Saturday 5 October 1661
At the office all the morning, then dined at home, and so staid at home all the afternoon putting up my Lord’s model of the Royal James, which I borrowed of him long ago to hang up in my room. And at night Sir W. Pen and I alone to the Dolphin, and there eat some bloat-herrings1 and drank good sack. Then came in Sir W. Warren and another and staid a while with us, and then Sir Arnold Brames, with whom we staid late and till we had drank too much wine. So home and I to bed pleased at my afternoon’s work in hanging up the shipp. So to bed.
- To bloat is to dry by smoke, a method chiefly used to cure herrings or bloaters. “I have more smoke in my mouth than would blote a hundred herrings.”—Beaumont and Fletcher, Island Princess. “Why, you stink like so many bloat-herrings newly taken out of the chimney.”—Ben Jonson, “Masque of Augurs.”