Mary Heath a-washing for us half the day. She dined with us on the remains of Saturday’s dinner. Borrowed of Thomas Fuller Sr 5/- in change. At home all the day and tolerable busy.
In the evening went down to Jones’s to the vestry where there were Mr Porter, Mr French, Joseph and Thomas Fuller, Joseph Burgess, Will Piper, Richard Page, Ed Foord, John Cayley, Joseph Durrant and myself. We stayed till about 10:20, but of all the out-of-the-way, quarrelsome people I ever saw, I think no one ever came up to Mr French. For there is no one in company must in any way the least so ever contradict or thwart what he proposes, though as for himself he seldom if ever fails to oppose that which anyone else shall happen to start, or gave as his opinion. Then he has the greatest skill imaginable in foretelling judging right of things when they are past. For if there is ever anything turns out to the disadvantage of the parish, why then it is always his opinion that it was wrong (though perhaps at the time of its being done, one of the eagerest for it), and on the other hand, if anything turns out to the advantage of the parish, why then he always knew it to be right (though perhaps the only person that should ever have opposed it). And what still renders him the more disagreeable company is that there is almost an impossibility of any person to speak a word beside himself; so the noise of his clamor with the hoarse and grating sound of his huge big oaths almost deafens the ears of any of his audience. But then the best remedy to bring him into a good humor and change his perverseness into obscenity and raillery is to give him 2 or 3 drams of old English gin. But however after all to be serious upon the affair it is a most melancholy thing that a man who professes the Christian religion and is constant at divine worship and is in many respects a good neighbor should behave in the manner he does. For undoubtedly it is very contrary tow that religion which he professes himself a member of.