In the morning Mr French and Mr Piper came before I was up and called me in order to make the land tax books, for in reality they must be carried into the sitting today; so accordingly, I made them, though I do not remember that I was either thanked or offered to be paid for the paper. But as to Mr French’s part, he has so often conferred favors upon me that I lay under great obligation to him, but as for Mr Piper, I know of none he ever conferred on me though sometimes solicited thereto; so that I think I may without partially say he is a mean-spirited old wretch. However, let him go as he is, for he will, I doubt, always remain poor in the midst of riches.
We dined on some veal boiled and the broth and caper sauce. Paid 4½d for 10 small plaice bought today. Paid John Pentecost 7/6 for 12 lbs of wool bought today. Paid Thomas Cornwell by a book debt and money 5/- in full for gardening, ditching etc. Bet Fuller drank tea at our house. In the evening went down to a public vestry at Jones’s, where our company was Joseph and Thomas Fuller, Mr French, Joseph Durrant, Will Piper, Richard Page and myself. There was nothing of any moment agreed to but that Peter Adams would be released from a bond which he gave the parish as security for the child born of the body of Anne Cain, of which he is the putative father, upon condition that he shall pay to the churchwarden or overseer on Monday the 3rd of July next the sum of four pounds, and also at the same time to pay to them, or either of them, a sum sufficient after the rate of 18d a per week to defray the expenses of keeping the said child until it shall arrive at the full age of 7 years.
Came home about 9:45 when I found my wife very ill. I also received a letter from my father Slater that my sister-in-law Ann Slater was very dangerously ill and given over by the doctors. Spent at Jones’s 1½d.