About 1:50 it pleased Almighty god to take from me my beloved wife, who, poor creature, has labored under a severe though lingering illness for these 38 weeks past, which she bore with the greatest resignation to the divine will. In her I have lost a sincere friend and virtuous wife, a prudent and good economist in her family and a very valuable companion (and one endued with more than a common share of good sense).
I will once more say she was virtuous even in the most strictest sense of the word virtue: she was always decent in her apparel and remarkably sweet and cleanly in her person, and had by nature a cheerful though religious turn of mind. Therefore I have lost an invaluable blessing, a wife who, had it pleased God to have given her health, would have been of more real excellence to me then the greatest fortune this world can give.
Oh, may her agonizing pains and dying groans have such a constant impression on my mind that (through the assistance of God’s grace) I may ever have the thought of death in my mind, and that by a truly religious course of life may be prepared to meet that King of Terrors; may the memory of her virtues always excite in me a love of that which is good and virtuous, and may I endeavor to copy the many excellencies she was undoubtedly possessed of; therefore I may justly say with the incomparable Mr Young: “Let them who have ever lost an angel pity me.”
We dined on the remains of yesterday’s dinner. My friend George Richardson came to advise me in the evening, and stayed with me all night, and both of us lodged at Master Durrant’s. Dame Durrant and Bett Mepham stayed with my servants.