To the Tower several times,
about the business of the pressed men, and late at it till twelve
at night shipping of them. But, Lord! how some poor women did
cry; and in my life I never did see such natural expression of
passion as I did here in some women's bewailing themselves, and
running to every parcel of men that were brought, one after
another, to look for their husbands, and wept over every vessel
that went off, thinking they might be there, and looking after
the ship as far as ever they could by moone-light, that it
grieved me to the heart to hear them. Besides, to see poor
patient labouring men and housekeepers leaving poor wives and
families, taken up on a sudden by strangers, was very hard, and
that without press-money, but forced against all law to be gone.
It is a great tyranny.
2nd. Up betimes, and forced to go to my Lord Mayor's, about the
business of the pressed men; and indeed I find him a mean man of
understanding and dispatch of any publick business. Thence out
of curiosity to Bridewell to see the pressed men, where there are
about 300; but so unruly that I durst not go among them: and
they have reason to be so, having been kept these three days
prisoners, with little or no victuals, and pressed out and
contrary to all course of law, without press-money, and men that
are not liable to it.
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