{370} Richard becomes certainly more respectable as he gets older, and beyond a slight flirtation with his landlady, Mrs. Stokes, of Short's Gardens, we hear little of his gallantries henceforward. He is certainly more prosperous, too, in some mysterious way, owing to a voyage he makes, apparently in an official capacity, from Gosport to Flanders, for which a sum of ninety-five guineas is handed to him. He says nothing of his adventures in Flanders, where, however, he only lands at Ostend for a few days from his ship the _Good Hope_. The voyage, however, is evidently an important one for him, as he has spoken of it on and off for many months, and takes a special journey to Cambridge to see brother Francis before setting out. On the 19th of October, 1698, he anchors in Dover Roads on his return, and goes thence to Danes Court, where he stays over Christmas, and returns to London in January, 1699. His friend Churchill has now taken the Treasury matter in hand, and after many months of hope deferred Richard Bere gets his £74 4s. at last in October. But Churchill wanted paying, and on the morrow of the payment "Churchill came to me drunk, and quarrelled with me because I would not give him the money he wanted." I suspect the money was all spent long ago, for Richard has often enough gone into the City to borrow five or ten pounds "on the King's order." He is very methodical about money matters, too, for all his apparent improvidence. He has a boon companion named Henry Johnson, who during the autumn and winter of 1699 drank mainly at his expense. Every penny thus spent is noted against the date in the diary, and a neat account of the whole. {371} headed "Expenditure on account of Henry Johnson," is bound up with the diary. From this it appears that Johnson consumed over seven pounds' worth of brandy at various taverns with Richard in about five months. On the 27th of January, 1700, Richard again visits the Duke of Norfolk; but it is rather a falling off to be told that he goes straight from the Duke's to eat black puddings at Smith's. In July of the same year he goes to see a witch called Anna Wilkes, a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and the same day he learns in the Tilt Yard that his boon companion Stourton is made Deputy-Governor of Windsor. On the 30th of July the young Duke of Gloucester dies, and one day next week Richard, after drinking punch with Mr. Van Dyk, tries to see the body of the young prince at the lying-in-state, but fails. His brother Francis is in town about the firstfruits and fees of his new fat living of Prescot, and Richard is his surety for £48 1s. 5d. to the King, and when Francis has got comfortably settled in his new rectory in July, 1701, Richard takes the ship _Providence_ for Liverpool to visit him. They take a fortnight to get there; and when he arrives a gentleman comes on board and announces that brother Francis has married his (the gentleman's) sister, whereupon Richard is much surprised, and promptly