There existed, until about 1859, another very notable “New” inn, probably the work of the Abbots of Sherborne, and intended for the reception of visitors to that beautiful Dorsetshire abbey. That splendid old hostelry, with a noble front of yellow sandstone, built in the Perpendicular style of architecture, probably about 1420, was the finest example of an inn of its period in England, but it was ruthlessly, and with incredible stupidity, demolished, and the only pictorial record of it appears to be an entirely inadequate, severe, and unsympathetic little wood-cut in Parker’s Domestic Architecture.[13] It figures in Mr. Thomas Hardy’s story of The Woodlanders as the “Earl of Wessex” inn at “Sherton Abbas.”

It was in those “good old days” that are so interesting to read about, and were so ill to live in, that the ancient hospice flourished most bravely. When ways were not merely rough and lonely, but were also infested by “sturdye beggaris,” “maysterless men,” and others who would not hesitate to do the solitary traveller a hurt, the good abbots or monks who established wayside houses of entertainment where no secular innkeeper dared were truly benefactors to their species. The relic of just such a place, on a road once extremely lonely and dangerous, is to be found along the present highway between Brecon and Llandovery, in South Wales, some two miles westward of the town of Brecon. The road runs terraced above the southern bank of the river Usk, through a rugged country where, in ancient times, Welsh chieftains and outlaws, alike lawless and beggarly, knocked the solitary traveller on the head and went over his pockets amid the appropriately dramatic scenery of beetling crag and splashing waterfall. At the gate of this lurk of bandits the holy monks of Malvern Priory founded an hospitium, on the spot where stand to-day the ancient and picturesque church and the few houses of the village of Llanspyddid: whose Welsh name, indeed, means the Hospice Church.

Nothing, unfortunately, is left of that “spythy,” or hospice, they so piously built and maintained, for, its usefulness long overpast, it was left to decay: but the church they built, in which travellers returned thanks for the succour vouchsafed them, remains by the roadside. It is a romantic-looking church, placed in an appropriate setting of extremely ancient and funereal-looking yews that lead up darkly to the heavy north porch, beautifully decorated with carved woodwork.

The “George” at Glastonbury presents the finest exterior of all these pilgrims’ inns, for it stands to-day very much as it did in the time of Edward the Sixth, when it was built (1475) by Abbot John Selwood for the accommodation of such pilgrims as were not personages. There has ever been a subtle distinction between a personage and a mere person. The great ones, the high and mighty of the land, on pilgrimage were made much of, and entertained by my lord Abbot in appropriately princely fashion, in the Abbot’s lodgings: the middle-class pilgrims were lodged at the Abbot’s inn, and the residue lay where best they might: perhaps in some guesten-hall, or possibly in the open air.

Pilgrimages to Glastonbury were less numerous and popular than those to the pre-eminent Shrine of the Blessed St. Thomas at Canterbury, but they were not few, for the story of this great mitred Somersetshire Abbey is one of the marvels and legendary wonders that, however greatly they may stagger the twentieth-century capacity for belief, were of old implicitly relied upon. Few were those who in mediæval times questioned their genuineness, and those who did so kept their doubts prudently to themselves.

This marvellous lore narrates how it was to St. Joseph of Arimathea that the Abbey owed its origin. In A.D. 63 he came, with eleven companions, wandering among the bogs and morasses of this western land, and discovered this elevated ground rising above the marshes, further topped by the commanding peak of Glastonbury Tor. “Weary all!” they exclaimed, as they sank down, exhausted, on the spot called Weary All Hill to this day, although its name is properly “Wirrall.” Here St. Joseph thrust his staff into the ground, and, taking root and blossoming every Christmas Day for over fourteen hundred years, it was known in all Christendom as the Holy Thorn.

THE “GEORGE,” GLASTONBURY.

The Holy Thorn itself was a sight to see, for, whatever its origin, it did actually blossom on or about Christmas, as descendants from the parent stock do to this day. The original hawthorn—or what was looked upon in the time of Queen Elizabeth as the original—was fanatically attacked by an early Puritan who succeeded in felling one of its two trunks, and was proceeding to destroy the other, when he struck his leg instead, and had an eye gouged out by a flying chip: an incident that would have pleased the old monks, had they not been dead and gone a generation earlier. This capacity in the Holy Thorn for taking its own part did not avail when a Cromwellian soldier-saint, a half-century or so later, cut it down. Nothing in the tragical way appears to have happened to him.

An object of even greater veneration than the Holy Thorn was the body of St. Dunstan, stolen by the monks of Glastonbury from Canterbury, and for long centuries a source of great revenue, in the shape of offerings from the faithful, eager for his spiritual good offices or for the healing touch of his relics.

That which was too staggering for the belief of old-time pilgrims was never discovered. At Glastonbury they were shown a part of Moses’ rod, some milk and some hair of the Virgin, part of the hem of the Saviour’s garment, a nail from the Cross, and a thorn from the Crown of Thorns. No one ever questioned those blasphemous mediæval Barnums, who showed a sample of the manna that fed the children of Israel, and the incredible item of “the dust of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three children sacrificed in the burning fiery furnace, with the bone of one of them”; and so they humbugged the devout for centuries.

Pilgrims of all kinds, bringing offerings, each one according to his means, were clearly to be encouraged, and there was from a very early period an “Abbot’s Inn” at Glastonbury. This stood on the site of the present “White Hart” until about 1755, when, to prevent it falling, it was pulled down. It had, however, ceased to be the Abbot’s Inn about 1489, the newly built “George” then taking its place. How dilapidated was the more ancient building may be understood from the story which tells of an auction being held on an upper floor, just before its demolition. “Going, going!” exclaimed the auctioneer, and then, as he accepted a bid, “Gone!”: whereupon the entire flooring of the room gave way, and every one and everything were, with a tremendous crash, precipitated down to the ground floor.

Abbot Selwood, who ruled from 1456 to 1493, built the “George” for middle-class pilgrims, and gave them board and lodging free for two days. He did so from a strictly business point of view; and we may even suspect that, if his guests made a longer stay, he recompensed himself by overcharging.

Although a room is shown in which King Henry the Eighth is said to have slept—heavens! did they treat him as a middle-class pilgrim?—and a room with oaken beams is termed the “Abbot’s Room,” there is little to be seen within, save the original stone newel staircase leading upstairs and a stone bench in the cellar now christened the Penitents’ Seat, on which, if you please, sinners under conviction sat, with water up to their knees. For my part, although the perennial spring is there, I remain sceptical of aught but beer-barrels and hogsheads of wine ever having occupied that Penitents’ Form. Penitents frequenting the cellars where the booze is kept are suspect.

The exterior, however, is a very fine example of the late Perpendicular phase of Gothic architecture, as applied to domestic or semi-domestic uses. The battlements formerly had stone figures peering from each embrasure, figures traditionally said to have represented the Twelve Cæsars, or the Twelve Apostles. Exactly how this was managed can hardly be seen, for there are but seven openings. Only one figure now remains, and he looks little like a Cæsar, and very much less like an Apostle.

At the present time the “George” is a “family and commercial” hotel. Its notepaper would seem to indicate that it is not the house for Dissenters, for it displays, beneath a mitre and crossed croziers, an aspiration in Latin to the effect that “May the Anglican Church Flourish.” Our withers are wrung: we are galled, and wince.

The “Red Lion,” opposite the “George,” with fine stone-embayed window and frontage dated 1659, was formerly the Porter’s Lodge and gateway of the Abbey.

A very spirited view of Glastonbury, including the “George,” in the eighteenth century was executed, as an etching, by Rowlandson, and shows us, in his inimitable manner, the life and bustle of an old English country town on market-day. There you see a post-chaise and four being driven at top speed through the town, bringing disaster to a woman dealer in crockery, whose donkey, lashing out with his hind-legs, is upsetting the contents of his panniers; and there at the town-pump, in those days before house-to-house water-supply, are the gossipping servants, very beefy about the ankles, filling their pitchers and pipkins.

HIGH STREET, GLASTONBURY, IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
From the etching by Rowlandson.

CHAPTER VII

Let us try to imagine that inn, licensed for the sale of wine and spirituous liquors and for religious services! It seems odd, but after all not so odd as these mad times of our own, when public-houses are converted into missions, and ordained clergymen of the Church of England become publicans and serve drinks across the counter in the interest of temperance and good behaviour.[14]

No traces of that oratory now remain in the “George.” It is one of the most comfortable of old houses, and full of old panelling and old prints and furniture, but the “great men and nobles” have long ceased to lodge here, and it is now only frequented by “others.” The chapel was desecrated at the time of the Reformation, and was afterwards in use as part of the stables.

The carving seen in the illustration over the archway is no integral part of the inn, but was brought from old Holywell House in 1837, on the destruction of that mansion, of which it formed the decorative pediment.

The Church, as already shown, was the earliest innkeeper in those days when travellers travailed in difficulties and dangers; and semi-religious bodies often acted the same hospitable part. The Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem kept hostelries at various places, prominent among them the old house which is now the “Angel” at Grantham.

The “Angel,” in common with other inns of the same name, derived its sign in the far-off thirteenth century from a religious picture-sign of the Annunciation, and we may readily see how, in the fading of the picture, the rest of the group gradually sank out of sight, leaving only that bright announcing messenger visible to passers-by. Undoubtedly the “Angel” at Islington obtained its name in this way: staggering though the thought may be to those who know that merely secular public-house, in that roaring vortex of London traffic.

THE “GEORGE,” ST. ALBANS.

The attitude of greeting in the pose of the angelic figure led in course of time to such a sign being often called the “Salutation”: hence the various old inns of that name in different parts of the country were originally “Angels.”

The “Angel” at Grantham is a quaint admixture of ancient and modern. It was a hostel, and bore this name even so early as the reign of King John, for beneath its roof that monarch held his Court in the February of 1213. We do not, however, find anything nowadays so ancient in the “Angel,” for every vestige of the building in which that shifty and evasive monarch lodged has disappeared. This is by no means to say that the “Angel” is of recent date. It belongs in part to the mid-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—a more than respectable age. From the midst of the town of Grantham it looks out upon the Great North Road, and in truth, facing a highway of so great and varied historic doings, no building can have witnessed more in the way of varied processions. History, made visible, has passed by, in front of these windows, for at least five hundred years, beginning with the gorgeous cavalcades of kings and courts and armies going or coming on missions of peace or war to and from Scotland, and at last—what a contrast!—ending with the hotel omnibus to or from the railway-station, with the luggage of “commercials.”

THE “ANGEL,” GRANTHAM.

A very tragical incident in history was enacted in the great room, now divided into three, that once extended the whole length of the frontage on the first floor. Perhaps it was in the bay of the beautiful Gothic oriel window lighting this room that Richard the Third signed the death-warrant of the Duke of Buckingham, October 19th, 1483. That it was signed in this room we know. What was his manner when he put his hand to that deed? Did he declaim anything in the “off with his head; so much for Buckingham,” dramatic way, as we are led by Colley Cibber’s stage-version of Shakespeare’s Richard the Third to suppose he did? Or did he silently treat it as a matter of stern, imperious necessity of statecraft? Had he possessed the dramatic sense, he certainly would have mouthed some such bloodthirsty phrase, and, turning on his heel in the self-satisfied attitude of triumphant villainy we know so well, would have made a striking exit, as per stage directions, curling a villainous and contemptuous lip, in the manner that never yet failed to bring down the heartfelt hatred, and the hisses, of the gallery.

It is, however, to be sadly supposed that the King did nothing of that sort. He could not play to the gallery—for it was not there; he probably did not turn upon his heel, nor curl his lip, for the Stage, whence you learn the trick of these things, had not yet come into existence. And if you do but consider it, most of the great doings of the world, bloody or legislative, or what not, have been done—not, if it please you, “enacted”—without a due sense of their dramatic and spectacular possibilities. They all came in the day’s work, and the issues were too tremendous, the risks too great and impending, for the personages involved in them to enjoy the leisure for posing.

The old embayed stone frontage of the “Angel” has survived many a shock and buffet of Time, and, although the mullions of most of its windows have long since been removed, in the not unnatural demand for more light, the antiquity of the house is manifest to the most commercial, and least antiquarian, traveller. On either side of the Gothic archway by which you enter, the carved heads of Edward the Third and his heroic Queen Philippa still appear, and at the crown of the arch, serving the purpose of a supporting corbel to the beautiful oriel window above, is a sculptured angel supporting a shield of arms.

The historic “Angel,” scene of so many centuries of conviviality, has long been made to foster the cause of temperance. Indeed, for two hundred years past, ages before Temperance became a Cause with capital letters and capital endowments, the rent of the house went towards this object, under the will of one Michael Solomon, who, dying in 1706, directed that a sermon should be annually preached in Grantham church, “strongly denouncing drunkenness,” the cost to be met out of the rental of the “Angel.” But the most cynical stroke of chance befell in November, 1905, when the preacher of this counterblast against drink, paid for out of the profits of a licensed house, was the Reverend Gerald Goodwin, son of the chief proprietor of a prominent Newark brewery.

The “George,” at Norton St. Philip, claiming to have been licensed in 1397, has stirring history, as well as antiquity and beauty, to recommend it. You who are curious as to where the village of Norton stands may take the map of Somerset and presently, scanning the county to the south of Bath, discover it set down about seven miles to the south of that ancient city, in a somewhat sequestered district. The reason of so large and so grand a hostelry being in existence since the Middle Ages in so small a village is not, at the first blush, evident, and it is only when the ancient history of Norton itself is explored that the wherefore of it is found.

It seems, then, that the land hereabout was in those far-off times the property of the old Priory of Hinton Charterhouse—that old Carthusian house whose brethren were the best farmers, wool-growers, and stock-raisers of their time in the West Country. As early as the reign of Henry the Third the monastery was licensed to hold a fair here in May, on the vigil, the feast, and the morrow of the festival of SS. Philip and James; and again, in 1284, secured a charter conferring the right of holding a market at “Norton Charterhouse” every Friday, instead of, as formerly, at the bleak and much-exposed Hinton. In 1345 the Priory was further empowered to annually hold a fair on the feast of the Decollation of St. John at Norton: an institution that, although the Priory went the way of all its kind over five hundred and fifty years ago, remained a yearly fixture on August 28th and 29th until quite recent times. It was known locally, for some reason now undiscoverable, as “Norton Dog Fair.”

The fair in its last years degenerated into the usual thing we understand nowadays as a fair: a squalid exhibition of Fat Women and Two-headed Calves; a gaudy and strepitous saturnalia of roundabouts and mountebanks; but it was—or they were, for, as we have already seen, there were at one time two—originally highly important business conventions. The principal business then transacted was the selling of wool and cloth, and it was for the purpose of helping their trade as wool-growers, and for the benefit generally of their very lucrative fairs, that the monks of Hinton Charterhouse in the fourteenth century built as a hostel that which is to-day the “George” inn.

THE “GEORGE,” NORTON ST. PHILIP.

For generations the merchants and wool-staplers exposed their wares and did their business in the street, or in a large upper room of the house, and long continued to do so when in course of time the whole thing had been altogether secularised.

The cyclist who comes to Norton St. Philip from Bath has a weary time of it, among the hills, by Odd Down, Midford, and Freshford; and only when he has come uphill to windy Hinton Charterhouse are his toils over, and the rest of the way easy. It is a broad, modern road, but the observant may yet see the disused Abbot’s Way going, narrow, and even more steep, over the fields, to the left hand; and we may well imagine the joy of the old travellers along it when they saw the grey church tower in the village, nestling in a fold of the hills, and heard those sweet-toned bells of Norton that still sound so mellow on the ear, and are the identical “very fine ring of six bells” that Pepys heard on June 12th, 1668, and pronounced “mighty tuneable.”

The “George” keeps unmistakable evidences of its semi-ecclesiastical origin, and the Gothic character of the solid stonework in the lower storey points to the latter half of the fourteenth century. The curious and exceedingly picturesque contrast between the massive masonry below and the overhanging timbered upper part has led, without any other evidence, to the conjecture that the house must at some time have suffered from fire, or otherwise been injured and partly rebuilt; but such instances of mixed methods in ancient building are numerous.

History of a romantic kind has been enacted here, for it was in the street of Norton St. Philip, that a furious skirmish was fought, June 26th, 1685, between the untrained and badly armed rustics of the rebel Duke of Monmouth, and the soldiers of King James, under command of the weak and vacillating Lord Feversham. The rebel peasantry, armed only with pikes, scythes, and billhooks, that day withstood and routed their enemies, and they held the village that night, Monmouth himself sleeping in one of the front bedrooms of the “George.” It was while dressing at this window the following morning that he was fired at by some unknown person desirous of earning the reward offered by James for the taking of his nephew’s life. The bullet, however, sped harmlessly by that preserver and champion of the Protestant liberties of the country: hence the invincible anonymity of the firer of that shot. Had Monmouth died thus, it is conceivable he would have come down to us a more manly historic figure.

The interior of the “George” is woefully disappointing, after the expectations raised by the noble exterior. It was obviously never ornately fitted, and long generations of neglect and misuse have resulted in the house being, internally, little better than a mere wreck, with the installation of a vulgar bar to insult the Gothic feeling of the place. The property now belongs to the Bath Brewery Company, and is not merely that abomination, a “tied house,” but is maintained in a barely habitable condition, the Company being reported of opinion that the Somersetshire Archæological Society—interested, as all archæologists must be, in a house so architecturally and historically interesting—should restore the building. If that report be true, it is a striking example of colossal impudence.

On the ground-floor, the present Tap-room keeps a large fire-place with old-fashioned grate. Above, mounting by a stone spiral staircase to the first floor, is the room used by Monmouth (the one to the right hand in the view), and known as the “King’s Room.” Its door, floor, and walls are of the roughest, as also are those of the adjoining room. On the floor above, running the whole length of the building, under the roof, is the long room used by the old wool-merchants as their market: and a darksome and makeshift place, under the roof-timbers, it is, and must have been at the best of times. To-day the floor is rotten, and you must go delicately, lest you fall through to the next floor, and then through that to the ground, where only the explorer can feel secure.

It is the same tale of far-gone decay in the yard, to which you enter, as also to the house itself, by the great archway in the village street. It was always a small yard, but was partly galleried. The tottering remains of the gallery, with brewhouse below, are left, still filled with the enormous casks built in the brewhouse itself, and only to be removed by demolishing them. The rooms are mere ruins. If ever the interior and the yard of the “George” are restored it will be a great and an expensive work; but it is to be feared that, Norton St. Philip being an unlikely place for lengthened resort—visitors coming from curiosity from Bath for merely an hour or so—such a work will never be undertaken.

In even worse case, from an archæologist’s point of view, is the “George” at Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire; for it stands in the High Street of a busy little town, and has been disastrously altered in recent years by the brewers who own it. Brewers have no undue leanings toward historic or architectural sentiment, and in this instance their object was to fit their house for use as a commercial hotel. Accordingly, they caused the ancient stone face to be pulled down and have replaced it by an imitation timbered gabled front. Something of what the old front was like may be discovered at the back, where the date, 1583, may be seen on the stonework, together with an inscription to the effect that it was restored in 1706.

The “George” was originally built as a pilgrims’ inn by the Abbots of Winchcombe and Hayles, whose noted West Country shrines attracted many thousands of the pious and the sinful in days gone by. At Winchcombe they had the body of St. Kenelm, the Saxon boy-king who succeeded to the throne of Mercia in A.D. 822, and, according to legendary lore, was murdered at the instigation of his sister Cwoenthryth, who desired his place. Kenelm was but seven years of age, but already so pious, if we are to believe the story, that the poisons at first administered to him refused their customary effects, and there was nothing for it but to strike his head off. Piety, therefore, was not proof against cold steel.

YARD OF THE “GEORGE,” NORTON ST. PHILIP.

His tutor, the treacherous Askobert, was induced to perform this act, in the lonely forest of Clent. To the astonishment of Askobert, a white dove flew from the severed neck and soared away into the sky. Naturally surprised by such a marvel, he nevertheless was not unnerved, and buried the body under a thorn-bush and went his way. Cwoenthryth in due course succeeded, and reigned for some two years, when the inevitable vengeance fell. It came about in a curious way—as do all these retributions in monastic legends. The Pope was celebrating Mass in his Cathedral of St. Peter when a dove that had been observed there poised itself over the high altar and dropped from its beak a piece of parchment inscribed, “In Clent in Cowbach Kenelm Kynge’s child lieth under a thorn, his head taken from him.”

This strange message was conveyed to England, and an expedition, formed of the monks of Winchcombe and Worcester, set off to the forest of Clent. Arrived there, the expeditionary force was guided to the thorn-tree by a white cow, and duly found the body. After disputing whose property it was to become, they decided that, as they were all wearied with the journey and their exertions, they should, every one, lie down and rest, the body to become the possession of those who should first arise. The Winchcombe men were first awake, and were well away over the hills with their prize before the monks of Worcester ceased from their snoring, yawned, opened their eyes, and found the treasure gone.

The miraculous power of St. Kenelm manifested itself on the way, for the men of Winchcombe, fainting on their journey for lack of water, prayed, for the love of him, to be guided to some spring; when immediately a gush of water burst forth from the hillside. Thus refreshed, they came into Winchcombe, where the wicked Cwoenthryth, whom later generations have agreed to name, in more simple fashion, Quenride, was reading that very comminatory Psalm, the 109th, wherein all manner of disasters are invoked upon the Psalmist’s enemies. There has ever been considered some especial virtue in reciting prayers and invocations backwards, and Quenride, having gone through the Psalm in the ordinary way, was proceeding to take it in reverse when the procession came winding along the street. At that moment her eyes fell out; and, to bear witness to the truth of the story, the Abbey of Winchcombe long exhibited, among the greatest of its treasures, the blood-stained psalter on whose pages they fell—which, of course, was convincing.

Can we wonder that, in those credulous ages, pilgrimage to Winchcombe should have been a popular West Country practice? And if not to St. Kenelm’s shrine, there was the peculiarly holy relic of the neighbouring Abbey of Hayles, where the monks treasured nothing less tremendous than a bottle of Christ’s blood. This in after years—as was to be supposed—was discovered to be a blasphemous imposture, the precious phial being declared by the examining Commissioners in the time of Henry the Eighth to contain merely “an unctuous gum, coloured.”

YARD OF THE “GEORGE,” WINCHCOMBE.

A pilgrims’ inn at Winchcombe was, in view of the crowds naturally resorting to either or both of these Abbeys, a very necessary institution, and for long the “George” so remained.

The ways of the brewers with the old house have been already in part recorded and the destruction of much of interest deplored, but there still remains a little of its former state. There is, for instance, the great archway at the side, with the oaken spandrels carved with foliage and the initials R. K.; standing for Richard Kyderminster, Abbot of Winchcombe at some period in the fifteenth century. Through this archway runs the yard, down to the back of the town, and there is what is still called the “Pilgrims’ Gallery,” on one side. One scarcely knows which of the two courses adopted by the brewers with this old inn was the most disastrous: the actual demolition of the old frontage, or the “restoration” of the Pilgrims’ Gallery in so thorough a manner that it is, in almost every respect, a new structure. Nor does it, as of old, conduct to bedrooms, for that part of the house giving upon it has been reconstructed as a large room, available for entertainments or public dinners.

There is something peculiarly appropriate in the refectory of a monastic house becoming an inn. Such is the history of the “Lord Crewe Arms,” at Blanchland.

It is a far cry to that picturesque and quiet village, in stern and rugged Northumberland; but you may be sure that, however wild and forbidding the surrounding country, the site and the immediate neighbourhood of an ancient abbey will prove to be fertile, sheltered, and beautiful; and Blanchland, the old home of an Abbey of Præmonstratensian canons, is no exception to this rule.

Whichever way the traveller comes into Blanchland, he comes by hills more or less precipitous, and by moors chiefly remarkable for their savage and worthless nature, and it is a welcome change when, from the summit of a steep hill, he at last looks down upon the quiet place, nestling in a hollow on the Northumbrian side of the little river Derwent, that here separates the counties of Northumberland and Durham.

Down there, still remote from the busy world, the village is slowly but surely fading out of existence, as we learn from the cold, dispassionate figures of the Census returns, which record the fact that in 1811 the inhabitants numbered 518, while in 1901 they were but 232.

It is a compact little place. There is the ancient bridge, built by the monks, across the Derwent, still, in the words of Froissart, “strong and rapid and full of large stones and rocks”; and there are the church-tower, the old Abbey gatehouse, the “Lord Crewe Arms,” and some few houses, forming four sides of a square. “The place,” as Walter Besant truly says in his novel, Dorothy Forster, “has the aspect of an ancient and decayed college.”

Blanchland owes everything to its old abbey, conducted under the rules of the original brethren of Prémonté, and even derived its name of Blanche Lande from the white habits of the monks; just as Whitland in Carmarthenshire, took its name from a similar history.

The Abbey of Blanchland was founded here, at “Wulwardshope,” as the place was originally named, in 1163, and, rebuilt and added to from time to time, flourished until the heavy hand of Henry the Eighth and his commissioners ended it, in 1536. In all those long centuries it had remained obscure, both in its situation and its history; and was indeed so difficult to come to that tradition tells a picturesque story of mediæval Scottish raiders failing to find the place and so returning home, when its situation was revealed to them by the bells the monks were ringing, to express joy at their deliverance. Alas! it was their own funeral knell the brethren rang; for, guided by the sound, those Border ruffians entered Blanchland, burnt its Abbey and slew the monks.

Shortly after the suppression of the Abbey under Henry the Eighth, the monastic lands became the property, and the domestic buildings of the Abbey the home, of the Radcliffe family, and afterwards of the Forsters, who, according to the wholly irreverent, and half-boastful, half-satirical local saying, were older than the oldest of county families, for “the Almighty first created the world and Adam and Eve, and then He made the Forsters.”

Blanchland was at last lost to that long-descended race by the treason of General Forster, who was concerned in the rising of 1715, and so forfeited his estates; and in 1721 the property was purchased by Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop of Durham, who at the age of sixty-seven had married Dorothy Forster, at that time twenty-four years of age.

THE “LORD CREWE ARMS,” BLANCHLAND.

The present inn, the “Lord Crewe Arms,” is a portion of the old refectory buildings on the west side of the cloister garth, but many alterations and additions have been made since those times, and the actual oldest part is the ancient monastic fireplace, very much disguised by later generations, and in the fact that it is now in use as the fireplace of the modern kitchen.

In the fine drawing-room of the inn, formerly the ball-room of the Forster mansion, hangs a portrait of Lord Crewe, that time-serving reactionary sycophant under James the Second and would-be toady to William the Third. His public life was a version, on a higher plane, of that of the celebrated Vicar of Bray, and he succeeded admirably in his determination to stick to his principles—to live and die Bishop-Palatine of Durham; for as Lord Bishop he remained until his death, aged eighty-nine, in 1722, in the reign of George the Second.

But he well deserves the honour of the inn being named after him, for he left his wealth in various charities, the rent of the inn itself forming a portion of the income of the Crewe trustees.

Our ultimate example of a monastic hostel is found at Aylesbury, a town whose name would, to imaginative persons, appear at the first blush to indicate a happy hunting-ground for old inns; but although—Shakespeare to the contrary—there is usually very much in a name, the meaning is not always—and in place-names not often—what it would seem to be. Thus, Aylesbury is not the town of ale, but (a very different thing), Aeglesberge, i.e. “the Church Town,” a name it obtained in Saxon times, when the surrounding country was godless, and this place exceptionally provided.

At the same time, Aylesbury—the place also of ducks and of dairies—was once notable for an exceedingly fine inn: none other than the great galleried “White Hart,” first modernised in 1814, when its gabled, picturesque front was pulled down and replaced by a commonplace red-brick front, in the style, or lack of style, then prevalent; and finally cleared away in 1863, to make room for the existing Corn Exchange and Market House.

THE “OLD KING’S HEAD,” AYLESBURY.

Coming into Aylesbury, in quest of inns, one looks at that building with dismay. Was it really to build such a horrific thing they demolished the “White Hart”? How deplorable!

Aylesbury is a town where, late at night, the police foregather in the reverberative Market Square, instead of going their individual beats; and there, through the small hours, they talk and laugh, hawk and spit, and make offensive noises, until the sleepless stranger longs to open his window and throw things at them. Happy he whose bedroom does not look upon their rendezvous! But this is merely incidental. More germane to the matter under consideration is the fact that, although the “White Hart” be gone, Aylesbury still keeps a remarkably fine inn, of the smaller sort, in the “Old King’s Head,” which, if not indeed a pilgrims’ inn, seems to have been originally built by some religious fraternity as a hospice or guest-house for travellers. Of its history and of the original building nothing is known, the present house dating from 1444-50. You discover the “Old King’s Head” in a narrow street off the market-place, and at the first glimpse of it perceive that here is something quite exceptionally fine. A sketch is, if it be any good at all, always worth a page of description, and so we will let the accompanying illustration take the place of mere verbiage. Only let it be observed that the larger gable and the window in it are new, having been rebuilt in 1880.

The great window, entirely constructed of oak, is the chief feature of the exterior, just as the noble room it lights is the principal object of interest in the house itself. The point most worthy of consideration here is that in this remarkably fine window, and in the room itself, you have an unaltered and unrestored work of the fifteenth century. In early ages the house was an inn with some ecclesiastical tie, and when it passed from the hands of the brotherhood (whoever they may have been) that once owned it, and became a secularised hostelry, it seems to have continued its career with very little alteration beyond that of adopting as a sign the “King’s Head”: that king doubtless originally Henry the Eighth himself. The house was, in the seventeenth century, one of the Aylesbury inns that issued tokens, for in museums and private collections are still to be found copper pieces inscribed “At ye King’s Head In Aillsburey, W.E.D. 1657.” There still existed, until comparatively recent times, traces of old galleries in the extensive yard, but modern changes have at last completely abolished them.

The fine room of which the great window forms one complete side was no doubt originally the common-room of the hostel. It is now the tap-room. A fine lofty hall it makes: oaken pillars, black with age, springing from each corner, based upon stone plinths and supporting finely moulded beams that, crossing in the ceiling, divide it into nine square compartments. The great window, divided by mullions and a transom into twenty lights, is of course seen to best advantage from within, and still keeps much of the original armorial stained glass.

CHAPTER VIII

Strange, mysterious plotters, highwaymen, and great nobles resorted to them, and, coming to things more domestic, there, under the inn’s hospitable roof, town councils not infrequently met in those times before ever “municipal buildings” were dreamed of, and conducted their business over a cheering, and inebriating, cup. Your inn was, in short, then at once your railway-station, club, hotel, reading-room and mart. There were distinct advantages, in the social sense, in all this. It meant good-fellowship when respectable townsfolk were not ashamed to spend a winter evening in the parlour of a representative inn, or play a game of bowls in summer on the bowling-green with which most such houses were once furnished, and the man who now glowers in unneighbourly and solitary way over his hearthstone, would expand, with such opportunities, into as good-natured a fellow as any of the olden time.

THE “REINDEER,” BANBURY.

The inns of Banbury make some historic figure. It was in one of them—the chronicler says not which—that the dispute took place between the two Yorkist commanders, which led to the battle of Danesmoor being lost by their side, in July, 1469.

The occasion was the revolt of the great Earl of Warwick against Edward the Fourth. To intercept Warwick at Northampton the Earl of Pembroke was marching with a force from Gloucestershire, and was joined on the Cotswolds by Lord Stafford of Southwick, newly raised a step in the peerage by being created Earl of Devon. Lord Stafford’s troops numbered six thousand good archers: a very welcome reinforcement; but, even so, the combined forces dared not at once risk an engagement with the rebels at Daventry, and fell back upon Banbury. There a quarrel took place between Lord Stafford and the Earl of Pembroke, all on account of a pretty girl. Says Hall: “The earle of Pembroke putt the Lorde Stafforde out of an Inne, wherein he delighted muche to be, for the loue of a damosell that dwelled in the house: contrary to their mutuall agrement by them taken, which was, that whosoeaver abteined first a lodgyng should not be deceaved nor remoued. After a greate many woordes and crakes, had betwene these twoo capitaines, the lord Stafford of Southwyke, in greate dispite departed with his whole compaignie and band of Archers, leauynge the erle of Pembroke almost desolate in the toune.”

Accordingly, so weakened, the next day the Earl of Pembroke was defeated. He took refuge in Banbury church, but, according to Hall, was dragged forth by the fierce John Clapham, who beheaded him in the porch with his own hands.

Possibly it was at the “Red Lion,” in the High Street, that the damosell lived who caused all the strife between those great lords. If so, it renders that fine old house the more interesting. Modern needs, and a not unreasonable desire to keep incoming guests and their belongings dry, have caused the picturesque courtyard to be roofed in with glass, thus hiding many of its pictorial qualities; but you still enter from the street by a fifteenth-century oaken portal, much blunted by wear and tear and many successive coats of paint and varnish in all those succeeding centuries; yet indubitably still fifteenth-century work.

But the most picturesque inn at Banbury is the “Reindeer.” History is silent as to the why or the how of its acquiring that name, and is indeed dumb in almost every other respect concerning the old house. The “Reindeer,” both in itself and in its situation, is scarcely like the “Red Lion,” an hotel. You look in at the “Reindeer” for a drink and for curiosity only; for the house does not precisely invite guests, and probably does most business on market days, when country folk from neighbouring villages throng the strait and crooked streets of Banbury and put up their traps in its yard and insist on liberally drinking the health of one another. Parson’s Street, indeed, the situation of the “Reindeer,” is a market-street and crowded shopping centre, where brazen-tongued salesmen exhort housewives to “buy, buy, buy”; or indulge in rhapsodical, exclamatory passages in praise of their goods. You are gazing, let us say, outside the “original” Banbury-cake shop, opposite, upon the magpie black and white of the “Reindeer” frontage, when a parrot-like voice is heard exclaiming, in ecstatic rapture, “O what loverly heggs!” and, turning, you perceive, not a grey parrot in a gilded cage, but a white-aproned provision-dealer’s assistant, unfortunately at large. Fleeing into the courtyard of the inn, you still hear faint cries of “There’s ’am!” “O mother! what butter!”

The neighbourhood, it will be perceived, does not in these days lend itself to quiet residence, and although, by the evidence of its architecture, the “Reindeer” was doubtless at one time one of the chief hotels of the town, it has long ceased to hold anything like that position.

The old oaken gates and the black-and-white timbering above appear to be the oldest portions of the house: the gates themselves inscribed with the date “1570” on one side, and on the other

“IHON · KNIGHT ◈ IHONE · KNIGHT ◈ DAVID HORN.”

The great feature of the inn is, however, the noble oak-panelled chamber known, for whatever inscrutable reason, as the “Globe Room.” Exterior and interior views of it are the merest commonplaces in Banbury. There are, in fact, three things absolutely necessary, nay, almost sacramental, for the stranger to do in Banbury, without having performed the which he is a scorn and a derision. The first of these indispensable performances is the eating, or, at any rate, the buying of Banbury cakes. And here let me add that the Banbury cakes of Banbury have a lightness and a toothsomeness entirely lacking in the specious impostors made elsewhere. Just as there are no other such pork-pies as those of Melton Mowbray, and as Shrewsbury cakes can apparently only be made at Shrewsbury, so the “Banburys” made in other towns are apt to lie as heavy on your chest as a peccadillo upon a tender conscience. But in their native town they disappear, to the accompaniment of cups of tea, with a rapidity alarming to the pocket, if not to the stomach; for they cost “tuppence” apiece, and a hungry pedestrian or cyclist finds no difficulty in demolishing half a dozen of them.

YARD OF THE “REINDEER,” BANBURY.

The second of these necessary observances is the viewing of Banbury Cross: not the old original famous Banbury Cross of the nursery rhyme, to which many generations of children have been invited to “ride a cock-horse” to see the tintinnabulatory lady with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes; that cross was destroyed by the Puritans, and the modern one is not even a copy of it, for no man knoweth what the original was like.

The third of these necessary rites is the viewing of the “Globe Room” at the “Reindeer.” What the exterior of that room is like, let the illustration of the courtyard show. The date of its building is still faintly traceable in the figures “1637” on the masonry of the gable. They charge you threepence to view the interior, and if so be you cannot frame to admire the richly decorated plaster ceiling for yourself, the printed notice that a cast has been taken from it, and is to be seen in South Kensington Museum, is calculated to impress the intellectually snobbish. For our own part, seeing things with our own eyes and judging of them comparatively, there seems no very adequate reason for South Kensington acquiring such a cast, unless, indeed, (which is unthinkable) the Department of Science and Art is bent upon copies of all the old ceilings in the country. This is, in short, to say that although the plaster decoration of the “Globe Room” is fine, it is neither so intrinsically fine, nor so original above all others, that it deserves so great an honour. The really supremely fine feature of the room is the beautiful Jacobean panelling in oak, now almost coal-black with age, covering the walls from floor to ceiling, and designed and wrought in unusually thorough and bold style. There is not a finer room of its period in the country, and it may even be questioned (leaving the mere matter of size alone) if there is even another quite so fine or in every detail so perfect.

The reason of this magnificently panelled apartment being added to the older and very much less ornate portion of the inn is obscure; and it will be noted, as a matter of curiosity, that, entered as it is only by a doorway from the open courtyard, the room is not, structurally a part of the house. The name of the “Globe Room” given to it is not explained in any way by the decorations or by its history, which is as obscure as its origin. Tradition says Cromwell “held a council” here, and accordingly, although history does not tell us anything specifically about it, a picture, reproduced in a variety of ways, showing a number of stern and malignant Roundheads interrogating an elegant and angelic-looking Royalist clad in white, and bearing a very strong likeness to Charles the First himself, is one of the commonplaces of the town.

THE GLOBE ROOM, “REINDEER” INN, BANBURY.

For one of the most entertaining examples of history enacted at an inn, we must shift the scene to Chester.

Among the ancient inns of that city, long since retired from the innkeeping business is the “Blue Posts,” a house in its day historic by reason of one dramatic incident: an incident so dramatic that it would almost seem to have been borrowed from the stage. It was the year 1558, the last of the reign of Queen Mary, of bloody memory, and Dr. Henry Cole, Dean of St. Paul’s, was come to Chester on his way to Ireland, where he had work to do, in the persecution of the Irish Protestants. He lodged for the night at the “Blue Posts,” in Bridge Street, and in the evening the Mayor of Chester called upon him there.

The Dean made no secret of his mission. To him it was a labour of love to bring imprisonment and torture, fire and stake, to correct the religious errors of those Protestants over sea. Had he not already distinguished himself by a revolting and bloodthirsty sermon, on the occasion of Cranmer’s sentence of martyrdom?

In conversation with the Mayor, he drew from his travelling valise the Royal commission for his errand. “Here,” he exclaimed, with exultation, “here is that will lash the heretics of Ireland!”

Now, whether the landlady was in the room at the time, or listening at the keyhole—in a manner traditional among landladies—does not appear; but she overheard the conversation, and, having a brother, a Protestant, in Dublin, was alarmed for his safety in particular, and, let us hope, for that of Protestants in general. So, that night, when the Dean was doubtless dreaming of the shackles and gyves, the faggots and the rackings he was bringing to the heretics of Ireland, Mrs. Mottershead, the landlady with the sharp ears, abstracted the fateful commission, and in its stead placed a pack of cards, with the knave of clubs showing satirically at the top. O! daring and witty Mrs. Mottershead!

We may, if gifted with anything like a due sense of humour, well chuckle at the outraged feelings of the Lord President of the Council of Ireland when the Dean, all unconscious, presented him with this unconventional authority. My Lord, however, summoned some humour of his own, wherewith to meet the situation. “Let us,” said he, “have another commission, and we will meanwhile shuffle the cards.”

Crestfallen, the emissary returned, and did actually obtain a new commission, but when again arrived at Chester, and awaiting a fair wind for Ireland, he heard of the Catholic Queen’s death and the accession of her Protestant sister; and so found his way back to London once more.

THE “MUSIC HOUSE,” NORWICH.

The episode would fitly end in the Dean being flung, loaded with chains, into some loathsome dungeon; but although he was, in fact, committed to the Tower in 1560, after having been deprived of all his preferments, such dramatic completeness was lacking. But, at any rate, he was transferred to the Fleet Prison, and, after a long captivity, seems to have died there in 1580.

Meanwhile, virtue was rewarded, in the person of Mrs. Mottershead, who was granted a pension of £40 a year, representing perhaps £500 a year in our own day.

The former “Blue Posts,” where this historic interlude was played, was long since refronted in respectable, but dull, red brick, and is now, or was recently, a boot-shop. But although no hint of its former self is given to the passer-by, those who venture to make a request, are shown a fine upstairs room, with elaborately pargeted ceiling, still known as the “Card Room.”

The “Music House” inn, King Street, Norwich, situated in what is now a poor and densely populated part of that city, has a vaulted cellar of Norman masonry, a vestige of the time when the Norwich Jews were very rich and numerous. The house of which it formed part was then the residence of one Moyses, and afterwards of Isaac, his nephew, who in the reign of King John seems to have come, like many of his race, to some mysterious and uncomfortable end, probably in the dungeons of Norwich Castle. In the course of time the famous Paston family came into possession of the house, and in 1633 the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, resided here. Shortly afterwards it became the meeting-place of the “city music,” ancestors of modern town bands, who seem to have practised the waits and other performances within, until they had their parts sufficiently perfect to dare inflict them on the city. Hence the sign of the “Music House.”

In the same neighbourhood we have the “Dolphin” inn at Potter Heigham, a place sadly changed in modern times.

Potter Heigham is no longer rural, and the long, long and narrow street leading to it, out of Norwich, is crowded with the waggons and railway-lorries of the old city’s expanding commerce. In midst of all this rumbling of wheels over uneven pavements stands the “Dolphin” inn, the home in his declining days of Bishop Hall, who rented it for some ten years, until his death there, in 1656, in his eighty-second year.

THE “DOLPHIN,” POTTER HEIGHAM.

It was a comparatively new house then, for while you see the date, 1587, over the entrance door and a merchant’s mark and the initials R B on either side, a prominent gable shows the date 1629 done, very large, in vitrified brick.

Still you come grandly into the house, though it be a humble tavern now, between an old pillared entrance, and across a courtyard, and in the house are Jacobean fireplaces, with a fine newel staircase carved in the manner of an old church bench-end, with an heraldic lion and the Gothic foliage known as a “poppy head.” The “Dolphin” would be capable, if it were differently situated, of being converted into a handsome old-world hotel, but the poor and crowded neighbourhood of Potter Heigham forbids anything of that kind, and so it remains humble and unassuming.

A tragical little story belongs to the humble old “Nag’s Head” inn at Thame, formerly the “King’s Head.” The old sign of it was used as a gallows for a Parliamentary rebel who had deserted his side and joined the King, and was so unlucky as to be captured. Those Puritans had a grim humour. One of the condemned man’s executioners, before turning him off, turned his face, bound with a handkerchief, to the sign, with the words: “Nay, sir, you must speak one word with the King before you go. You are blindfold, and he cannot see, and by and by you shall both come down together.” And then he was hoisted up.

There is another historic house at Thame, for it was into the yard of the “Greyhound” in that town that John Hampden came, lying mortally wounded upon the neck of his horse, from the skirmish of Chalgrove Field, on June 18th, 1643. He had unwillingly taken arms against oppression and iniquitous taxation, and was thus at the outset killed. No enemy’s bullet laid him low: it was his own pistol, overloaded by a careless servant, that, exploding, shattered his hand. He died, on the 24th, of lockjaw.

The front of the house has been rebuilt, and the yard somewhat altered, since the patriot rode in at that tragical time; but the house is in essentials the inn of his day. Long since ceased to be an inn, it is now occupied as a furnishing ironmonger’s shop and warehouse.

THE “NAG’S HEAD,” THAME.

The “Crown and Treaty House” inn at Uxbridge, long known to would-be beery rustics by the affectionately wistful name of the “Crown and Treat Ye,” is a genuinely historic house. It stands away beyond the tramway terminus, facing the road at the very extremity of Uxbridge town, as you cross canal and river and so leave Middlesex for Buckinghamshire; and although very much of its real antiquity is disguised by modern paint and plaster, it is in fact the surviving portion of the great mansion built in 1575 by one of the Bennet family, and, at the opening of the war between King and Parliament, in the occupation of one “Mr. Carr.”

The meeting here of leading spirits on either side of the contending forces was well meant. It began January 20th, 1645, and was convened for the purpose of “taking into consideration the grievances of which each party complained, and to propose those remedies which might be mutually agreeable.” Unfortunately, little sincerity attended the actual meeting. The King’s party were unyielding, and the military successes of the Parliament rendered the leaders of that side ill-disposed to give away in talk that which they had won in the field. Moreover, like most conferences in which religious as well as political questions were the subjects of discussion, those debates only further inflamed mutual hatreds and further sundered the already wide points of disagreement.

YARD OF THE “GREYHOUND,” THAME.

There were sixteen commissioners on either side, and for three weeks they argued without coming to any settlement. Neither side would give way, for either was convinced of its ability to finally crush the other by force of arms. Much blood had already been shed, indecisively, and passions ran high. Uxbridge was selected as a kind of half-way house between London, held strongly by the Parliament, and Oxford, as strongly held for the King; and when the empty verbiage was done, the propositions put forth scouted, and the pretensions disallowed, the parties separated, falling back respectively to London and to Oxford, to recommence those hostilities for which they were spoiling. Treaty, therefore, there was not: only an ominous truce between Right Divine and People’s Will.

The Earl of Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion, gives an interesting account of these fruitless meetings:

“There was,” he says, “a good house at the end of the town which was provided for the Treaty. Above was a fair room in the middle of the house, handsomely dressed up for the Commissioners to sit in; a large square table being placed in the middle with seats for the Commissioners; one side being sufficient for those of either party: and a rail for those who should be thought necessary to be present, which went round. There were many other rooms on either side of this great room for the Commissioners to retire to, when they thought fit to consult by themselves, and there being good stairs at either end of the house they never went through each other’s quarters, nor met, but in the great room.”

Neither side used the house, except for these meetings, the Royalists being appropriately accommodated at the “Crown,” which then stood in the middle of the High Street, in the centre of the town, opposite the still-existing “White Horse,” and the Parliament people at the “George.”

THE “CROWN AND TREATY,” UXBRIDGE.

In those times the highway out of Uxbridge, ceasing to be broad and straight, left the High Street of Uxbridge by a sharp turning to the right and went in a narrow way called Johnson’s Row to the crossing of the Colne, which was effected to the north of the present bridge and was made in two stages by wooden bridges, using the still-surviving island in the middle of the river as a kind of natural pier or abutment. The road therefore crossed, in a more or less direct fashion, from immediately in front of the “Swan and Bottle” inn to where the present flour-mill stands, cautiously using that very considerable island on the way. The modern road, with its bridge of seven arches, on the other hand, boldly spans the river at its widest part, and seeks no help midway. It is all very clear and palpable to you who stand on the bridge and see how the road across it swoops round, at a very noticeable angle, to join the older road at the flour-mill; but Johnson’s Row was demolished 1905-6, to make an approach to the new railway-station, and the old landmarks are growing obscured. It was the making of this road in 1785 that changed the fortunes of the Treaty House. The new highway was cut through its gardens, and the house itself brought from private life and a dignified seclusion to face the wayfaring world. What else, then, could it do but become an inn?

THE “TREATY ROOM,” “CROWN AND TREATY,” UXBRIDGE.]

The house, although even now not small, was once much larger. Its least imposing front is turned to the street and is not improved by the modern appointments of a public-house. The great feature of the building is the room on the first floor, called, with what appears to be insufficient warranty, the “Treaty Room,” the real place of meeting having been, apparently, the front room, now divided by a partition into two. It was doubtless its being immeasurably the finest room in the house that led to the so-called “Treaty Room” being selected for that honour. It is, in fact, a noble apartment, greatly neglected for these many years past, but grand in spite of indifference and decay. There are smeary picture-postcards of it to be purchased in Uxbridge, and it has been photographed by enthusiastic visitors times without number, generally without success; for it is a dark interior, and the wood-carving is shallow and does not yield sufficient pictorial light and shade for the cameras to do it justice. It should be added, by way of comparative criticism, that, although this panelling is itself so fine, it does not for a moment compare with the bold and effective work of the “Globe Room” at the “Reindeer,” Banbury. There you have a massiveness of construction and a breadth of design almost architectural: here there are no bold projections, and the recurrent flat pilasters are covered with an intricate Renaissance scroll and strap-work, which, although in itself good, is too small in scale to be highly effective.

THE “RED LION,” HILLINGDON.

The “Red Lion” at Hillingdon, near Uxbridge, has its small share in the troubled story of the Stuarts, although, to be sure, its plastered front is a thought too modern-looking. Here Charles the First, escaping from the besieged city of Oxford, lay the first night of his distracted wanderings through England that led him eventually to the end of his armed resistance, at Southwell.

THE “THREE CROWNS,” CHAGFORD.

The “Three Crowns” at Chagford, South Devon, now a favourite old-world haunt of tourists visiting Dartmoor, illustrates still another incident in that internecine warfare. It was originally a manor-house built in the time of Henry the Eighth by Sir John Whyddon, a native of Chagford, who went to London to seek his fortune, and, as a lawyer, found it. He became a Judge of the King’s Bench, was knighted, and we are gravely told that he was the first judge to ride to Westminster on a horse: his predecessors, and his learned contemporary brethren, had gone on mules.

In the troubled times of the Civil War, when Royalist and Roundhead disturbed even these remote nooks of the country, Chagford was attacked by the Royalists under Sir John Berkeley. In the street-fighting, according to Clarendon, “they lost Sidney Godolphin, a young gentleman of incomparable parts. He received a mortal shot by a musket, a little above the knee, of which he died on the instant, leaving the misfortune of his death upon a place which could never otherwise have had a mention in the world.” Ay! but that was written in days long before the appreciation of picturesque scenery had brought troops of visitors to Chagford.