a large body of Royalists.  The Grantham folk had much to say when the troopers rode back with forty-five prisoners besides divers horses and arms and colours.  The “Angel” must have seen all this and sighed for peace.  Grim troopers paced its corridors, and its stables were full of tired horses.  One owner of the inn at the beginning of the eighteenth century, though he kept a hostel, liked not intemperance.  His name was Michael Solomon, and he left an annual charge of 40s. to be paid to the vicar of the parish for preaching a sermon in the parish church against the sin of drunkenness.  The interior of this ancient hostelry has been modernized and fitted with the comforts which we modern folk are accustomed to expect.

Across the way is the “Angel’s” rival the “George,” possibly identical with the hospitium called “Le George” presented with other property by Edward IV to his mother, the Duchess of York.  It lacks the appearance of age which clothes the “Angel” with dignity, and was rebuilt with red brick in the Georgian era.  The coaches often called there, and Charles Dickens stayed the night and describes it as one of the best inns in England.  He tells of Squeers conducting his new pupils through Grantham to Dotheboys Hall, and how after leaving the inn the luckless travellers “wrapped themselves more closely in their coats and cloaks ... and prepared with many half-suppressed moans again to encounter the piercing blasts which swept across the open country.”  At the “Saracen’s Head” in Westgate Isaac Newton used to stay, and there are many other inns, the majority of which rejoice in signs that are blue.  We see a Blue Horse, a Blue Dog, a Blue Ram, Blue Lion, Blue Cow, Blue Sheep, and many other cerulean animals and objects, which proclaim the political colour of the great landowner.  Grantham boasts of a unique inn-sign.  Originally known as the “Bee-hive,” a little public-house in Castlegate has earned the designation of the “Living Sign,” on account of the hive of bees fixed in a tree that guards its portals.  Upon the swinging sign the following lines are inscribed:—­

        Stop, traveller, this wondrous sign explore,
        And say when thou hast viewed it o’er and o’er,
        Grantham, now two rarities are thine—­
        A lofty steeple and a “Living Sign.”

The connexion of the “George” with Charles Dickens reminds one of the numerous inns immortalized by the great novelist both in and out of London.  The “Golden Cross” at Charing Cross, the “Bull” at Rochester, the “Belle Sauvage” (now demolished) near Ludgate Hill, the “Angel” at Bury St. Edmunds, the “Great White Horse” at Ipswich, the “King’s Head” at Chigwell (the original of the “Maypole” in Barnaby Rudge), the “Leather Bottle” at Cobham are only a few of those which he by his writings made famous.

[Illustration:  A Quaint Gable.  The Bell Inn, Stilton]