Leaving Grantham and its inns, we push along the great North Road to Stilton, famous for its cheese, where a choice of inns awaits us—­the “Bell” and the “Angel,” that glare at each other across the broad thoroughfare.  In the palmy days of coaching the “Angel” had stabling for three hundred horses, and it was kept by Mistress Worthington, at whose door the famous cheeses were sold and hence called Stilton, though they were made in distant farmsteads and villages.  It is quite a modern-looking inn as compared with the “Bell.”  You can see a date inscribed on one of the gables, 1649, but this can only mean that the inn was restored then, as the style of architecture of “this dream in stone” shows that it must date back to early Tudor times.  It has a noble swinging sign supported by beautifully designed ornamental ironwork, gables, bay-windows, a Tudor archway, tiled roof, and a picturesque courtyard, the silence and dilapidation of which are strangely contrasted with the continuous bustle, life, and animation which must have existed there before the era of railways.

Not far away is Southwell, where there is the historic inn the “Saracen’s Head.”  Here Charles I stayed, and you can see the very room where he lodged on the left of the entrance-gate.  Here it was on May 5th, 1646, that he gave himself up to the Scotch Commissioners, who wrote to the Parliament from Southwell “that it made them feel like men in a dream.”  The “Martyr-King” entered this inn as a sovereign; he left it a prisoner under the guard of his Lothian escort.  Here he slept his last night of liberty, and as he passed under the archway of the “Saracen’s Head” he started on that fatal journey that terminated on the scaffold at Whitehall.  You can see on the front of the inn over the gateway a stone lozenge with the royal arms engraved on it with the date 1693, commemorating this royal melancholy visit.  In later times Lord Byron was a frequent visitor.

On the high, wind-swept road between Ashbourne and Buxton there is an inn which can defy the attacks of the reformers.  It is called the Newhaven Inn and was built by a Duke of Devonshire for the accommodation of visitors to Buxton.  King George IV was so pleased with it that he gave the Duke a perpetual licence, with which no Brewster Sessions can interfere.  Near Buxton is the second highest inn in England, the “Cat and Fiddle,” and “The Traveller’s Rest” at Flash Bar, on the Leek road, ranks as third, the highest being the Tan Hill Inn, near Brough, on the Yorkshire moors.

[Illustration:  The Bell Inn, Stilton]

Norwich is a city remarkable for its old buildings and famous inns.  A very ancient inn is the “Maid’s Head” at Norwich, a famous hostelry which can vie in interest with any in the kingdom.  Do we not see there the identical room in which good Queen Bess is said to have reposed on the occasion of her visit to the city in 1578?  You cannot imagine a more delightful old chamber, with its massive beams,