There are many fine examples of old houses that are not inns in Gloucester, beautiful half-timbered black and white structures, such as Robert Raikes’s house, the printer who has the credit of founding the first Sunday-school, the old Judges’ House in Westgate Street, the old Deanery with its Norman room, once the Prior’s Lodge of the Benedictine Abbey.  Behind many a modern front there exist curious carvings and quaintly panelled rooms and elaborate ceilings.  There is an interesting carved-panel room in the Tudor House, Westgate Street.  The panels are of the linen-fold pattern, and at the head of each are various designs, such as the Tudor Rose and Pomegranate, the Lion of England, etc.  The house originally known as the Old Blue Shop has some magnificent mantelpieces, and also St. Nicholas House can boast of a very elaborately carved example of Elizabethan sculpture.

We journey thence to Tewkesbury and visit the grand silver-grey abbey that adorns the Severn banks.  Here are some good inns of great antiquity.  The “Wheat-sheaf” is perhaps the most attractive, with its curious gable and ancient lights, and even the interior is not much altered.  Here too is the “Bell,” under the shadow of the abbey tower.  It is the original of Phineas Fletcher’s house in the novel John Halifax, Gentleman.  The “Bear and the Ragged Staff” is another half-timbered house with a straggling array of buildings and curious swinging signboard, the favourite haunt of the disciples of Izaak Walton, under the overhanging eaves of which the Avon silently flows.

The old “Seven Stars” at Manchester is said to be the most ancient in England, claiming a licence 563 years old.  But it has many rivals, such as the “Fighting Cocks” at St. Albans, the “Dick Whittington” in Cloth Fair, St. Bartholomews, the “Running Horse” at Leatherhead, wherein John Skelton, the poet laureate of Henry VIII, sang the praises of its landlady, Eleanor Rumming, and several others.  The “Seven Stars” has many interesting features and historical associations.  Here came Guy Fawkes and concealed himself in “Ye Guy Faux Chamber,” as the legend over the door testifies.  What strange stories could this old inn tell us!  It could tell us of the Flemish weavers who, driven from their own country by religious persecutions and the atrocities of Duke Alva, settled in Manchester in 1564, and drank many a cup of sack at the “Seven Stars,” rejoicing in their safety.  It could tell us of the disputes between the clergy of the collegiate church and the citizens in 1574, when one of the preachers, a bachelor of divinity, on his way to the church was stabbed three times by the dagger of a Manchester man; and of the execution of three popish priests, whose heads were afterwards exposed from the tower of the church.  Then there is the story of the famous siege in 1642, when the King’s forces tried to take the town and were repulsed by the townsfolk, who were staunch Roundheads.  “A great and