The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-21
OLD INNS OF ENGLAND,

Keepers Who Helped HighWaymen- Noted Artists as Painters of Tavern
 Sixns.
 The oldest English inn is said to be the Fighting Cocks, St Albants, but the honor more probably rests with the Seven Stars Withy Grove, Man chester. which was built somewhere about 1900, says the London Express, There was a Seven Stars on the site even prior to that date, so the land lord is privileged to claim that the pre- misses have been licensed more than 560 years
 The Dick Wilmington in Cloth Fair, St. Bartholomews also goes back to the fifteenth century. At Battle and Compton there are original pilgrims inns, hundreds of years old-houses for the lodging of travellers bent on pilgrimages to famous shrines.
 The Georgian Bull at Dartford, with it's red brick front, it's nine windows in row, it's galleried courtyard and its monumental bull in effigy among the chimneypots, stands on the site of a pilgrims hostelry. A magnificent mediaeval house, with courtyard eloquent of coaching days and rare show of Jacobean carved oak is the New Inn at Gloucester. In London the only remaining galleried inn is the George, in the Borough High street. a still thriving house, rich in old time savor.
 On the desolate hilltop in Yorkshire, near Brough. is the Tan Hill Inn, the highest in England. This house is 1,727 feet above sea level.
 The innkeeper sympathy with high
 The innkeeper's sympathy with high we'll known. His immemorial league with thieves and brigands is attested in scores of books and plays. Dick Tur pin it appears, never really did that memorable horseback ride to York. Turpin stole the reputation of John Nevison, who accomplished the ride in 1676 before Dick was b1rn.
 Dick was the son of the landlord of the Crown at Hampstead, Essex, a still existent hostelry. MT Charles G. Harper gives his real history and con founds Harrison Ainsworth with this disconcerting epitaph. "The Isorriest, the most sordid and absolutely conn., monplace scoundrel that was ever raised to be so undeserved pedestal" '"
 The Green Man, which stands on the crest of Putney Hill, sheltered many desperate and despicable charac- ters, and the house still keeps a stout, bolt studded door as relic of its "good old times"
 Among the houses with historic as sociation are the crown and Treaty at UXbridge, where the commissioners of King and Parliament vainly sought for peace in 1645; the Sacareno Head, Southell, where Byron hobnobbed at the bar and where Charles I. dined with the Scotch commissioners and gave himself into their hands; the Red Lion at High Wycombe, where Disraeli mode his first political speech the Greyhound at Thame, where prone up- on his horses neck; the Red Lion, Hill lington, where the Merry Monarch lay the first night of his distracted wan derings through England.
 1 It is surprising how many noted arr lists began life by painting inn signs. Among them were Morland David Cox, Herring and Sir William Beechey. Millais painted a George and Dragon sign for the George Inn, Hayes Com mon. Another George and Dragon at Wargrave on Thames, has double sided sign painted by two R.A.'s. Cor ing on Thames has a sign from the brush of Marcus Stone, R. A. There are signs by Walter Crane and Caton Woodville at Grayshot and Fittleworth. Hogarth painted a number of signs for friendly publicans.
 The very Odyssey of Inns, says MT. Harper is "Pickwick. In that work alone Dickens mentions fifty-fve hos telries All dickens lovers know the i Pickwickian shrine at Gotham, where MT. Pickwick discovered his disconso- late friend.
 London's Pickwick hostelries have been remodeled out of all knowledge. The Golden Cross at Charing Cross, for example, where the genial old boy be- gan his travels, and the Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, whence the eastern countries coaches set forth Of the Bull at Rochester this delicious story is told.
 "So this is where MT. Pickwick is supposed to have slept?" remarked a visitor when viewing the bedroom IT by favor of former landlord. That stranger meant no offense, but the landlord was greatly ruffled. 'Suppos- ed to have slept? He did sleep here, sir!"