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