THE YORK ROAD 329 



postillions and coachmen seemed never off the road — 

 huge flocks of geese destined for the London market, 

 and travelling the seventy-five miles with uncommon 

 ease; enormous droves of oxen, not such roadsters born. 

 Each beast was indeed thrown and shod at Stilton to 

 enable them to bear the journey. And to show the 

 huge press even of this kind of traffic, this business 

 of shoeing oxen was a trade almost in itself, as I have 

 been told by the present landlord of the Angel Inn, who 

 used in his youth to do the office himself, and to whose still 

 active memory I am indebted for most of the foregoing 

 details. 



And to cross the road (the breadth of the great North 

 Road at Stilton at once seizes the imagination, it is royal, 

 the breadth of it, and looks like the artery of a nation), 

 to cross the road from the Angel, and to come to the 

 Angel's great rival, the Bell, is to bridge a whole period 

 in the history of English travel ; to pass in twenty yards 

 from the age of crack coaches and spicy teams to times 

 long antecedent, when Flying Machines' were not; when 

 the great roads were hazily marked over desolate heathy 

 tracks ; when men travelled on horseback and women 

 rode pillion, and people only felt secure when they went 

 in large companies ; when solitary travellers went in fear 

 of their lives when the gloaming overtook them, and 

 " spurred apace to reach the timely inn." 



The date of Charles the First's execution is to be seen 

 on one of the gables of the Bell. But this dream in 

 stone must date far further back than 1649 (when no 

 doubt a slight restoration was here commemorated), must 

 date far back I should say into the early days of the 

 Tudors ; must have seen much of the gorgeous life of 

 that period of pageant pass and repass its hospitable 

 doors. There is an inn at Tuxford, sixty-two miles 

 further on the road to York, which stands on the site of 

 an old house called the Crown, which must very greatly 

 have resembled the Bell at Stilton. I make mention of 

 it here because some of the Crown's history has been 



