2i6. COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



house ; and a very rare and curious token it is, showing 

 " The Cat "■ — ^the name of the town, and inn. 



All distinguished travellers on the Brighton Road 

 pulled up as a matter of course at the Dorset Arms. 

 Amon^rst those whose names have been handed down as 

 habitual visitors, was Lord Liverpool, who always stayed 

 at the Dorset Arms when on his way to visit the 

 Harcourt seat near Buxted, and who has left a record of 

 his impatience at dawdling waiters and dinners not 

 served up to the minute ; " Liverpool's in a hurry " even 

 now being remembered in the place. Another constant 

 guest was Lord Seymour, who died, I believe, in 1837 — 

 mean, I am sorry to say, as regards his expenses ; and 

 yet not mean either one way, for if he didn't eat and 

 drink much, he possessed a passion for illumination 

 which must have produced some respectable items in 

 the bill — thirty wax candles or more burning in his bed- 

 room all night. Spencer Perceval too, the Prime Minister 

 (remarkable for great ability and for having been shot in 

 the lobby of the House of Commons in 18 12 by John 

 Bellingham), must have been a familiar figure at the 

 Dorset Arms, for the House from which he was married 

 in 1790 to Miss Jane Wilson stands just at the bottom 

 of the Dorset Arms' garden. 



At nine miles three furlongs up the London Road, 

 tow^ards London, stands the other inn that I have par- 

 ticularly mentioned — the White Hart, now called the 

 Clayton Arms, at Godstone Green. The White Hart 

 claims to be a very old house. Mr. Churchill, the pro- 

 prietor, who has had it for twenty-two years, and who 

 takes a natural and gratifying pride in its history, tells 

 me that it was an inn in Richard the Second's time, 

 whose badge was a white hart couchant, as heralds may 

 know. The White Hart was open timbered then, and had 

 quarried windows. The gable ends were added in 

 Elizabeth's time. In the absence of documentary 

 evidence it requires but a small stretch of the imagination 

 to picture the long crowd of all ranks, kings, queens 



