Book Description

But altogether the old George Inn is somewhat disappointing. Its balustraded galleries are there sure enough, with the queer old staircase leading up to them in one of the corners; but it has the same burnished-up appearance of the courtyard of the Leicester Hospital at Warwick. How much more pleasing both would strike the eye were there less paint and varnish. The Inn has been refronted, and from the street has quite a modern appearance. Huntingdon recalls the sterner name of Cromwell. Strange that this county, so proud of the Lord Protector (for has it not recently set up a gorgeous statue at St. Ives to his memory?), should still harbour red-hot Jacobites! According to The Legitimist Calendar, mysterious but harmless meetings are still held hereabouts on Oak Apple Day: a day elsewhere all but forgotten. Huntingdon was the headquarters of the Royalist army certainly upon many occasions, and when evil days fell upon the "Martyr King," some of his staunchest friends were here secretly working for his welfare.[1] When Charles passed through the town in 1644, the mayor, loyal to the back-bone, had prepared a speech to outrival the flowery welcome of his fellow-magistrates: "Although Rome's Hens," he said, "should daily hatch of its preposterous eggs, chrocodilicall chickens, yet.