This structure is chiefly known through a humorous connection that Thackeray has given it with King George III. That monarch made a royal visit to Gloucester, and in his lectures on the "Four Georges" Thackeray says: "One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town, pushed over Molly the housemaid with her pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps, ran up stairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms, and then trotted down to the bridge, where by this time a dozen of louts were assembled. 'What! is this Gloucester new bridge?' asked our gracious monarch; and the people answered him, 'Yes, Your Majesty.'--'Why, then, my boys, let's have a hurray!' After giving them which intellectual gratification he went home to breakfast." The town is quaint and picturesque, but the buildings generally are modern, most of them dating from the days of good Queen Anne, but they exhibit great variety in design. The most noted of the older Gloucester houses is the "New Inn," on Northgate Street. After the murder of Edward II. at Berkeley Castle, not far from Gloucester, where he had been imprisoned in a dungeon in the keep, in 1327, his remains were brought to the abbey church at Gloucester for interment, a shrine being raised over them by the monks. The king was murdered with fiendish cruelty. Lord Berkeley at the castle would willingly have protected him, but he fell sick; and one dark September night Edward was given over to two villains named Gurney and Ogle. The ancient chronicler says that the "screams and shrieks of anguish were heard even so far as the town, so that many, being awakened therewith from their sleep, as they themselves confessed, prayed heartily to God to receive his soul, for they understood by those cries what the matter meant." The king's shrine in Gloucester naturally attracted many pilgrims, and the New Inn was built about 1450 for their accommodation. It is a brick-and-timber house, with corridors leading to the chambers running along the sides of the inner court and reached by outside stairways, as was the common construction of houses of public entertainment three or four centuries ago. The inn remains almost as it was then, having been but slightly modernized. Most of the pilgrims to the shrine brought offerings with them, and hence the pains taken for their accommodation. The usual tale is told about a subterranean passage connecting this inn with the cathedral. New Inn is enormously strong and massive, and covers a broad surface, being constructed around two courtyards. [Illustration: NEW INN, GLOUCESTER.]