Of the old Inns in Royston it may be of interest to add that the Red Lion ball-room continued to be a centre of fashionable gatherings until, with the decay of the posting and coaching business for which the Red Lion had been chiefly famous, the Bull Hotel (the same owners) became the leading house. The Red Lion was afterwards given up, the ball-room, with its associations going back to the Old Royston Club, was removed and re-erected as the present ball-room or billiard-room of the Bull Hotel, while its rampant lion which had presented a bold face to the High Street for more than a century, was removed to a higher position on the top of Reed Hill, where it now does duty, and has given a sign to the house standing there. Here, for the sake of auld lang syne, it gets a bright new coat of paint now and again, and worthily holds its own as the last relic of a famous old inn, around which so much of the public life of the town and neighbourhood had revolved for some generations! The Bull was originally the "Black Bull," and the Boar's Head the "Blue Boar's Head." The Bull had stabling for a hundred horses. The Green Man was a sign that explained itself when, at the beginning of the century and for some years afterwards, upon an angular sign on the front of the inn, with faces two ways, was the painted figure of a man in the green habit of the archer and forester. The "Jolly Butchers" or "Ye three Butchers," on the Market Hill, and the "Catherine Wheel," in Melbourn Street, have ceased to be inns. Such was the outward shell of Royston in the hectic flush of the "good old times." The taking of the census recently suggests a word with regard to the population of the town and how it was ascertained in times gone by. At least, at one decade (1821) the Overseers were paid a penny per head for taking the population. In 1801 the population was only 1484, and in 1831 it was 2008. Further particulars of the population of the town and of the villages in the neighbourhood will be found in an appendix at the end of this book. {117} CHAPTER XII. PUBLIC WORSHIP AND EDUCATION--MORALS AND MUSIC. When the reforming spirit which brooded over the two centuries touched the subject of education, its advocates became enthusiastic! Here is what an old writer said in 1806 about a proposal to establish evening schools for the instruction of farm servants:-- "We should hear the humble countryman talk of the heroes of old, catch the patriotic inspiration from the action of his great forefathers, while wisdom would extend her protecting hand and claim the nation for her own"!