The “Bear Inn,” where the three roysterers had called for a quart of wine, was in South Street, at the lower corner of Bear Lane. It probably took its name from the Bere or Bear Gate, which was so styled in 1286, when the Cathedral Close was first surrounded by a wall. It was rebuilt in 1481, and was then the town mansion of the abbots of Tavistock, the wealthiest, if not the oldest, of the monastic houses of Devonshire. It is described as “le Bere Inne alias Bere” in the lease; by which John Peryn, the last abbot, in view of the pending dissolution of his house, leased it, in the year 1539, to Edward Brygeman and Jane, his wife, for a term of sixty years. King Henry VIII., on the 30th January, 1546, granted the freehold of the premises to William Abbot, Esq., by whom, on the 15th February, 1548, they were sold to Griffin Amerideth and John Fortescue, who, on the 28th October, 1549, renewed the lease granted by the abbot to Edward Bridgman. Shortly afterwards the property was held in moieties, one of which belonged to William Buckenham, Mayor of Exeter in 1541, and was, in pursuance of his will, together with the other moiety which he purchased of Edward Ameredith in 1565, conveyed by Buckenham’s executor, Philip Chichester, on the 6th of March, 1566, to the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty of the city of Exeter, for the benefit of the poor persons lodged in the Twelve (Ten) Cells in Billiter Lane, now called Preston Street. Prince, in his _Worthies of Devon_, published in 1701, tells us that the arms of Tavistock Abbey and of Ordgar, its founder, were “to be seen in painted glass in the great window of the dining room,” with the figure of a man standing on a bridge. This was, no doubt, a rebus on the name of Bridgeman, the former owner. Even so late as the beginning of the present century, when Jenkins wrote his _History of Exeter_, he could remember that a “great part of the old buildings, particularly the chapel, was standing a few years since; they were built with freestone, of excellent Gothic workmanship, decorated with fretwork panels. Mutilated inscriptions and different sculptures were seen, and over the cornice, even with the battlements, was a cabossed statue of a bear, holding a ragged staff between its paws.” Dr. Shapter is the fortunate possessor of some admirable sketches of bits of the old building from the pencil of the late John Gendall. These show the heavy stone arches of the basement, and a massive stone spiral staircase leading to the floor above, evidently portions of the structure rebuilt in 1481. When newspapers began to be published in Exeter, early in the last century, the “Bear” appeared now and then in their quaint advertisements, and, like the “Mermaid” and the “Dolphin,” it became a noted house for carriers. One of these advertisements announced, in July, 1722, that “Since the widow Wibber has left The Bear, for the Better Accommodation of Merchants,