In Holborn there were once nine or ten galleried inns. We will only allude to those still in existence within the memory of the writer. The most famous of them, perhaps, was the "George and Blue Boar," originally the "Blue Boar," the site of which is covered by the Inns of Court Hotel. The house is named in the burial register of St. Andrew's, Holborn, as early as 1616, but it is chiefly known from a story related by the Rev. Thomas Morrice, in his _Memoir of Roger Earl of Orrery_ (1742), that Cromwell and Ireton, in the disguise of troopers, here intercepted a letter sewn in the flap of a saddle from Charles I. to his Queen, in which he wrote that he was being courted by the Scotch Presbyterians and the army, and that he thought of closing with the former. Cromwell is supposed to have said, "From that time forward we resolved on his ruin." The writer ventured to ask that excellent historian, Dr. Samuel Gardiner, what he thought of the statement. In August, 1890, he most kindly replied by letter as follows:--"The tale has generally been repudiated without enquiry, and I am rather inclined to believe, at least, in its substantial accuracy. The curious thing is, that there are two lines of tradition about intercepted letters, as it seems to me quite distinct." We may, therefore, without being over credulous, cherish the belief that the picturesque incident referred to was one that actually occurred. There is an advertisement of December 27th, 1779, offering the lease of the "George and Blue Boar," which helps us to realize the value and capacity of an important inn of that period. We are told that it contains forty bedrooms, stabling for fifty-two horses, seven coach-houses, and a dry ride sixty yards long; also that it returns about £2,000 a year. In George Colman the younger's "Heir at Law," act i., scene 2, this house is said by one of the characters to be "in tumble downish kind of a condition," but it survived until 1864, when it made way for the Inns of Court Hotel.