The particular journey on which he accomplished these supposed prodigious feats of lying and prize-winning took him to Coggeshall, in Essex, which appears at that time to have rejoiced in the possession of a “Liars’ Club.” The tale is well told in the old _New Quarterly Magazine_: “There is a story that Bishop Porteous once stopped in this town to change horses, and, observing a great crowd in the streets, put his head out of the window to inquire the cause. A townsman standing near by replied that it was the day upon which they gave the whetstone to the biggest liar. Shocked at such depravity, the good Bishop proceeded to the scene of the competition, and lectured the crowd upon the enormity of the sin, concluding his discourse with the emphatic words: ‘I never told a lie in my life,’ whereupon the chief umpire exchanged a few words with his fellows, and, approaching the carriage, said: ‘My Lord, we unanimously adjudge you the prize,’ and forthwith the highly objectionable whetstone was thrust in at the carriage window.” This inimical article in course of time disappeared from these walls, later Bishops being less appreciative of the peculiar humour of the situation, or perhaps feeling themselves to be unworthy of the exceptional honour; for, after all, if Bishop Porteous “never told a lie in his life,” surely he must have ranked with the only other personage reputed to have been naturally truthful, George Washington. But it is to be remarked that we have these statements from suspect sources—from the personages themselves. The Bishop said he had never done such a thing, and Washington as a boy declared he “could not.” Now, it has been declared on eminent authority which no one will care to dispute that “all men are liars,” and it would seem, therefore, that these two were superhuman. They were not, on account of that alleged natural truthfulness, one whit the better than their fellow-men, for there is more joy in one sinner that sees the error of his ways and repents than in a hundred just men. On the north side of the old courtyard are the rooms especially associated, according to tradition, with Bonner, whose ghost is said to haunt the corridors and the apartment still known as his bedroom. This part of the Palace is appropriately dark, and the passages narrow. These rooms are now occupied by the servants, as also are those on two other sides of the quadrangle, generally known as Bishop Laud’s rooms. Until a few years ago—and perhaps even yet—the servants were wakened in the morning by a man known as the “knocker-up,” who went round the courtyard with a long wand, and tapped sharply with it at the upper windows.