He who would correctly rede the riddle of the Great Bed would be a clever man, for its history is so confounded with legend that to say where the one begins and the other ends is now impossible. The Bed is a huge four-poster of black oak, elaborately carved with Renaissance designs, and is now twelve feet square, having been shorn of three feet of its length by a former landlord of the Saracen's Head. The date, 1463, painted on the head is an ancient and impudent forgery intended to give verisimilitude to the legend of this monumental structure's origin. This story tells how it was the work of one Jonas Fosbrooke, a journeyman carpenter, who presented it to Edward the Fourth "for the use of the royal family or the accommodation of princes, or nobles, or for any great occasion." The King, we are told, was highly pleased with this co-operative bedstead, and pensioned the ingenious Fosbrooke for life; but history, curiously, fails to tell us of royal or any other families herding together in this way. The legend then goes on to tell how, not having been used for many years by any noble persons, it was put to use when the town was very full of strangers. These unfortunate plebeian persons found it anything but a bed of roses, for they were tormented throughout the night by the snobbish and indignant ghost of Jonas, who objected to anyone beneath the rank of a knight-bachelor sleeping in his bed, and savagely pinched all who could not claim gentility. This weird ghost-story was probably invented by the landlords of the several inns in which the Bed has been housed to account for a vigorous and hungry race of fleas that inhabited the old four-poster, and must have been originated at a very early date, for on it hangs the story of Harrison Saxby, Master of Horse to Henry the Eighth. Saxby fell violently in love with the daughter of a miller near Ware, and swore he would do anything to win her from her many other suitors. The King, passing through the town, heard of this and promised to give her (those were autocratic times!) to him who should sleep in the Great Bed, and, daring all that the ferocious apparition of Fosbrooke could do, should be found there in the morning. All save the valorous Saxby held back, but he determined that no disembodied spirit should come between him and his love, and, duly tucked in, was left to sleep--no, not to sleep, for the powers of darkness were exalted to considerable purpose in the night, and when day dawned the rash Saxby was discovered on the floor, covered with bruises. If we seek rather the practical joker than the supernatural visitant to poor Saxby, we shall probably be on the right quest. The Great Bed was not always housed at the Saracen's Head. Coming originally from Ware Priory, it was next at the Crown, where it remained until that old house was pulled down, in 1765, being in turn transferred to the Bull.