"Alas!" replied the King, "whom shall men--to say nothing of kings--trust? I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been shewed to me of her, either by pictures or report, and am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done; and I like her not." Which, of course, was final. Queen Elizabeth, of course, was here, not once but thrice, and on her first visit she stayed at the "Crown" inn, "which," says Francis Thynne, "is the only place to intertaine Princes comming thither." It was, indeed, the place where her father stayed, and where, according to one account, Anne of Cleves lodged; and was the scene of the inimitable colloquy between the carriers in _Henry the Fourth_, just previous to the robbery on Gad's Hill. The "Crown," of course, is gone now, and an ugly building, bearing the same sign, but dating only from 1863, stands on its site. [Sidenote: "ROGUES AND PROCTORS"] On the last day of her visit, the queen was entertained by "that charitable man but withal most determined enemy to Rogues and Proctors," Master Richard Watts, whose almshouse for the lodgment of six poor travellers bears still upon its front the evidence of his aversions. Controversy has long raged around the term "proctor," and the victory seems to rest with those who declare that the class thus excluded from the benefits of Master Watts' charity was that of the "procurators" who were licensed by the Pope to go through the country collecting "Peter's pence"; but I have my own idea on that point, and I believe that the "proctors" referred to were not papists, but either "proctors that go up and downe with counterfeit licences, cosiners, and suche as go about the countrey using unlawfull games"; or the "proctors" especially and particularly mentioned in the Statute Edw. VI. c. 3, s. 19, licensed to collect alms for the lepers who at that time were still numerous in England. These privileged beggars were deprived of their immunity from arrest by the "Act for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdie Beggars" (39 Eliz. c. 4), wherein "all persons that be, or utter themselves to be _Proctors_, procurers, patent gatherers, or collectors for gaols, prisons, or hospitals"[5] are, together with "all Fencers, Bearewards, common players of Interludes, and Minstrels" to be adjudged Rogues and Vagabonds. Now it is sufficiently remarkable that this Act was passed (perhaps with the strenuous help of Master Watts, who was a Member of Parliament, and who we see hated proctors so ardently) at about the time when the "Six Poor Travellers" was built, and the reasons for refusing admission either to a true Proctor of a lazar-house, or to a pretended one, must be sufficiently obvious.