Distinguished foreigners without number have rested here and wondered at the habits of Englishmen. The foreigner, it is to be feared, never, with every advantage, really understands us; sometimes, too, he is so perverse that we find a difficulty in understanding him. Thus, Master Estienne Perlin, who travelled the roads and sampled the inns of England so far back as 1558, says we were great drunkards then. He wrote an account of his travels, and of England, as it appeared to him; and the way in which he wrestles with the pronunciation of the language is amusing enough. Thus, according to this traveller, if an Englishman would treat you, he would say in his language: “Vis dring a’ quarta uin oim gasquim oim hespaignol oim malvoysi.” This is merely maddening, and it is a positive relief to know that the meaning of it is, “Will you drink a quart of Gascony wine, another of Spanish, and another of Malmsey?” According to this, the Englishman of three hundred years ago mixed his drinks alarmingly. “In drinking,” continues this amusing foreigner, “they will say to you, a hundred times, ‘Drind iou,’ which is, ‘I drink to you’; and you should answer them in their language, ‘Iplaigiou,’ which means ‘I pledge you.’ If you would thank them in their language, you say, ‘God tanque artelay.’ When they are drunk,” he concludes, “they will swear by blood and death that you shall drink all that is in your cup, and will say to you thus: ‘Bigod sol drind iou agoud uin.’” [Picture: Entrance to Stamford. (After J. M. W. Turner R.A.)] Such customs as these must have been excellent business for the “George” and its contemporaries. To this inn belongs an incident not paralleled elsewhere. The daughter of one of its landlords, Margaret, daughter of Bryan Hodgson, married a bishop! Or, more exactly, one who became a bishop: the Reverend Beilby Porteous, who at the time of his marriage, in 1765, was vicar of Ruckinge and Wittersham, in Kent. In 1776 he became Bishop of Chester, and eleven years later Bishop of London. This was long years before Whincup kept the house. He reigned here in the full tide of the coaching age, and was one of the proprietors of the “Stamford Regent.” Much history has been made at Stamford, from the time when it was the “stone ford” of the Romans across the Welland, through the long ages of blood and destruction, stretching, with little intermission, from the days of Saxon and Danish conflicts to that final clash of arms in 1643, when Cromwell held the town and besieged Burghley House; and to that Monday in the first week of May, 1646, when Charles the First, having slept the night before at the residence of Alderman Wolph (descended from Wulph, son of King Harold) slipped through a postern-gate in the town wall, and so escaped for a final few hours as a free man. The gate is there yet, in the grounds of Barn Hill House, a mansion which, in 1729, was purchased by Stukeley, the antiquary, vicar of All Saints.