There is (unless it has lately been abolished) another curiosity at Grantham. It is a custom. When the time-expired Mayor vacates his office, what has aptly been called a “striking” ceremony takes place. His robe is stripped off, his chain is removed from his shoulders, and with a small wooden hammer the Town Clerk takes the ex-Chief Magistrate on the head to typify the end of his authority. There is only one possible method more derogatory than this humiliating treatment, but it need not be specified. XXVIII IN history, Grantham and its immediate neighbourhood are notable as having witnessed the rise of Oliver Cromwell. At the outbreak of hostilities in March 1643, the town was taken and its fortifications demolished by the Royalists, but was retaken shortly afterwards by the Parliamentary troops under a hitherto undistinguished Cornet of Horse, after some fighting at Gonerby. The rise of this cornet is picturesquely described by De Foe. “About this time,” he says, “it was that we began to hear of the name of Oliver Cromwell, who, like a little cloud, rose out of the East, and spread first into the North, until it shed down a flood that overwhelmed the three kingdoms.” It was on May 22, 1643, that, with twelve troops, Cromwell defeated at Gonerby twenty-four troops of the opposing forces, and thus commenced this meteorological career. The ascent of Gonerby Hill, where these events took place, is a part of the journey to the North. It begins at the distance of a mile and a quarter beyond Grantham, shortly before reaching the hundred and twelfth milestone from London. For this part of the world it is a remarkable eminence, but although a long continuous climb, it does not come up to the impressive old descriptions of it, and cannot compare with such hills as Reigate Hill, or with Boughton Hill on the Dover Road. The village of Great Gonerby, a poor, out-at-elbows kind of a place, stands on the crest of the hill, with its great spired church as a landmark, a wide, bare street, a little inn with the curious sign of the “Recruiting Sergeant,” and an old posting inn, the “Rutland Arms,” its principal features. Passing through the cutting by which the gradient of the northern side of the hill has been eased, a remarkable view is unfolded of that flat region, fertile as a land of promise, the Vale of Belvoir. We shall hear presently what Sir Walter Scott has to say of Gonerby Hill, but in the meanwhile let us see how the view from it struck another traveller, the Reverend Thomas Twining, an amiable clergyman of Colchester, who in the eighteenth century was in the habit of taking holidays along the roads, mounted on his horse “Poppet,” and writing letters to his friends, describing what he saw. He was here in 1776.