I knew that was not a place for me: wherefore, following my direction and the winding of the stairs, I went up a storey higher, which brought me into a room which I soon perceived to be a court-room or place of judicature. After I had stood a while there, and taken a view of it, observing a door on the farther side, I went to it, and opened it, with intention to go in, but I quickly drew back, being almost affrighted at the dismalness of the place; for besides that the walls quite round were laid all over, from top to bottom, in black, there stood in the middle of it a great whipping-post, which was all the furniture it had. In one of these two rooms judgment was given, and in the other it was executed on those ill people who for their lewdness were sent to this prison, and there sentenced to be whipped; which was so contrived that the court might not only hear, but see, if they pleased, their sentence executed. A sight so unexpected, and withal so unpleasing, gave me no encouragement either to rest or indeed to enter at all there; till looking earnestly I espied, on the opposite side, a door, which giving me hopes of a farther progress, I adventured to step hastily to it, and opened it. This let me into one of the fairest rooms that, so far as I remember, I was ever in, and no wonder, for though it was now put to this mean use, it had for many ages past been the royal seat or palace of the kings of England, until Cardinal Wolsey built Whitehall, and offered it as a peace offering to King Henry the Eighth, who until that time had kept his court in this house, and had this, as the people in the house reported, for his dining-room, by which name it then went. This room in length (for I lived long enough in it to have time to measure it) was threescore feet, and had breadth proportionable to it. In it, on the front side, were very large bay windows, in which stood a large table. It had other very large tables in it, with benches round; and at that time the floor was covered with rushes, against some solemn festival, which I heard it was bespoken for. Here was my _nil ultra_, and here I found I might set up my pillar; for although there was a door out of it to a back pair of stairs which led to it, yet that was kept locked. So that finding I had now followed my keeper’s direction to the utmost point, beyond which I could not go, I sat down and considered that rhetorical saying, “That the way to Heaven lay by the gate of Hell;” the black room, through which I passed into this, bearing some resemblance to the latter, as this comparatively and by way of allusion might in some sort be thought to bear to the former.