Another contemporary says: “The building called ‘Denbigh Hall,’ respecting which, the reader may have formed the same conception as ourselves, and imagined it to be the august mansion of some illustrious grandee, is nothing but a miserable hostelry of the lowest order, a paltry public-house, or ‘Tom and Jerry shop,’ as we heard an indignant fellow-traveller contemptuously style it, which has taken the liberty of assuming this magnificent appellation.” Tradition described how this house, once called the “Marquis of Granby,” had been resorted to by the Earl of Denbigh on one occasion when his carriage had broken down, and that he stayed the night under its roof, and was so grateful for the attentions of the host that he left some property to that fortunate man, who thereupon changed the name of his sign to the “Denbigh Hall.” This, at any rate, was the story told when the London and Birmingham Railway was first opened. There were those who looked upon it as a myth invented for the amusement of travellers, and perhaps those sceptics were right, but let others who are not unwilling to believe the story, hug the apt reflection that so unusual a sign must have had an unusual origin; and, so much being granted, let them go a little further and accept the legend as it is told. The little inn still stands by the wayside. XXIV Stony Stratford, a hundred years ago “principally inhabited by lace-makers, with women and children at almost every door, industriously employed in this manufacture,” is now perhaps best known for the famous _non sequitur_ associated with it. “You may well call it Stony Stratford,” said the tormented traveller, “I was never so bitten with fleas in my life!” It would be ill questing among the old inns of “Stony” to discover which of them could claim the doubtful honour of giving rise to that ancient jest. There are many inns—the “Cock,” the “Bull,” “George,” “White Swan,” and numerous others—but among them the “Cock” is easily first in size and architectural dignity. The explorer, entering the mile-long street of Stony Stratford at “Tram-end,” whence a hideous steam-tramcar plies to Wolverton, a mile and a half away, discovers no focus of interest in the long thoroughfare stretching out before him, excepting in the old red-brick frontage of the “Cock,” with its handsome wrought-iron sign and beautiful late seventeenth-century oak doorway, brought, according to tradition, from some old manor-house near Olney; or “Ony,” as they choose to call it in the neighbourhood. It was not always so undistinguished a street, for in it stood one of the twelve crosses erected to mark where the body of Queen Eleanor had rested on the way from Harby in Northants, to Westminster. It was wrecked, with others, in 1646. [Illustration: STONY STRATFORD.]