The “Talbot,” in Market street, was the great rival of the “Lion.” It was the house to which came John Jobson to set up the “Nimrod,” and be generally a thorn in the side of Isaac Taylor, of the “Lion” yard. Although much else is lost, fugitive memories still remain of Mrs. Jobson’s turban, hinting that she must have been a remarkable person. Why has not some diarist of that time left us an intimate account of all these things? After the coaching age and Jobson were both simultaneously snuffed out, in 1842, the “Talbot” was taken by E. Wheeler and Son, followed shortly by one Peters, who had been a coachman on the “Nimrod.” It is to be feared he found it anything but a lucrative speculation, for the house was shortly closed. Some little while later, it was taken by the Post Office. The building still exists, little altered, although the lower part is a fancy warehouse, and the upper floors let out as offices, by the name of “Talbot Chambers.” It is a great square unbeautiful red-brick structure, with the sign, an effigy of that old English hound, the Talbot, still surmounting the entrance. The “Raven and Bell,” frequently mentioned in the rivalries of the old coach-proprietors, is not to be confounded with the “Raven” in Castle Street, but was situated on Wyle Cop. The “Raven,”—a favourite sign in Shropshire and Staffordshire—and almost exclusively confined to these two counties, derives from the old heraldic coat of the Corbets, that ancient Shropshire family whose ancestral acres are situated at Moreton Corbet, and is an ancient play upon the family name, by way of _corbeau_, the French for raven. Indeed, not only the Corbets of Moreton, but most others of the same name, bear one or more ravens as their heraldic cognizance. Wyle Cop is still a place of inns. There are the beautiful old “Unicorn,” half-timbered and gabled, and that oddly conjoined “Lion and Pheasant”; and many another to be found throughout the town. XXVI