If we retrace our route from Sheppey, and, coming again across the bridge at King’s Ferry, turn off to the left beyond Iwade, we shall presently come into Milton Regis, otherwise Milton-next-Sittingbourne, past the fine and very striking church, of Norman and Early English periods. It is, in this age of silly “suffies,” generally locked, and therefore the tourist finds considerable difficulties in the way of seeing the beautiful interior and the three Northwode brasses: a knight in heraldic tabard; another about 1480; and John Northwode and wife, 1496. But the odd, and much more humble, tombstone in the churchyard to one “Abraham Washiton late Hvsband of Alise Washinton, now living at Milton, whome had in all six hvsbands,” 1601, is easily found. Alice, you will observe, was at that date “now living,” and so, for all we know, may have married again; but possibly she may by that time have struck the surviving men of Milton as rather lethal. [Illustration: THE CHURCH, MILTON REGIS.] Before ever there was a town of Sittingbourne there was a town of Milton, standing upon Milton Creek. It was from early times a royal manor, and until ages comparatively recent Sittingbourne, as the lesser place, was best described as “Sittingbourne-next-Milton.” But, from being situated directly upon the great Dover Road, Sittingbourne grew, while Milton languished. Great inns sprang up beside that historic highway, to serve the needs of travellers. No less a personage than Henry the Fifth, coming home flushed with the victory of Agincourt in 1415, was entertained at the “Red Lion,” a hostelry still in the forefront in 1541, when Henry the Eighth was its guest, and held there one of his fateful Councils, which probably resulted in some one losing his head. The “George,” the “Rose,” and the “Red Lion” seem to have long been the best inns. Hasted, the historian of Kent, says the “Rose” was the most superb of any in the kingdom; but that must have been at a much later date, for we are not to suppose that those two monarchs stayed at a second-rate house. For the “Red Lion” you will now seek in vain, although there is a “Lion,” without any specified colour; a large old inn, with long, seventeenth-century red-brick frontage: twelve windows in a row; quite the largest in the town, although part is now let off as a bank. A quaint, old-world scene presents itself up the archway entrance to the courtyard, with the prettily framed windows of the coffee-room on one side.