The country gentlemen, scandalised at his rapacity, boycotted his inn, and his brother innkeepers of Canterbury disowned him. The unfortunate man wrote to the _St. James’s Chronicle_, endeavouring to justify himself, and complaining bitterly of the harm that had been wrought his business by the continual billeting of soldiers upon him. But it was in vain he protested; his trade fell off, and he was ruined in six months. Sometimes, too, there was a difference of opinion as to whether a bill had or had not actually been paid, as we see by the following indignant letter: Normanton near Stamford. 2{d} Sept{r} 1755. Madam, My Lord Morton Received a Letter from you of the 5{th} Aug{t} inclosing a Bill drawn by you on his Lp for £6 1 11, and to make up this sum p{r} your Account annexed to the above-mentioned Letter, you charge twelve shillings for his Servant’s eating, for which he is ready to Swear he paid you in full; then you charge for the Horses Hay for 35 Nights notwithstanding you was ordered to send the horse out to grass, and by the by when the horse came to London he was so poor as if he had been quite neglected which seems probable as he mended soon after he came here; at any rate you have used my Lord ill in the whole affair, and if you or your Servants have committed any accidental mistake either in the Lads Board or the horses hay pray see to rectify it soon, because things of that sort not cleard up and satisfied are very hurtfull to People in your publick way especially with those to whom you have already been obliged, and who at any rate will not be imposed upon. I am-- Madam-- Your humble sert JOHN MILNE. To M{rs} Beaver at the Black Bull Newcastle upon Tine, free Morton. Then there was Dover, notorious for high prices. “Thy cliffs, _dear_ Dover! harbour and hotel,” sang Byron, who bitterly remembered the “long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted.” The “Ship,” the hotel probably indicted by the poet, has long since disappeared, but that gigantic caravanserai, the “Lord Warden Hotel,” could at one time, in its monumental charges, have afforded him material for another stanza. Magnificent as were the charges made by overreaching hosts elsewhere, they all paled their ineffectual sums-total before the sublime heights of the account rendered to Louis Napoleon when Prince-President of France. He merely remarked that it was truly princely, and paid. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF AN ACCOUNT RENDERED TO JOHN PALMER IN 1787.]