The “White Hart” at Aylesbury was generally believed to have dated back to the time of Richard the Second, and in the time of the Wars of the Roses to have been the rendezvous of the White Rose party, while the “Roebuck” was affected to the Red Rose. Until 1812 the “White Hart” retained its fine mediæval, three-gabled frontage, with first floor overhanging the ground-floor, and the second overhanging the first. Elaborately carved barge-boards decorated the gables. In the centre of the front was a great gateway with deeply reeded oaken posts and heavy double doors, which could be closed on occasion; but, in the growing security of the land, had scarce within the memory of man been shut to. Within was a spacious courtyard, partly surrounded by a gallery supported on stout oaken pillars and reached by a staircase. From this gallery, as in most other mediæval hostelries, the bedrooms and principal sitting-rooms opened. The “Coffee Room” and “Commercial Room” were at either side of the entrance from the street: the “Commercial Room” itself having, before the days of “commercials,” once been called “the Change,” and used, as asserted by local tradition, as the place where the principal business transactions of the town were conducted, over suitable liquor. On the side opposite was the room called the “Crown,” where the collectors of customs and excise, and other officials periodically attended. In the “Mitre,” an adjoining room, the Chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln, and the “Apparitor” of the Archdeacon had of old collected, for three hundred years, the dues or fees of the Church. Another room, the “Fountain,” was perhaps originally a select bar. Running under the entire frontage of the house was the extensive cellarage, necessarily spacious in days when every one drank wine, and many deeply. At the end of the yard was the great kitchen, and beyond it large gardens and a beautiful, full-sized bowling-green. Gigantic elms, at least three centuries old, bordered the gardens, which were further screened from outside observation by dense shrubberies of flowering shrubs, laburnums, lilacs, mountain-ash, acacias, and red chestnuts. Ancient walnut-trees and shady arbours completed this lovely retreat. But this was not all. Beyond this very delightful, but merely ornamental, portion was an orchard stocked with fine apple- and pear-trees: codlins, golden and ribston pippins, Blenheim orange, russets and early June-eatings, Gansell’s bergamot pear, and others. Three very fine mulberry-trees, at least three centuries old, and of course a varied and extensive stock of bush-fruit, were included in this orchard, and in addition there was the kitchen-garden.