Ill fared the unsuspecting burgess who met any of these sinners on the way to plenary indulgence, for they would, not unlikely, murder him for the sake of anything valuable he carried; or, out of high spirits and the sheer fun of the thing, cudgel him into a jelly; arguing, doubtless, that as they were presently to turn over a new leaf, it mattered little how soiled was the old one. Drunkenness and crime, immorality, obscenity, and licence of the grossest kind were, in fact, the inevitable accompaniments of pilgrimage. [Illustration: THE “STAR,” ALFRISTON.] Although East Anglia was in the old days more plentifully supplied with great monastic houses than any other district in England, the destruction wrought in later centuries has left all that part singularly poor in the architectural remains of them: and even the once-necessary guest-houses and hostels have shared the common fate. That charming miniature little house, the “Green Dragon” at Wymondham, in Norfolk, may, however, as tradition asserts, have once been a pilgrims’ inn dependent upon the great Benedictine Abbey, whose gaunt towers, now a portion of the parish church, rise behind its peaked roofs. [Illustration: CARVING AT THE “STAR,” ALFRISTON.] The beautiful little Sussex village of Alfriston--whose name, by the way, in the local shibboleth, is “Arlston”--a rustic gem not so well known as it deserves, possesses a very fine pilgrims’ inn, the “Star,” a relic of old days when the bones of St. Richard of Chichester led many a foot-sore penitent across the downs to Chichester, in quest of a clean spiritual bill of health. Finely carved woodwork is a distinguishing feature of this inn, whose roof, too, has character of its own, in the heavy slabs of stone that do duty for slates, and bear witness to the exceptional strength of the roof-tree that has sustained them all these centuries. The demoniac-looking figure seen on the left-hand of the illustration is not, as might perhaps at first sight be supposed, a mediæval effigy of Old Nick, or an imported South Sea Islander’s god, but the figure-head of some forgotten ship of the seventeenth century, wrecked on the neighbouring coast, off Cuckmere Haven. Ancient carvings still ornament the wood-work of the three upper projecting windows, the one particularly noticeable specimen being a variant of the George and Dragon legend, where the saint, with a mouth like a potato, no nose to speak of, and a chignon, is seen unexpectedly on foot, thrusting his lance into the mouth of the dragon, who appears to be receiving it with every mark of enjoyment, which the additional face he is furnished with, in his tail, does not seem to share. The left foot of the saint has been chipped off. All the exterior woodwork has been very highly varnished and painted in glaring colours, from the groups under the windows to the green monkey and green bear contending on the angle-post for the possession of a green trident.