[Illustration: THE “GREEN DRAGON,” WYMONDHAM.] [Illustration: THE PILGRIMS’ HOSTEL, BATTLE.] The old pilgrims’ hospice of Battle Abbey still remains outside the great gateway, and now offers refreshments to those modern pilgrims who flock in thousands, by chars-à-banc, on cycles, or afoot, to Battle in search of the picturesque; or merely, in many cases, to complete the conventional round of sight-seeing prescribed for visitors to Hastings. It is a typically Sussexian building of domestic appearance, framed in stout oak timbering, and filled with plaster and rubble, and was probably built early in the fifteenth century. The so-called “New” Inn, at Gloucester, when actually new, the matter of four hundred and fifty years ago, was erected especially for the accommodation of pilgrims flocking to the tomb of the murdered King Edward the Second, who, by no means a saintly character in life, was in death raised by popular sentiment to the status of something very like a holy martyr. He had been weak and vicious, but those who on September 21st, 1327, put him to a dreadful death in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle acted on behalf of others worse than he, and the horror and the injustice of it had the not unnatural effect of almost canonising the slain monarch. The Abbot of St. Peter’s at Gloucester, John Thokey, when all others, fearing the vengeance of the murderers, dared not give the King’s body burial, begged it and buried it, with much reverence, within the Abbey walls. His Abbey, now the Cathedral of Gloucester, reaped unexpected benefits from the humane instincts of that good and pitiful man, for “miracles” were wrought at the “martyr’s” tomb, and abundant thank-offerings continued to flow in, and at last enabled the great Abbey to be rebuilt. [Illustration: THE “NEW INN,” GLOUCESTER.] It became eventually a pressing need to provide housing outside the Abbot’s lodgings for the stream of pilgrims, and accordingly the New Inn was built in the middle of the fifteenth century (1450-1457) by John Twynning, a monk of that establishment, of whom we know little or nothing else than that he was, according to the records of his time, a “laudable man.” It remained until quite recent years the property of the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester.