The historic “Angel,” scene of so many centuries of conviviality, has long been made to foster the cause of temperance. Indeed, for two hundred years past, ages before Temperance became a Cause with capital letters and capital endowments, the rent of the house went towards this object, under the will of one Michael Solomon, who, dying in 1706, directed that a sermon should be annually preached in Grantham church, “strongly denouncing drunkenness,” the cost to be met out of the rental of the “Angel.” But the most cynical stroke of chance befell in November, 1905, when the preacher of this counterblast against drink, paid for out of the profits of a licensed house, was the Reverend Gerald Goodwin, son of the chief proprietor of a prominent Newark brewery. The “George,” at Norton St. Philip, claiming to have been licensed in 1397, has stirring history, as well as antiquity and beauty, to recommend it. You who are curious as to where the village of Norton stands may take the map of Somerset and presently, scanning the county to the south of Bath, discover it set down about seven miles to the south of that ancient city, in a somewhat sequestered district. The reason of so large and so grand a hostelry being in existence since the Middle Ages in so small a village is not, at the first blush, evident, and it is only when the ancient history of Norton itself is explored that the wherefore of it is found. It seems, then, that the land hereabout was in those far-off times the property of the old Priory of Hinton Charterhouse--that old Carthusian house whose brethren were the best farmers, wool-growers, and stock-raisers of their time in the West Country. As early as the reign of Henry the Third the monastery was licensed to hold a fair here in May, on the vigil, the feast, and the morrow of the festival of SS. Philip and James; and again, in 1284, secured a charter conferring the right of holding a market at “Norton Charterhouse” every Friday, instead of, as formerly, at the bleak and much-exposed Hinton. In 1345 the Priory was further empowered to annually hold a fair on the feast of the Decollation of St. John at Norton: an institution that, although the Priory went the way of all its kind over five hundred and fifty years ago, remained a yearly fixture on August 28th and 29th until quite recent times. It was known locally, for some reason now undiscoverable, as “Norton Dog Fair.”