It will already have been noticed that the Stuarts and their troubles contributed most of the historic associations belonging to our old hostelries; and we have not yet quite done with them. The incidents of Charles the Second’s flight in 1651, after the battle of Worcester, include a halt of one night at the “Sun,” Cirencester, the well-known escape from the “Queen’s Arms,” an inn--that is an inn no longer--at Charmouth, and visits to the “George” at Bridport, and a house of the same name at Broadwindsor. The “King’s Arms” at Salisbury is associated with meetings and conferences of the King’s supporters, who, while he lay in hiding at Heale House, considered there the best way of conducting him to the coast and safety. The route chosen lay through Mere, where, at the “George” inn (rebuilt in the eighteenth century) Colonel Phelips and Charles, travelling as his servant, Will Jackson, called. The Colonel, an acquaintance of the landlord, descended into the cellar of the inn, to sample the liquors of the house, while “Will Jackson” stood respectfully aside. Mine host, however, was an hospitable man, and, turning to the servant, with jug and glass, said, “Thou lookest an honest fellow--here’s a health to the King!” The “honest fellow,” whether taken aback by the suddenness of it, or acting an unwilling part, made some difficulty in replying; whereupon the landlord mildly took the Colonel to task for the kind of man he had brought. [Illustration: THE “COCK AND PYMAT.”] From another “George”--the “George” at Brighthelmstone, in after years styled the “King’s Head”--the King escaped to France. Nor even yet have we quite done with the hapless Stuarts, of whom undoubtedly Charles the Second was the most fortunate. One of the most historic of inns was the famous “Cock and Pymat” at Whittington, near Chesterfield. It is now only to be spoken of in the past tense because, although there is still an inn of that name at Whittington, it is not the famous “Revolution House” itself, but only a modern building to which the old sign of the “Cock and Magpie”--for that is the plain English of “Pymat”--has been transferred. Whittington in these times is a very grim and unlovely village, in the dismal colliery district of Chesterfield, whose wicked-looking crooked spire gives an air of _diablerie_ to its immediate surroundings; but two centuries and a quarter ago, when James the Second was on the throne, and busily engaged in undermining the religious and Parliamentary liberties of the realm, it was a tiny collection of houses on a lonely moor, and an ideal place for meetings of conspirators. There and then those very mild and constitutional plotters who, despite their mildness, did actually succeed in overturning that already insecure monarch, met and formulated their demands.