The occasion was one well calculated to arouse enthusiasm for the well-known comforts of the old-time English hostelry. He had come, with the faithful Boswell, by post-chaise from Oxford, on the way to Birmingham; it was the inclement season of spring, the way was long, and the wind, blowing across the bleak Oxfordshire downs, was cold. Welcome, then, the blazing fire of the “Shakespeare’s Head”--for that was the real name of the house--and doubly welcome that dinner for which they had halted. Can we wonder that the worthy Doctor was eloquent? I think not. “There is no private house,” said he, “in which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern.... No man but a very impudent dog indeed can as freely command what is in another man’s house as if it were his own; whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome; and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is provided as by a good tavern or inn.” The “Chapel House” inn took its name from a wayside chapel formerly standing here, anciently belonging to the neighbouring Priory of Cold Norton. At a later period, when education began to spread and the roads were travelled by scholars and others on their way to and from Oxford, Brasenose College took over the conduct of it, both as an oratory and a guest-house for the succour of wayfarers along these then unenclosed and absolutely lonely downs. A priest was maintained here until 1547. Afterwards the site seems to have been occupied by a mansion built by William Fitzalan, of Over Norton: a house that gave place in its turn to the inn. Few ever knew “Chapel House” inn by its real name. It doubtless obtained the title from surviving traditions of Shakespeare having partaken of the hospitality of the old guest-house, on his journeys between Stratford-on-Avon and London. It is, indeed, singular how such traditions survive in this neighbourhood, the “Crown” at Oxford being traditionally the successor of the house where Shakespeare usually inned, and an old Elizabethan mansion at Grendon Underwood, formerly an inn, a halting-place when he chose another route and went by that village and Aylesbury to London.