The KING’S HEAD on the Balkern Hill, Colchester, is an ancient and memorable inn, though the present house is not very old. At the time of the surrender of the town to Fairfax, in 1648, it was a general _rendezvous_ of the noblemen and gentry of the Royalist party. Foxe, too, in his _Book of Martyrs_ mentions that “at the KINGE’S HEAD in Colchester, and at other innes in the sayd towne, the afflicted Christians had set places appointed for themselves to meet at.” Mr. H. W. King has kindly informed the author that the KING’S HEAD, now existing at Leigh, is not the same house as one which existed there under the same name in the eighteenth century. The latter is traceable (writes Mr. King) as a private house from 1671 to about 1720, being described in 1702 as a “messuage and shop.” Between 1718 and 1723 it was rebuilt, as in the latter year it is spoken of as a new house, and is described as an inn with the sign of the QUEEN’S HEAD. In 1740 it is described as “the ANGEL, heretofore the QUEEN’S HEAD.” In 1766 it is described as “the KING’S HEAD, heretofore the QUEEN’S HEAD, afterwards the ANGEL.” It then became a private house, as it has ever since remained. It was probably soon after this, about 1766, that the present KING’S HEAD at Leigh assumed that name. These three changes, all within the short space of fifty years, or less, are very interesting. They seem to suggest that the house was first named the QUEEN’S HEAD in honour of Queen Anne; but that, when she died in 1714, the same sign (perhaps slightly altered) was made to do duty for some time as an ANGEL, and still later was changed to the KING’S HEAD, probably on the accession of one of the Georges. At Harold Wood there is a KING HAROLD, which is no doubt connected with the name of the place. At Nazing, which was one of the estates with which Harold endowed the neighbouring Abbey of Waltham, there has been for at least a century past a KING HAROLD’S HEAD.