on particularly that Guildford "hath very faire Innes
and good entertainment at the Tavernes, the Angell, the Crowne, the
White hart, and the Lyon"; and Guildford only, of all the towns he
mentions, has all its inns either still standing or represented under
the same names, wholly or partially rebuilt. The Angel has kept more of
what is old than the others, including a panelled hall with a
seventeenth century clock, and some fine timber and brickwork best seen
from the inn yard. Under the Angel, too, lies one of a pair of vaulted
crypts which have puzzled all the archaeologists. The two crypts lie on
opposite sides of the street, and are beautiful examples of fourteenth
century work in chalk; in one of them, too, there was evidently once
some fresco work, but that has nearly all been rubbed away. What were
the crypts for? No one knows for certain. Mr. Thackeray Turner thinks
they were without doubt the undercrofts of merchants' houses; but there
is better reason for supposing that they are remains of some religious
foundation, perhaps of White Friars. At one time there stood in the
centre of the High Street, between the two crypts, the "Fyshe Crosse,"
which John Russell, the Guildford historian, tells us carried on its
summit a flying angel carved in stone, and was erected by the White
Friars in 1345. There is no evidence to prove that this was so, though
it may have been; in any case, the "Fyshe Crosse" was demolished in 1595
as being abominably in the way of the street traffic. If the White
Friars ever had a convent near the cross, possibly the Angel was
originally their guest-house, afterwards turned into an inn.

The Red Lion was the best inn, according to Pepys. It was at the Red
Lion that he "lay in the room the King lately lay in," which would have
pleased Pepys; and it was with the drawers of the inn, one Saturday
night, that he and Mr. Creed made merry over the minister of the town,
who had a girdle as red as his face, but preached next day a better
sermon than Pepys had looked for. The inn had a garden, out of which on
another occasion the gossiping little Admiralty official cut "sparagus
for supper--the best that ever I ate but in the house last year."
Doubtless the host of the Red Lion liked Pepys's recommendation, but
Pepys and his wife must have occasionally been rather noisy guests. It
was in the same inn garden that he and Mr. Creed "played the fool a
great while, trying who could go best over the edge of