is request was granted, and in the
place where the friars sang their services and preached, the mayor and
burgesses "drank their guild" and held their banquets. When they got
tired of that building they filched part of the old grammar school
from the boys, making an upper storey, wherein they held their council
meetings. The old church then was turned into a prison, but now
happily it is a church again. At last the corporation had a town hall
of their own, which they decorated with the initials S.P.Q.R., Romanus
and Readingensis conveniently beginning with the same letter. Now they
have a grand new town hall, which provides every accommodation for
this growing town.

[Illustration: The Greenland Fishery House, King's Lynn. An old Guild
House of the time of James I]

The Newbury town hall, a Georgian structure, has just been demolished.
It was erected in 1740-1742, taking the place of an ancient and
interesting guild hall built in 1611 in the centre of the
market-place. The councillors were startled one day by the collapse of
the ceiling of the hall, and when we last saw the chamber tons of
heavy plaster were lying on the floor. The roof was unsound; the
adjoining street too narrow for the hundred motors that raced past the
dangerous corners in twenty minutes on the day of the Newbury races;
so there was no help for the old building; its fate was sealed, and it
was bound to come down. But the town possesses a very charming Cloth
Hall, which tells of the palmy days of the Newbury cloth-makers, or
clothiers, as they were called; of Jack of Newbury, the famous John
Winchcombe, or Smallwoode, whose story is told in Deloney's humorous
old black-letter pamphlet, entitled _The Most Pleasant and Delectable
Historie of John Winchcombe, otherwise called Jacke of Newberie_,
published in 1596. He is said to have furnished one hundred men
fully equipped for the King's service at Flodden Field, and mightily
pleased Queen Catherine, who gave him a "riche chain of gold," and
wished that God would give the King many such clothiers. You can see
part of the house of this worthy, who died in 1519. Fuller stated in
the seventeenth century that this brick and timber residence had been
converted into sixteen clothiers' houses. It is now partly occupied by
the Jack of Newbury Inn. A fifteenth-century gable with an oriel
window and carved barge-board still remains, and you can see a massive
stone chimney-piece in one of the original chambers w