Distinguished travellers of old generally made their entrance here, through the long-vanished St. Stephen’s Gate in the equally vanished walls. This way came, in 1600, on his public entry, that dancing Will Kemp, of whom we have already heard much. On the completion of his ninth day’s jigging, from Hingham to Barford Bridge and Norwich, he ended at St. Giles’s Gate, and thence, to avoid the crowd, rode into the City. Three days later, having duly advertised his intentions, he danced in through St. Stephen’s Gate. The City Waits assembled to do him honour, huge crowds pressed forward to see him, the Mayor entertained this caperer and gave him £5 in Elizabethan angels, and altogether he had a truly phenomenal reception.

The delightful old City of Norwich was ever hearty and hospitable, and, although much else be changed, it is so still. No merely ecclesiastic settlement, the cold glories of its Cathedral are but one phase of Norwich. Prosperous and self-sufficing in the best sense; its citizens public-spirited, its situation beautiful, its highways imposing and byways quaint and curious, Norwich stands by itself, in its likeness to no other town or city in England. If one must seek a parallel, it is to Exeter one must look, for there is much in common between the two. Both are, very distinctly, the capitals of their respective provinces; Norwich still metropolitan to East Anglia, and Exeter to the West of England. In both, too, the streets are winding and without plan, affording facilities, unparalleled elsewhere, of immediately losing your way.

Unhappily—it is purely an antiquarian criticism—the prosperity and business energy of Norwich have swept away many landmarks of absorbing interest to the student of the roads, and much havoc has been wrought with the old coaching-inns. While many of the more obscure old taverns remain, the great coaching houses, standing on prominent sites and occupying much valuable ground, have, for the most part, been destroyed. Only “Rampant Horse Street” now remains to tell of the inn once bearing that name. The “Maid’s Head,” a splendid specimen of an old hostelry, remains, it is true, in Tombland, but where is the “King’s Head,” to which the Newmarket, Thetford, and Norwich Mail once came, and where the “Coach Office, Lobster Lane,” whence the Cromer Coach, the “Unicorn,” by North Walsham, set out twice a day? What the “Unicorn” was like we may see from Pollard’s picture. It was something between an omnibus and a hearse, and was drawn by a “unicorn” team—i.e., three horses; whence the name of the coach.

St. Peter’s, the narrow thoroughfare adjoining Rampant Horse Street, behind the loop road, and overshadowed by the great bulk of St. Peter Mancroft, was a great rendezvous for the coaching and carrying interests, and signs of that old-time feature in its history still remain in the numerous inns and houses that once were inns, now converted to other uses. Of these the most important by far was the “White Swan,” sometimes called, for convenience, merely the “Swan.” Many years have passed since it retired from public life, and it is now occupied as a wholesale provision store, for which the spacious old coach-yard and its great ranges of buildings seem to render it peculiarly suitable. Many might pass the house unnoticed, for its red-brick front is severely plain. The old coach-archway, however, is sufficient to attract the attention of the observant, for although the fine late seventeenth-century decorative carvings of festooned fruit and flowers on its framing are blunted by time and many successive coats of paint, their excellence still proclaims itself to the critical eye. A cursory glance shows that the house was re-fronted with brick in the Georgian period, and that beneath that commonplace skin an ancient building, in parts dating back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, still exists. A little fragment peeps interestingly from one corner of the red brick; it is an ancient corner-post, ornamented with the carving of an armed man. Not even those Georgian builders had the heart to destroy it.

Among coaches frequenting the “White Swan” were the “Light Post Coach,” the “Expedition,” and its successor, the “Magnet,” referred to in the earlier pages of this book. But long before any coaches ran the “White Swan” was an important house; the foremost in Norwich. Traces of that ancient import are not far to seek, and are stimulating to the imagination, even if facts be wanting. Directly opposite the entrance, across the very narrow street, is the great church of St. Peter Mancroft, and in line with it are the ancient Gothic vaulted cellars of the old inn. Antiquaries, on their periodical visits to Norwich, descend these depths, and, standing amid the butter-tubs and the sacks of nuts and miscellaneous groceries, speculate darkly on possible secret communications between the mediÆval inn and the church, with little enlightenment ever forthcoming.

A ramble over the premises discloses nothing more of really ancient date, but does reveal something unexpected, in the splendid long room on the first floor of the buildings stretching down the yard. It dates from about 1760, and is, architecturally speaking, a noble room, of moulded ceiling and panelled plaster walls, with a raised platform at one end, surmounted by a Chippendale shield with coat-of-arms greatly resembling that of Caius College. It is now degraded to the position of a stock-room, piled with hams, sacks, and biscuit-boxes, but keeps its distinction throughout adversity, and is a reminder of times when the “White Swan” was the centre of Norwich social life; when balls and assemblies were held beneath its roof, and the original “Theatre Royal,” nursery of much dramatic talent, was established here. At the “White Swan” those pioneer players, the “Norwich Company of Comedians, servants to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk,” as they humbly styled themselves, began their performance. At that time the play began at 7 p.m., but the doors were opened at 5. An hour earlier than that, the servants of the playgoers were sent to keep the seats, which were not highly expensive. The highest price was half a crown for a box; and the pit, then fashionable, cost only two shillings. When such prices ruled, the actor’s lot was not exactly luxurious, and stage-furnishing was quite a negligible quantity. But dramatic art was never higher than then