The name of the house was the "Royal Red Gate Inn," the pole
we had seen on the Watling Street holding a wooden gate painted red. We
asked why the red gate was a royal one, and the landlady said it was
because Queen Adelaide once called there, but who Queen Adelaide was,
and when she called there, she did not know. When asked what she called
for, she replied, "I don't know, unless it was for a drink!" As we did
not know who Queen Adelaide was ourselves, we had to wait until we
reached Nuneaton, where we were informed that she was the wife of
William IV, and that in her retirement she lived at Sudbury Hall in
Derbyshire, so this would be on her coach road to and from London. The
lane at one end of the Red Gate went to Fenney Drayton, where George Fox
the Quaker was born, about whom we had heard farther north; but we had
to push on, and finally did reach Nuneaton for the night.
_(Distance walked twenty-seven miles_.)
_Thursday, November 2nd._
In our early days we used to be told there was only one man in
Manchester, which fact was true if we looked at the name; in the same
way we were told there was but one nun in Nuneaton, but the ruins of the
nunnery suggested that there must have been quite a number there in the
past ages.
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