The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Taking a bracing walk through a Warwickshire village yesterday, I noticed first that (it being where the Gunpowder Plotters plotted) there are several houses named after them. As they have been considered the vilest of traitors for much of our history, with small children encouraged to burn effigies on November 5th each year, this seemed rather impressively robust. Then I saw a sign beneath someone's doorbell which read:

If you have been invited here, welcome! If not, you had better have a bloody good reason to ring this bell.

Grumpy old sod? Or sturdy English yeoman? I rather think the latter. I resisted the temptation to ring the bell to tell him so.