The History of Signboards, from the Earliest times to the Present Day

by Jacob Larwood; John Camden Hotten

DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

Notwithstanding the ballad of the “Vicar and Moses,” which says,

“At the sign of the Horse old Spintext of course
Each night took his pipe and his pot,”

the horse rarely or never occurs without a distinctive adjective to determine its colour, action, or other attribute. All natural colours of the horse, and some others, are found on the signboard—black, white, bay, sorrel, (rare,) pied, spotted, red, sometimes golden, and in one instance, at Grantham, a Blue Horse is met with. Frequently the sign of the Horse is accompanied by the following hippophile advice:—

“Up hill hurry me not;
Down hill trot me not;
On level ground spare me not;
And in the stable I’m not forgot.”

Many years ago, at Greenwich, there was a public-house with the sign of a Horse. Behind the house was a large grass field, to which referred the following notice, painted under the sign:—“Good Grass for Horses. Long Tails three shillings and sixpence per week.” An inquisitive person passing that way, and not understanding the meaning of the notice, went in and questioned the landlord, who informed him that a difference was made for the bob-tailed horses; “for,” said he, “long-tailed horses can whisk off the flies, and eat at their leisure; but bob-tails have to shake their heads and run about from morning till night, and so do eat much less.”

The Red Horse is now almost extinct; it occurs as the sign of a house in Bond Street, in an advertisement about a spaniel lost by the Duke of Grafton.[234] By the term red was not meant vermilion; at that time it was the accepted word for what we now call roan. The Bay Horse is a great favourite in Yorkshire; in 1861 there were, in the West Riding alone, not less than seventy-seven inns, taverns, and public-houses, with such a sign, besides innumerable ale-houses. One would expect the Yorkshire Grey more indigenous to that county. The Dapple Grey is apparently a tribute of gratitude of the publicans to the “Dapple Grey” of the nursery rhyme—

“I had a little bonny nag,
His name was Dapple Grey,
And he would bring me to an ale-house
A mile out of the way.”

Dappled grey, too, was the fashionable colour of horses in the last century; thus Pope’s mercenary Duchess—

“The gods, to curse Pamela with her prayers,
Gave her gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares.”

Of the White Horse innumerable instances occur, and many are connected with names known in history. At the White Horse, near Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the noted Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, spent the last years of his life, and died.

“The Duke of Queensbury being present at his death, knowing the Duke to be a dissenter, and thinking he must be a Catholic, offered to send for a Catholic priest, to which the Duke answered, ‘No,’ said he, ‘those rascals eat God; but if you know of any set of fellows that eat the devil, I should be obliged to you if you would send for one of them!’”

All of a piece! So ended

“That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim.”[235]

At the White Horse in Kensington, Addison wrote several of his Spectators. His favourite dinner, when he stayed at this house, was fillet of veal and a bottle of claret. The old inn remained in its original state till about forty years ago, when it was pulled down, and the name changed to the Holland Arms; but the sign is still preserved in the parlour of the new establishment.

Edinburgh also has its famous White Horse; in a close in the Canongate, an inn dating from the time of Queen Mary Stuart, and which Scott has introduced in one of his novels, may still be seen. It was well-known to runaway couples, and hundreds have been made happy or unhappy for life “at a moment’s notice,” in its large room, in which, as well as in the White Hart in the Grassmarket, these impromptu marriages were as regularly performed as at Gretna Green. The White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, now a tame omnibus office, was for more than a century one of the bustling coaching inns for the West. “Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the mail coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land’s-End.”—Hazlitt. This place calls up pleasant fancies of travelling by the mail, through merry roads, with blooming hawthorn and chestnut trees, larks singing aloft, the village bells, and the blacksmith’s hammer tinkling in the distance; but another White Horse Inn shows the dark side of the picture—the unsafety of the roads, for the White Horse, corner of Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, was long a detached public-house, where travellers customarily stopped for refreshment, and to examine their firearms before crossing the fields to Lisson Green.[236] The last White Horse we shall mention was in Pope’s Head Alley, the sign of John Sudbury and George Humble, the first men that opened a printshop in London, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Peacham, in his “Compleat Gentleman,” says that Goltzius’ engravings were commonly to be had in Pope’s Head Alley. There also, in 1611, the first edition of Speed’s “Great Britain” was published.

At a certain place in Warwickshire a fellow started a public-house near four others, with signs respectively of the Bear, the Angel, the Ship, and the Three Cups. Yet quite undaunted at his neighbours, he put up the White Horse as his sign, and under it wrote the following spirited and prophetic rhymes:—

“My White Horse shall bite the Bear,
And make the Angel fly;
Shall turn the Ship her bottom up,
And drink the Three Cups dry.”

And so it did; the lines pleased the people, the other houses soon lost their custom, and tradition says that the fellow made a considerable fortune.

The Running Horse or the Galloping Horse—perhaps originally the horse of Hanover—is also very common. In the London Gazette, Feb. 12-15, 1699, a horse race is advertised at Lilly Hoo, in Hertford; the advertisement concludes: “and on the same day a smock worth £3 will be run for, besides other encouragements for those that come in 2d. or 3d. Any woman may run gratis, that enters her name at the Running Horse, where articles may be seen,” &c. Races by women were not uncommon in those days, and instances may yet occasionally be heard of, particularly in the east end of London, where every great match generally concludes with a race among the free and easy ladies of the neighbourhood.

The combinations in which we meet with the Horse are all very plain, and require no explanation. The Horse and Groom, and the Horse and Jockey, are the most prevalent. Racing, from time immemorial, has been a favourite English sport. Fitzstephen mentions the races in the days of Henry II., and in the ballad of Syr Bevys of Hampton,[237] full details are given.

“In somer at Whitsontide,
Whan knighten most on horseback ride,
A course let they make or a daye
Steedes and Palfraye for to assaye;
Which horse that best may ren,
Three miles the cours was then,
Who that might ride them shoulde
Have forty pounds of redy golde.”

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth races were much in vogue, and betting carried to great excess. The famous George Earl of Cumberland is recorded to have wasted more money than any of his ancestors, chiefly by racing and tilting. In 1599, private matches by gentlemen who rode their own horses were of frequent occurrence. In the reign of James I. public races were celebrated at various places, under much the same regulations as now. The most celebrated were called Bellcourses. In the latter part of the reign of Charles I. there were races in Hyde Park as well as at Newmarket. Charles II. was very fond of this diversion, and appointed meetings at Datchet Mead when he resided at Windsor. Gradually, however, Newmarket became the principal place. The king, a constant attendant, established a house for his own accommodation, and entered horses in his royal name. Instead of bells, he gave a silver bowl or a cup, value 100 guineas, on which the exploit and pedigree of the winning horse were generally engraved. William III. and Queen Anne both added to the plate. George I., towards the end of his reign, discontinued the plate and gave 100 guineas instead; George II. made several racing regulations, about the age of horses, the weight of jockeys, &c. Already, in 1768, the horses had obtained great swiftness; for Misson, in his “Travels,” mentions one that ran 20 miles in 55 minutes upon uneven ground, which for those times was certainly a remarkable feat.

The Bell and Horse is an old and still frequent sign; it occurs on trades tokens; as John Harcourt at the Bell and Black Horse in Finsbury, 1668, and on various others; whilst at the present day it may be seen at many a roadside alehouse. Bells were a favourite addition to the trappings of horses in the middle ages. Chaucer’s abbot is described:—

“When he rode men his bridle hear,
Gingling in a whistling wind as clere,
And eke as loud as doth a chapel bell.”

In a MS. in the Cottonian Library[238] relating the journey of Margaret of England to Scotland, there to be married to King James, we find constant mention of these bells. The horse of Sir William Ikarguil, companion of Sir William Conyars, sheriff of Yorkshire, is described as “his Hors Harnays full of campanes [bells] of silver and gylt.” Whilst the master of the horse of the Duke of Northumberland was “monted apon a gentyll horse, and campanes of silver and gylt.” And a company of knights is introduced, “some of their hors harnes was full of campanes, sum of gold and sylver, and others of gold.” This led to the custom of giving a golden bell as the reward of a race. In Chester, such a bell was run for yearly on St George’s day; it was “dedicated to the kinge, being double gilt with the Kynges Armes upon it,” and was carried in the procession by a man on horseback “upon a septer in pompe, and before him a noise of trumpets in pompe.”[239] This custom of racing for a bell led to the adoption of the still common phrase, bearing off the BELL.

Names of celebrated race horses are found on signboards as well as human celebrities. Such are Bay Childers at Dronfield, Derby; Flying Childers at Melton Mowbray; Wild Dayrell, Oldham; Filho da Puta, Nottingham; and Filho tavern, Manchester. Blink Bonny is common in Northumberland; Flying Dutchman occurs in various places; and the Arabian Horse at Aberford, in Yorkshire, may perhaps represent the great Arabian Godolphin, the sire of all our famous racers.

The Horse and Tiger, at Rotherham, is said to refer to the accident in a travelling menagerie which took place many years ago, when the tiger broke loose and sprang upon the leaders of a passing mail coach, although visitors from London generally suppose the “tiger” to mean the spruce groom, or horse attendant, coming from the country to London in such numbers. Even that poor hack, the Manage Horse, is not forgotten, as he may be seen going through his paces before a public-house in Cottles Lane, Bath. In one of the turnings in Cannon Street, City, there is an old sign of the Horse and Dorsiter, which is simply an old rendering of the more common Pack Horse, formerly the usual sign of a posting inn. No doubt the Frighted Horse, which occurs in many places, belongs to this class of horses,—the expression “fright” being a corruption of freight. Some publicans who, with their trade combine the calling of farrier, set up the sign of the Horse and Farrier,—in Ireland rendered as the Bleeding Horse. A Dutch farrier in the village of Schagen, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the White Horse, and wrote under it the following very philosophical verse:—

“In ’t witte Paard worden de paarden haar voeten met yzer beslagen
[176] Dat men de menschen dat mee kon doen zy hoefden dan geen schoenen te dragen.”[240]

The Horse and Stag, (Finningley, Nottinghamshire,) and the Horse and Gate, are both hunting signs; yet the last may have been suggested by the Bull and Gate. The Horse and Trumpet is a very common sign, illustrating the war horse; the Horse and Chaise (or shaze, as it is spelled) in the Broad Centry, (sanctuary,) Westminster, is named in an advertisement in the Postboy, Jan. 23-25, 1711; whilst the Chaise and Pair is still to be seen at Northill, Colchester.

The [Nag’s Head]—which only in one instance is varied by the Horse’s Head, namely, at Brampton in Cumberland—is a sign that has become famous in history; it is represented on the print of the entry of Queen Marie de’ Medici on her visit to her daughter Henriette Marie, Queen of Charles I., being the sign of a notorious tavern opposite the Cheapside Cross. It is suspended from a long square beam, at the end of which a large crown of evergreens is seen. As none of the other houses are decked with greens, this apparently represents the Bush.[241] This tavern was the fictitious scene of the consecration of the Protestant bishops at the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559. It was pretended by the adversaries of the Protestant faith, that a certain number of ecclesiastics, in a hurry to take possession of the vacant sees, assembled here; where they were to undergo the ceremony from Antony Kitchen, alias Dunstane, Bishop of Llandaff, a sort of occasional Nonconformist, who had taken the oath of supremacy to Elizabeth; Bonner, Bishop of London, (then confined in the Tower,) hearing of it, sent his chaplain to Kitchen, threatening him with excommunication in case he proceeded. On this the prelate refused to perform the ceremony; whereupon, according to Catholics, Parker and the other candidates, rather than defer possession of their dioceses, determined to consecrate one another, which they did, without any sort of scruple. Scorey began with Parker, who instantly rose Archbishop of Canterbury. The refutation of this tale may be read in Strype’s life of Archbishop Parker.[242]

A curious anecdote is told concerning the sign of a Gelding. Golden Square, it appears, was originally called Gelding Square, from the sign of a neighbouring inn; but the inhabitants, indignant at the vulgarity of the name, changed it to its present title.

Some publicans appear to be of opinion that the Grey Mare is the best horse for their signboards; in Lancashire, especially, this sign abounds. Others put up the Mare and Foal; but they are evidently not very well acquainted with the old ballad of the “Mare and Foal that went to church,” for there the Mare says:—

“Oh! to pray for those publicans I am very loath,
They fill their pots full of nothing but froth,
Some fill them half full, and others the whole;
May the devil go with them!—Amen, says the foal.
Derry down,” &c.

Besides the Mare and Foal, there is the Cow and Calf, which is very common. A still more happy mother, the Cow and Two Calves, was, in 1762, a sign near Chelsea Pond; whilst a touching picture of paternal bliss might have been seen on a sign in Islington in the last century, viz., the Bull and Three Calves; that animal, doubtless, was placed there in the company of his offspring, to illustrate the homely old proverb, “He that bulls the cow must keep the calf.” The Goat and Kid was a sign at Norwich in 1711;[243] the Sow and Pigs is common; and the Ewe and Lamb occurs on a trades token of Hatton Garden in 1668, and may still be seen in many places. A practical traveller in the coaching days, staying at the Ewe and Lamb in Worcester, wrote on a pane of glass in that inn the following very true remark:—

“If the people suck your ale no more
Than the poor Lamb, th’ Ewe at the door,
You in some other place may dwell,
Or hang yourself for all you’ll sell.”

The Cat and Kittens was, about 1823, a sign near Eastcheap; it may have come from the publican’s slang expression, cat and kittens, as applied to the large and small pewter pots. In the police courts it is not uncommon to hear that such and such low persons have been “had up” for “cat and kitten sneaking,” i.e., stealing quart and pint pots.

So much for quadrupeds. Happy families of birds are equally abundant; there was the Sparrow’s Nest in Drury Lane, of which trades tokens are extant; the Throstle Nest, (a not inappropriate name for a free-and-easy singing club!) is the sign of a public-house at Buglawton, near Congleton; the Martin’s Nest, at Thornhill Bridge, Normanton; the Kite’s Nest, (an unpromising name for an inn, if there be anything in a name,) at Stretton, in Herefordshire; and finally, the Brood Hen, or Hen and Chickens, which latter is more common than any of the former. Not improbably it originated with the sign of the Pelican’s Nest, to which several of the above-named nests may be referred. Under the name of the “Brood Hen,” it occurs on a trades token of Battle Bridge, Southwark; as the “Hen and Chickens,” it was also known in the seventeenth century, for there are tokens of John Sell “at y^e Hen and Chickens on Hammond’s Key;” it is likewise mentioned in the following daily occurrence of the good old times:—

“Wednesday night last, Captain Lambert was stopt by three footpads near the Hen and Chickens, between Peckham and Camberwell, and robbed of a sum of money and his gold watch.”[244]

The prevalence of this sign may be accounted for by the kindred love for the barleycorn in the human and gallinaceous tribes. It was also used as a sign by Paulus Sessius, a bookseller of Prague, in 1606, who printed some of Kepler’s astronomical works; above his colophon, representing the hen and her offspring, is the motto: “GRANA DAT A FIMO SCRUTANS,” the application of which is not very obvious.

Speaking of birds’ nests figuring as signs, we may mention that, at the beginning of the present century, the small shops under the tree at the corner of Milk Street, City, used to describe themselves as “under the Crow’s Nest, Cheapside.” An old-fashioned snuff shop, still in existence, issued its tobacco papers in this way, and the small bookshop there at present advertises itself as “under the tree,” although it was only very recently that the crow ceased to visit and repair his nest here.

The Three Colts, in Bride Lane, 1652, is represented on a trades token by three colts running; such a sign gave its name to a street in Limehouse. The Horseshoe is a favourite in combination with other subjects. Aubrey, in his “Miscellanies,” p. 148, says:—

“It is a very common thing to nail horseshoes on the thresholds of doors, which is to hinder the power of witches that enter into the house. Most houses of the West End of London have the horseshoe on the threshold; it should be a horseshoe that one finds.”

Elsewhere he says:—

“Under the Porch of Staninfield Church in Suffolk, I saw a tile with a horseshoe upon it placed there for this purpose, though one would imagine that the holy water would have been sufficient.”

Concerning the same superstition Brand observes:—

“I am told there are many other similar instances. In Monmouth Street (probably the part alluded to by Aubrey) many horseshoes nailed to the threshold are still to be seen. In 1813 not less than 17 remained, nailed against the steps of doors. The bawds of Amsterdam believed in 1687, that a horseshoe which had either been found or stolen placed on the hearth would bring good luck to their houses.”[245]

The charm of the horseshoe lies in its being forked and presenting two points; thus Herrick says:—

“Hang up hooks and sheers, to scare
Hence the hag that rides the mare;
Till they be all over wet
With the mire and the sweat,
This observ’d the manes shall be
Of your horses all knot-free.”[246]

Any forked object, therefore, has the power to drive witches away. Hence the children in Italy and Spain are generally seen with a piece of forked coral (coral is particularly efficacious) hung round their necks, whilst even the mules and other cattle are armed with a small crescent formed by two boars’ tusks, or else a forked piece of wood, to avert the spells of what Macbeth calls “the juggling fiends.” Even the two forefingers held out apart are thought sufficient to avert the evil eye, or prevent the machinations of the lord and master of the nether world. Great power also lies in the pentagram and Solomon’s seal, which, being composed of two triangles, present not less than six forked ends. Both these figures are much used by the Moors, with the same object in view as the horseshoe by western nations. In this country, at the present day, scarcely a stable can be seen where there is not a horseshoe nailed on the door or lintel; there is one very conspicuous at the gate of Meux’s brewery at the corner of Tottenham Court Road, and conspicuous on the horse trappings of this establishment the shoe in polished brass may be seen; in fact, it has become the trade-mark of the firm, the same as the red triangle which distinguishes the pale ale of the Burton brewers. The iron heels of workmen’s boots are also frequently seen fixed against the doorpost, or behind the door, of houses of the lower classes.

The Horseshoe, by itself, is comparatively a rare sign. There is a Horseshoe Tavern, mentioned by Aubrey in connexion with one of those reckless deeds of bloodshed so common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:—

“Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake 13 languages, was a captain under the Erle of Essex. He had a world of cuts about his body with swords and was very quarrelsome and a great ravisher. He met coming late at night out of the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane with a lieutenant of Colonel Rossiter, who had great jingling spurs on. Said he, the noise of your spurrs doe offend me, you must come over the kennel and give me satisfaction. They drew and passed at each other, and the lieutenant was runne through and died in an hour or two, and it was not known who killed him.”[247]

This tavern was still in existence in 1692, as appears from the deposition of one of the witnesses in the murder of Mountfort the actor by Captain Hill, who, with his accomplice, Lord Mohun, whilst they were laying in wait for Mrs Bracegirdle, drank a bottle of canary which had been bought at the Horseshoe Tavern.

The Three Horseshoes are not uncommon; and the single shoe may be met with in many combinations, arising from the old belief in its lucky influences: thus the Horse and Horseshoe was the sign of William Warden, at Dover, in the seventeenth century, as appears from his token. The Sun and Horseshoe is still a public-house sign in Great Tichfield Street, and the Magpie and Horseshoe may be seen carved in wood in Fetterlane; the magpie is perched within the horseshoe, a bunch of grapes being suspended from it. The Horns and Horseshoe is represented on the token of William Grainge in Gutterlane, 1666,—a horseshoe within a pair of antlers. The Lion and Horseshoe appears in the following advertisement of a shooting match:—

“ON Friday the 16th of this instant, at two in the afternoon, will be a plate to be (sic) shot for, at twenty-five guineas value, in the Artillerie Ground near Moorfields. No gun to exceed four feet and a half in the barrel, the distance to be 200 yards, and but one shot a piece, the nearest the centre to win. No person that shoots to be less than one guinea, but as many more as he pleases to compleat the sum. The money to be put in the hands of Mr Jones, at the Lion and Horseshoe Tavern, or Mr Turog, gunsmith in the Minories. Note, that if any gentleman has a mind to shoot for the whole, there is a person will shoot with him for it, being left out by mistake in our last.”[248]

The Hoop and Horseshoe on Towerhill, was formerly called the Horseshoe. This, like every old tavern, has its murder to record:—

“The last week one Colonel John Scott took an occasion to kill one John Buttler, a hackney coachman, at the Horse Shoe Tavern on Tower Hill, without any other provocation ’tis said, but refusing to carry him and another gentleman pertaining to the law, from thence to Temple Bar for 1s. 6d. Amongst the many pranks that he hath played in other countries ’tis believed this is one of the very worst. He is a very great vindicator of the Salamanca Doctor. He is a lusty, tall man, squint eyed, thin faced, wears a peruke sometimes and has a very h—— look. All good people would do well if they can to apprehend him that he may be brought to justice.”[249]

The Horseshoe and Crown is named in the following handbill, which is too characteristic to curtail:—

“Daughter of a Seventh daughter.
Removed to the sign of the Horseshoe and Crown in Castle Street, near the 7 Dials in St Giles.

Liveth a Gentlewoman, the Daughter of a Seventh Daughter, who far exceeds all her sex, her business being very great amongst the quality, has now thought fit to make herself known to the benefit of the Publick.

She resolves these questions following:—As to Life whether happy or unhappy? the best time of it past or to come? Servants or lodgers if honest or not? To marry the person desir’d or who they shall marry and when? A Friend if real or not? a Woman with child or not, or ever likely to have any! A friend absent dead or alive, if alive when return? Journey by Land or voyages by Sea, the Success thereof. Lawsuits, which shall gain the better? She also Interprets Dreams. These and all other lawful questions which for brevity sake are omitted, she fully resolves.

Her hours are from 7 in the Morning till 12, and from 1 till 8 at Night.”[250]

These quack “gentlewomen” were as much the order of that day as the broken-down clergymen who advertise medicines for nervous and rheumatic complaints are in our own time. Heywood, in his play of “the Wise Woman of Hogsden,” enumerates the following occupations as their perquisites:—

“Let me see how many trades have I to live by: First, I am a wise woman and a fortuneteller, and under that I deale in physick and fore-speaking, in palmestry and things lost. Next I undertake to cure madd folks; Then I keepe gentlewomen lodgers, to furnish such chambers as I let out by the night; Then I am provided for bringing young wenches to bed; and for a need you see I can play the matchmaker.”

Generally they proclaimed themselves the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, a relationship that is still thought to be accompanied by powers not vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. This belief in the virtue of the number 7 doubtless originated from the Old Testament, where that number seems in greater favour than all others. The books of Moses are full of references to it; the creation of the world in 7 days, sevenfold vengeance on whosoever slayeth Cain; Noah had to take 7 males and females of every clean beast, 7 males and females of every fowl of the air, for in 7 days it would begin to rain; the ark rested in the 7th month, &c., &c. From this the middle ages borrowed their predilection for this number, and its cabalistic power.[251]

Horned cattle are just as common as horses on the signboards; the Bull, in particular, is a favourite with the nation, whether as a namesake—so much so, indeed, as to have given it a popular name abroad—or as the source of the favourite roast-beef, or from the ancient sport of bull-baiting, it is difficult to say. From Ben Jonson we gather that there was another reason which sometimes dictated the choice of this animal on the signboard. In the “Alchymist” he introduces a shopkeeper, who wishes the learned Doctor to provide him with a sign.

“Face. What say you to his Constellation, Doctor, the Balance?
Sub. No, that is stale and common:
A Townsman born in Taurus gives the Bull
Or the Bull’s head: in Aries, the Ram,
A poor device.”—Alchymist, a. ii. s. i.

Newton dates a letter from “the Bull,” at Shoreditch, September 1693; it is addressed to Locke, and a curious letter it is, containing an apology for having wished Locke dead.

The Bull is generally represented in his natural colour, black, white, grey, pied, “spangled” (in Yorkshire,) and only rarely red and blue; yet these two last colours may simply imply the natural red, brown, and other common hues, for newspapers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often contain advertisements about blue dogs; and whatever shade that was intended for, it may certainly with as much justice be applied to a bull as to a dog. The Chained Bull at North Allerton, Leeds, and the Bull and Chain, Langworthgate, Lincoln, doubtless refer to the old cruel pastime of bull-baitings. Occasionally we meet also with a Wild Bull, as at Gisburn, near Skipton.

Leigh Hunt observes:—“London has a modern look to the inhabitants; but persons who come from the country find as odd and remote-looking things in it as the Londoners do in York and Chester; and among these are a variety of old inns with corridors running round the yard. They are well worth a glance from anybody who has a respect for old times.” Such a one is the Bull’s Inn in Bishopsgate Street, where formerly plays were acted by Burbadge, Shakespeare’s fellow-comedian, and Tarlton in good Queen Bess’s time amused our forefathers on summers’ afternoons with his quaint jokes and comic parts.[252] This inn is also celebrated as the London house of the famous Hobson, (Hobson’s choice,) the rich Cambridge carrier. Here a painted figure of him was to be seen in the eighteenth century, with a hundred pound bag under his arm, on which was the following inscription:—“The fruitful Mother of a Hundred More.”[253] At the Bull public-house on Towerhill, Thomas Otway, the play writer, died of want at the age of 33, on the 14th of April 1685, having retired to this house to escape his creditors.[254]

The Bull, at Ware, obtained a celebrity by its enormous bed. Taylor, the Water poet, in 1636 remarked, “Ware is a great thorowfare, and hath many fair innes, with very large bedding, and one high and mighty Bed called the Great Bed of Ware: a man may seeke all England over and not find a married couple that can fill it.” Nares, in his “Glossary,” quotes Chauncey’s, Hertfordshire; for a story of twelve married couple who, laid together in the bed, each pair being so placed at the top and bottom of the bed, that the head of one pair was at the feet of another. Shakespeare alludes to it in “Twelfth Night,” where Sir Toby Belch in his drunken humour advises Aguecheek to write: “as many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper, though the sheet were big enough for the Bed of Ware in England,” (a. iii. s. 2.) Where the “high and mighty Bed” was located, seems a mooted point; some say at the Bull, others at the Crown, and Clutterbuck places it at the Saracen’s Head, where there is or was a bed of some twelve feet square, in an Elizabethan style of carved oak, but with the date 1463 painted on the back. Tradition says that it was the bed of Warwick the king-maker, and was bought at a sale of furniture at Ware Park. Recently it has been sold, and Charles Dickens is now said to be its possessor.

The Bull Inn at Buckland, near Dover, deserves to be mentioned for its comical caution to the customers:

“The Bull is tame so fear him not,
All the while you pay your shot.
[184] When money’s gone, and credit’s bad,
It’s that which makes the Bull run mad.”

The famous Old Pied Bull Inn, Islington, was pulled down circa 1827, the house having existed from the time of Queen Elizabeth. The parlour retained its original character to the last. There was a chimney-piece containing Hope, Faith, and Charity, with a border of cherubims, fruit and foliage, whilst the ceiling in stucco represented the five senses. Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have been an inhabitant of this house.

“This conjecture is somewhat strengthened by the nature of the border [in a stained glass window,] which was composed of seahorses, mermaids, parrots, &c., forming a most appropriate allusion to the character of Raleigh, as a great navigator, and discoverer of unknown countries; and the bunch of green leaves [two seahorses supporting a bunch of green leaves,] has been generally asserted to represent the tobacco plant, of which he is said to have been the first importer into this country.”[255]

At what time the house was converted into an inn does not appear. The sign of the Pied Bull in stone relief, on the front towards the south, bore the date 1730, which was probably the year this addition was made to the building. That it was an inn in 1665, appears from the following episode of the Plague-time:

“I remember one citizen, who, having thus broken out of his house in Aldersgate Street, or there about, went along the road to Islington. He attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and after that at the White Horse, two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused; after which he came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the same sign. He asked them for lodging for one night only, pretending to be going into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound, and free from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much that way. They told him they had no lodging, that they could spare but one bed up in the garret, and that they could spare that bed but for one night, some drovers being expected the next day with cattle; so if he would accept of that lodging, he might have it, which he did; so a servant was sent up with a candle with him, to show him the room. He was very well dressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret; and when he came to the room he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant, ‘I have seldom lain in such a lodging as this;’ however, the servant assured him again that they had no better. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I must make shift; this is a dreadful time, but it is but for one night.’ So he sat down upon the bed-side, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him up a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale; but some hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her otherwise, put it out of her head, and she went up no more to him. The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in the house asked the servant that had showed him up stairs, what was become of him. She started; ‘alas,’ said she, ‘I never thought more of him; he bade me carry him some warm ale, but I[185] forgot.’ Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent up to see after him, who coming into the room found him stark dead, and almost cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard in one of his hands; so that it was plain he died soon after the maid left him; and that it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the bed. The alarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having been free from the distemper till that disaster; which bringing the infection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round about it. I do not remember how many died in the house itself, but I think the maid-servant who went up first with him, fell presently ill by the fright, and several others; for whereas there died but two in Islington of the plague the week before, there died seventeen the week after, whereof fourteen were of the plague. This was in the week from the 11th of July to the 18th.”[256]

The Red Bull was the sign of another of the inn-playhouses in Shakespeare’s time; but, like the Fortune, mostly frequented by the meaner sorts of people. It was situated in Woodbridge Street,[257] Clerkenwell, (its site is still called Red Bull Yard,) and is supposed to have been erected in the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. At all events, it was one of the seventeen playhouses that arose in London between that period and the reign of Charles I. Edward Alleyn the actor, founder of Dulwich College, says in a memorandum, Oct. 3, 1617, “went to the Red Bull and received for the ‘Younger Brother’

“—— That the Globe
Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,
Had been consumed, the Phenix burnt to ashes,
The Fortune whipp’d for a blind—Blackfriars,
He wonders how it ’scaped demolishing
I’ the time of Reformation; lastly he wished
The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear-gardens,
And there be soundly baited.”[258]

The [Bull’s Head] is often seen instead of the Bull; its origin may be from the butchers’ arms, which are azure two axes salterwise, arg. between two roses arg. as many bulls’ heads couped of the second attired or, &c.; in Holland a carved bull’s head is always a leather-seller’s sign. At the [Bull’s Head], in Claremarket, the artists’ club used to meet, of which Hogarth was a member, and Dr Ratcliffe a constant visitor. The Bull’s Head was already used in signs three hundred years ago, as we may see from an entry in Machyn’s Diary, which does not say much for the morality of the period:—

“The xij day of June (1560) dyd ryd in a care[259] abowt London ij men and iij women; one man, for he was the bowd and to brynge women unto strangers; and on women was the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous Strett; and a-nodur the wyff of the Bull-hed besyd London Stone, and boyth were bawdes and hores and the thodur man and the woman were brodur and syster and wher taken nakyd together.”

As a variation, on the Bull’s Head there is the Cow’s Face:—

“GEORGE TURNIDGE, aged about 16, a short thickset Lad with a little dark brown Hair, a scar in his left cheek under his eye, wears a canvass jacket lined with red and canvass Breeches, with a red cap, run away from his Master the 7th instant. Whoever secures him and gives Notice to Mr Henry Davis, Waxchandler at the Cow’s Face in Miles Lane in Canon Street, shall have a Guinea Reward, and reasonable charges.”—London Gazette, Jan. 13-17, 1697.

The Bull’s Neck is a sign at Penny Hill, Holbeach, and the Buffalo Head is common in many places. The latter was the sign of one of the coffee-houses near the Exchange, during the South Sea bubble, and was hung up over the head quarters of a company for a grand dispensary, capital £3,000,000. The rage for joint-stock companies had come to such a pitch at that period, that an advertisement appeared stating:—

“THIS day the 8th instant at Sam’s Coffeehouse behind the Royal Exchange, at three in the afternoon, a book will be opened, for entering into a joint copartnership for carrying on a thing that will turn to the advantage of those concerned.”

Not less than £28,000,000 were asked for at that period to enter upon various speculations. At the Buffalo Head Tavern, Charing Cross, Duncan Campbell, the deaf and dumb fortune-teller, used at one time to deliver his oracles. He is immortalised in the Spectator, No. 474, where, in answer to the letter of a lady inquiring about Duncan’s address, a note is entered, “That the Inspector I employ about Wonders, inquire at the Golden Lyon, opposite the Halfmoon Tavern, Drury Lane, into the merit of this silent sage.”[260]

Among the combinations in which the Bull is met with on signboards, the Bull and Dog is one of the most common, derived, like the Bull and Chain, from the favourite sport of bull-baiting, which amusement is described at full length and in brilliant colours by Misson, in his “Travels.” A comical variation of this is the Bull and Bitch at Husborn Crawley, Woburn. In the sign of the Bull and Butcher,[261] the bull is placed in still worse company; this was very forcibly expressed on the sign of a butcher in Amsterdam, who was represented with a glass of wine in his hand, standing between two calves, and pledging them with the cruel words,—

“Zyt verblyt
Soo lang gy er zyt.”[262]

The Bull and Magpie, which occurs at Boston, has been explained as meaning the Pie, πιναξ, and the Bull of the Romish Church; but this looks very like a cock-and-bull story. As “some help to thicken other proofs that also demonstrate thinly,” as Iago has it, it may be asked whether this might not have arisen out of the sign of the “Pied Bull,” thus leading to the “Pie and Bull,” or the “Bull and Magpie;” the transition seems simple and easy enough; but should this not be considered satisfactory, since we have the “Cock and Bull,” and the “Cock and Pie,” we may by a sort of rule of three manœuvre obtain the Bull and [Pie or Magpie]. See under [Bird Signs].

The Black Bull and Looking-Glass is named in an advertisement in the original edition of the Spectator, No. lxviii., as a house in Cornhill. It was evidently a combination of two signs.

Still more puzzling is the Bull and Bedpost; but as the actual use of this sign as a house decoration remains to be corroborated, we may dismiss it with the remark, that the Bedpost, in all probability, was a jocular name for the stake to which the bull was tied when being baited, in allusion to the stout stick formerly used in bed-making to smooth the clothes in their place. The Bull and Swan, High Street, Stamford, may be heraldic, both these animals being badges of the York family; but the Swan in all probability was the first sign, the Bull being added on account of the singular custom of Bull Running, which yearly took place, both at Tamworth and Stamford, on St John’s eve. The Bull in the Pound, is the Bull punished for trespass, and put in the pound or pinfold; whilst the Bull and Oak at Wicker, Sheffield, (at Market Bosworth there is a house with the sign of the Bull in the Oak,) may have originated from the sign of “the Bull” being suspended from an oak tree, or referring to an oak tree standing near the house. Bulls are often tied to trees or posts in pastures, and this also may have given rise to the sign.

Visitors to the Isle of Wight will have noticed the word Bugle frequently inscribed under the picture of a Bull on the inn signboards there. Bugle is a provincial name in those parts for a wild bull. It is an old English word, and is used by Sir John Mandeville; “homes of grete oxen, or of bugles, or of kygn.” It was still current in the seventeenth century, for Randle Holme, 1688, classes the “Bugle, or Bubalus,” amongst “the savage beasts of the greater sort.” The horns of this animal, used as a musical instrument, gave a name to the Buglehorn. It may be remarked that the term bugle doubtless came, in old times, with other Gallicisms common to Sussex and Hampshire, from across the Channel, where the word bugle is still preserved in the verb beugler, the common French word for the lowing of cattle.

The Ox is rather uncommon; the Durham Ox and the Craven Ox, two famous breeds, are sometimes met with; then there is a Craven Ox Head, in George Street, York, and a Grey Ox at Brighouse, in the West Riding. The Ox and Compasses at Poulton Swindon, in Cumberland, is evidently a jocular imitation of the London sign of the Goat and Compasses.

The Cow is more common; its favourite colours being Red, Brown, White, Spotted, Spangled, &c. The Red Cow occurs as a sign near Holborn Conduit, on the seventeenth century trades tokens. It also gave a name to the alehouse in Anchor and Hope Lane, Wapping, in which Lord Chancellor Jeffries was taken prisoner, disguised as a sailor, and trying to escape to the Continent after the abdication of James II. Thinking himself safe in this neighbourhood, he was looking out of the window to while the time away, when he was recognised by a clerk who bore him a grudge, and at once betrayed him. An heraldic origin is not necessary for this colour of the cow.

“Cows (I mean that whole species of horned beasts) are more commonly black than Red in England. ’Tis for this reason that they have a greater value for Red Cow’s Milk than for Black Cow’s Milk. Whereas in France we esteem the Black Cow’s Milk, because Red Cows are more common with us.”[263]

Speaking of the Green Walk, St James’s Park, Tom Brown says: “There were a cluster of senators talking of state affairs, and the price of corn and cattle, and were disturbed with the noisy Milk folk crying: A can of Milk, Ladies; a can of Red Cow’s Milk, sirs?”[264] The preference for the Red Cow’s milk may, however, have a more remote origin, namely, from the ordinance of the law contained in Numbers xix. 2, where a red heifer is enjoined to be sacrificed as a purification for sin. Hence, Red Cow’s milk is particularly recommended in old prescriptions and panacea, as, for instance, in the following receipt of “a Cock water for a Consumption and Cough of the Lunges:”—

“Take a running cock and pull him alive, then kill him and cutt him in pieces and take out his intrailes and wipe him cleane, breake the bones, then put him into an ordinary still with a pottle of sack and a pottle of Red Cow’s Milk,” &c., &c.[265]

The Red Cow, in Bow Street, was the sign of a noted tavern, (afterwards called the Red Rose,) which stood at the corner of Rose Alley. It was when going home from this tavern that Dryden was cudgelled by bravoes, hired by Lord Rochester, for some remarks in Lord Mulgrave’s Essay on Satire, in the composition of which Dryden had assisted his lordship. The king offered £50, and a free pardon, but “Black Will with a cudgel,” to whom Lord Rochester had intrusted the task of thrashing the laureate, showed that there was such a thing as honour amongst rogues, and did not betray him for the king’s £50. In all probability, however, he received a larger sum from his lordship. In Dryden’s old age, Pope, then a boy, came here to look at the great man whose fame in after years he was to equal if not to eclipse. This tavern was the famous mart for libels and lampoons; one Julyan, a drunken dissipated “secretary to the Muses,” as he calls himself, was the chief manufacturer.

Near Marlborough, Wilts, there is an alehouse having the sign of the Red Cow, with the following rhyme:—

“The Red Cow
Gives good Milk now.”

That under a Brown Cow at Oldham is still more sublime:—

“This Cow gives such Liquor,
’Twould puzzle a Viccar (sic.)”

The Heifer is to be met with sometimes in Yorkshire, but always with some local adjective, as the Craven Heifer; the Airesdale Heifer, the Durham Heifer, &c. The Pied Calf at Spalding seems to present a solitary instance of a calf on the signboard. Neither are sheep very common; the Ram was a noted carrier’s inn in the seventeenth century, in West Smithfield, and, indeed, continued as such until the recent destruction of this old cattle market. The crest of the cloth-workers was a mount vert, thereon a ram statant; so that this sign in that locality was very well chosen, being in honour of the cattle-dealers on ordinary occasions, and serving for the cloth-workers in the time of Bartholomew fair, for whose benefit the fair was founded. In 1668 there were two Ram’s Head inns in Fenchurch Street; one of them was a carriers’ inn for the Essex people. The Ram’s Skin, which occurs at Spalding in Lincolnshire, is another name for the Fleece. The Black Tup figures on a sign near Rochdale, perhaps in allusion to the black ram frail matrons used to bestride in the old custom of Free Bench, thus related in Jacob’s “Law Dictionary:”—

“In the manors of East and West-Enbourne in the Co. of Berks, and the manor of Torre in Devonshire, and other parts of the West of England, there is a custom, that when a Copyhold Tenant dies his widow shall have ‘Free Bench’ in all his customary lands ‘dum sola et casta fuerit,’ but if she commits incontinency she forfeits her estate. Yet nevertheless on her coming into the court of the manor, riding backwards on a black ram with his tail in her hand and saying the words following, the steward is bound by the custom to readmit her to her free bench; The words are these:—

Here I am
Riding upon a Black Ram
Like a w——e as I am;
And for my crincum crancum
I have lost my bincum bancum;
And for my T——’s game
Have done this worldly shame.
Therefore pray, Mr Steward, let me have my land again.

This is a kind of penance among jocular tenures to purge the offence.”

Though the ram is rarely, and the sheep never seen on the signboard, the Lamb is not uncommon. In 1586, it was the sign of Abraham Veale, (agreeably to the punning practices of the time, one would have expected the Calf from him,) a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard, and in 1728 of Thomas Cox, also a bookseller, under the Royal Exchange in Cornhill. Doubtless, these signs had originally represented the Lamb with the flag of the Apocalypse. The sign was used by other trades: in 1673, it was the distinctive ornament of a confectioner at the lower end of Gracechurch Street;[266] and an instance of an alehouse is found in the following advertisement, which at the same time affords us a peep at the homely proceedings of the Admiralty in those days:—

“THIS is to give notice to the Officers and Company of His Majesty’s Frigate Boreas, who were on Board her at the taking the Ship Vrow Jacoba and Briggantyne Leon, that they will be paid their respective Shares of said Prizes, on Wednesday the Eight of April next, at the sign of the Lamb, in Abchurch Lane. Paying will begin at Eight o’clock of the forenoon of the said Day.”[267]

Think of that, ye clerks in Her Majesty’s offices, eight o’clock in the forenoon!

A few combinations also occur, as the Lamb and Breeches, the sign of Churches & Christie, leather-sellers and breeches-makers, on London Bridge, in the last century; this was a sign like that of the [Hat and Beaver], in which the living animal, and the article manufactured from its skin, were juxtaposed. The Lamb and Crown was a sort of colonial or emigration office in Threadneedle Street, near the Southsea House in 1759.[268] At the present day there is a Lamb and Lark at Keynsham, Bath, and in Printing House Lane, Blackfriars. It is a typical representation of the proverb, “Go to bed with the Lamb and rise with the Lark.”

The Lamb and Hare figure together in Portsmouth Place, Lower Kennington Lane. The Lamb and Still is a combination intimating the sale of distilled waters. It was the sign of a house in Compton Street, in 1711, which had the honour to lodge Mr Fert, a dancing-master, and author of a work called “A Discourse or Explanation of the ground of Dancing.”[269]

If we except the heraldic Blue Boar, and the Sow and Pigs, we shall find no other pigs on the signboard but the Pig and Whistle,[270] the Little Pig at Amblecote, Stourbridge, and the Hog in the Pound in Oxford Street, jocularly called the gentleman in trouble. This latter was formerly a starting-point for coaches, and became notorious through the crime committed by its landlady, Catherine Hayes. Having formed an illicit connexion, she was induced by her paramour to murder her husband, after which she cut off his head, put it in a bag, and threw it in the Thames. It floated ashore, and was put on a pole in St Margaret’s Churchyard, Westminster, in order that it might be recognised; and by this primitive means the murderess was detected. The man was hanged, and Catherine burnt alive at Tyburn in 1726.

The Goat is not very common; there was a Goat Inn at Hammersmith, taken down in 1826, and rebuilt under the name of Suspension Bridge Inn; up to that time, the sign, and the woodwork from which it was suspended, used to extend across the street. The [Goat in Boots], on the Fulham Road,[271] was in old times called simply “the Goat.” Besides these, there is a Black Goat in Lincoln, and a Grey Goat in Penrith and Carlisle, and a few others without addition of colour.

A walk through town on a fine Sunday morning will at once convince anybody of the good understanding that exists between the Englishmen and the canine species, “l’ami de l’homme” as Buffon calls the dog. From every lane and alley in the lower parts of the town sally forth men and youths in clean moleskins and corduroys, each invariably accompanied by some yelping cur, the least of whose faults is to be ugly. It is no wonder, then, that the Dog should be of frequent occurrence on the signboard. Pepys mentions a tavern of that name in Westminster, where, about the time of the Restoration, he used occasionally to show his merry face. In 1768, the author of the “Art of Living in London,” recommended the Dog in Holywell Street for a quiet good dinner:—

“Where disencumbered of all form or show,
We to a moment might or sit or go;
Eat what the palate recommends us hot,
Yet not considered as a useless guest.”

PLATE IX.
GOOSE AND GRIDIRON. (St Paul’s Churchyard, circa 1800.)	ANGEL AND GLOVE. (Harleian Collection, 1710.)
THREE KINGS. (Banks’s Collection, 1720.)
MARYGOLD. (Child’s Bank, Fleet Street, circa 1670.)	GUY OF WARWICK. (Roxburghe Ballads, circa 1650.)

For some unknown reason, the Black Dog seems the greatest favourite; perhaps the English terrier is meant by it, a dog who “once had its day,” as the Scotch terrier appears to have it now. In the seventeenth century, there was a Black Dog Tavern near Newgate; a house of old standing, of which trades tokens are yet extant.

Mr Akerman, in his work on “Trades Tokens issued between 1648-1672,” makes a mistake in surmising that Luke Hutton’s “Black Dog of Newgate” had anything to do with this tavern. That poem is simply against “coney-catchers,” i.e., roguish detectives or informers of the Jonathan Wild stamp, and even worse. Such a one is impersonificated under the name of the Black Dog of Newgate, because the coney-catchers used to hunt people down threatening them with Newgate. This Black Dog may have derived its name from the canine spectre that still frightens the ignorant and fearful in our rural districts, just as the terrible Dun Cow, and the Lambton Worm were the terror of the people in old times. Near Lyme Regis, Dorset, there is an alehouse which has this black fiend in all his ancient ugliness painted over the door. Its adoption there arose from a legend that the spectral black dog used to haunt at nights the kitchen fire of a neighbouring farm-house, formerly a Royalist mansion, destroyed by Cromwell’s troops. The dog would sit opposite the farmer; but one night, a little extra liquor gave the man additional courage, and he struck at the dog, intending to rid himself of the horrid thing. Away, however, flew the dog and the farmer after him, from one room to another, until it sprang through the roof, and was seen no more that night. In mending the hole, a lot of money fell down, which, of course, was connected in some way or other with the dog’s strange visit. Near the house is a lane still called Dog Lane, which is now the favourite walk of the black dog, and to this genius loci the sign is dedicated.

There was another notorious Black Dog next door to the Devil Tavern, the shop of Abel Roper, who printed and distributed the majority of the pamphlets and ballads that paved the way for the Revolution of 1688. He was the original printer of the famous ballad of “Lillibulero.” Whatever pleased the public, whether good or bad, he was always ready to provide and send into the world; he was also the editor of the newspaper called the Postman. In the beginning of the reign of Charles II. he lived “at the Sun, over against St Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet Street.”[272]

Tokens are extant of the Pied Dog in Seething Lane, 1667, a sign still frequently to be seen at the present day.

We very rarely meet with the Blue Dog; but there is an example in Grantham, and the sign occurs in a few other places.

Sometimes a peculiar breed is chosen, as the Setter Dog at Redford, Notts; the Pointer at Peckfield, Milford Junction; the Beagle at Shute, Axminster, and the Merry Harriers, common in hunting counties. Equally common is the Greyhound, particularly in the North country, where coursing has long been a favourite sport. In the seventeenth century, it was the sign of a fashionable tavern in London, for in a sprightly ballad in the Roxburgh collection,[273] a young gallant is introduced who is going to forsake his evil courses and turn over a new leaf. He gives a last farewell to all his doxies:

“Farewell unto black patches,
And farewell powder’d locks;”

and remembers all those delightfully wicked places he used to haunt formerly, and amongst them:

“Farewell unto the Greyhound,
And farewell to the Bell,
And farewell to my landlady,
Whom I do love so well.”

This was probably the same Greyhound mentioned by Machyn, which seems to have been situated in Fleet Street, where the gaudily dressed Spanish ambassador took his stirrup-cup before leaving London. The same author mentions the sign elsewhere, apparently in Westminster; and the little picture of manners which accompanies it is rather curious:—

“The viij day of January (1557) dyd ryd in a care in Westmynster the wyff of the Grayhound, and the Abbot’s servand was wypyd [whipped] becawse that he toke her owt of the car, at the care h—e, [the back of the cart.]”

—another example that the course of true love never does run smooth, even though it runs upon wheels.

The White Greyhound was the sign of John Harrison, in St Paul’s Churchyard, a bookseller who published some of Shakespeare’s early works, as “The Rape of Lucrece,” “Venus and Adonis,” &c. White greyhounds, or rather silver greyhounds, were, until eighty years ago, the badges worn on the arm by king’s messengers.

The sign of the Black Greyhound is also of frequent occurrence, and at Grantham there is a Blue Greyhound. Indeed, although Lincoln was formerly famous for green, it seems also to have taken a great fancy to blue, for there we find the Blue Bull and the Blue Cow, the Blue Dog, the Blue Fox, (all in Colsterworth,) besides the Blue Pig, the Blue Ram, in Grantham, which town can also boast of the unique sign of the Blue Man.

The Talbot—old and now almost obsolete term for a large kind of hunting dog—has acquired a literary celebrity from having been substituted for the old sign of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, whence the pilgrims started on their merry journey to Canterbury. In 1606, we find the Talbot the sign of Thomas Man, bookseller in Paternoster Row, which, however, at that time, was not such a book market as now, being occupied by “eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen; and their shops were so resorted unto by the nobility and gentry in their coaches, that ofttimes the street was so stopped up, that there was no passage for foot passengers.”[274] So it continued until the fire; and it was only in the middle of the last century that the booksellers began to make their appearance in it.

A Talbot Inn in the Strand is mentioned in the following very quaint advertisement:—

“TO BE SOLD, a fine Grey Mare, full fifteen hands high, gone after the hounds many times, rising six years and no more; moves as well as most creatures upon earth, as good a road mare as any in 10 counties and 10 to that; trots at a confounded pace; is from the country, and her owner will sell her for nine guineas; if some folks had her she would fetch near three times the money. I have no acquaintance, and money I want, and a service in a shop to carry parcels or to be in a gentleman’s service. My father gave me the mare to get rid of me, and to try my fortune in London, and I am just come from Shropshire, and I can be recommended, as I suppose nobody takes servants without, and have a voucher for my mare. Enquire for me at the Talbot Inn near the New Church at the Strand.

“A. R.”[275]

At the foot of Burdley’s Hill, Gloucester, there is a Talbot Inn, which has a sign painted with two inscriptions; at the side where the road is level, it says:—

“Before you do this hill go up,
Stop and drink a cheerful cup.”

On the side of the hill it says:

“You’re down the hill, all danger’s past,
Stop and drink a cheerful glass.”

A publican at Odell has chosen the Mad Dog for a sign, evidently his beau ideal of a “jolly fellow,” one having a great horror for water; another at Pidley, Hunts, not to be behindhand with the Mad Dog, has put up the Mad Cat. We have as odd and apparently as unmeaning a sign in Tabernacle Walk, namely, the Barking Dogs.

All the combinations of the sign of the Dog point towards sports, as the Dog and Bear, which was very common in the seventeenth century, when bear-baiting was in fashion, and kings and queens countenanced it by their presence. The Dog and Duck refers to another barbarous pastime, when ducks were hunted in a pond by spaniels. The pleasure consisted in seeing the duck make her escape from the dog’s mouth by diving. It was much practised in the neighbourhood of London till the beginning of this century, when it went out of fashion, as most of the ponds were gradually built over. One of the most notorious [Dog and Duck] Taverns stood in St George’s Fields, where Bethlem Hospital now stands; it had a long room with tables and benches, and an organ[276] at the upper end. In its last days it was frequented only by thieves, prostitutes, and other low characters. After a long and wicked existence it was at length put down by the magistrates. In the seventeenth century it was famous for springs, but already in Garrick’s time its reputation was very equivocal:

“St George’s Fields, with taste and fashion struck,
Display Arcadia at the Dog and Duck,
And Drury Misses, here in tawdry pride,
Are there “Pastoras” by the fountain side;
To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps,
With Fauns half drunk and Dryads breaking lamps.”[277]

In an unpublished paper from the MS. collection of William Hone, we have a mention of it:—

“It was a very small public-house till Hedger’s mother took it, who had been a barmaid to a tavern-keeper in London, who left this house to her at his death. Her son Hedger then was a postboy to a yard I believe at Epsom, and came to be master there. After making a good deal of money he left the house to his nephew, one Miles, (though it still went in Hedger’s name,) who was to allow him £1000 per annum out of the profits, and it was he that allowed the house to acquire so bad a character that the licence was taken away. I have this from one William Nelson who was servant to old Mrs Hedger, and remembers the house before he had it. He is now [1826] in the employ of the Lamb Street Water Works Company, and has been for thirty years. In particular, there never was any duck hunting since he knew the Gardens. Therefore, if ever, it must have been in a very early time indeed. Hedger, I am told, was the first person who sold the mineral water, (whence the St George’s Spa.) In 1787, when Hedger applied for a renewal of his licence, the magistrates of Surrey refused, and the Lord Mayor came into Southwark and held a court and granted the licence, in despite of the magistrates, which occasioned a great disturbance and litigation in the law courts.”

The old stone sign is still preserved, embedded in the brick wall of the garden of Bethlehem Hospital, visible from the road, and representing a dog squatted on his haunches, with a duck in his mouth, and the date 1617.

Another famous Dog and Duck inn formerly stood on the site of Hertford Street, in the now aristocratic precincts of May Fair. It was an old-fashioned wooden public-house, extensively patronised by the butchers and other rough characters during May Fair time. The pond in which the cruel sport took place was situated behind the house, and for the benefit of the spectators was boarded round to the height of the knee, to preserve the over-excited spectators from involuntary immersions. The pond was surrounded by a gravel walk shaded with willow trees.

The Dog and Badger, Kingswood, Gloucester, refers to the now obsolete sport of badger-baiting. More genial sports, however, are called to mind by the Dog and Gun, Dog and Partridge, Dog and Pheasant, all of which are very common.

“As I was going through a street of London, where I never had been till then, I felt a general clamp and faintness all over me, which I could not tell how to account for, till I chanced to cast my eyes upwards and found that I was passing under a signpost on which the picture of a cat was hung.” This little incident of the cat-hater, told in No. 538 of the Spectator, is a proof of the presence of cats on the signboard, where, indeed, they are still to be met with, but very rarely. There is a sign of the Cat at Egremont, in Cumberland, a Black Cat at St Leonard’s Gate, Lancaster, and a Red Cat at Birkenhead. There is also a sign of the Red Cat in the Hague, Holland, and “thereby hangs a tale.” It was put up by a certain Bertrand, a Frenchman, who had left his native country, having been mixed up in some conspiracy against Mazarin. Arrived at the Hague, he opened a cutler’s shop, and put up a double sign, representing on the one side a red cat, on the other a portrait of his Eminence Cardinal Mazarin in his red gown, and with his bristling moustache; underneath he wrote “aux deux méchantes bêtes” (the two obnoxious animals.) Holland, however, was at peace with France at that time, and so the Burgomaster, afraid of offending the French ambassador, requested Bertrand to alter his sign. Mazarin’s face was then painted out and another red cat put in its place. Gradually as the first sign was forgotten, the name became unmeaning, and was finally altered into the Red Cat, and in this shape it has come down to the present day, still the sign of a cutler, and a descendant of Bertrand.[278]

The Cat and Lion, which we meet with sometimes, as at Stockport, was probably at one time the Tiger and Lion. It is occasionally accompanied by the following elegant distich:—

“The lion is strong, the cat is vicious,
My ale is strong, and so is my liquors.”

The Cat and Parrot was, in 1612, the sign of Thomas Pauer, a bookseller, dwelling near the Royal Exchange. At Santry, near Dublin, and in some other places, we meet with the Cat and Cage, which is represented by a cat trying to pull a bird out of a cage; but its origin may be found in the Cat in the Basket, a favourite sign of the booths on the Thames when that river was frozen over in 173940. The sign was a living one, a basket hanging outside the booth, with a cat in it. It was revived when the river was again frozen in 1789, and seems to have had many imitators, for on a print[279] representing a view of the river at Rotherithe during the frost, there is a booth with a merry company within, whose sign, inscribed the Original Cat in the Cage, represents poor Tabby in a basket. This sign of the Cat in the Basket, or in the Cage, doubtless originated from the cruel game, once practised by our ancestors, of shooting at a cat in a basket. Brand, in his “Popular Superstitions,” gives a quotation, from which it appears that a similar cruel sport was still practised at Kelso in 1789; but instead of shooting at the cat, it was placed in a barrel, the bottom of which had to be beaten out. The same game is still practised in Holland, and generally, if not always, on the ice.

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[196] J. Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, London, 1597, p. 97.

[197] “Allectorius is a stone similar to a dark crystal, which is taken from the stomach of a capon when it is four years old. Its utmost size is that of a bean. Gladiators take it in their mouths in order to be invincible, and not to suffer from thirst.”—Tractatus de Animalibus et Lapidibus, 4to, circa 1465-75.

[198] Guillim’s Display of Heraldry. The same is also related in the Latin Bestiarium. Harl. MSS. 4751; and by Albertus Magnus, Camerarius, &c.

[199] “Boyne’s and Akerman’s Trades Tokens of the 17th Century,” in England, Ireland, and Wales.

[200] Steward’s Accounts of Sir John Howard.

[201] See Cunningham’s London Past and Present, p. 41.

[202] Burnet’s History of the Reformation, Lib. ii., vol. ii., p. 14. It is possible also that the White Bear was set up in compliment to Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, queen to Richard III., who, as a difference from her father’s bear and ragged staff, had adopted the White Bear as a badge.

[203] Timbs’s Flyleaves.

[204] Bagford, who was present at the excavations, relates this story in a letter prefixed to Leland’s Collectanea, p. lxiii., 1770. See also Sir John Oldcastle.

[205] “Lambspring, das ist ein herzlichen Teutscher Tractat von Philosophischen Steine, welchen für Jahren ein adelicher Teutscher Philosophus, Lampert Spring geheissen mit schöne Figuren beschrieben hat. Frankfort am Main, 1625.”

[206] “This is a great wonder, and very strange: the dragon contains the greatest medicament.”

[207] “Mercury rightly precipitated or sublimated in its own water dissolved and again coagulated.”

[208] “There is a dragon lives in the forest who has no want of poison: when he sees the sun or fire he spits venom, which flies about fearfully. No living animal can be cured of it; even the basilisk does not equal him. He who can properly kill this serpent has overcome all his danger. His colours increase in death; physic is produced from his poison, which he entirely consumes, and eats his own venomous tail. This must be accomplished by him in order to produce the noblest balm. Such great virtue as will point out herein that all the learned shall rejoice.”

[209] Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, p. 61.

[210] Allusions to the unicorn occur frequently in the Old Testament, and commentators inform us that these references were typical of the coming Saviour.

[211] “It is reported that the unicorn’s horn sweats when it comes in the presence of poison, and that for this reason it is laid on the tables of the great, and made into knife-handles, which, when placed on the tables, show the presence of poison. But this is not sufficiently proved.”—Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus, lib. xxv.

[212] Bib. Harl. 5953, vol. i., p. 403.

[213] Relation of the Island of England, published by the Camden Society.

[214] See Bib. Harl. 5953, vol. i., p. 407.

[215] Hentzner’s Travels, p. 54.

[216] Henry Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman.

[217] Fuller’s Worthies, voce Middlesex.

[218] “It is rather peculiar that the same superstitious notions should be found in India in connexion with the horn of the rhinoceros, whom some consider as the fabled unicorn divested of his romantic garb. His horn, too, was thought useful in diseases, and for the purpose of discovering poisons.”—Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible. “The fine shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. Goblets made of these would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.”—Thunberg’s Journey to Caffraria.

[219] Daily Courant, February 2, 1711.

[220] “This is the Civet, as you may see; but enter. Perfumes sold here for men and women.”

[221] The reason why the hedgehog was generally represented with apples stuck on his quills, appears from the following words in Bossewell, (p. 61,)—“He clymeth upon a vine or an apple-tree and biteth off their braunches and twigges, and when they [the apples] be fallen downe, he waloweth on them, and so they sticke on his prickes, and he beareth them unto a hollow tree or some other hole.” The early naturalists also said that if, when he was so loaded, one of the apples happened to drop off, he would throw all the others down in anger and return to the tree for a new load.

[222] Harl. MSS. 353, fol. 145.

[223] London Gazette, No. 368.

[224] London Gazette, Sept. 18-21, 1682. I am confident the newspapers made a misprint, and that the man’s name was Haase, Dutch or German, for the Hare he represented on his sign.

[225] Hone’s Every-Day Book, Oct. 17, fol. 1.

[226] Rev. J. Richardson, LL.B., Recollections of the Last Half Century. See also under Stunning Joe Banks in the Slang Dictionary, recently issued by the publisher of this work.

[227] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842.

[228] [See] under [Religious Signs].

[229] London Gazette, Oct. 2-6, 1673.

[230] Childe Harold, canto I. lxx.

[231] Hone’s Every Day Book, Jan. 17, vol. ii.

[232]

“I wear horns, which everybody sees,
But many a one wears horns and does not know it.”

[233] Bagford Bills. Bib. Harl. 5962.

[234] Postman, February 1-3, 1711.

[235] Richardsoniana, p. 168.

[236] Timbs, Curiosities of London, p. 402.

[237] As quoted by Strutt in “Gliggam,” &c.

[238] Printed in Leland’s Collectanea, pp. 270, 272.

[239] A MS. of the sixteenth century, Bib. Harl. 2150, fol. 356, gives full particulars of this fête and procession.

[240]

“At the White Horse, horses are shod with iron,
Pity the same cannot be done to men, for then they would need no shoes.”

[241] Crowns exactly similar to this, made of box, tinsel, and coloured paper, are yearly hung out by the fishmongers in Holland on the first arrival of the salt herring after the summer fishery.

[242] Pennant’s Account of London, p. 423.

[243] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842; and London Gazette, Dec. 30, 1718.

[244] Lloyd’s Evening Post, Jan. 16-19, 1761.

[245] Brand’s Popular Superstitions.

[246] Robert Herrick, Hesperides, p. 234.

[247] Aubrey, Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 3.

[248] Postman, June 1703.

[249] Intelligencer, May 30, 1681.

[250] Bagford Bills. Bib. Harl. 5964.

[251] Hence we have 7 ages, 7 churches, 7 champions, 7 penitential psalms, 7 sleepers of Ephesus, 7 years’ apprenticeship, 7 cardinal virtues and deadly sins, 7 make a gallows-ful, boots of 7 leagues, 7 liberal arts, and innumerable other instances.

[252] Collier’s Annals, vol. iii. p. 271, and Halliwell’s Introduction to Tarlton’s Jests, p. 16.

[253] Spectator, No. 509.

[254] “He went about almost naked in the rage of hunger,” says Dr Johnson, “and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffeehouse asked him for a shilling; and Otway going away bought a roll and was choked with the first mouthful.”

[255] Lewis’s Islington, p. 160.

[256] The History of the Plague, by Defoe.

[257] There is still a [Bull’s Head] public-house in this street, built on the site of the house of Thomas Britton, the Musical Small-Coal Man, where he gave his celebrated concerts for a period of 36 years, powdered duchesses and fastidious ladies of the Court tripping through his coal repository, and climbing up a ladder to assist at these famous meetings.

[258] Randolph’s Muses’ Looking-Glass.

[259] This riding in a cart was a very ancient punishment, probably introduced by the Normans; in the romance of Lancelot du Lac the cart is mentioned with the following remarks:—“At that time a cart was considered so vile that nobody ever went into it, but those who had lost all honour and good name; and when a person was to be degraded, he was made to ride in a cart, for a cart served at that time for the same purpose as the pillory now-a-days, and each town had only one of them.” In the old English laws it was called the Tumbrill; thus Edward I. in 1240 enacted a law by which millers stealing corn were to be chastised by the Tumbrill.—See Fabian’s Chronicles, 2 Edw. I.

[260] For the chequered life of this strange individual, see Caulfield’s Memoirs of Remarkable Persons, vol. ii. From the Original Weekly Journal, Sept. 13, 1718, we gather the information that, “Last week Dr Campbell, the famous dumb fortune-teller, was married to a gentlewoman of considerable fortune in Shadwell.”

[261] A curious story of Bulleyn Butchered, the sign said to have been put up in commemoration of Henry VIII.’s unfortunate queen, and its corrupted form of [Bull and Butcher] will be found in the first division of this work. Vide [Historical Signs].

[262] “Be happy while you live.”

[263] M. Misson’s Memoirs and Observations on his Travels in England, 1719.

[264] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1700.

[265] From a MS., entitled “Medycine Boke” of one Samson Jones, doctor of Bettws, Monmouthshire, 1650-90; a note on the flyleaf says, “I had this book from Mr Owen of Bettws, Monmouth. He assured me he knew for a fact it was the receipt booke of Samson Jones, a good doctor of that parish, a hundred and fifty years agone.” It contains some extraordinary prescriptions. Surely if Master Samson Jones made use of them, the earth must very quickly have hidden his blunders.

[266] London Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1673.

[267] Idem, March 24-28, 1761.

[268] Public Advertiser, March 4, 1759.

[269] Postman, Feb. 13, 1711.

[270] [See] under [Humorous Signs], further on.

[271] [See] under [Humorous Signs], further on.

[272] Kingdom’s Intelligencer, March 30 to April 6, 1683.

[273] The Merry Man’s Resolution, or his last farewell to his former acquaintance. Rox Ball. iii. f. 242.

[274] Strype, B. iii. p. 195.

[275] Public Advertiser, March 1759.

[276] Organs were first introduced in taverns during the Commonwealth. When the liturgy and the use of organs in Divine service were abolished, these instruments being removed from churches, were set up in inns and taverns. Hence a pamphlet of 1659 has these words:—“They have translated the organs out of their churches and set them up in taverns, chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial Bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wonted to assist them in the celebration of God’s praises.”

[277] Garrick’s Prologue to the Maid of the Oaks, 1774.

[278] La Haye, par de Fonseca. 1853.

[279] Crowle Pennant, vol. viii.

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CHAPTER V.
BIRDS AND FOWLS

Thomas Coryatt, a gentleman from Somerset, who travelled over a great part of Europe in the reign of King James I., and wrote an amusing account of his travels, gives a curious instance of the prevalence of signs in Paris representing birds. Speaking of the bridges over the Seine, he says one of them is “the Bridge of Birdes, formerly called the Millar’s Bridge. The reason why it is called the Bridge of Birdes is because all the signes belonging unto shops on each side of the streete are signes of birdes.”[280] They never were so general in England, though certainly the Cock and the Swan appear to have found more votaries than any other signboard animals. The Eagle is not nearly so common; some we have mentioned in a former part as undoubtedly of heraldic origin. From this source the Golden Eagle may be derived; it was the emblem of the Eastern Empire, and occurs in various family arms; but it is also a fera naturæ. It was, in 1711, the sign of James Levi, a bookseller in the Strand, near the Fountain Tavern. The Eagle and Ball, of which there are two in Birmingham, was suggested by the imperial eagle standing on the globe, or the spread eagle with the globe in his talon. The Eagle and Serpent, or the Eagle and Snake, is a mediæval emblem of courage united to prudence.

Mythical birds also have been in great favour. The burning and reviving of the Phœnix, for instance, like the salamander and the dragon, typified certain transformations obtained by chemistry, whence he was a very general sign with chemists, and may still be seen on their drug-pots and transparent lamps. The firm of Godfrey and Cooke, for instance, have adhered to it ever since the opening of their establishment, A.D. 1680. Persons of a highly imaginative turn will probably shudder to think of the awful quantities of physic prepared by this house in those 184 years. The pills, if piled up like cannon-balls, would make pyramids higher than those of Gizeh; the draughts would be sufficient to cover the earth with a nauseous deluge; and the powders, if blown about by an evil wind, levelling valleys and mountains, would change the whole of Europe into a medicated desert. The original shop referred to by the date 1680 stood in Southampton Street, and there phosphorus was first manufactured by the predecessor of this firm, Hanckwitz, a Pole or Russian by birth, who advertised it wholesale at 50s., and retail at £3 the ounce. Ambrose Godfrey was his successor.

Not only apothecaries used this emblem, but all kinds of shops adopted it. In the time of James I. it was the sign of one of the places where plays were acted in Drury Lane,—sometimes also called the Cockpit Theatre. This was destroyed by the unruly apprentices during one of their saturnalia. Being rebuilt, it was sacked a second time by the Parliamentary soldiers. In Charles II.’s piping times of peace Killigrew’s troop of “the king’s servants” played in it, until they removed to the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn.

The character ascribed to the Pelican was fully as fabulous as that of the Phœnix. From a clumsy, gluttonous, piscivorous water-bird, it was transformed into a mystic emblem of Christ, whom Dante calls “nostro Pellicano.” St Hieronymus gives the story of the pelican restoring its young ones destroyed by serpents, as an illustration of the destruction of man by the old serpent, and his salvation by the blood of Christ. The “Bestiarium,” in the Royal Library at Brussels, says:—

“Phisiologus dist del Pellican qu’il aime moult ses oiseles et quant ils sont nés et creu ils s’esbanoient en lor ni contre lor pere et le fierent de lors eles en ventilant ensi come il li vont entor et tant le fierent qu’ils le blechent es ex. Et lors les refiert li peres et les occit. Et la mere est de tel nature que ele vient al ni al tierc jor et s’accoste sor ses oiselès mors et ell oevre son costé de son bec et en espant son sanc sor ses oiseles et ensi les resucite de mort; car li oiseles par nature rechoivent le sang si toit come il saut de la mere et le boivent.”[281]

In the Armory of Birds by Skelton, a similar notion is expressed:

“Than sayd the Pellycane,
When my Byrdts be slayne,
With my Bloude I them reuyue,
Scrypture doth record
The same dyd our Lord,
And rose from deth to lyue.”

There is still an old stone carving of the Pelican walled in the front of a house in Aldermanbury, and as a sign the bird appears to be a great favourite at the present day. An anecdote is told of Jekyl’s dissatisfaction at the prices at the Pelican Inn, Speenham Land, and of his writing the following epigram upon the same:—

“The Pelican at Speenhamland,
That stands below the hill,
May well be called the Pelican,
From his enormous bill.”

Longfellow made a similar epigram on the Raven Inn at Zurich:—

“Beware of the raven of Zurich,
’Tis a bird of omen ill,
With a noisy and unclean breast,
And a very, very long bill.”

It is amusing to see how wit runs in the same channel. In “Scrapeana, a Collection of Anecdotes, 1792,” a similar anecdote is fathered upon Foote. “Pray what is your name?” said Foote to the Master of the Castle Inn at Salthill. “Partridge, sir!”—“Partridge! it should be Woodcock by the length of your bill!”

But the coincidence is most amusing in the case of Longfellow. It is observed by a contributor to Notes and Queries,[282] that the verses may be a plagiarism; at any rate they have a strange family resemblance to the following, said to have been written by a commercial traveller on an inside window shutter of the Golden Lion, Brecon, kept by a Mr Longfellow, alias Tom Longfellow:—

“Tom Longfellow’s name is most justly his due,
Long his neck, long his bill, which is very long too;
Long the time ere your horse to the stable is led,
Long before he’s rubbed down, and much longer till fed.
Long indeed may you sit in a comfortless room,
Till from kitchen, long dirty, your dinners shall come.
Long the often-told tale that your host will relate,
Long his face while complaining how long people eat,
Long may Longfellow long ere he see me again,
Long ’twill be ere I long for Tom Longfellow’s inn.”

And long, doubtless, was his face when he read the above.

The Raven, or the Black Raven, is still a common inn sign. There is one in Bishopsgate yet in existence, of which trades tokens of the seventeenth century are extant; and on the Great Western Road between Murrell Green and Basingstoke, the Raven Inn is still, or was not many years ago, to be seen, in which Jack the painter, alias James Aitken, the man who set fire to Portsmouth Dockyard, Dec. 7, 1776, was taken prisoner. This house was built in 1653, and has preserved much of its original appearance. In 1711 the Raven or the Black Raven was the sign of S. Popping, bookseller in Paternoster Row; and about the same time John Dunton published at the Black Raven, in the Poultry, the earliest printed review of literary works, under the name of “Literature from the North, and News from all Nations.” What the work was worth we may judge from D’Israeli’s description of the man: “a crack-brained, scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed.” Notwithstanding this, his autobiography, under the name of the “Life and Errors of John Dunton,” is one of the most curious works in existence. In Molesworth Street, Dublin, there is a sign of the Three Ravens, which may be called a living sign, for there are always some ravens kept on the premises. The Raven was the badge of the old Scotch kings, and thus may have been adopted as a kind of Jacobite symbol. To this may be attributed its frequency on the signboard as well as some other sable birds. The common occurrence of the Blackbird and the Cock and Blackbird as signs had long puzzled us, till one day turning over some old Scotch ballads we came upon one, which Allan Ramsay gives as a favourite old Scotch song. We shall merely quote the first two stanzas, (there are six in all,)—quite sufficient, as far as the poetry is concerned:—

“Upon a fair morning for soft recreation,
I heard a fair lady was making her moan,
With sighing and sobbing, and sad lamentation,
Saying, my blackbird most royal is flown.”
My thoughts they deceive me,
Reflections do grieve me,
And am o’erburthen’d with sad misery.
Yet if death should blind me,
As true love inclines me,
My blackbird I’ll seek out wherever he be.

“Once in fair England my blackbird did flourish,
He was the chief blackbird that in it did spring,
Prime ladies of honour his person did nourish,
Because he was the true son of a king.
But since that false fortune,
Which still is uncertain,
Has caused this parting between him and me,
His name I’ll advance,
In Spain and in France,
And I’ll seek out my blackbird wherever he be.”

To which dark-haired prince of the Stuart family the song alludes is not known; but there is a passage in a letter of Sir John Hinton, physician to Charles II., which seems to imply that the black boy was a nickname for Charles II.

“The day before General Monk went into Scotland he dined with me; and after dinner he called me into the next room, and after some discourse, taking a lusty glass of wine, he drank a health to his bonny black boy, (as he called Your Majesty,) and whispered to me, that if ever he had power, he would serve Your Majesty to the utmost of his life.”[283]

What lends strength to the supposition is the occurrence of such a sign as the Crow in the Oak, at Foleshill, Coventry, which seems to have been a covert way of representing the royal oak during the times of the Commonwealth, the disguise continuing after there was no more need of it, similar to the “Cat and Wheel,” and other signs dating from the same period, for no other reason than because the house had become known by them. In the same manner the Oak and Black Dog, (at Stretton on Dunsmoor,) if not a combination of two signs, may have been put up in derision of the Prince in the Royal Oak. The Crow or the Black Crow, is also a common sign; so are the Three Blackbirds;[284] then there is the Chough, at Chard in Sommerset, the Three Choughs at Yeovil; the Three Crows,—all of which belong to the same family, and seem to have the same origin.

On Friday, August 27, 1770, at the Three Crows in Brook Street, Holborn, the coroner sat on the body of Thomas Chatterton, and the ten jurymen returned a verdict of felo de se. One cannot think of this sign and the crowner (as the vulgar still term this officer) sitting on the body of poor Chatterton without calling to mind the ballad of the three corbies; but the poor suicide had no “fallow doe” that

“buried him before the prime,
And was dead herself ere even-song time.”

He was interred in the burying ground of Shoelane workhouse; at the present day Farringdon market-place occupies the spot.

The Stork now is of frequent occurrence, although it does not occur among the older English signs. Coryatt thus speaks of these birds:—

“There, [at Fontainebleau] I saw two or three birds that I never saw before; yet I have much read of admirable things of them, in Aelianus the Polyhistor, and other historians, even Storckes, which do much haunt many cities and towns of the Netherlands, especially in the sommer. For in Flushing, a towne of Zeland, I saw some of them, those men esteeming themselves happy in [on] whose houses they harbour, and those most unhappy whom they forsake. It is written of them that when the old one is become so old that it is not able to helpe itselfe, the young one purveyeth foode for it, and sometime carryeth it about on his backe, and if it seeth it so destitute of meate, that it knoweth not where to get any sustenance, it casteth out that which it hath eaten the day before, to the end to feede his damme. This bird is called in Greeke πελαργος where hence cometh the Greeke word αντιπελαργειν which signifieth to imitate the stork in cherishing our parents.”[285]

This fabled virtue of the stork suggested the sign to many Continental booksellers and printers. The [Two Storks] was the sign of Martin Nutius of Antwerp, 1550, and his son, Philip Nutius. Their colophons, which were varied continually, all represent a young stork feeding an old one, sometimes carrying him on his back, with the motto: “pietas homini . tutissima . virtus.” A similar sign was used, circa 1682, by Franciscus Canisius; and, in 1651, by Joan. Bapt. Verdussen, both of Antwerp. The Parisian booksellers adopted it as well, for we find it on the titlepages of Sebastien Nivelle, and of Sebastien Cramoisy, the king’s printer, of the Rue St Jacques, 1636. He used a Scripture motto with it: “honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam ut sis longaevus super terram, Ecc. XX.” In the Banks’ Collection of Bills there is one of the Stork Hotel at Basle, of the end of the last century. It gives the address in four languages. The English stands thus:—Christophe Imhoff, “a the Seigne off the Storgk at Basel.”

The Three Cranes was formerly a favourite London sign. With the usual jocularity of our forefathers, an opportunity for punning could not be passed, so instead of the three cranes, which in the vintry used to lift the barrels of wine, three birds were represented. The Three Cranes in Thames Street, or in the vicinity, was a famous tavern as early as the reign of James I. It was one of the taverns frequented by the wits in Ben Jonson’s time. In one of his plays he says:—

“A pox o’ these pretenders to wit, your Three Cranes, Mitre and Mermaid men! not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard among them all!”—Bartholomew Fair, a. i. s. 1.

On the 23d of January 16612, Pepys suffered a strong mortification of the flesh in having to dine at this tavern with some poor relations. The sufferings of the snobbish secretary must have been intense:—

“By invitation to my uncle Fenner’s and where I found his new wife, a pitiful, old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt, a midwife. Here were many of his and as many of her relations, sorry mean people; and after choosing our gloves we all went over to the Three Cranes Taverne, and though the best room of the house in such a narrow dogghole we were crammed, and I believe we were near 40, that it made me loath my company and victuals and a very poor dinner it was too.”

Opposite this tavern people generally left their boats to shoot the bridge, walking round to Billingsgate, where they would re-enter them.

The Cock occurs almost as frequently on the signboard as alive at the head of his family in the farm yard. It is one of the oldest signs, already in use at the time of the Romans, who record that one Eros, a freeman of Licius, Africanus Cerealis, kept an inn at Narbonne at the sign of the Cock—“a gallo gallinaceo.” In Christian times the sign acquired a new prestige. The cock is thus mentioned in “The Armory of Byrdes:”—[286]

“The Cocke dyd say
I use alway
To crow both first and last.
Lyke a Postle I am,
For I preche to Man,
And tell hym the nyght is past.

“I bring new tydynges
That the Kyng of all Kynges,
In tactu profudit chorus:
Then sang he mellodious
Te Gloriosus
Apostolorum chorus.”

This bird, in the legends of the middle ages, was surrounded with a mystical, religious halo:—

“It was about the time of cock-crowing when our Saviour was born,—the circumstance of the time of cock-crowing being so natural a figure and representation of the Morning of the Resurrection; the Night as shadowing out the night of the Grave; the third Watch being as some suppose the time our Saviour will come to judgment at; the noise of the cock awakening sleepy man and telling him as it were the night is far spent, and the day is at hand, representing so naturally the voice of the Archangel awakening the dead and calling up the righteous to everlasting day; so naturally does the time of cock-crowing shadow out these things, that probably, some good, well meaning men might have been brought to believe that the very devils themselves when the cock crew and reminded them of them did fear and tremble and shun the light.”[287]

Ideas such as these continued a long time in the popular mind, for Aubrey tells us that in his younger days people “had some pious ejaculation too when the cock did crow, which put them in mind of y^e Trumpet at y^e Resurrection.”[288]

One of the oldest Cock taverns in London is the Cock in Tothill Street, Westminster, lately re-christened as the Cock and Tabard. An ancient coat of arms, carved in stone, England quartered with France, discovered in this house, is now walled up in the front of the building. In the back parlour is a jolly, bluff-looking man in a red coat, said to represent the driver of the first mail to Oxford, which started from this tavern. Tradition says that the workmen employed at the building of Westminster Abbey, in the reign of Henry VII., used to receive their wages at this house. It was formerly entered by steps; the building now exhibiting traces of great antiquity, and appears at one time to have been a house of considerable pretensions. The rafters and timber are principally of cedar wood. There is a curious hiding-place on the staircase, and a massive carving of Abraham about to offer his son Isaac; and another, in wood, representing the Adoration of the Magi, said to have been left in pledge, at some remote period, for an unpaid score. The cock may have been adopted as a sign here on account of the vicinity of the Abbey, of which St Peter was the patron, for in the middle ages a cock crowing on the top of a pillar was often one of the accessories in a picture of the apostle. This certainly was a very unkind allusion for the poor saint, particularly when accompanied with such a sneering rhyme as that under the sign of the Red Cock in Amsterdam in 1682. On the one side was written:—

“Doe de Haan begost te kraayen
Toen begost Petrus te schraayen.”

On the reverse:—

“De haan die kraait niet by ongeval
Vraagt Petrus die ’t U zeggen zal.”[289]

The Cock in Bow Street witnessed a disgraceful scene in the reign of Charles II.:—

“Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the public, in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened. The crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For this demeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined £500. What was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission of the king, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves and exacted it to the last groat.”[290]

It was on his way home from supper at this house, December 21, 1670, that Sir John Coventry was attacked by several men, and had his nose cut to the bone. Sir John had remonstrated in the House of Commons against the improper distribution of public money, and proposed to lay a tax on the theatres; this was opposed by the Court, the players being “the king’s servants and a part of his pleasure;” upon which Sir John asked “whether the king’s pleasure lay among the men or among the women that acted?” The assault was committed by Simon Parry, Miles Reeves, O’Brian, and Sir Thomas Sandys, instigated by the Duke of Monmouth.

Pepys much praises the Cock in Suffolk Street:—

“15th March 1669.—Mr Hewes and I did walke to the Cocke, at the end of Suffolke Street, where I never was, a great ordinary mightily cried up, and there bespoke a pullet, which, while dressing, he and I walked into St James’s Park, and thence back and dined very handsome with a good soup and a pullet for 4s. 6d. the whole.”

This first visit evidently had given great satisfaction, for, three weeks after, he took Mrs P. and some friends there, and was, as usual, “mighty merry, this house being famous for good meat, and particularly pease porridge.”

At the same period there was another celebrated Cock Tavern in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar, properly called the [Cock and Bottle], a sign still of daily occurrence, which seems to be a figurative rendering of liquor on draught and in bottle, cock being an old English, and still provincial word for the spigot or tap in a barrel.[291] The sign is, however, generally represented by a cock standing on a bottle. The present sign of the house, still conspicuous in gilt over the door, is said to have been carved by no less a hand than Grinling Gibbons. During the plague time of 1665, the following advertisement appeared in the Intelligencer:—

“THIS is to certify that the Master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmass next so that all persons who have any accounts or farthings belonging to the said house are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July and they shall receive satisfaction.”

Certainly those were dull times, and well might that fashionable establishment close for the “long vacation,” for the plague was then coming to its highest pitch; all the gallant customers had fled town, and according to Defoe’s computation, “not less than 10,000 houses were forsaken of the inhabitants in the city and suburbs:”—

“There was not so much velvet stirring as would have bene a cover to a little booke in octavo, or seamde a Lieftenant’s Buff-doublet; a French hood would have been more wondered at in London, than the Polonyans with their long-tayld Gaberdynes; and, which was most lamentable, there was never a Gilt spur to be seene all the Strand over, never a feather wagging in all Fleet Streete, vnlesse some country Fore-horse came by, by meere chaunce with a Raine-beaten Feather in his costrill; the streete looking for all the world like a Sunday morning at six o’Clocke, three hours before service, and the Bells ringing all about London, as if the Coronation day had beene a half a yeare long.”[292]

But there was a good time coming after the plague and fire, when troops of gay courtiers might quaff their wine and sparkling ale, as happy as the “merry monarch” himself. Amongst them, our friend Pepys, who informs us, that on the 23d of April 1668, he went “by water to the Temple, and then to the Cock alehouse, and drank and eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs Pierce home, and then Knipp and I to the Temple again and took boat, it being darkish, and to Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire burning at Lambeth for the king’s coronation day.”

Exactly one hundred years later, the Cock is named with encomiums on its porter, in the “Art of Living in London;” but it is to be hoped the porter was better than the poetry:—

“Nor think the Cock with these not on a par,
The celebrated Cock of Temple Bar,
Whose Porter best of all bespeaks its praise,
Porter that’s worthy of the Poet’s lays.”[293]

In William Waterproof’s Monologue, the fame of a waiter of this tavern is handed down to posterity in the harmonious verses of the Poet Laureate.

Jackson the pugilist, who has a pompous epitaph on his grave in the Brompton burial-ground, kept for some time the Cock alehouse, Sutton, on the Epsom Road; but being patronised by the Prince of Wales and a great many of the leading members of the “nobility and gentry,” he was in a very short time enabled to retire with a £10,000 fortune. Finally, some twenty years ago, there was a Cock and Bottle public-house in Bristol kept by a man named John England, who added to his sign the well known words:—

“England expects every man to do his duty.”

The sign of the Three Cocks occurs in the following advertisement:—

“ALL persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at the Three Cocks in St John’s Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to him before the 25th of December 1709, are desired to fetch them away by the 25th of March next, or they will be disposed off.”—London Gazette, Jan. 18-21, 1711.

From this and innumerable other similar advertisements, it appears that pawnbrokers in those days did not always rigorously adhere to the Three Balls; that is to say, they were occasionally goldsmiths, and in that capacity used any sign.

It is rarely that the sign of the Cock designates any particular colour. There is a Black Cock in Owen Street, Tipton; a cock of this colour was always considered something more than an ordinary bird; with the Greeks it was a grateful sacrifice to Esculapius and Pluto, and in the middle ages it played a prominent part in matters of witchcraft. The Blue Cock is a sign at Leicester; but neither colour is common. At Hargrave, near Bury St Edmunds, there is a Cock’s Head, put up either in imitation of a nag’s,—bull’s,—bear’s,—or boar’s head, or as the crest of a fool’s cap, which, in old times, usually terminated with a cock’s head.

Though some sort of religious prestige may at first have prompted the choice of the cock, more profane ideas latterly contributed to make it popular, such as the pastimes of cock-throwing, or “shying,” and cock-fighting. To this first practice alludes the sign of William Brandon, on Dowgate Hill, which was called, Have at it; his token representing a man about to throw a stick at a cock. This cruel game was very common in alehouses in former times; the whole sport consisting in throwing a stick at an unfortunate cock tied to a stake; if the animal was killed it was the thrower’s property; if not, he forfeited the small sum paid for each “shy.” What a slaughter of cocks was carried on in this way may be judged from the following:—

“Last Tuesday a Brewer’s servant in Southwark took his walk round Towerhill, Moorfield, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and knocked down so many cocks that by selling them again, he returned home twenty shillings odd pence richer man than he came out.”[294]

Medals are extant of the reign of William III., on which John Bull is represented throwing sticks at the French cock: not a very lofty allegory, it must be confessed; but in those days the public taste was not very refined; thus, after the victory of Blenheim, the simile was in equal bad taste, the same idea being expressed by a huge lion tearing an unfortunate cock in pieces.

Cock-fighting was a favourite diversion with the Romans, and we find continual traces of it during their occupation here. Fitz-Stephen says, it was the sport of schoolboys in his time; but as they grew up it seems the taste adhered to them. That sturdy bluebeard-king, Henry VIII., though always ready to chop off the heads of his subjects, felt his heart melt at the miseries of the cocks, and made edicts against cock-fights, yet with the inconsistency that marked his other tastes built a cock-pit unto himself at Whitehall. James I., also, was a great amateur. Though habitually suppressed by various sovereigns, the evil would always break out again, till it was finally abolished by an Act of Parliament in the 12 & 13 Queen Victoria. In Staffordshire, and other counties where this sport is still practised “on the sly,” the Fighting Cocks is a favourite sign.

The cock occurs in innumerable combinations with all kinds of heterogeneous objects, many of which seem merely selected for their oddity: among the most explicable is the Cock and Bottle, of which we have offered a solution, ([p. 207]) and which again occurs in the following title:—

“Just Published,

“A full account of the Life and Visions of Nicholas Hart who has every year in his Life past, on the 5th of August, fall’n into a Deep Sleep and cannot be awaked till 5 Days and Nights are expired, and then gives a surprising Relation of what he hath seen in the other World. Taken from[211] his own mouth in September last; after he had slept 5 days in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the August before. By William Hill, of Lincoln’s Inn. The Truth of all which the said Nicholas Hart hath attested under his Hand, the 3d Day of August 1711, before several credible Witnesses, and declared his Readiness to take oath of the same. He began to sleepe as usual the 5th Day of this instant August 1711 at Mr Dixies at the Cock and Bottle in Little Britain. Entered according to Law. Printed for J. Baker, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, price 2d.”[295]

This same book, under the title of “Life and Visions of William Hart, in which are particularly described the state of the Blessed Spirits in the Heavenly Canaan, and also a Description of the Condition of the Damned in a State of Punishment, etc., by Will. Hill, senior of Lincoln’s Inn, London,” is still sold as a chapbook by the “running stationers.” The Spectator did not believe in Nicholas Hart, and introduced the subject to the public with his usual humour in No. 191. Hart seems to have tested the truth of the proverb which says, that fortune comes whilst we are sleeping, for he certainly made more by sleeping than many others by waking. Stow tells a similar story of one William Foxley, potmaker to the mint, who slept full fourteen days and fifteen nights, and when he woke up “was in all points found as if he had slept but one night.”

The Cock and Trumpet is a common sign, typifying those ideas about the cock expressed on p. 205. This simile is constantly used by the poets; and most beautifully enlarged upon by Shakespeare:—

“The Cock that is the Trumpet of the morn,” &c.—Hamlet, a. i. sc. 1.

“And now the Cock, the morning’s trumpeter,
Play’d hunt’s up to the day-star to appear.”—Drayton.

“All the night shrill chaunticler,
Day’s Proclaiming Trumpeter,
Claps his wings and loudly cries,
Mortals, mortals, wake, arise.”—Nativity Hymn.[296]

The Cock and Bell, if not a simple combination of two signs, may be derived from a custom formerly practised in some parts of England, for boys to have cock-fights on Shrove Tuesday; the party whose cock won the most battles, was held victorious in the cock-pit, and gained the prize—a small silver bell suspended to the button of the victor’s hat, and worn for three successive Sundays. It is an old sign, and occurs on a Birchin Lane trades token between 1648 and 1672.

The Cock and Breeches originated in a favourite form of gilt gingerbread at Bartholomew Fair, although the very objectionable anecdote of Joe Miller concerning such a sign is generally believed to have had something to do with its origin.

The Cock and Bull is still frequently seen, but though the meaning of the phrase is well understood, neither its origin, nor the meaning of the two animals on the signboard, have as yet been properly explained. As we have no sound theory to offer, we shall abstain from entering on the subject, for fear of giving an illustration of what a cock-and-bull story is, rather than clearing up the mystery of the signboard. It occurs amongst the seventeenth century trades tokens.

The Cock and Dolphin was the sign of one of the London carriers’ inns:—

“James Nevil’s Coach to Hampstead comes to the Cock and Dolphin in Gray’s Inn Lane, in and out every day.”—De Laune’s Present State of London, 1681.

Hatton, in 1708, placed this inn “on the east side of Gray’s Inn Lane, near the middle.” At the present day it is a public-house sign in Kendal, Westmoreland. It is more likely to be a combination of two signs, than to refer to the French Cock and the Dolphin in the arms of the Dauphin. The same applies to the Cock and Anchor in Gateshead and Dublin; the Cock and Swan, and the Cock and Crown, both in Wakefield; and the Cock and Bear at Nuneaton; whilst the Cock and House in Norwich may originally have been the cocking-house of the district,—that is, the house where cock-fights were held.

Fully as general as the sign of the Cock is that of the Swan; the reason why, is perhaps truly, though coarsely, expressed under an old Dutch signboard:—

“De Swaan voert ieder kroeg, zoowel in dorp als stad,
Om dat hy altyd graag is met de bek in ’t nat.”[297]

Not only is there a conformity of æsthetic symbolism in various parts of Europe, observable in the constant recurrence of the same objects on signboards, but even the same jokes are found. Thus the Swan at Bandon, near Cork, has the following rhymes, nearly akin to the Dutch epigram above, but strongly flavoured with Hibernian wit:—

“This is the Swan
That left her pond,
[213] To Dip her Bill in porter,
Why not we,
As well as she
Become regular Topers.”

Another Milesian at Mallow, also near Cork, has it thus modified:—

“This is the Swan that dips her neck in Water,
Why not we as well as she, drink plenty of Beamish and Crawford’s Porter.”

In London it was always a favourite sign by the river side:—

“‘I find the Swan to be your usual sign by the River,’ said I. ‘Why, yes,’ replied George. ‘I don’t know what a Coach or a Waggon and Horses or the High-mettled Racer have to do with our River.’ ‘Pray, now,’ said I to my oracle, ‘do enumerate the signs of the Swan remaining [this was in 1829] on the Banks of the River, between London and Battersea Bridges.’ ‘Why, let me see, Master, there’s the Old Swan at London Bridge, that’s one—there’s the Swan in Arundel Street, two,—then ours here, (Hungerford Stairs,) three,—the Swan at Lambeth; that’s down though. Well, then the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been turned into a Brewhouse, though that was where our people [the Watermen] rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett’s will; now they row to the sign of the New Swan, beyond the Physick Garden; we’ll say that’s four, then there’s the two Swan signs at Battersea, six.’”[298]

The Swan, by London Bridge, was a very ancient house, and gave a name to the Swan stairs. Trades tokens of this house are extant, representing a Swan walking on Old London Bridge, with the date 1657. This feat was performed by the Swan on the token, to intimate that it was the Swan above the Bridge in contradistinction to another tavern known as the Swan below the Bridge. Pepys once dined at this house; and though always very ready to be pleased, he has not much good to say about it. “27 June, 1660. Dined with my Lord and all the officers of his regiment, who invited my Lord and his friends, as many as he would bring to dinner, at the Swan at Dowgate, a poor house and ill dressed, but very good fish and plenty.” The landlady of this tavern is mentioned in a curious manner in a tract printed in 1712, entitled “The Quack Vintners:”—

“May the chaste widow prosper at the Swan
Near London Bridge, where richest wines are drawn,
And win by her good humour and her trade,
Some jolly son of Bacchus to her bed.”

Previous to 1598 there was a Swan Theatre on the Bankside, near the Globe; so named from “a house and tenement called the Swan,” mentioned in a charter of Edward VI., granting the manor of Southwark to the City of London. It fell into decay in the reign of James I., was closed in 1613, and subsequently only used for gladiatorial exhibitions. Yet, in its time, it had been well frequented, for a cotemporary author says—“it was the Continent of the world, because half the year a world of beauties and brave spirits resorted to it.” One of the oldest Swan signs on record is that of the old printer, Wynkyn de Worde, assistant, and finally successor to Caxton, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, issued some works “emprynted at the signe of the Swane in Fletestrete.”

From an anecdote preserved by Aubrey, iii. 415, it appears that Ben Jonson did not always “go to the Devil,” but was also in the habit of having his cup of sack at a Swan tavern near Charing Cross:—

“A Grace by Ben Jonson extempore, before King James.

“Our king and queen, the Lord God blesse,
The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse,
And God blesse every living thing
That lives and breathes and loves the King.
God blesse the Councill of Estate,
And Buckingham the fortunate.
God blesse them all and keep them safe,
And God blesse me, and God bless Ralph.

“The king was mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was. Ben told him ’twas the drawer at the Swanne Taverne by Charing-crosse, who drew him good canarie. For this drollerie, his Ma^tie gave him an hundred poundes.”

Tokens of this house of the plague year are extant, representing a Swan with a sprig in its mouth, and the inscription, “Marke Rider at the Swan against the Mewes,[299] 1665. His Halfe Penny.”

The Swan at Knightsbridge had a reputation which we should call “fast.” It was well known to young gallants, and was the terror of all such jealous husbands and fathers as the Sir David Dunce who figures in Otway’s “Soldier of Fortune,” 1681:—

“I have surely lost and never shall find her more. She promised me strictly to stay at home till I came back again; for ought I know, she may be up three pairs of stairs in the Temple now, or it may be taking the air as far as Knightsbridge with some smoothfaced rogue or another; ’tis a damned house that Swan; that Swan at Knightsbridge is a confounded house!”

Tom Brown also alludes to it; Peter Pindar (Dr Woolcot) commemorates a vestry dinner there:—

“At Knightsbridge at a Tavern called the Swan,
Churchwardens, Overseers, a jolly clan,
Order’d a dinner for themselves,
A very handsome dinner,” &c.

The old house was pulled down in 1788, and its name transferred to a public-house in Sloane Street, which, with three other houses, occupies the site of the old Swan.

The Swan tavern in Exchange Alley, Cornhill, was well known among the musical world in the last century. In this house, some celebrated concerts were given, at a time when there were no proper concert-rooms; they commenced in 1728, under the management of one Barton, formerly a dancing-master, and continued for twelve years, when the place was burnt down; at the rebuilding, it was christened the King’s Head.

In 1825, the landlord of the Swan tavern at Stratford, near London, recommended the charms of his place in the following poetical strain:—

“At the Swan Tavern kept by Lound
The best accommodation’s found,—
Wine, Spirits, Porter, Bottled Beer,
You’ll find in high perfection here.
If in the Garden with your lass
You feel inclin’d to take a glass,
There Tea and Coffee of the best,
Provided is for every guest.
And females not to drive from hence,
The charge is only fifteen pence.
Or if disposed a Pipe to smoke,
To sing a song or crack a joke,
You may repair across the Green,
Where nought is heard, though much is seen.
There laugh, and drink, and smoke away,
And but a mod’rate reckoning pay.
Which is a most important object
To every loyal British subject.
In short,
The best accommodation’s found
By those who deign to visit Lound.”

The Black Swan, though formerly considered a rara avis in terris, may now be seen in every town and village, swinging at the door of mine host, the picture painted just as fancy may have suggested, long before the actual bird was brought over from Australia. At the Black Swan tavern in Tower Street, the Earl Rochester, when banished from the Court, took lodgings under the name of Alexander Bendo, his profession that of an Italian quack, and there he had those comical adventures with the waiting-maids of the Court. Hamilton says in his “Memoires de Grammont,” that the adventures Rochester had in this disguise are by far the most amusing given in his works. Another Black Swan alehouse is named in a broadside of 1704:—

“A most strange but true account of a very large sea monster that was found last Saturday in a common-shore in New Fleet Street in Spittlefields, where at the Black Swan alehouse thousands of people resort to see it,” &c.

This dreadful monster was simply “a dead Porpoise of a very large size, it being above Four Foot in length, and Three Foot about,” and the fact of it “leaving the deep to rove up into Fresh Water Rivers, and more especially to crawl up so far a common-shore,” prognosticated, it was thought, some dire calamities, which are told in not very parliamentary language.

The [Swan with Two Necks] is another lusus naturæ observable on the signboard, said to owe its origin to the corruption of the word nick into neck.[300] This explanation, however ingenious, is somewhat “sujet à caution,” for this reason: it is a well-known and established fact that the London signs of old had no inscriptions under them. Now, considering the small size of the nicks in question, they would scarcely have been perceptible at the height on which the sign was generally suspended, and even if visible, would never have been sufficiently noticed or understood to give a name to the sign. We shall not venture to propose another solution, as nothing of a sufficiently distinct character occurs to us: but it is just possible that a sign of two swans represented swimming side by side may have given rise to the “Swan with two necks,” or that the symbol of two birds’ necks encircled by a coronet which was used by a foreign publisher—taken, it has been conjectured, by him from the arms of some trade company—may have been the origin.

Machyn, in his “Diary,” mentions the sign of “the Swane with the ij nekes at Mylke Street end,” in 1556, when on the 5th of August, a woman living next door to that sign drowned herself in Moorfields.

In 1636, the Two Necked Swan was already to be seen in Berkshire, at the town of Lamburne, where Taylor the water poet names it as the sign of a tavern. In later years it was a famous carriers’ inn in Lad Lane, Cheapside, whence, for more than a century and a half, passengers and goods were despatched to the North. To this inn the following couplet alludes:—

“True sportsmen know nor dread nor fear,
Each rides, when once the saddle in,
As if he had a neck to spare,
Just like the Swan in Ladlane.”

Huddersford Cape Hunt.

Notwithstanding the “double bill” suggested by the two heads, it still continues a favourite inn sign. Four is rather an unusual number on the signboard, but we have this quadruple alliance in one solitary instance, the Four Swans, Bishopsgate, which is internally one of the best remaining examples of those famous galleried inns of old London.

The Swan and Bottle, Uxbridge, is a variation of the Cock and Bottle; the Swan and Rummer was a coffee-house near the Exchange, during the South Sea bubble—the Rummer, a common addition, being simply joined to the Swan, to intimate that wine was sold; the Swan and Salmon are combined on many signs, doubtless in honour of the two ornaments of our English rivers. The very name is sufficient to call up a pleasant picture.

The Swan and Hoop, Moorfields, was the birthplace of Keats the poet. The Swan on the Hoop, “on the way called old Fysshe Strete,” is mentioned as early as 1413.[301] The same combination may still be seen on London signboards.

With regard to the Swan and Sugarloaf, which occurs amongst the trades tokens, and is still seen, (as in Fetter Lane, for instance,) the sugarloaf was at first added by a grocer, whose sign having gained popularity as a noted landmark, or from other causes, was imitated by rivals or juniors, particularly on account of its presenting the favourite alliteration. Combinations with the sugarloaf are very common, all arising from its being the grocer’s sign: thus the Three Crowns and Sugarloaf, Kidderminster; Wheatsheaf and Sugarloaf, Ratcliff Highway, seventeenth century, (trades token;) Tobacco Roll and Sugarloaf, Gray’s Inn Gate, Holborn;[302] the Three Coffins and Sugarloaf, Fleet Street, 1720.

In the sign of the Swan and Rushes, at Leicester, the rushes were merely a pictorial accessory, placed in the background to bring out the white plumage of the Swan, whilst the Swan and Helmet, at Northampton, no doubt originated from a helmet with a Swan for crest.

In one instance, a Drake occurs as a sign, namely, on the token of Will. Johnson, at “ye Drake in Bell Yard,” near Temple Bar, 1667. The Duck is only to be seen in company with the Dog; in one instance it accompanies a Mallard. This last animal was otherwise well known to the Londoners, since in 1520, amongst “the articles of good gouernãce of the cite of London,” it was recommended to magistrates—“also ye shall enquyre, yf ony person kepe or norrysh hoggis, oxen, kyen, or mallardis within the ward in noying of ther neyhbours.”[303] The Duck and Mallard was the sign of a lock (and probably gun-) smith in East Smithfield in 1673.[304]

The Pigeon was a tavern at Charing Cross in 1675.[305] The [Three Pigeons] were very common; there still exists an inn of this name at Brentford:—

“It is a house of interest as being in all likelihood one of the few haunts of Shakespeare now remaining; as being indeed the sole Elizabethan tavern existing in England, which in the absence of direct evidence, may fairly be presumed to have been occasionally visited by him.”[306]

It was kept at one time by Lowin, one of the original actors in Shakespeare’s plays, and is often named by the old dramatists:

“Thou art admirably suited for the Three Pigeons at Brentford. I swear I know thee not.”—The Roaring Girl.

“We will turn our courage to Braynford, westward,
My Bird of the Night—to the Pigeons.”

Ben Jonson’s Alchymist.

There, also, George Peel played some of his merry pranks. In the parlour is an old painting dated 1704, representing a landlord attending to some customers seated at a table in the open air, with these lines:—

“Wee are new beginners
And thrive wee would fain,
I am honest Ralph of Reading,
My wife Susana to name.”

Bat Pidgeon, the famous hairdresser, immortalised by the Spectator, lived at the sign of the Three Pigeons, “in the corner house of St Clement’s Churchyard, next to the Strand.” There he remained as late as 1740, when he cut the “boyish locks” of Pennant.

In 1663 it was the sign of a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard,[307] and in 1698 of John Newton, also a bookseller over against Inner Temple Gate, Fleet Street.

The Dove was the sign of a coffeehouse on the riverside, between the two malls at Fulham. “In a room in this house, Thomson wrote part of his ‘Winter.’ He was in the habit of frequenting the house during the winter season, when the Thames was frozen and the surrounding country covered with snow. This fact is well authenticated, and many persons visit the house to the present day.”[308] The Stockdove is a sign at Romiley, Stockport; the Dovecote is a public-house at Laxton, Carlton-on-Trent, probably on account of the pigeons constantly flying out and in; and there is a Pigeon Box at Prior’s Lee, near Shiffnall. The pigeon-shooting matches may have something to do with the selection of this sign.

The Falcon was another of the devices used by Wynkyn de Worde over his shop in Fleet Street. Falcon Court, in that locality, perhaps derives its name from this house. Subsequently, Gordobuc, the earliest English tragedy, was “imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sign of the Faucon,” no doubt Wynkyn’s house, by William Griffiths in 1565; and in 1612, Peacham’s “Garden of Heroical Devises” was published by Wa. Dight at the sign of the Falcon in Shoe Lane. These booksellers, perhaps, borrowed their device from the stationers’ arms, which are, argent on a chevron between three bibles, or, a falcon volant between two roses, the Holy Ghost in chief; it was also a badge of some of the kings. At the Falcon inn, Stratford-on-Avon, there is still a shovelboard on which William Shakespeare is said often to have played. Another Falcon Tavern connected with Shakespeare’s name used to stand on the Bankside, where he and his companions occasionally refreshed themselves after the fatigues of the performances at the Globe. It long continued celebrated as a coaching inn for all parts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, till it was taken down in 1808. The name is still preserved in the Falcon Glass-house, which stands opposite its site, and in the Falcon Stairs. There was another Falcon Inn in Fleet Street, bequeathed to the company of cordwainers, by a gentleman named Fisher, under the obligation that they were yearly to have a sermon preached in the Church of St Dunstan, in the West, on the 10th of July. Formerly, on that day, sack and posset used to be drunk by those concerned, in the vestry of the church, if not to the health, at least to the “pious memory” of this Fisher; but that good custom has long since been abandoned.

The Falcon on the Hoop is named in 1443. “In the xxj yer of Kyng Harry the vj^te,” the brotherhood of the Holy Trinity received “for the rent of ij yere of Wyllym Wylkyns for the Sarrecyn Head v li. vj s. viij d., paynge by the yer liij s. iiij d. and of the Faucon on the Hope, for the same ij yer vi li., that is to say paynge by the yer iij li.” Rent, it must be confessed, seems small, and landlords exceedingly accommodating in those days. Six days before that period, there is an entry in the church-wardens’ accounts for “kervyng and peinting of the seigne of the Faucon vj sh.”[309] This mention of the sign clearly shows that it was not a picture, but a carved and coloured falcon, suspended in a hoop, whence the name of the sign.

The Magpie being a bird of good omen, was, on that account, very often chosen; with this another reason concurred, namely, the sign of the eatable pie falling into disuse, it was transformed into the Magpie, (see [Cock and Pie];) and this transition was so much the easier as the original name of the magpie was pie, (Latin pica, French pie,) and only subsequently for its knowing antics, did it receive the nickname of maggoty[310] pie, which gradually was abbreviated into Magpie. The full form of the epithet is preserved in the nursery rhyme:—

“Round about, round about,
Maggoty Pie,
My father loves good ale
And so do I.”

The Maggoty Pie was an inn in the Strand during the reign of James I.: it is alluded to in Shirley’s Comedy of “The Ball,” a. i. sc. 1, where Freshwater, the Italianised Englishman, says:—

“I do ly at the signe of Dona Margaretta de Pia in the Strand.”

which his man Gudgin explains to mean, “the Maggety Pie in the Strand, sir.”

As late as 1654, we find the name “maggoty pie” used in “Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal,” July 26 to August 3, where the Welshman’s arms are described as a fly, a maggoty pie, &c.[311] The Magpie and Stump represents the magpie sitting on the stump of a tree; it was the sign of one of the Whig pothouses in the Old Bailey during the riots of 1715. There is still an old house with such a sign in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The Magpie and Pewter Platter, in Wood Street, originated from a magpie standing by a dish and picking out of it. The Magpie and Crown, says the author of “Tavern Anecdotes,” (1825,) is a ridiculous association; but when once joined is not to be separated without injury to the concern, as it happened in the case of a Mr Renton, who was originally waiter at a house of this name in Aldgate, famous for its ale, which was sent out in great quantities. The landlord becoming rich, pride followed, and he thought of giving wing to the Magpie, retaining only the royal attribute of the crown. The ale went out for a short time, as usual, but it was not from the Magpie and Crown, and the customers fancied it was not so good as usual; consequently the business fell off. The landlord died, and Renton purchased the concern, caught the Magpie, and restored it to its ancient situation; the ale improved in the opinion of the public, and its consumption increased so much, that Renton, at his death, left behind him property amounting to £600,000, chiefly the profits of the Magpie and Crown ale. This danger of altering a sign is also illustrated by another example. When Joseph II., emperor of Germany, was at Maestricht, in the Netherlands, he stayed at the Gray Ass Inn, (L’Ane Gris,) in honour of which imperial visit the landlord discarded his humble quadruped sign, and put up the Emperor’s Head. The customers seeing the Old Gray Ass gone, thought the business had fallen into other hands, and so went to various inns in the neighbourhood, and particularly to a New Gray Ass, which had just then opened in the same street. The landlord seeing his business falling off, through the change of his sign, yet unwilling to part with his Emperor’s head, after long thinking and pondering, at last hit upon a clever compromise: he kept up the portrait of the Emperor, but wrote under it, “At the Original Gray Ass, (au veritable Ane Gris.)”

The Parrot, or Popinjay, is an old sign now almost out of fashion, the Green Parrot, Swinegate, Leeds, being one of the few remaining. Andrew Maunsell, a bookseller and printer, resided at the Parrot in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1570, and continued to trade under this sign till 1600. Taylor, the water poet, mentions the Popinjay at Ewell, in 1636. It was a very appropriate sign for quacks, and one of these, at all events, had candour enough to adopt it. His handbill begins in a grandiloquent style:—

“Noble or Ignoble, you may be foretold anything that may happen to your Elementary Life: as at what time you may expect prosperity; or if in Adversity the End thereof, or when you may be so happy as to enjoy the Thing desired. Also young Men may foresee their Fortunes as in a Glass, and pretty Maids their Husbands in this Noble, yea, Heavenlie art of Astrologie. At the sign of the Parrot opposite to Ludgate Church within Blackfriars’ Gateway.”[312]

The Parrot and Cage, in St Martin’s Lane, Strand, advertised in 1711 as a “just and substantial office of insurance” on marriages, births, &c. This office, apparently, had chambers in some bird-fancier’s house, at all events to that class of the community the sign belonged more exclusively. In 1787, there was one near the monument, the sign of a cagemaker who sold “likewise parrots and other forring birds.”

The Peacock, in ancient times, was possessed of a mystic character. The fabled incorruptibility of its flesh led to its typifying the Resurrection; and from this incorruptibility, doubtless, originated the first idea of swearing “by the Peacock,” an oath that was to be inviolably kept. Its first introduction on the signboard is lost in the unrecorded wastes of time; but the oath was a common one in early times, especially on occasions of military adventures. Near the Angel in Clerkenwell, there is the Peacock public-house, which bears the date 1564. This was formerly a great house of call for the mail and other coaches travelling on the Great North Road, much the same as the Elephant and Castle was for the southern counties. The Peacock and Feathers was a sign in Cornhill in 1711.

The Ostrich seems more common at present than in ancient times. There is one on a stone-carved sign in Bread Street, probably the sign of a feather shop. Generally, the ostrich is represented with a horseshoe in his mouth, in allusion to its digestive powers; for this reason Cade says to Iden:—

“I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin.”—Henry VI., 2d Part, a. iv. sc. 10.

The landlord of an alehouse at Calverley, near Leeds, has put his premises under the protection of Minerva’s bird, the Owl. At St Helens, Lancashire, there is a still more curious sign, viz., the Owl’s Nest, or the Owl in the Ivy Bush. A bush or tod of ivy was formerly supposed to be a favourite place for the owl to make its nest in. The old dramatists abound in allusions to this:

“And, like an owle, by night to go abroad,
Roosted all day within an ivy-tod.”[313]—Drayton.

“Michael von Owle, how dost thou?
In what dark barn or tod of aged ivy
Hast thou been hid?”—Beaumont and Fletcher, a. iv. sc. 3.

In a masque of Shirley’s, entitled “The Triumph of Peace,” 1633, one of the scenes represented a wild, woody landscape, “a place fit for purse-taking,” where, “in the furthest part was seene an ivy-bush, out of which came an owle.” Opinion, one of the dramatis personæ, informed the public, that this scene was intended for “a wood, a broad-faced owl, an ivy-bush, and other birds beside her.”[314]

In districts where Grouse and Moorcock are found, these birds frequently court the patronage of the thirsty sportsman at the village alehouse door. One publican, at Upper Haslam, Sheffield, invites at once the follower of Nimrod and of Walton: his sign is the Grouse and Trout.

The last bird-sign which remains to be noticed, is unquestionably the most puzzling of all. It occurs on an old trades token of Cornhill, and is there called “The Live Vulture.” That the man should have kept a live vulture at his door seems very improbable. The only explanation which occurs to us, is the possibility that, at some period or other, a live vulture had been exhibited at this house, and that from this event its name was derived.[315]

A curious instance of a tradesman exhibiting a living bird as an attraction to his house, is supplied us in a recent letter of a Paris correspondent, which gives at the same time an amusing anecdote of the well-known Alexandre Dumas. The writer, speaking of a magnificent new café which had recently been completed, says:—

“Writing of this newly started restaurant naturally recals the fact of the disappearance of the historic pavilion of Henry IV. at St Germain-en-Laye, kept for many years by the Duchess of Berry’s maître d’hôtel, Collinet. He was the pupil of Carême, and learnt to make sauces from Richout, saucemaker to the last of the Condés, and pastry from Heliot, “Ecuyer ordinaire de la bouche de Madame la Dauphine,” a title I have vainly searched for in the list of the queen’s household. The result of this combination of culinary instructions was that his “Bifsteaks à la Bearnaise,” and his woodcock pies, attracted not only all the fashionable world, but a brilliant galaxy of literary celebrities to the “Pavilion Henry IV.” Alexandre Dumas’s château of Monte Christo was close to St Germain. He sent daily for his cutlets to Collinet, who let his bill run on till it amounted to 25,000f. (£1000), in payment of which the distinguished chef received an autograph letter from the great novelist, accompanied by a live eagle. Alexandre Dumas expressed his regret at not being able to pay the bill, but suggested his exhibiting the eagle and the letter, which exhibition would inevitably attract crowds to his hotel, and there I myself have seen the eagle and read the letter.”

PLATE X.
GREEN MAN. (Roxburghe Ballads, circa 1650.)	ADAM AND EVE. (Newgate Street, 1669.)
TOBACCONIST SIGN. (Banks’s Collection, 1750.)
DOG’S HEAD IN POT. (Roxburghe Ballads, 1665.)	WHISTLING OYSTER. (Drury Lane, 1825.)

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[280] Coryatt’s Crudities, vol. i. p. 29.

[281] “Phisiologus tells us that the Pelican is very fond of his young ones, and when they are born and begin to grow, they rebel in their nest against their parent and strike him with their wings, flying about him and beat him so much till they wound him in his eyes. Then the father strikes again and kills them. And the mother is of such a nature that she comes back to the nest on the third day and sits down upon her dead young ones, and opens her side with her bill and pours her blood over them, and so resuscitates them from death, for the young ones by their instinct receive the blood as soon as it comes out of the mother, and drink it.”—Bibl. Nat. Belg. No. 10074.

[282] Notes and Queries, No. 236, May 6, 1854.

[283] Letter of Memorial to King Charles II. from Sir John Hinton, physician in ordinary to His Majesty, 1679. Ellis, Orig. Letters, 3d series, vol. iii. p. 307.

[284] The Three Blackbirds, Choughs, Crows, Ravens, &c., may allude to Charles, James, and Rupert.

[285] Coryatt’s Crudities, vol. i. p. 39. In the East the same fable is current as to the paternal affection of young storks; their name in Hebrew is chesadao, which implies mercy or pity.

[286] “Armory of Byrdes, Imprynted at Londõ by John Wyght dwellĩg Poules Church yarde at the sygne of the Rose.” A poem of the time of Henry VIII., attributed to Skelton, the poet laureate.

[287] Bourne’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1725, p. 65.

[288] Aubrey’s Remains of Gentilisme and Judaism.—Lansdown MSS.

[289] On the obverse:—

“When the cock began to crow
St Peter began to cry.”

Reverse:—

“The cock does not crow for nothing;
Ask St Peter, he can tell you.”

[290] Johnson’s Life of Lord Dorset.

[291] There was formerly a kind of ale called Cock ale, but what it was is not exactly known.

[292] Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie. London, 1604. Percy Society, 1841. Though this is a description of the state of London in 1603, it perfectly applies to the plague of 1665.

[293] The Art of Living in London. Poem in 2 cantos, 1768.

[294] Protestant Mercury, Feb. 14, 1700.

[295] Daily Courant, Aug. 9, 1711.

[296] Bisson’s Janus, or Small Tokens for the Old Year, and Little Gifts for the New Year. 1674. Luttrell Ballads, vol. ii. p. 20.

[297] “The reason why so many alehouses in town and country have the sign of the swan, is because that bird is so fond of liquid.”

[No English translation can convey the peculiar significance of the original. The above gives only the bare sense.]

[298] J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 280.

[299] The king’s stables (which stood on the site now occupied by Trafalgar Square) called the “mews,” because formerly his majesty’s falcons were kept there, mue being a French word for a certain kind of bird-cage or coop: whence the words “mewed up.”

[300] These nicks were little horizontal, vertical, and diagonal notches cut in the swan’s bill, in order that each owner might know his own swans. In the Archæologia for 1812, a roll of 219 swan marks is given, together with the ordinances respecting swans on the river Witham, in Lincoln, belonging to various gentlemen; this paper bears the date of June 1570. The nicking was done by swanherds, appointed by the king’s licence, who kept a register of all the various marks. None but freeholders were to have marks, and these were to be perfectly distinct from those used by other gentlemen. The Corporation of London had the right of keeping swans on the Thames for fourteen leagues above and below bridge, and their flocks seem to have been very numerous, for Paulus Jovius describing the approach to London in 1552, says, “This river abounds in swans swimming in flocks, the sight of which, and their noise, are very agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course.” Those of the company of the vintners had two nicks or marks on their bill, it is said, and hence the popular explanation of the sign. This nicking of swans on the river was formerly a matter of great state. The members of the Corporation of London used annually to go up the Thames in the month of August, in gaily decorated barges, and after the swans were nicked and counted, to land off Barn Elms, and there partake of a collation in the open air, ending which, history informs us, they used to dance, but it would require very reliable authority to convince us that an alderman could find enjoyment on the “light fantastic toe,” particularly after a hearty collation.

[301] For the origin of the sign, see under [Hoop].

[302] Mercurius Publicus, Aug. 30-Sept. 16, 1660.

[303] Arnold’s Customs of London.

[304] London Gazette, October 2-6, 1673.

[305] City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade, Nov. 4, 1675.

[306] Halliwell’s Local Illustrations to the “Merry Wives of Windsor.” Folio Shakespeare.

[307] Kingdom’s Intelligencer, March 30 to April 6, 1663.

[308] Faulkner’s Account of Fulham, 1813, p. 359.

[309] Hone’s Ancient Mysteries Described, p. 81.

[310] Magot is in French a quaint, little figure.

[311] For the benefit of those curious in Cambrian heraldry we will give these arms in a note:—“A fly, a maggoty pie, a gammon of bacon and a ——: the fly drinks before his master; a magpie doth prate and chatter, a gammon of bacon is never good till it be hanged, and a —— when it is out never returns to its country, no more will a Welshman; otherwise, his arms are two trees verdant, a beam tressant, a ladder rampant, and Taffe pendant.”

[312] Bagford Bills Harl. MSS., 5931.

[313] A tod is an old word for any entangled mass, but generally applied to flax and ivy.

[314] This comment of “Opinion” might lead to the conclusion that either there was no painted scene at all, or at least that it was badly executed; yet such can scarcely have been the case, for a notice occurs at the end of the masque, purporting that “the scene and ornament was the act of Inigo Jones, Esq., surveyor of His Majesty’s Works.” This play was acted by the gentlemen of the Inns-of-Court, in the presence of the king and queen, at Whitehall, Feb. 3, 1633.

[315] That vultures were exhibited as great curiosities, will be seen from our notice of the [George and Vulture]. See under [Religious Signs].

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CHAPTER VI.
FISHES AND INSECTS.

The [Mermaid], as a sign, must have had great attractions for our forefathers. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatists, notice this taste for strange fishes. The ancient chronicles teem with captures of mermen, mermaids, and similar creatures. Old Hollinshed gives a detailed account of a merman caught at Orford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. He was kept alive on raw meal and fish for six months, but at last “fledde secretelye to the sea, and was neuer after seene nor heard off.” Another chronicler says, “About this time [1202] fishes of strange shapes were taken, armed with helmets and shields like armed men, only they were much bigger.” And Gervase of Tilbury roundly asserts that mermen and mermaids live in the British Ocean. Even in more modern times, every now and then a mermaid (the mermen seem to have been more scarce) made her appearance. In an advertisement at the beginning of the seventeenth century, we find:—

“IN Bell Yard, on Ludgate Hill, is to be seen, at any hour of the day, a living Mermaid, from the waist upwards of a party colour, from thence downwards is very strange and wonderful.

Mulier formosa superne
Desinit in piscem.”

After which follows a most promising and tempting little bit of information in French:—“Son corps est de divers couleurs avec beaucoup d’autres curiosités qu’on ne peut exprimer.” Again, in 1747:—

“We hear from the north of Scotland, that some time this month a sea creature, known by the name of Mermaid, which has the shape of a human body from the trunk upwards, but below is wholly fish, was carried some miles up the water of Devron.”[316]

In 1824, a mermaid or merman (for the sex was discreetly left in dubio) made its appearance before “an enlightened public,” when, as the papers inform us, “upwards of 150 distinguished fashionables” went to see it. At Bartholomew Fair, in 1830, a stuffed mermaid was exhibited; but if once she had been such a “mulier formosa” as captivated the ancient mariners, she was certainly much altered.[317] A very different specimen had been exhibited in Fleet Street in 1822; but she disappeared all at once most mysteriously, not, however, without a rumour of her being under the protection of the Lord Chancellor, which, as she was a comely maiden with flaxen hair, “mulier superne et inferne,” lies within the range of possibilities. The sea-serpent has now almost done away with the mermaid; yet, as late as 1857, there appeared an article in the Shipping Gazette, under the intelligence of 4th June, signed by some Scotch sailors, and describing an object seen off the North British coast, “in the shape of a woman, with full breast, dark complexion, comely face,” and the rest.

At one time it appears to have been a very common sign, if we may judge from the way in which it is mentioned by Brathwait in his New Cast of Characters, (1631):—

“If she [the hostess] aspire to the conceit of a sine and device, her birch pole pull’d downe, he will supply her with one, which he performes so poorely as none that sees it, but would take it for a sign he was drunk when he made it. A long consultation is had before they can agree what sign must be reared. ‘A meere-mayde’ says she, ‘for she will sing catches to the youths of the parish.’ ‘A lyon,’ says he, for that is the onely sign he can make; and this he formes so artlessly, as it requires his expression, this is a lyon. Which old Ellenor Rumming, his tapdame, denies, saying it should have been a meere-mayde.”

Among the most celebrated of the Mermaid taverns in London, that in Bread Street stands foremost. As early as the fifteenth century, it was one of the haunts of the pleasure-seeking Sir John Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno 1464:—“Paid for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Stret, for my mastyr and Syr Nicholas Latimer, x d. ob.” In 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh established a literary club in this house, doubtless the first in England. Amongst its members were Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, Cotton, &c. It is frequently alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in their comedies, but best known is that quotation from a letter of Beaumont to Ben Jonson:—

“What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that any one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly,
Till that were cancell’d; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
[227] Was able to make the two next companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”

There was another Mermaid in Cheapside, frequented by Jasper Mayne, and in the next reign by the poet laureate, John Dryden. Mayne mentions it in “The City Match,” (1638:)—

“I had made an ordinary,
Perchance at the Mermaid.”

At one time the landlord’s name was Dun, which is told us in a somewhat amusing anecdote:—“When Dun, that kept the Meremaid Tavern in Cornhill, being himself in a room with some witty gallants, one of them (which, it seems, knew his wife) too boldly cryd out in a fantastick humour, ‘I’ll lay five pound there’s a cuckhold in this company.’ ‘’Tis Dun,’ says another.”[318] In 1681, there was a Mermaid in Carter Lane, which had a great deal of traffic as a carriers’ inn.[319]

The sign was also used by printers. John Rastall, for instance, brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, “emprynted in the Cheapesyde at the sygne of the Meremayde; next to Poulysgate in 1527;” and in 1576 a translation of the History of Lazarillo de Tormes, dedicated to Sir Thomas Gresham, was printed by Henry Binnemann, the queen’s printer, in Knight-rider Street, at the sign of the Mermaid. A representation of this fabulous creature was generally prefixed to his books.

The Seahorse may be seen in Birmingham, York, and various other places. Bossewell, in his peculiar mixture of English and Latin, gives a quaint description of this animal:—

“This waterhorse of the sea is called an hyppotame, for that he is like an horse in back, mayne, and neying: rostro resupinato a primis dentibus: cauda tortuosa, ungulis binis. He abideth in the waters on the day, and eateth corn by night et hunc Nilus gignit.”[320]

The Dolphin is another sign of very old standing. One of the first instances of its use was probably the following inn:—

“The other side of this High Street, from Bishopsgate and Houndsditch, the first building is a large inn for the receipt of travellers, and is called the Dolphin, of such a sign. In the year 1513, Margaret Ricroft, widow, gave this house, with the gardens and appurtenances, unto William Gam, R. Clye, their wives, her daughters, and to their heirs, with condition they yearly do give to the warders or govornors of the Greyfriars’ Church, within Newgate, 40 shillings, to find a student of divinity in the university for ever.”[321]

Moser, in his “Vestiges Revived,” mentions this same inn as the Dolphin, or rather, Dauphin Inn; and says that it was adorned with fleur-de-lys, cognisances, and dolphins; and was reported to have been the residence of one of the dauphins of France, probably Louis, the son of Philip August, who, in 1216, came to England to contest the sceptre with King John.[322] The house was still in existence at the end of the seventeenth century, when it was a famous coaching inn. Perhaps it was to this tavern that Pepys and his company adjourned on 27th March 1661:—

“To the Dolphin to a dinner of Mr Harris’s, where Sir William and my Lady Batten and her two daughters, and other company, when a great deal of mirth, and there staid till 11 o’clock at night, and in our mirth I sang and sometimes fiddled, (there being a noise of fiddlers there,) and at last we fell to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life, which I did wonder to see myself to do. At last we made Mingo, Sir W. Batten’s black, and Jack, Sir W. Penn’s, dance, and it was strange how the first did dance with a great deal of skill.”

Pepys might well wonder what a man may come to, he who had been born when “lascivious dancing” was considered a heinous crime. Another Dolphin, well worthy of remembrance, was the sign of Sam. Buckley, a bookseller in Little Brittain, at whose house Steele and Addison’s Spectator was published.

Ancient naturalists made a wonderful animal of the dolphin. Bossewell, for instance, from whom we have just quoted, tells most extraordinary stories about him; but they are unfortunately too long to quote. Londoners formerly might have seen the living fish from the river banks, for old chroniclers every now and then have entries to the effect that dolphins paid London a visit. Thus: “3 Henry V. Seven dolphins came up the river Thames, whereof 4 were taken.” “14 Rich. II. On Christmas day a dolphin was taken at London Bridge, being 10 ft. long, and a monstrous grown fish.”[323] The Dolphin and Anchor is still a common sign; and the Fish and Anchor, at North Littleton, Warwickshire, evidently implies the same emblem. Aldus Manutius, the celebrated Venetian printer, was the first to use the sign, adopting it from a silver medal of the Emperor Titus, presented to him by Cardinal Bembo, with the motto, σπευδε βραδεως. Camerarius thus (in our translation) mentions this sign in his book on Symbols:—

“That the dolphin wound round the anchor was an emblem of the Emperors August and Titus, to represent that maturity in business which is the medium between too great haste and slowness; and that it was also used in the last century by Aldus Manutius, that most famous printer, is known to everybody. Erasmus clearly and abundantly explains the import of that golden precept.

“Our emblem is taken from Alciatus, and has a different meaning. He reports, namely, that ‘when violent winds disturb the sea, as Lucretius says, and the anchor is cast by seamen, the dolphin winds herself round it, out of a particular love for mankind, and directs it, as with a human intellect, so that it may more safely take hold of the ground; for dolphins have this peculiar property, that they can, as it were, foretell storms. The anchor, then, signifies a stay and security, whilst the dolphin is a hieroglyphic for philanthropy and safety.’”—Joach. Camerarius, “Symbolorum et Emblematum Centuriæ Quatuor.” Centuria iv. p. 19; Moguntia, 1697.

This sign was afterwards adopted by William Pickering, a worthy “Discipulus Aldi,” as he styled himself; Sir Egerton Bridges made some verses upon it, amongst which occur the following:—

“Would you still be safely landed,
On the Aldine Anchor ride;
Never yet was vessel stranded,
With the Dolphin by its side.
....... “Nor time, nor envy ever shall canker
The sign that is my lasting pride;
Joy then to the Aldus Anchor,
And the Dolphin at its side.

“To the Dolphin as we ’re drinking,
Life and health and joy we send;
A poet once he saved from sinking,
And still he lives—the poet’s friend.”

The Dolphin and Comb was the sign of E. Herne, a milliner on London Bridge in 1722. This is an instance of one of the articles sold within being added to the original sign of the house. Milliners in those days used to have a much more extensive variety of objects for sale than they have now, comprehending almost every article required for female apparel,—and including knives, scissors, combs, pattens, patches, poking sticks, fans, bodkins, &c. Such additions to signs were of frequent occurrence, thus the Fox and Topknot, the Lamb and Breeches, the Fox and Cap, and the Lamb and Inkbottle, which last figures on the imprint of Thomas Roch, Newgate Street, a bookseller who made “the best ink for deeds and records,” 1677. Frequently the sign of the Fish is seen without any further specification; in this case it is probably meant for the Dolphin, which is the signboard-fish par excellence. The Fish sign is a very common public house decoration at the present day, probably for the same reason as the Swan, because he is fond of liquor,—nay, to such an extent goes his reputation for intemperance, that to “drink like a fish” is a quality of no small excellence with publicans. In Carlisle, however, there are two signs of the Fish and Dolphin, a rather puzzling combination,—unless it has reference to the dolphin’s chase after the shoals of small fishes. The Fish and Bell, Soho, may either allude to a well-known anecdote of a certain numskull, who, when he caught a fish, which he desired to keep for dinner on some future grand occasion, put it back into the river, with a bell round its neck, so that he should be able to know its whereabouts the moment he wanted it; or it may be the usual Bell added in honour of the bell-ringers. A quaint variety of this sign is the Bell and Mackerel, in the Mile-End Road. The Three Fishes was a favourite device in the Middle Ages, crossing or interpenetrating each other in such a manner, that the head of one fish was at the tail of another. We cannot prove that it had any emblematic meaning, but it may possibly represent the Trinity, the fish being a common symbol for Christ, derived from the Greek monogram or abbreviation, ΙΧΘΥΣ. It occurs as a sign in the following advertisement, which minutely describes the livery of a page in the year of the Restoration:—

“On Saturday night last run away from the Lord Rich, Christophilus Cornaro, a Turk christened; a French youth of 17 or 18 years of age, with flaxen hair, little blew eyes, a mark upon his lip, and another under his right eye; of a fair complexion, one of his ears pierced, having a pearl-coloured suit, trimmed with scarlet and blue ribbons, a coat of the same colour with silver buttons; his name Jacob David. Give notice to the Lord, lodging at the Three Fishes in New Street, in Covent Garden, a cook-shop, and good satisfaction shall be given.”[324]

The Three Herrings, the sign of James Moxton, a bookseller in the Strand, near Yorkhouse, in 1675, is evidently but another name for the Three Fishes; at the present day it is the sign of an ale-house in Bell Yard, Temple Bar. Several taverns with this sign are mentioned in the French tales and plays of the 17th century; two of them seem to have been very celebrated, one in the Faubourg St Marceau, the other near the Palais de Justice; this last one seems to have been particularly famous, for it is named as a rival to the celebrated Pomme de Pin. “Si je vay au Palais, tous ces clercs sont alentour de moy; l’un me mène aux Trois Poissons, l’autre à la Pomme de Pin.”—Comédie de la Vefve, ac. iii. s. 3.[325] The Fish and Quart at Leicester must be passed by in silence, as the combination cannot immediately be accounted for. Were it in France a solution would be easier, for in French slang a “poisson,” or fish, means a small measure of wine. The Fish and Eels at Roydon, in Essex; the Fish and Kettle, Southampton; and the White Bait, Bristol, all tell their own tale, and need no comment. The Salmon is seen occasionally near places where it is caught. The Salmon and Ball is the well-known Ball of the silkmercers in former times, added to the sign of the Salmon; whilst the Salmon and Compasses is the masonic emblem that is added to the sign. Both these occur in more than one instance in London. The Fishbone is rarely met with as a public-house sign, though there is an example of it at Netherton in Cheshire, and also amongst the seventeenth century tokens of New Cheapside, Moorfields. But generally it is the sign of a rag and bone shop, or, in the euphonious language of the day, a “miscellaneous repository,” or “bank of commerce.” These shops, as their title of “marine stores” implies, used to buy all the odds and ends of rope, sails, seamen’s old clothes, in short all the rubbish of which a ship is cleared after its return from a long voyage. Bones of large fish would be often amongst the curiosities brought home by the sailors, these also they bought and hung them up outside their doors, and in the end these bones became their distinctive sign. The Sun and Whalebone at Latton, in Essex, may have originated from a whalebone hanging outside the house, or that the landlord had laid the foundation of his fortune as a rag merchant.

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Insects are of very rare occurrence. The industrious habits of the bees, however, made their habitation a favourite object to imply a similar industry in the shopkeepers. Many years ago there used to be at Grantham in Lincolnshire, a signpost on which was placed a Beehive in full swarm, with the following lines under it:—

“Two wonders, Grantham, now are thine,
The highest spire and a living sign.”

Though the living bees were gone the following season, yet the sign and inscription remained until very recently. The following is a common inscription under the sign of the Beehive:—

“Within this hive we’re all alive,
Good liquor makes us funny;
If you are dry, step in and try
The flavour of our honey.”

A tea-dealer at the corner of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, in the end of the last century, had for his sign the Walking Leaf, (the Phyllium siccifolium of the naturalists,) an East Indian insect, of an anything but agreeable association, when we consider the remarkable vegetable appearance of this insect, and the possibility that it might be dried among the tea-leaves.

Although the frog cannot be considered either an insect or a fish, yet we may include it in this chapter. Of frogs there are some instances on the signboard; the [Three Frogs], (see under [Heraldic Signs],) and Froghall, formerly a public-house at the south end of Frog Lane, Islington. On the front of this house there was exhibited the ludicrous sign of a plough drawn by frogs. There is at the present day a Froghall Inn at Wolston, near Coventry; and a public-house of that name at Layerthorpe in the West Riding, but the picture of the sign was doubtless unique. The principal inn on the island of Texel is called the Golden Frog, (de Goude kikker.) We may wonder that there are not more examples of this sign in Holland, for there are, without doubt, as many frogs in that country as there are Dutchmen; and even unto this day it is a mooted point, which of the two nations has more right to the possession of the country; both, however, are of a pacific disposition, so that they live on in a perfect entente cordiale.

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[316] General Magazine, Jan. 1747.

[317] It was sketched by George Cruikshank; and a wood-cut of it may be seen in Morley’s “Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair,” p. 488.

[318] “Coffeehouse Jests,” 1688, p. 128.

[319] Delaune’s “Present State of London,” 1681.

[320] Bossewell’s “Works of Armourie,” 1589, p. 65.

[321] Stow, p. 62. A striking instance of the depreciation of money within the last three centuries. At the present day, 40s. would scarcely keep an Oxford or Cambridge student in cigar-lights.

[322] Moser makes a slight error. The heir-apparent to the throne of France did not assume the title of Dauphin till 1349, when Humbert II., Dauphin of Vienne, having no posterity, retired to a monastery, and sold his estates to Philip VI., King of France, on behalf of his grandson, afterwards Charles V.

[323] Delaune’s “Present State of London.”

[324] “Mercurius Publicus,” Aug. 30; Sep. 6, 1660.

[325] “If I go to the Palace of Justice, all those clerks are constantly after me; one takes me to the Three Fishes, the other to the Pine Cone.”—Comedy of the Widow, a. iii. s. 3.

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CHAPTER VII.
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC.

In old times, when signboards flourished, there would have been many reasons for choosing these house-decorations. 1. Their symbolic meaning, as the olive-tree, the fig-tree, the palm-tree. 2. To intimate what was sold within, as the vine, the coffee-plant, &c. 3. The use of some plants as badges. 4. The vicinity of some well-known tree or road-mark, near the place where the sign was displayed. 5. The desire of a landlord to have an unusual sign.

The oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom is the Bush; it was a bush or bunch of ivy, box or evergreen, tied to the end of a pole, such as is represented in many of the suttler’s tents in the pictures of Wouverman. The custom came evidently from the Romans, and with it the oft-repeated proverb, “Good wine needs no Bush.” (Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus; in Italian, Al buon vino non bisogna frasca; in French, à bon vin point d’enseigne.) Ivy was the plant commonly used: “The Tavern Ivy clings about my money and kills it,” says the sottish slave in Massinger’s “Virgin Martyr,” (a. iii. s. 3.) It may have been adopted as the plant sacred to Bacchus and the Bacchantes, or perhaps simply because it is a hardy plant, and long continues green. As late as the reign of King James I. many inns used it as their only sign. Taylor, the water poet, in his perambulation of ten shires around London, notes various places where there is “a taverne with a bush only;” in other parts he mentions “the signe of the Bush.” Even at the present day “the Bush” is a very general sign for inn and public-house, whilst sometimes it assumes the name of the Ivy Bush, or the Ivy Green, (two in Birmingham.) In Gloucester, Warwick, and other counties, where at certain fairs the ordinary booth people and tradesmen enjoy the privilege of selling liquors without a licence, they hang out bunches of ivy, flowers, or boughs of trees, to indicate this sale. As far away as the western States of North America, at the building of a new village, or station, it is no uncommon thing to see a bunch of hay, or a green bough, hung from above the “grocery,” or bar-room door, until such time as a superior decoration can be provided. The bunch being fixed to a long staff was also called the [Alepole]; thus among the processions of odd characters that came to purchase ale at the Tunnyng of Elinour Rummyng:—

“Another brought her bedes
Of jet or of coale,
To offer to the Alepole.”

How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to enlarge and encroach upon the public way, has been shown in our [Introduction], [pp. 16], [17]. The Bunch gradually became a [garland of flowers] of considerable proportions, whence Chaucer, describing the Sompnour, says:—

“A garlond hadde he sette upon his hede
As gret as it were for an alestake.”

Afterwards it became a still more elegant object, as exemplified by the Nagshead in Cheapside, in the print of the entry of Marie de Medici; finally it appeared as a crown of green leaves, with a little Bacchus, bestriding a tun dangling from it. Thus the sign was used simultaneously with the bush.

“If these houses [ale-houses] have a boxe-bush, or an old post, it is enough to show their profession. But if they be graced with a signe compleat, it’s a signe of a good custome.”[326]

In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described:—“A flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe doore, but especially a conceited signe and an eminent bush.” “Tavernes are quickly set up, it is but hanging out a bush at a nobleman’s or an alderman’s gate, and ’tis made instantly.”—Shirley’s Masque of the Triumph of Peace. In a woodcut from the “Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles,” introduced in Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” the Bush is suspended from a square board, on which the sign was painted; for in France as well as in England, signboard and bush went together:—

“La taverne levée
L’enseigne et le bouchon,
La dame bien peignée
Les cheveux en bouchon.”[327]

—Chanson nouvelle des Tavernes et Tavernières, Fleur des Chansons Nouvelles, Lyon, 1586.

Whilst an English host in “Good News and Bad News,” says:—“I rather will take down my bush and sign than live by means of riotous expense.” Gradually, as signs became more costly, the bunch was entirely neglected and the sign alone remained.

The Hand and Flower is a sign very frequently adopted by alehouses in the vicinity of nursery grounds:—thus, there is one in the High Street, Kensington, and one in the King’s Road, a little past Cremorne, though there the nursery ground has very recently been built over.

The Rose, besides being the queen of flowers, and the national emblem, had yet another prestige which alone would have been sufficient to make it a favourite sign in the middle ages; this was its religious import. On the monumental brass of Abbot Kirton, formerly in Westminster Abbey, there was a crowned rose with I.H.C. in its heart, and round it the words

SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORUM, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM.[328]

And in Caxton’s Psalter, above a woodcut representing an angel holding a shield with a rose on it, occur the words:—

“Per te rosa toluntur vitia,
Per te datur mestis leticia.”[329]

It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some allusion to the Rose of Jericho, or to the Christmas rose.

Three centuries ago roses were still very scarce, as we learn from an original MS. of the time of Henry VIII., and signed by him, preserved at the Remembrance Office, in which it says that a red rose cost two shillings; hence, roses were often amongst the terms of a tenure. Sir Christopher Hatton, the handsome Lord Chancellor, with the “bushy beard and shoe strings green,” who danced himself into Queen Elizabeth’s favour, paid the Bishop of Ely for the rent of Ely House for a term of twenty-one years in 1576, a red rose, ten loads of hay, and £10 a-year; but that roses then were plentiful, in that garden at all events, is also evident, for the Bishop and his successors had a right to gather yearly twenty bushels of roses out of it. Sir John Poulteney, 21 Edward III., gave and confirmed by charter to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, his tenement of Cold Harborough, and appurtenances, for one rose at Midsummer; a still more whimsical tenure was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York, for which yearly a payment was to be made of a red rose at Christmas, and a snow ball at Midsummer.[330] Unless the flower of the Viburnum or Gueldres Rose, sometimes called a Snowball, was meant, the payment will have been almost impossible in those days when ice-cellars were unknown.

At the present day some publicans take liberties with the old sign of the Rose; in Macclesfield, and at Preston, for instance, there is the Moss Rose; on Silkstone Common, in Yorkshire, the Bunch of Roses; on the London Road, Preston, the Rosebud, &c. The Three Roses was formerly a common sign; from the way they are represented, they appear to have been heraldic roses, (see our [illustration] of the ancient Lattice.) It was the sign of Jonathan Edwin, bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1673. At the Rose Garland, Robert Coplande, the bookseller and printer, published in 1534 Dame Juliana Berner’s “Boke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, and Fyshyng.” This shop was in “the Flete Strete.” Rose garlands or chaplets were not only worn in the middle ages as head-dresses, but also awarded as archery prizes.

“On euery syde a Rose garlonde
They shott under the lyne,
Whoso faileth of the Rose garlonde, sayth Robyn,
His tackyll he shall tyne.”

Merry Gestes of Robin Hoode.

Copland’s Rose garland, doubtless, suggested the sign of another bookseller, John Wayland, who also lived in Fleet Street about the year 1540; his sign was the Blue Garland.

The colloquial phrase, Under the Rose, is sometimes used as a sign, or written under the pictorial representation of the rose; it occurs on a trade’s token of Cambridge,[331] and may be seen on various public-houses of the present day. Numerous suppositions have been made concerning its origin, some holding that it arose from this flower being the emblem of Harpocrates; others from a rose painted on the ceiling, any conversations held under which were not to be divulged; whilst Gregory Nazianzen seems to imply that the rose, from its close bud, had been made the emblem of silence.

“Utque latet rosa verna suo putamine clausa,
Sic os vincla ferat, validis arcietur habenis,
Indicatque suis prolixa silentia labris.”[332]

At Lullingstone Castle, in Kent, the residence of Sir Percival Dyke, Bart., there is, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, a representation of a rose nearly two feet in diameter, surrounded with the following inscription:—

“Kentish true blue
Take this as a token,
That what is said here
Under the Rose is spoken.”

The Dutch have a similar phrase. In an old Book of Inscriptions of the seventeenth century is a device written round a rose painted on the ceiling:—

“Al wat hier onder de Roos geschied,
Laat dat aldaar en meld het niet.”[333]

There is one sign of the Rose, the origin of which it is difficult to ascertain, this is the Rose of Normandy, a public-house in the High Street, Marylebone. It was built in the seventeenth century, and is the oldest house in that parish. In 1659 it is described as having

“Outside a square brick wall set with fruit trees, gravel walks 204 paces long, 7 broad; the circular wall 485 paces long, 6 broad; the centre square, a bowling-green, 112 paces one way, 88 another—all, except the first, double set with quickset hedges, full grown, and kept in excellent order, and indented like town walls.”[334]

The street having been raised, the entrance to the house is at present some steps beneath the roadway. The original form of the exterior has been preserved, and the staircases and balusters are coeval with the building; but the garden and large bowling-green have dwindled into a miserable skittle-ground.

As a sign the [Marygold], it is said, arose from a popular reading of the sign of the [Sun]; a very natural and plausible origin. At the same time, it is just worth mentioning, that this flower (originally called the Gold) seems to have been considered as an emblem of Queen Mary; so, at least, it would appear from a lengthy ballad of “the Marygolde,” composed by her chaplain, William Forrest, in which, amongst many other similar allusions, the following words are found:—

“She [the Queen] may be called Marygolde well,
Of Marie (chiefe) Christes mother deere,
That as in heaven she doth excell,
And golde on earth to have no peere,
So certainly she shineth cleere,
In grace and honour double fold,
[238] The like was never erst seen heere,
Such as this flower the Marygolde.”

The flower was a favourite one in the middle ages, deriving the first part of its name from the Virgin Mary. No mention of the actual use of the sign, however, has been met with previous to 1638, when it appears on the title-pages of Francis Eglisfield, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard. His name still occurs at the same house in 1673,[335] when it was also the sign of “Mr Cox, milliner, over against St Clement’s Church in the Strand.”[336] This must have been the same house in which Richard Blanchard and Francis Child, the goldsmiths, kept their “running cashes.”[337] It is the oldest banking firm in London. Francis Child, the founder, was, in the reign of Charles I., apprenticed to a goldsmith, William Wheeler, whose shop stood on the same spot now occupied by the bank. He married his master’s daughter, and thus laid the foundation of his immense fortune. Many bills and other papers relating to Nell Gwynn are still preserved by this firm, as well as various documents concerning the sale of Dunkerque. Alderman Blackwell, who was ruined by the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., was at one time a partner in this house. It was here that Dryden deposited the £50 offered for the discovery of the bullies of the “Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade.”[338] The old sign of the house is still preserved by their successors, together with various relics of the Devil Tavern, on the site of which it was built.

Only a few other flowers occur, mostly modern introductions. The Daisey, Bramley, Leeds; the Tulip, Springfield, Chelmsford; the Lilies of the Valley, Ible, near Wirksworth; the Snowdrop, near Lewes; Woodbine Tavern, South Shields; and the Forest Blue Bell, Mansfield. The Blue Bell is very common, but, inter doctores lis est, whether it signifies the little blue flower, or a bell painted blue.

As a sequel to the flowers, we may name the Myrtle tree, of which there are two in Bristol, and the Rosemary Branch, in Camberwell, and in many other places. Rosemary was formerly an emblem of Remembrance, in the same way as the Forget-me-not is now; “There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” says Ophelia, (Hamlet, ac. iv., s. 5,) and in Winter’s Tale, Perdita says:—

“For you, there’s Rosemary and Rue, these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long,
Grace and remembrance be to you both.”

Winter’s Tale, ac. iv., s. 4.

Hence Rosemary and gloves were of old presented to those who followed the funeral of a friend.

Fruit trees are much more common, particularly the Apple-tree and the Pear-tree, which (owing to the favourite drinks of cider and perry) are next to the Rose; and the Oak, the most frequent among vegetable signs. The Apple-tree, near Coldbath Fields prison, was one of the numerous public-houses which Topham the strong man kept in 1745. At the Apple-tree Tavern, in Charles Street, Covent Garden, four of the leading London Free Masons’ lodges, considering themselves neglected by Sir Christopher Wren in 1716, met and chose a grandmaster, pro tem., until they should be able to place a noble brother at the head, which they did the year following, electing the Duke of Montague. Sir Christopher had been chosen in 1698. The three lodges that joined with the Apple-tree Lodge used to meet respectively at the [Goose and Gridiron], St Paul’s Churchyard; the Crown, Parker’s Lane; and at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, Westminster. The Hand and Apple was the sign, in 1782, of a shop in Thames Street, where “syder, Barcelona, cherry brandy, tobacco,” &c., were sold. It represented a hand holding an apple, and was chosen on account of the cider.[339] To this beverage other signs owe their origin: for instance, the Red-streak Tree, from the apple of which the best cider is made. Tickets used formerly to be in the windows of houses where cider was sold, with the words, “Bright Red-streak Cyder sold here,” illustrated with three merry companions in cocked hats, sitting under an apple-tree drinking cider, on the other side a pile of barrels, from which the landlord is drawing the liquor. In Maylordsham, Hereford, this sign is rendered as the “Red-streaked Tree;” there was a Red-streaked Tree Inn in that same town in 1775.[340] The Apple-tree and Mitre is an old painted sign, a great deal the worse for London smoke, in Cursitor Street. It represents an apple-tree abundantly loaded with fruit, standing in a landscape, with some figures; above it a gilt mitre. It is evidently a combination of two signs.

The Pear-tree is as common as the Apple-tree. The Iron Pear-tree at Appleshaw, Andover, Hants, and at Redenham in the same county, may have been derived from some noted pear-tree in that neighbourhood, whose hollow and broken stem was secured with plates or bands of iron. Very general, also, is the Cherry-tree. It was the sign of a once famous resort in Bowling-green Lane, Clerkenwell, and was adopted on account of the quantities of cherry-trees which grew upon its grounds, even as late as thirty or forty years ago. In our younger days, this house was the resort of the fast men of Clerkenwell; its bowling-green gave the name to the alley in which the house stood. Down the river, at Rotherhithe, was the Cherry-garden, a famous place of entertainment in the reign of the Merry Monarch. Pepys went to it on June 15, 1664, and, with his usual pleasant flow of animal spirits, “came home by water, singing merrily.”

“Over against the parish church, [St Olave’s, Southwark,] on the south side of the street, was some time one great house, builded of stone, with arched gates, which pertained to the Prior of Lewis, in Sussex, and was his lodging when he came to London; it is now a common hostelry for travellers, and hath to sign the Walnut-tree.”[341]

The Walnut-tree was also the sign of a tavern at the south side of St Paul’s Churchyard, over against the New Vault, in which place a concert is advertised in July 1718, which, from the high price of the admission tickets—5s. each—must have been something out of the common.[342] The Walnut-tree was frequently adopted by cabinetmakers, and is at the present day a not uncommon alehouse sign.

The Mulberry-tree was introduced at an early period, but does not seem to have been used as a sign until modern times. James I., in 1609, caused several shiploads of mulberry trees to be imported from abroad to encourage the home manufacture of silk: these were planted in a part of St James’s Park; but the climate being too cold for the silk worms, it was changed into a pleasure garden, where even the serious Evelyn would occasionally relax. 10th May 1654:—

“My Lady Gerard treated us at the Mulberry Gardens, now y^e only place of refreshment about y^e towne for persons of y^e best quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partizans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been y^e usual rendezvous for y^e ladys and gallants at this season.”

Here Dryden went to eat mulberry tarts, and here Pepys occasionally dined, as 5th April 1669, when he indulged in what he calls an “olio,” evidently an olla podrida, since it was prepared by a Spanish cook; and the dish was so “noble,” and such a success, that he and his friends left the rest of their dinners untouched; and after a ride in a coach and a walk for digestion, they took supper “upon what was left at noon, and very good.”

Orange trees were one of the ornaments of St James’ Park in the reign of Charles II.; and at that period and long after, were mostly used as signboards of the seed-shops, and by Italian merchants. The Orange-tree and Two Jars was the sign of a shop of the latter description in the Haymarket in 1753.[343] No doubt, the orange tree must have obtained some popularity in the reign of William III., as it is the emblem of the Orange family. The orange tree is said to be originally a Chinese plant, (whence they were formerly called China oranges.) They were unknown to the ancients, and introduced by the Moors into Sicily in the twelfth century. France possessed them in the fourteenth century; and probably much about the same period they were brought to England, for we find “pome d’orring” mentioned as one of the items at the coronation dinner of Henry IV. in 1399, where they occur in the third course, along with quincys en comfyte doucettys, and other items of a modern dessert.[344] But a still earlier instance is mentioned in the “Book of Days,” (vol. ii. p. 694,) viz., in 1290, when a large ship from Spain arrived at Portsmouth laden with spices. On this occasion, Queen Eleanor of Castile, anxious to taste again the luscious fruit that reminded her of her home in sunny Spain and the days of her girlhood, bought out of the cargo “a frail of figs, of raisins, and of grapes, a bale of dates, 230 pomegranates, 15 citrons, and 7 oranges.” This probably is the oldest mention of the orange being brought to England. The tree is said to have been introduced into this country by a member of the Carew family. Oranges are named amongst the articles of diet consumed by the Lords of the Star Chamber in 1509, when their price is quoted one day at iijd., and another at ijd., whilst the charge for strawberries was vijd., and on another day iiijd.[345] Perhaps, however, they were only used as hors d’œuvres, for Randle Holme, in his instructions how to arrange a dinner, (in that omnium gatherum, “Academy of Armory,”) mentions oranges and lemons as the first item of the second course. At all events, they were abundant enough in 1559, for on May day of that year the revellers “at the queen’s plasse at Westmynster shott and threw eges and orengs on a-gaynst a-nodur.”[346] In an “Account of several Gardens near London,” in 1691,[347] Beddington Gardens are mentioned—then in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, but belonging to the Carew family—as having in it the best oranges in England. The orange and lemon trees grew in the ground, “and had done so near one hundred years, the house in which they were being above 200 feet long. Each of the trees was about 13 feet high, and generally full of fruit, producing above 10,000 oranges a year.” Sir William Temple’s oranges at Sheen are also praised. It is, indeed, a pity that this plant has so much gone out of fashion; for, besides being always green, it bears fruit and flowers all the year round, both appearing at the same time. The flowers have a delicious smell; the candied petals impart a very fine flavour to tea, if a few of them are infused with it; whilst the fruit may be preserved in exactly the same manner as other fruit. The sign of the orange-tree still occurs at Highgate, Birmingham; the Lemon Tree at Beacon Street, Lichfield.

The Olive Tree was a common Italian warehouse sign, but was occasionally used by other shops. Amongst the tokens in the Beaufoy Collection, there is the “Olfa Tree, Singon Strete,” an example of the liberties taken with our language on the old tokens, as this stands for the Olive Tree in St John’s Street. The usefulness of the olive tree made it in very early times a symbol of peace. In 1503 it was the sign of Henry Estienne, a bookseller and printer at the end of the Rue de St Jean Beauvais, otherwise Clos Bruneau, in Paris. This firm, for several generations, continued the leading publishers and printers in Paris. Sauval, who wrote in 1650, says that in his time the olive tree, carved in stone, was still to be seen in the front of the house. Here Francis I., in 1539, visited Robert Estienne, grandson of the founder of the firm, in his workshops; and to give him a proof of his favour, conferred upon him the title of Printer to the King for Latin and Hebrew; and presented him with those beautiful letters which Estienne proudly mentions on his title-pages: “Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi regii, typis regiis.”

The Vine, or the Bunch of Grapes, is a very natural sign at a place where wine is sold. The last particularly was almost inseparable from every tavern, and was often combined with other objects—

“Without there hangs a noble sign,
Where golden grapes in image shine;
To crown the bush, a little Punch-
Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch,
Sits loftily enthron’d upon
What’s called (in miniature) a Tun.”

Compleat Vintner: London, 1720, p. 86.

The Bunch of Carrots, at Hampton Bishop, Hereford, is probably meant as a joke upon the Bunch of Grapes. Bagford, in a letter to his brother antiquary, Leland,[348] says:—

“I have often thought, and am now fully perswaded, that the planting of vines in the adjacent parts about this city, was first of all begun by the Romans, an industrious people, and famous for their skill in agriculture and gardening, as may appear from their rei agrariæ scriptores, as well as from Pliny and other authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden, (which at this time is called Vine Street,) and a third in St Giles-in-the-Fields.[349] Many places in the country bear the name of the Vineyard to this day, especially in the ancient monasteries, as Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c., which were left as such by the Romans.”

In Bede’s time vineyards were abundant; and still later, tithes on wine were common in Gloucester, Kent, Surrey, and the adjacent counties. Winchester was famous for its vineyards in olden times, for Robert of Gloucester, in summing up the various commodities of the English counties, says:—

“And London ships most, and wine at Winchester.”

The Isle of Ely was called Isle des Vignes, and the tithe on the vines yielded as much as three or four tuns of wine to the bishop. Even in Richard II.’s time, the Little Park at Windsor was used as a vineyard for the home consumption; and the vale of Gloucester, according to William of Malmesbury, produced, in the twelfth century, as good a wine as many of the provinces of France; this county, in fact, produced the best wine:—

“There is no province in England hath so many or such good vineyards as this county, [Gloucester,] either for fertility or sweetness of the grape; the wine whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not much inferior to French in sweetness.”[350]

From the household expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, (1289-1290,) it appears that the white wine was at that period chiefly home-grown, whilst the greater proportion of red wine was imported from abroad. Even as late as the last century wine was made in England: Faulkner[351] quotes the following memorandum from the MS. notes of Peter Collinson:—

“October 18, 1765.—I went to see Mr Roger’s vineyards at Parson’s Green [at Fulham] all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe; I did not see a green, half-ripe grape in all this quantity. He does not expect to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The branches and fruit are remarkably large, and the wine very strong.”

Grosley[352] mentions a vineyard at Cobham, belonging to a Mr Hamilton, of about half an acre, planted with Burgundian vines; but the wine it produced will cause nobody to regret that the culture has been abandoned, for “it was a liquor of a darkish gray color; to the palate it was like verjuice and vinegar blended together by a bad taste of the soil.” This description, enough to set the teeth on edge, is most likely true, and gives us the reason why English wine came to be abandoned.

As the vine was set up as a sign in honour of wine, so the Hop-pole, or the Hop and Barleycorn, the [Barley Mow], the Barley Stack, the Malt and Hops, and the Hopbine, are very general tributes of honour rendered to beer. In many ale-houses a bunch of hops may be seen suspended in some conspicuous place.

The Pine-apple, in the end of the last and the beginning of this century, was generally the emblem adopted by confectioners, though not exclusively, for it was the sign of an eating-house in New Street, Strand, at which Dr Johnson, on his first coming to town, used to dine.

“I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine-apple in New Street, just by.[353] Several of them had travelled; they expected to meet every day, but did not know one another’s names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.”

The pine-apple was first known at the discovery of America, and was preserved in sugar as early as 1556. The first pine-apple was brought from Santa Cruz to the West Indies, thence to the East Indies and China. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing in October 1716, informs her sister that she had been at a supper of the King of Hanover, “where there were,” says she, “what I thought worth all the rest, two ripe ananas, which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came there, but by enchantment.” Upon inquiry she learned that they had been forced in stoves or hot-houses, and is “surprised we do not practise in England so useful an invention.” It was not till the end of the last century that they were introduced into English gardens, having been brought over from hot-houses in Holland; and from that time seems to date their introduction on the signboard. It is still in general use with public-houses.

Of the Fig Tree there are several examples among the London trades tokens, some of them, no doubt, grocers’ signs, but other trades may have adopted it, either in allusion to the text of every man “sitting under his own fig-tree,” or because the fig-tree was a symbol of quiet unassuming industry; as such, at least, Camerarius represents it:—

“Verno tempore ficus arbor speciosis floribus aut fructuum præcocium abundantia minime sese ostentat, nullamque inanem hominibus de se spem injicit: in autumno autem fructus suaviss. ac quidem in illis reconditos quasi flores quosdam proferre solet.”[354]

The Almond Tree was the sign of John Webster in St Paul’s Churchyard, in 1663; and the Peach Tree occurs sometimes as an ale-house sign, as, for instance, in Nottingham. Neither of these signs, however, are of frequent occurrence.

Not only fruit-trees but various forest-trees are constantly met with on the signboard: thus the Green Tree, which is very common, originally had allusion to the foresters of the “merry greenwood,” or was suggested by some large evergreen, or tree sheltering, or standing near the inn; of this green tree the Green Seedling in Chester is evidently a sprout. Again, in Sheffield there are two signs of the Burnt Tree, which name possibly originated from some tree having been damaged in a fire, and becoming a well-known landmark. The Oak, the vigorous emblem of our mighty state, is deservedly much used for a sign; sometimes it is called the British Oak. At Kilpeck, in Herefordshire, the following rhyme accompanies it:—

“I am an oak and not a yew,
So drink a cup with good John Pugh.”

Druidical recollections are called up by the Oak and Ivy, at Bilston, Stafford; Hearts of Oak is the material out of which, according to the song, our ships and seamen are constructed, and therefore well deserves the favourite place it occupies amongst the signboards of the present day; whilst the Acorn, the fruit of the British oak, is nearly as common as the other oak signs.

Next to the oak the Elm seems to have had most followers. From the trades tokens it appears that the Three Elms was the sign of Edward Boswell in Chandos Street, in 1667; and also of Isaac Elliotson, St John Street, Clerkenwell. Besides these there was, about the same date, the One Elm, and the Elm. At present we have the Nine Elms, and the Queen’s Elm, Brompton, which is mentioned under the name of the Queen’s Tree, in the parish books of 1586. This tree is said to derive its name from the fact of Queen Elizabeth, when on a visit to Lord Burleigh, being caught in a shower of rain, and taking shelter under the branches of an elm-tree, then growing on this spot. The Seven Sisters, the sign of two public-houses in Tottenham, were seven elm-trees, planted in a circular form, with a walnut tree in the middle; they were upwards of 500 years old, and the local tradition said that a martyr had been burnt on that spot. They stood formerly at the entrance from the high road at Page Green, Tottenham. Within the last twenty years they have been removed. The Chestnut, the Sycamore, the Beech Tree, the Fir Tree, the Birch Tree, and the Ash Tree, all occur in various places where ale-houses are built in the shadow of such trees. The Thorn Tree is peculiar to Derbyshire. The Buckthorn Tree was, in 1775, the sign of “William Blackwell in Covent Garden, or at his garden in South Lambeth.” He had chosen this sign because he sold, amongst other herbs, “buckthorn and elder-berries, besides leeches and vipers.” What the use of the first was is well known; as for the vipers, they were eaten in broth and soups, before Madame Rachel’s enamels were employed, by ladies who wished to continue “young and beautiful for ever.” The Crab Tree, our indigenous apple-tree, is also seen in a great many places. A house in Fulham, with that name, is well known to the oarsmen on the Thames. It derives its denomination from a large crab-tree growing near the public-house, which gave its name to the whole village. The Willow Tree is very rare; in the seventeenth century it was the sign of a shop in the Old Exchange, as appears from a trades token, but what business was carried on under this gloomy sign does not appear. Fuller, in his Worthies, (voce Cambridgeshire,) says of willows:—

“A sad tree whereof such who have lost their love make them mourning garlands; and we know that exiles hung their harps upon such doleful supporters; the twiggs hereoff are physick to drive out the folly of children. Let me add that if green ash may burn before a queen, withered willows may be allowed to burn before a lady.”

As an attribute of forsaken love it is of constant occurrence in old plays:—

“Sylli. If you forsake me,
Send me word, that I may provide a willow garland
To wear when I drown myself.”

Massinger’s Maid of Honour, a. iv. s. 5, 1631.

And in the same play Sylli, who thinks himself the preferred lover, says to his rival:—

“You may cry willow, willow!”—Ibid., a. v. s. 1.

Shakespeare uses the same emblem frequently, particularly in Desdemona’s famous willow song. There is a quaint ballad which an old Northumberland woman used to sing, but which we have never seen in print: it begins as follows:—

“Young men are false, and they are so deceitful:
Young men are false, and they seldom will prove true;
For wi’ wrangling and jangling, their minds are always changing,
They’re always seeking for some pretty girl that’s new.

It’s all round my hat, I will wear a green willow,
It’s all round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day;
If any one should ask you the reason why I wear it,
Oh! tell them I have been slighted by my own true love.”

Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” says:—This tree might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in Psalm cxxxvii.: “We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof;” or else from a coincidence between the weeping willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned: the Agnus castus or vitex was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, “and the willow being of a much like nature,” says an old writer, “it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland.”—Swan’s Speculum Mundi, ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635.

The frequency of the sign of the Yew Tree is not to be attributed to its association with the churchyard, but to its being the wood from which those famous bows were made that did such execution at Agincourt and Poictiers, and wherever the English armies trod the field before the invention of gunpowder. So great was the patronage our early kings granted to the practice of the bow, that the patten-makers, by an Act of Parliament of 4 Henry V., were forbidden, under a penalty of £5, to use in their craft any kind of wood fit to make arrows of.

The Cotton Tree is a sign generally put up in the neighbourhood of cotton factories, as at Manchester. The Palm Tree is one of the oldest symbols known: it was used as such by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, and by them transmitted to the early Christians. St Ambrosius, in a very forcible image, compares the life of an early and faithful Christian to the palm tree, rough and rugged below, like its stem, but increasing in beauty upwards, where it bears heavenly fruit. It might also illustrate a more homely truth, namely, that business cannot flourish without patronage and custom; thus, Camerarius says:—

“Inter alias multas singulares proprietates quas scriptores rerum naturalium Palmæ attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hæc arbor non facile crescat, nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nec non humore aliquo conveniente irrigetur.”[355]

The Cocoa Tree was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses when that beverage was newly imported and very fashionable. One of the most famous was in St James’ Street; it was, in the reign of Queen Anne, strictly a Tory house:—“A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa Tree, or Ozinda’s, [another chocolate-house in the same neighbourhood,] than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St James’.”[356] Deep play was the order of the day in that as in all other fashionable resorts at the end of the last century. Walpole, in 1780, wrote to one of his friends:—

“Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference of which amounted to an hundred and four score thousand pounds. Mr O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 off a young Mr Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother’s death. O’Birne said, ‘You can never pay me?’ ‘I can,’ said the youth, ‘my estate will sell for the debt.’ ‘No,’ said O., ‘I will win ten thousand, you shall throw for the odd ninety.’ They did, and Harvey won.”[357]

It afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. This gambling seems to have been inseparable from the chocolate-houses. Roger North, attorney-general to James II., says,—

“The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention called Chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all the quality, where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of wh—— seldom fails: as if the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his school of discipline.”[358]

Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan Franz. Rauch wrote a treatise against that beverage and the monks. In England, however, it seems to have been introduced much later, for in 1657 it was advertised as a new drink:—

“IN BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable rates.”[359]

It is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate on its first introduction. M^me. de Sévigné, in her letters, gives many proofs of it; at one time she fervently recommends it to her daughter as a perfect panacea, at other times she is as violently against it, and puts it down as the root of all evil.

The Coffee House is the now inappropriate sign of a gin-palace in Chalton Street, Somers Town. Early in the last century this neighbourhood was a delightful rural suburb, with fields and flower gardens. A short distance down the hill was the then famous Bagnigge Wells, and close by were the remains of Totten-Hall, with the Adam and Eve tea-gardens, and the so-called King John’s Palace. Many foreign Protestant refugees had taken up their residence in this suburb, on account of the retirement it afforded, and the low rates asked for the small houses. “The Coffee House” was then the popular tea and coffee-gardens of the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the neighbourhood, as well as the pleasure-seeking Cockney from the distant city. There were other public-houses and places of entertainment near at hand, but the specialty of this establishment was its coffee. As the traffic increased, it became a posting-house, uniting the business of an inn to the profits of a pleasure garden. Gradually the demand for coffee fell off, and that for malt and spirituous liquors increased. At present the gardens are all built over, and the old gateway forms part of the modern bar; but there are aged persons in the neighbourhood who remember Sunday-school excursions to the place, and pic-nic parties from the crowded city, making merry here in the grounds.

The Holly Bush is a common public-house sign at the present day. Among the London trades tokens there is one of the Hand and Holly Bush at Templebar, evidently the same inn mentioned in 1708 by Hatton, “on the north side, and about the middle of the backside of St Clements, near the church.”[360] This combination with the hand does not seem to have any very distinct meaning, and apparently arose simply from the manner of representing objects in those days, as being held by a hand issuing from a cloud. Adorning houses and churches at Christmas with evergreens and holly is a very ancient custom, supposed, like some others of our old customs, to be derived from the Druids. Formerly the streets also appear to have been decked out, for Stow tells us that

“Against the feast of Christmas every man’s house, as also the parish churches, were decked with holme, ivy, and bayes, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be given. The conduits and standards in the streets were likewise garnished.”

Thus flowers, fruit trees, and forest trees were represented on the signboard, and with them even the homely but useful tenants of the kitchen garden found a place. The Artichoke, above all, used to be a great favourite, and still gives a name to some public-houses. As a seedsman’s sign it was common and rational; not so for a milliner, yet both among the Bagford and Banks’s shopbills there are several instances of its being the sign of that business; thus:—

“Susannah Fordham, att the Hartichoake, in ye Royal Exchange,” in the reign of Queen Anne, sold “all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and linnens, and all sorts of gloves and ribons, and all other sorts of millenary wares.”[361]

Probably the novelty of the plant had more than anything else to do with this selection; for though it was introduced in this country in the reign of King Henry VIII., yet Evelyn observes:—

“’Tis not very long since this noble thistle came first into Italy, improved to this magnitude by culture, and so rare in England that they were commonly sold for a crowne a piece.”[362]

The Cabbage is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liverpool, and Cabbage Hall, opposite Chaney Lane, on the road to the Lunatic Asylum, Oxford, was formerly the name of a public-house kept by a tailor; but whether he himself had christened it thus, or his customers had a sly suspicion that it owed its origin to cabbaging, history has omitted to record. Another public-house, higher up the hill, was known by the name of Caterpillar Hall, a name clearly selected in compliment to Cabbage Hall, intimating that it meant to draw away the customers from Cabbage Hall, in other words, that the caterpillar would eat the cabbage. The Oxnoble, a kind of potato, is the name of a public-house in Manchester, and the homely mess of Pease and Beans was a sign in Norwich in 1750.[363] The Three Radishes was, in the seventeenth century, a common nursery and market gardener’s sign in Holland. There was one near Haarlem, to which was added a representation of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene in the garden, with this rhyme—

“Christus vertoont men hier
Na zyn dood in verryzen,
Als een groot hovenier
Die ieder een moet pryzen.
Dit ’s in de drie Radyzen.”[364]

Another, near Gouda, had a still more absurd inscription:—

“Adam en Eva leefden in den Paradyze
Zelden aten zy stokvisch maar veel warmoes, kropsla en radyzen.
Hier vindt gy allerley aardgewas om menschen mêe te spyzen.”[365]

The Wheatsheaf is an extremely common inn, public-house, and baker’s sign; it is a charge in the arms of these three corporations, besides that of the brewers. In the middle of Farringdon Street, opposite the vegetable market, is Wheatsheaf Yard, once a famous waggon inn, which also did a roaring trade in wine, spirits, and Fleet Street marriages. Indeed, most of the large inns within the liberties of the Fleet served as “marriage shops” between 1734 and 1749; amongst the most famous were the Bull and Garter, the Hoop and Bunch of Grapes, the Bishop Blaize and Two Sawyers, the Fighting Cocks, and numerous others. The gateway entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carvings of wheat ears and lions’ heads intermixed, finished in a manner not unworthy of Grinling Gibbons himself.

The Oatsheaf is very rare; it was the sign of a shop in Cree Church Lane, Leadenhall Street, in the seventeenth century, as appears from a trades token; but this seems the only instance of the sign.

With these plants we may also class Tobacco, that best abused of all weeds. Sometimes we see a pictorial representation of the Tobacco plant, but most usually it occurs in the form of Tobacco rolls, representing coils of the so-called spun or twist tobacco, otherwise pigtail, for the sake of ornament, painted brown and gold alternately. Decker, in his “Gull’s Hornbook,” mentions Roll Trinidado, leaf, and pudding tobacco, which probably were the three sorts smokers at that day preferred. That it was used mixed may be conjectured from the introduction to “Cinthia’s Revels,” a play by Ben Jonson; one of the interlocutors says,—“I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket.”

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[326] “The Country Carbonadoed,” by D. Lupton, 1632. Voce “Alehouse.”

[327]

“The tavern opened
With signboard and bush;
The landlady’s hair neatly dressed.
Tied up in a knot.”

[328] Be thou, rose, queen of flowers, the cure of my diseases.

[329]

Through thee, rose, sins are taken away,
Through thee, gladness is given to the sorrowing.

[330] Blount’s “Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures,” p. 248.

[331] See Boynes’ Tokens issued in the seventeenth century in England, Wales, and Ireland.

[332] Like the rose in spring, hidden in its bud, so must the mouth be closed and restrained with strong reins, enforcing silence to the loquacious lips.

[333]

All that is done here, under the Rose,
Leave it here and do not divulge it.

[334] Memoirs by Samuel Sainthill, 1659, Gent. Mag., lxxxiii. p. 520.

[335] London Gazette, Nov. 6, 1673.

[336] Ibid., Oct. 20, 1673.

[337] See the “Little London Directory, 1677,” recently reprinted.

[338] Domestic Intelligencer, Sept. 9, 1679.

[339] Banks’s Bills in the British Museum.

[340] Hereford Journal, January 7, 1775.

[341] Stow’s Survey, p. 340.

[342] Daily Courant, July 1, 1718.

[343] Banks’s Bills.

[344] Harl. MSS., 279, p. 47, a cookery book of that period.

[345]

Lansdowne MS., No. 1, fol. 49. Three weeks’ diet of the Lords of the Star Chamber. These lords appear to have lived very well, as we may learn from some of the items of one day’s dinner:—
ffirst for bread, xijd.; ale, iijs. iiijd.; and wine, xvjd. Item to
viijd.vjd. vd. ijd. xiiijd. xd.
loyne of moton; maribones and beef; powdered beef; ij capons; ij geese; v conyes;
iiijd. xviijd. vd. xijd. vjd. xd.
j leg moton; vj places; vj pegions; ij doz. larkes; salt and sause; butter and eggs,
&c., &c., &c.

[346] Machyn’s Diary.

[347] Archæologia, vol. xii.

[348] Prefixed to Collectanea, 1770, p. lxxv.; there is also a paper on Vines in England in Archæologia, i. p. 321; and Roach Smith’s Collectanea Antiqua, vol. vi., p. 78, et seq. may be consulted with advantage upon this subject.

[349] Curiously enough, until about 1820, a public-house, the sign of the Vine, in Dobie Street, St Giles, occupied the very site assigned to this vineyard in Domesday Book, A.D. 1070.

[350] Hollinshed’s Description of Britain, p. 3.

[351] Faulkner, Antiquities of Kensington.

[352] Grosley, vol. i., p. 83.

[353] He lived then in Exeter Street, at a stay-maker’s. Boswell’s Johnson: London, 1819, p. 67.

[354] “In spring-time the fig-tree does not make any show of beautiful flowers or precocious fruit to deceive mankind with idle hope; but in autumn it generally produces exceedingly sweet fruit, with flowers as it were contained within them.”—Joachimus Camerarius, “Symbolorum Centuriæ Quatuor,” 1697, Centur. i., p. 18.

[355] “Among the many curious properties which the writers on natural history attribute to the palm tree, it is not one of the least singular that this tree cannot well thrive unless it be properly basked by the beams of the sun, and watered by some neighbouring stream.”—J. Camerarius, “Centuria,” i., 1697.

[356] Defoe’s Journey through England, p. 168.

[357] Horace Walpole’s Letters to Mr Mann, February 6, 1780.

[358] As quoted in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature, ii. p. 326.

[359] Publick Advertiser, Tuesday, June 16-22, 1657.

[360] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 36.

[361] Bagford Bills.

[362] Evelyn’s Miscellaneous Writings, p. 735.

[363] Gent. Mag., March 1842.

[364]

“Christ is represented here
After his death and resurrection,
As a great gardener
Whom every body must praise.
This is at the Three Radishes.”

[365]

“Adam and Eve lived in Paradise,
They rarely ate stock fish, but a great deal of hotchpotch, lettuce, and radishes.
All sorts of vegetables sold here for human food.”

A similarly dull joke occurs in an old English comedy, “Law Tricks,” by John Day, 1608. “I have heard old Adam was an honest man and a good gardener, loved lettuce well, salads and cabbage reasonably well, yet no tobacco.”

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CHAPTER VIII.
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNS.

The earlier signs were frequently representations of the most important article sold in the shops before which they hung. The stocking denoted the hosier, the gridiron the ironmonger, and so on. The early booksellers, whose trade lay chiefly in religious books, delighted in signs of saints, but at the Reformation the Bible amongst those classes, to whom till then it had been a sealed book, became in great request, and was sold in large numbers. Then the booksellers set it up for their sign; it became the popular symbol of the trade, and at the present moment instances of its use still linger with us. There was one day in the year, St Bartholomew’s, the 24th of August, when their shops displayed nothing but Bibles and Prayer-books. It is not impossible that this may have been originally intended for a manifestation against Popery, since it was the anniversary of the dreadful Protestant massacre in Paris in 1572. The following, however, is the only allusion we have met with relating to this custom:—“Like a bookseller’s shop on Bartholomew day at London, the stalls of which are so adorned with Bibles and Prayer-books, that almost nothing is left within but heathen knowledge.”[366]

One of the last Bible signs was about twenty years ago, at a public-house in Shire Lane, Temple Bar. It was an old established house of call for printers.

The Bible being such a common sign, booksellers had to “wear their rue with a difference,” as Ophelia says, and adopt different colours, amongst which the Blue Bible was one of the most common. “Prynne’s Histrio-Mastrix” was “printed for Michael Sparke, and sold at the Blue Bible, in Green Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey, 1632.” This blue colour, so common on the signboard, was not chosen without meaning, but on account of its symbolic virtue. Blue, from its permanency, being an emblem of truth, hence Lydgate, speaking of Delilah, Samson’s mistress, in his translation from Boccacio, (MS. Harl. 2251,) says—

“Insteade of blew, which steadfaste is and clene,
She weraed colours of many a diverse grene.”

It also signified piety and sincerity. Randle Holme[367] says—

“This colour, blew, doth represent the sky on a clear, sun-shining day, when all clouds are exiled. Job, speaking to the busy searchers of God’s mysteries, saith (Job xi. 17,) ‘That then shall the residue of their lives be as clear as the noonday.’ Which to the judgment of men (through the pureness of the air) is of azure colour or light blew, and signifieth piety and sincerity.”

Other booksellers chose the Three Bibles, which was a very common sign of the trade on London Bridge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: of one of them, Charles Tyne, trades tokens are extant,—great curiosities to the numismatist, as booksellers were not in the habit of issuing them. The sign of the Three Bibles seems to have originated from the stationers’ arms, which are arg. on a chevron between three bibles, or a falcon volant between two roses, the Holy Ghost in chief. One bookseller, on account of his selling stationery, also added three inkbottles to the favourite three Bibles, as we see from an advertisement, giving the price of playing cards in 1711:—

“SOLD by Henry Parson, Stationer at the Three Bibles and Three Inkbottles, near St Magnus’ Church, on London Bridge, the best principal superfine Picket Cards, at 2s. 6d. a dozen; the best principal Ombro Cards, at 2s. 9d. a dozen; the best principal superfine Basset Cards, at 3s. 6d. a dozen; with all other Cards and Stationery Wares at Reasonable Rates.”[368]

Combinations of the Bible with other objects were very common, some of them symbolic, as the Bible and Crown, which sign originated during the political troubles in the reign of Charles I. It was at this time when the clergy and the court party constantly tried to convince the people of the divine prerogative of the Crown, that the “Bible and Crown” became the standing toast of the Cavaliers and those opposed to the Parliament leaders. As a sign it has been used for a century and a half by the firm of Rivington the publishers. The old wood carving, painted and gilt in the style of the early signs, was taken down from over the shop in Paternoster Row in 1853, when this firm removed westward. It is still in their possession. Cobbett, the political agitator and publisher, in the beginning of this century chose the sign of the Bible, Crown, and Constitution; but the general tenor of his life was such, that his enemies said he put them up merely that he might afterwards be able to say he had pulled them down. A Bible, Sceptre, and Crown, carved in wood, may still be seen on the top of an ale-house of that name in High Holborn. The crown and sceptre in this case are placed on two closed Bibles.

The Bible and Lamb, i.e., the Holy Lamb, we find mentioned in an advertisement in the Publick Advertiser, March 1, 1759—

“TO BE HAD at the Bible and Lamb, near Temple Bar, on the Strand Side, the Skin for Pains in the Limbs, Price 2s.”

Books also were sold here, for in those days booksellers and toyshops were the usual repositories for quack medicines.

The Bible and Dove, i.e., the Holy Ghost, was the sign of John Penn, bookseller, over against St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, 1718; and the Bible and Peacock, the sign of Benjamin Crayle, bookseller, at the west end of St Paul’s, in 1688. If not a combination of two signs, the bird may have been added on account of its being the type of the Resurrection, in which quality it is found represented in the Catacombs, a symbolism arising from the supposed incorruptibility of its flesh.[369] Various other combinations occur, as the Bible and Key. Rowland Hall, a printer of the sixteenth century, had for his sign the [Half Eagle and Key], (see [Heraldic Signs],) of which the Bible and Key may be a free imitation. It was the sign of B. Dod, bookseller, in Ave Maria Lane, 1761; whilst the Golden Key and Bible was that of L. Stoke, a bookseller at Charing Cross, 1711. The “Bible and Key” is also the name of a certain Coscinomanteia, somewhat similar to the Sortes Virgilianæ. This method of divination was performed in two ways, in the first, (stated by Matthew of Paris to have been frequently practised at the election of bishops,) the Bible was opened on the altar, and the prediction taken from the chapter which first caught the eye on opening the book; the other was by placing two written papers, one negative, the other affirmative, of the matter in question, under the pall of the altar, which, after solemn prayers, was believed would be decided by divine judgment. Gregory of Tours mentions another method by the Psalms.[370]

At the present day “Bible and Key” divinations are often attempted by those who believe in fortune-telling and vaticinations. The method adopted is as follows:—A key is placed, with the bow or handle sticking out, between the leaves of a Bible, on Ruth i. 16:

“AND RUTH said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

The Bible is then firmly tied up, most effectually with a garter, and balanced by the bow of the key on the fore-fingers of the right hands of two persons, the one who wishes to consult the oracle, the other any person standing near. The book is then addressed with these words—“Pray, Mr Bible, be good enough to tell me if —— or not?” If the question be answered in the affirmative the key will swing round, turn off the finger, and the Bible fall down; if in the negative, it will remain steady in its position. Not only upon matrimonial, but upon all sorts of questions, this oracle may be consulted.

Further combinations are the Bible and Sun. The Sun was the sign of Wynkyn de Worde, and the printers that succeeded him in his house. It may, however, in this combination have been an emblem of the Sun of Truth, or the Light of the World. It was the sign of J. Newberry, in St Paul’s Churchyard, the publisher of Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield;” also of C. Bates, near Pie Corner; and of Richard Reynolds, in the Poultry, both ballad printers in the times of Charles II. and William III. Then there is the Bible and Ball, a sign of a bookseller in Ave Maria Lane in 1761, who probably hung up a Globe to indicate the sale of globes and maps; and the Bible and Dial, over against St Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, in 1720, was the sign of the notorious Edmund Curll, who was pilloried at Charing Cross, and pilloried in Pope’s verses. The Dial was, in all likelihood, a sun-dial on the front wall of his house.

Of the Apocryphal Books there is only one example among the signboards, viz., Bel and the Dragon, which was at one time not uncommon, more particularly with apothecaries. It was represented by a Bell and a Dragon, as appears from the Spectator, No. 28. “One Apocryphical Heathen God is also represented by this figure [of a Bell], which, in conjunction with the Dragon, makes a very handsome picture in several of our streets.” Although at the first glance this sign seems taken from the doubtful books of the Old Testament, still there is nothing in the Apocryphal book which could in any way prompt the choice of it for a signboard. After all, it may possibly be only a combination, or corruption, of two other signs. There still remain a few public-houses which employ it,—as in Worship Street; at Cookham, Maidenhead; at Norton in the Moors, &c., whilst in Boss Street, Horsely Down, there is a variation in the form of the Bell and Griffin. From a handbill of Topham, the Strong Man,[371] we see that it was vulgarly called the King Astyages Arms, for no better reason than because King Astyages is the first name in the story: the incident related in the Book of Bel and the Dragon having taken place after his death.

PLATE XI.
HOLE IN THE WALL. (“Guide for Malt-Worms.” Circa 1720.)
STAR, OR BUSH. (MS., circa 1425.)	BARLEY MOW. (Hogarth’s print of Beer St.)	DOG AND DUCK. (In the brick wall of Bethlehem Hospital.)
FLYING HORSE. (“Guide for Malt-Worms.” Circa 1720.)

A very common sign of old, as well as at present, is the [Adam and Eve]. Our first parents were constant dramatis personæ in the mediæval mysteries and pageants, on which occasions, with the naïveté of those times, Eve used to come on the stage exactly in the same costume as she appeared to Adam before the Fall.[372] The sign was adopted by various trades, including the publishers of books, as we may see from the following quaint title:—

“A PROTESTANT Picture of Jesus Christ, drawn in Scripture colours, both for light to sinners and delight to saints. By Tho. Sympson, M.A., Preacher of the Word at London. Sold by Edw. Thomas at the Adam and Eve, in Little Britain. 1662.”

In Newgate Street there yet remains an old stone sign of the Adam and Eve, with the date 1669. Eve is represented handing the apple to Adam, the fatal tree is in the centre, round its stem the serpent winding. It was the arms of the fruiterers’ company.

There is still an Adam and Eve public-house in the High Street, Kensington, where Sheridan, on his way to and from Holland House, used to refresh himself, and in this way managed to run up rather a long bill, which Lord Holland had to pay for him. A still older place of public entertainment was the Adam and Eve Tea-gardens, in Tottenham Court Road, part of which was the last remaining vestige “of the once respectable, if not magnificent, manor-house appertaining to the Lords of Tottenhall.” Richardson, in 1819, said that the place had long been celebrated as a tea-garden; there was an organ in the long room, and the company was generally respectable, till the end of last century, when highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and low women, beginning to take a fancy to it, the magistrates interfered. The organ was banished, and the gardens were dug up for the foundation of Eden Street. In these gardens Lunardi came down after his unsuccessful balloon ascent from the Artillery ground, May 16, 1783. Hogarth has represented the Adam and Eve in the March of the Guards to Finchley. Upon the signboard of the house is inscribed, “Tottenham Court Nursery,” in allusion to Broughton’s Amphitheatre for Boxing, erected in this place. How amusing is this advertisement of the great Professor’s “Nursery:”—

“From the Gymnasium at Tottenham Court
on Thursday next at Twelve o’clock will begin:

A lecture on Manhood or Gymnastic Physiology, wherein the whole Theory and Practice of the Art of Boxing will be fully explained by various Operators on the animal Œconomy and the Principles of Championism, illustrated by proper Experiments on the Solids and Fluids of the Body; together with the True Method of investigating the Nature of all Blows, Stops, Cross Buttocks, etc., incident to Combatants. The whole leading to the most successful Method of beating a Man deaf, dumb, lame, and blind.

by Thomas Smallwood, A.M.,
Gymnasiast of St. Giles,
and
Thomas Dimmock, A.M.,
Athleta of Southwark,
(Both fellows of the Athletic Society.)

^*_*^* The Syllabus or Compendium for the use of students in Athleticks, referring to Matters explained in this Lecture, may be had of Mr Professor Broughton at the Crown in Market Lane, where proper instructions in the Art and Practice of Boxing are delivered without Loss of Eye or Limb to the student.”

The tree with the forbidden fruit, always represented in the sign of Adam and Eve, leads directly to the Flaming Sword, “which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” Being the first sword on record, it was not inappropriately a cutler’s sign, and as such we find it in the Banks Collection, on the shop-bill of a sword cutler in Sweeting’s Alley, Royal Exchange, 1780. It is less appropriate at the door of a public-house in Nottingham, for the landlord evidently cannot desire to keep anybody out, whether saint or sinner. The vessel by which the life of the first planter of the vine was preserved, certainly well deserves to decorate the tavern: hence Noah’s Ark is not an uncommon public-house sign, though it looks very like a sarcastic reflection on the mixed crowd that resort to the house,—not to escape the “heavy wet,” as the animals at the Deluge, but in order to obtain some of it. Toy-shops also constantly use it, since Noah’s Ark is generally the favourite toy of children. Evelyn, in 1644, mentions a shop near the Palais de Justice in Paris:

“Here is a shop called Noah’s Ark, where are sold all curiosities, natural or artificial, Indian or European, for luxury or use, as cabinets, shells, ivory, porcelain, dried fishes, insects, birds, pictures, and a thousand exotic extravagances.”[373]

The Deluge was one of the standard subjects of mediæval dramatic plays. In the third part of the Chester Whitsun plays, for instance, Noah and the Flood make a considerable item; and at a much later period the same subject was exhibited at Bartholomew Fair. A bill of the time of Queen Anne[374] informs us that—

“AT Crawley’s Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived, with the addition of Noah’s Flood; also several fountains playing water during the time of the play. The last scene presents Noah and his family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts, two by two, and all the fowls of the air, seen in a prospect, sitting upon trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen the sun rising in a most glorious manner: moreover, a multitude of angels will be seen, in a double rank, which presents a double prospect—one for the sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen 6 angels ringing of bells, etc.”

The Deluge was the mystery performed at Whitsuntide by the company of dyers in London, and from this their sign of the Dove and Rainbow might have originated, unless it were adopted by them on account of the various colours of the rainbow. On the bill of John Edwards, a silk-dyer in Aldersgate Street, the Dove, with an olive branch in her mouth, is represented flying underneath the Rainbow, over a landscape, with villages, fenced fields, and a gentleman in the costume of the reign of Charles II. Besides this there are various other dyers’ bills with the sign of the Dove and Rainbow, both among the Bagford and Banks Collections. A few public-houses at the present day still keep up the memory of the sign; there is one at Nottingham, and another in Leicester.

“Abraham Offering his Son” was the sign of a shop in Norwich in 1750. A stone bas-relief of the same subject (Le Sacrifice d’Abraham) is still remaining in the front of a house in the Rue des Prêtres, Lille, France. A Dutch wood-merchant, in the seventeenth century, also put up this sign, and illustrated its application by the following rhyme:—

“’T Hout is gehakt, opdat men ’t zou branden,
Daarom is dit in Abram’s Offerhande.”[375]

Thus, though the wood of the sacrifice played a very insignificant part in the story, yet the simple mention of it was enough to make it a fit subject for a Dutchman’s signboard. We have a similar instance in Jacob’s Well, which is common in London, as well as in the country. The allusion here is to the well at which Christ met the woman of Samaria, who said to him:

“ART thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.” (S. John iv. 12.)

How cruelly these words apply to the gin-tap, at which generation after generation drink, and after which they always thirst again. Not unlikely the English use of this sign dates from the Puritan period.[376] Not always, however, had the sign any direct relation to the trade of the inmate of the house which it adorned; as, for example, Moses and Aaron, which occurs on a trades token of Whitechapel. In allusion to this, or a similar sign, Tom Brown says, “Other amusements presented themselves as thick as hops, as Moses pictured with horns, to keep Cheapside in countenance.”[377] Even the Dutch shopkeeper, whose imagination was generally so fertile in finding a religious subject appropriate as his trade sign, was at a loss what to do with Moses; for a baker in Amsterdam, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of Moses, with this inscription:

“Moses wierd gevist in het water,
Die hier waar haalt krygt vry gist, een Paaschbrood,
En op Korstyd een Deuvekater.”[378]

In London, however, the use of this sign may at first have been suggested by the statues of Moses and Aaron that used to stand above the balcony of the Old Guildhall. Connected with the history of Moses, we find several other signs, one in particular, mentioned by Ned Ward as the Old Pharaoh in the town of Barley, in Cambridgeshire. It was so named, says he, “from a stout, elevating malt liquor of the same name, for which this house had been long famous.”[379] Why this beer was called Pharaoh, Ned Ward does not seem to have known; but a story in the county is current that it was so named because the beer, like the Egyptian king of old, “would not let the people go!” It is now no longer drunk in England, but a certain strong beer of the same name is still a favourite beverage in Belgium. Next, in chronological order, connected with the history of Moses, follows the [Brazen Serpent], the sign of Reynold Wolfe, a bookseller and printer in St Paul’s Churchyard, 1544, and also of both his apprentices, Henry Binneman and John Shepperde. It had probably been imported by the foreign printers, for it was a favourite amongst the early French and German booksellers. At the present day it is a public-house sign in Richardson Street, Bermondsey. What led to the adoption of this emblem was not the historical association, but the mystical meaning which it had in the middle ages:—

“A serpent torqued with a long cross; others blazon Christ, supporting the brazen serpent, because it was an anti-type of the passion and death of our Saviour; for as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (Num. xxi. 8, 9; John iii. 14,) that all that behold him, by a lively faith, may not perish, but have everlasting life. This is the cognizance or crest of every true believer.”[380]

The idea was no doubt borrowed from the Biblia Pauperum. The Balaam’s Ass, again, was one of the dramatis personæ in the Whitsuntide mystery of the company of cappers, (cap-makers,) and this is the only reason we can imagine for his having found his way to the signboard. It occurs in 1722 in a newspaper paragraph, concerning a child born without a stomach, the details of which are too nauseous to be introduced here.[381]

The [Two Spies] is the last sign belonging to the history of Moses; it represents two of the spies that went into Canaan, “and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff,” (Num. xiii. 23.) This bunch of grapes made it a favourite with publicans; at many places it may still be seen, as in Catherine Street, Strand, (a house of old standing;) in Long Acre, &c. In Great Windmill Street, Leicester Square, it has been corrupted into the Three Spies.

After Moses there is a blank until we come to Samson, to whom our national admiration for athletic sports and muscular strength has given a prominent place on the signboard. Samson and the Lion occurs on the sign of various houses in London in the seventeenth century, as appears from the trades tokens. It is still of frequent occurrence in country towns, as at Dudley, Coventry, &c. It was also used on the Continent. In Paris there is, or was, not many years ago, a della Robbia ware medallion sign in the Rue des Dragons, with the legend “le Fort Samson,” representing the strong man tearing open the lion. To a sign of Samson at Dordrecht, in the seventeenth century, the following satirical inscription had been added:—

“Toen Samson door zyn kracht de leeuw belemmen kon,
De Philistynen sloeg, de vossen overwon.
Wiert hy nog door een Vrouw van zyn gezigt beroofd,
Gelooft geen vrouw dan of zy moet zyn zonder hoofd.”[382]

This admiration of strong men, which procured the signboard honours to Samson, also made Goliah, or Golias, a great favourite. In the Horse Market, Castle Barnard, he is actually treated just like a duke, admiral, or any other public-house hero, for there the sign is entitled the Goliah Head. Some doubts, however, may be entertained whether by Golias or Goliah, (for the name is spelt both ways,) the Philistine giant and champion was always intended. Towards the end of the twelfth century there lived a man of wit, with the real or assumed name of Golias, who wrote the “Apocalypsis Goliæ,” and other burlesque verses. He was the leader of a jovial sect called Goliardois, of which Chaucer’s Miller was one. “He was a jangler and a goliardeis.” Such a person might, therefore, have been a very appropriate tutelary deity for an alehouse.[383]

Goliah’s conqueror, King David, liberally shared the honours with his victim, and he still figures on various signboards. There is a King David’s inn in Bristol, and a David and Harp in Limehouse; whilst in Paris, the Rue de la Harpe is said to owe its name to a sign of King David playing on the harp. David’s unfortunate son, Absalom, was a peruke-maker’s very expressive emblem, both in France and in England, to show the utility of wigs. Thus a barber at a town in Northamptonshire used this inscription:

“Absalom, hadst thou worn a perriwig, thou hadst not been hanged.”

Which a brother peruke-maker versified, under a sign representing the death of Absalom, with David weeping. He wrote up thus:

“Oh Absalom! oh Absalom!
Oh Absalom! my son,
If thou hadst worn a perriwig,
Thou hadst not been undone.”

Psalm xlii. seems to be very profanely hinted at in the sign of the White Hart and Fountain, Royal Mint Street, which, if not a combination of two well-known signs, apparently alludes to the words, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” The Panting Hart (het dorstige Hert, or het Heigent Hert,) was formerly a very common beer-house sign in Holland. In the seventeenth century there was one with the following inscription at Amsterdam:—

“Gelyk het hert by frisch water sig komt te verblyden,
Komt also in myn huys om u van dorst te bevryden.”[384]

Another one at Leyden had the following rhyme:—

“Gelyk een hart van jagen moe lust te drinken water rein,
Also verkoopt men hier tot versterking van de maag, toebak, bier en Brandewyn.”[385]

The wise king Solomon does not appear to have ever been honoured with a signboard portrait, but his enthusiastic admirer, the Queen of Saba, figured before the tavern kept by Dick Tarlton the jester, in Gracechurch Street. This Queen of Saba, or Sheba, was a usual figure in pageants. There is a letter of Secretary Barlow, in “Nugæ Antiquæ,” telling how the Queen of Sheba fell down and upset her casket in the lap of the King of Denmark—when on his drunken visit to James I.—who “got not a little defiled with the presents of the queen; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverages, cakes, spices, and other good matters.”

Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” has a very ingenious explanation for the sign of the Bell Savage, as derived from the Queen of Saba, which though non è vero, ma ben trovato. He bases his argument on a poem of the fourteenth century, the “Romaunce of Kyng Alisaundre,” wherein the Queen of Saba is thus mentioned:—

“In heore lond is a cité,
On of the noblest in Christianté,
Hit hotith Sabba in langage,
Thence cam Sibely Savage.
Of all the world the fairest queene,
To Jerusalem Salomon to seone.
For hire fair head and for hire love,
Salomon forsok his God above.”[386]

Elisha’s Raven, represented with a chop in his mouth, is the sign of a butcher in the Borough,—a curious conceit, and certainly his own invention; at least we do not remember any other instance of the sign. This tribute is certainly very disinterested in the butcher, for if there were any such ravens now, it is probable that they would sadly interfere with the trade.

Few signs have undergone so many changes as the well-known Salutation. Originally it represented the angel saluting the Virgin Mary, in which shape it was still occasionally seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as appears from the tavern token of Daniel Grey of Holborn. In the times of the Commonwealth, however, “sacrarum ut humanarum rerum, heu! vicissitudo est,” the Puritans changed it into the Soldier and Citizen, and in such a garb it continued long after, with this modification, that it was represented by two citizens politely bowing to each other. The Salutation Tavern in Billingsgate shows it thus on its trades token, and so it was represented by the Salutation Tavern in Newgate Street, (an engraving of which sign may still be seen in the parlour of that old established house.) At present it is mostly rendered by two hands conjoined, as at the Salutation Hotel, Perth, where a label is added with the words, “You’re welcome to the city.” That Salutation Tavern in Billingsgate was a famous place in Ben Jonson’s time; it is named in “Bartholomew Fayre” as one of the houses where there had been

“Great sale and utterance of wine,
Besides beere and ale, and ipocras fine.”

During the civil war there was a Salutation Tavern in Holborn, in which the following ludicrous incident happened,—if we may believe the Royalist papers:—

“A hotte combat lately happened at the Salutation Taverne in Holburne, where some of the Commonwealth vermin, called soldiers, had seized on an Amazonian Virago, named Mrs Strosse, upon suspicion of being a loyalist, and selling the Man in the Moon; but shee, by applying beaten pepper to their eyes, disarmed them, and with their own swordes forced them to aske her forgiveness; and down on their mary bones, and pledge a health to the king, and confusion to their masters, and so honourablie dismissed them. Oh! for twenty thousand such gallant spirits; when you see that one woman can beat two or three.”[387]

At the end of the last century there was a Salutation Tavern in Tavistock Row, called also “Mr Bunch’s,” which was one of the elegant haunts, patronised by “the first gentleman of Europe,” otherwise the Prince Regent. Lord Surrey and Sheridan were generally his associates in these escapades. The trio went under the pseudonyms of Blackstock, Greystock, and Thinstock, and disguised in bob wigs and smockfrocks. The night’s entertainment generally concluded with thrashing the “Charlies,” wrenching off knockers, breaking down signboards, and not unfrequently with being taken to the roundhouse.

The Salutation in Newgate Street, some time called the Salutation and Cat, (a combination of two signs,) was haunted by many of the great authors of the last century. There is a poetical invitation extant to a social feast held at this tavern, January 19, 17356, issued by the two stewards, Edward Cave (of the Gentleman’s Magazine,) and William Bowyer, the antiquary and printer:—

“Saturday, January 17, 17356.

“Sir,

You’re desired on Monday next to meet,
At Salutation Tavern, Newgate Street,
Supper will be on table just at eight.
(Stewards) one of St John, [Bowyer,] t’other of St John’s Gate, [Cave.]”

Richardson the novelist was one of the invités. He returned a poetical answer, too long to quote at length: the following is part of it:—

“For me, I’m much concern’d I cannot meet
At Salutation Tavern, Newgate Street.
Your notice, like your verse, (so sweet and short!)
[266] If longer I’d sincerely thank’d you for it.
Howev’r, receive my wishes, sons of verse!
May every man who meets your praise rehearse!
May mirth as plenty crown your cheerful board!
And every one part happy, —— as a lord!
That when at home by such sweet verses fir’d,
Your families may think you all inspir’d.
So wishes he, who, pre-engag’d can’t know
The pleasures that would from your meeting flow.”

In this tavern Coleridge the poet, in one of his melancholy moods, lived for some time in seclusion, until found out by Southey, and persuaded by him to return to his usual mode of life. Sir T. N. Talfourd, in his Life of Charles Lamb, informs us that here Coleridge was in the habit of meeting Lamb when in town on a visit from the University. Christ’s Hospital, their old school, was within a few paces of the place:—

“When Coleridge quitted the University and came to town, full of mantling hopes and glorious schemes, Lamb became his admiring disciple. The scene of these happy meetings was a little public-house called the Salutation and Cat, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, where they used to sup, and remain long after they had ‘heard the chimes of midnight.’ There they discoursed of Bowles, who was the god of Coleridge’s poetical idolatry, and of Burns and Cowper, who of recent poets—in that season of comparative barrenness—had made the deepest impression on Lamb; there Coleridge talked of ‘fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,’ to one who desired ‘to find no end’ of the golden maze; and there he recited his early poems with that deep sweetness of intonation which sunk into the heart of his hearers. To these meetings Lamb was accustomed, at all periods of his life, to revert, as the season when his finer intellects were quickened into action. Shortly after they had terminated, with Coleridge’s departure from London, he thus recalled them in a letter:—‘When I read in your little volume your nineteenth effusion, or what you call “The Sigh,” I think I hear you again. I imagine to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy.’ This was early in 1769, and in 1818, when dedicating his works—then first collected—to his earliest friend, he thus spoke of the same meetings:—‘Some of the sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct—the memory “of summer days and of delightful years,” even so far back as those old suppers at our old inn—when life was fresh and topics exhaustless—and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.’”

The Angel was derived from the Salutation, for that it originally represented the angel appearing to the Holy Virgin at the Salutation or Annunciation, is evident from the fact that, even as late as the seventeenth century on nearly all the trades tokens of houses with this sign, the Angel is represented with a scroll in his hands; and this scroll we know, from the evidence of paintings and prints, to contain the words addressed by the angel to the Holy Virgin: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.” Probably at the Reformation it was considered too Catholic a sign, and so the Holy Virgin was left out, and the angel only retained. Among the famous houses with this sign, the well-known starting-place of the Islington omnibuses stands foremost. It is said to have been an established inn upwards of two hundred years. The old house was pulled down in 1819; till that time it had preserved all the features of a large country inn, a long front, overhanging tiled roof, with a square inn-yard having double galleries supported by columns and carved pilasters, with caryatides and other ornaments. It is more than probable that it had often been used as a place for dramatic entertainments at the period when inn-yards were customarily employed for such purposes. “Even so late as fifty years since it was customary for travellers approaching London, to remain all night at the Angel Inn, Islington, rather than venture after dark to prosecute their journey along ways which were almost equally dangerous from their bad state, and their being so greatly infested with thieves.”[388] On the other hand, persons walking from the city to Islington in the evening, waited near the end of John Street, in what is now termed Northampton Street, (but was then a rural avenue planted with trees,) until a sufficient party had collected, who were then escorted by an armed patrol appointed for that purpose. Another old tavern with this sign is extant in London, behind St Clement’s Church in the Strand. To this house Bishop Hooper was taken by the Guards, on his way to Gloucester, where he went to be burnt, in January 1555. The house, until lately, preserved much of its ancient aspect: it had a pointed gable, galleries, and a lattice in the passage. This inn is named in the following curious advertisement:—

“TO BE SOLD, a Black Girl, the property of J. B——, eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks French perfectly well; is of excellent temper and willing disposition. Inquire of W. Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement’s Church, in the Strand.”—Publick Advertiser, March 28, 1769.

Older than either of these is the Angel Inn, at Grantham. This building was formerly in the possession of the Knights Templars, and still retains many remains of its former beauty, particularly the gateway, with the heads of Edward III. and his queen Philippa of Hainault on either side of the arch; the soffits of the windows are elegantly groined, and the parapet of the front is very beautiful. Kings have been entertained in this house; but it seemed to bring ill luck to them, for the reigns of those that are recorded as having been guests in it, stand forth in history as disturbed by violent storms—King John held his court in it on February 23, 1213; King Richard III. on October 19, 1483; and King Charles I. visited it May 17, 1633.

Ben Jonson, it is said, used to visit a tavern with the sign of the Angel, at Basingstoke, kept by a Mrs Hope, whose daughter’s name was Prudence. On one of his journeys, finding that the house had changed both sign and mistresses, Ben wrote the following smart but not very elegant epigram:—

“When Hope and Prudence kept this house, the Angel kept the door,
Now Hope is dead, the Angel fled, and Prudence turned a w——.”

The Angel was the sign of one of the first coffee-houses in England, for Anthony Wood tells us that, “in 1650 Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house at the Angel, in the parish of St Peter, Oxon; and there it [coffee] was by some, who delight in noveltie, drank.” Finally, there was an Angel Tavern in Smithfield, where the famous Joe Miller, of joking fame—a comic actor by profession—used to play during Bartholomew Fair time. A playbill of 1722 informs the public in large letters that—

“Miller is not with Pinkethman, but by himself, at the Angel Tavern, next door to the King’s Bench, who acts a new Droll, called the Faithful Couple or the Royal Shepherdess, with a very pleasant entertainment between Old Hob and his Wife, and the comical humours of Mopsy and Collin, with a variety of singing and dancing.

“The only Comedian now that dare,
Vie with the world and challenge the Fair.”

In France, also, the sign of the Angel is and was at all times, very common. The Hotel de l’Ange, Rue de la Huchette, appears to have been the best hotel in Paris in the sixteenth century. It was frequently visited by foreign ambassadors: those sent by Emperor Maximilian to Louis XII. took up their abode here; so did the ambassadors from Angus, King of Achaia, who, in 1552, came to see France, much in the same way as various ambassadors from all sorts of high and low latitudes occasionally honour our Court with a visit. Chapelle, a French poet of the seventeenth century, thus celebrates a tavern with this sign in Paris, frequented by the wits of the period:—

“Je n’ay pas vu vostre theâtre
Qu’aussitot je ressors de là,
Pour un Ange que j’idolâtre,
A cause du bon vin qu’il a.”[389]

There being, then, such a profusion of Angels everywhere, it became necessary to make some distinctions, and the usual means were adopted; the Angel was gilded, and called the Golden Angel; this, for instance, was the sign of Ellis Gamble, a goldsmith in Cranbourn Alley, Hogarth’s master in the art of engraving on silver; shop-bills engraved for this house by Hogarth are still in existence. Another variety was the Guardian Angel, which is still the sign of an ale-house at Yarmouth. This, too, was used in France, as we find l’Ange Gardien, the sign of Pierre Witte, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in the seventeenth century.

Very common, also, were the Three Angels, which may have been intended for the three angels that appeared to Abraham, or simply the favourite combination of three,[390] so frequent on the signboard and in heraldry. That three angels were thought to possess mysterious power, is evident from the following Devonshire charm for a burn:—

“Three Angels came from the north, east, and west,
One brought fire, another ice,
And the third brought the Holy Ghost,
So out fire—and in frost—
In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

The [Three Angels] was a very general linen-draper’s sign, for which there seems no reason other than that the long flowing garments in which they are generally represented, suggest their having been good customers to the drapery business.

Angels appear in combination with various heterogenous objects, in many of which, however, the so-called Angel is simply a Cupid. The Angel and Bible was a sign in the Poultry in 1680.[391] The Angel and Crown was a not uncommon tavern decoration. The following stanza from a pamphlet, entitled, “The Quack Vintners,” London, 1712, p. 18, shows the way in which this sign was represented:—

“May Harry’s Angel be a sign he draws
Angelick nectar, that deserves applause,
Such that may make the city love the Throne,
And, like his Angel, still support the Crown.”

From this we learn it was a Cupid or Amorino supporting a crown; the sign of the house had doubtless originally been the Crown, and the Cupid, so common in the Renaissance style, had been added by way of ornament, but was mistaken by the public as a constituent of the sign. The verses probably applied to the Angel and Crown, a famous tavern in Broad Street, behind the Royal Exchange. There was another Angel and Crown in Islington, where convivial dinners were held in the olden time. It was a common practice in the last and preceding centuries for the natives of a county or parish to meet once a year and dine together. The ceremony often commenced by a sermon, preached by a native, after which the day was spent in pleasant conviviality, after-dinner speeches, and mutual congratulations. The custom now has almost died out; but this is one of the invitation tickets:

St Mary, Islington.

Sir,

You are desidered to meet many other Natives of this place on Tuesday [271]y^e 11th day of April 1738 at Mrs Eliz. Grimstead’s y^e Angel and Crown, in y^e Upper Street, about y^e hour of One; Then and there w^th Full Dishes, Good Wine and Good Humour to improve and make lasting that Harmony and Friendship which have so long reigned among us.

Walter Sebbon.
John Booth.
Bourchier Durrell.
James Sebbon.
Stewards.

N.B. The Dinner will be on the table peremptorily at Two.
Pray pay the Bearer Five Shillings.

That same year, another Angel and Crown Tavern in Shire Lane obtained an unenviable notoriety, for it was there that a Mr Quarrington was murdered and robbed by Thomas Carr, an attorney from the Temple, and Elisabeth Adams. They were hanged at Tyburn, January 18, 1738.

The [Angel and Gloves] at first sight seems a whimsical combination, but is easily explained when we advert to the woodcut above the shop-bill of Isaac Dalvy, in Little Newport Street, Soho, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, sold gloves, &c., under this sign, which simply represented two Cupids, each carrying a glove,—in fact, exactly the same conceit as that of the Herculanese shoemaker, noticed in a former chapter. It is more difficult to find a rational explanation for the Angel and Stilliards. The Steelyard, or Stilliard, in Upper Thames Street, was the place where the Hanse merchants exposed their goods for sale, and was so called from the king’s steelyard, or beam, there erected for weighing the tonnage of goods imported into London.[392] Whether this sign represented a Cupid with such a weighing machine, or a view of the hall of the Hanse merchants, with a Fame flying over it, is now impossible to decide. It may be suggested that a variation of the well-known figure of Justice, with steelyards in place of the usual scales, was the origin. Be this as it may, the only mention we have found of the sign is in the following advertisement:—

“WILLIAM DEVAL, at the Angel & Stilliards, in St Ann’s Lane, near Aldersgate, London, maketh Castle (Castille), Marble, and white Sope as good as any Marseilles Sope; Tryed and Proved and sold at very Reasonable Rates.”[393]—Domestic Intelligencer, January 2d, 1679.

A few years later we find the Angel and Still noticed, as in the following advertisement:—

“A WELL-SET Negro, commonly called Sugar, aged about twenty years, teeth broke before, and several scars in both his cheeks and forehead, having absented from his Master, whosoever secures him and gives notice to Benjamin Maynard, at the Angel and Still, at Deptford, shall have a Guinea Reward and reasonable charges.”—Weekly Journal, October 18, 1718.

In this case the still was simply added to intimate the sale of spirituous liquors.

The Angel and Sun, apparently a combination of two signs, is named as a shop or tavern near Strandbridge, in 1663,[394] and is still the name of a public-house in the Strand. The Angel and Woolpack, at Bolton, is the same sign which, near London Bridge, is called the Naked Boy and Woolpack. A woolpack, with a negro seated on it, was at one time very common; for a change or distinction, this negro underwent the reputed impossible process of being washed white, and thus became a naked boy, which, in signboard phraseology, is equivalent to an angel.

The Virgin was unquestionably a very common sign before the Reformation, and it may be met with even at the present day, as, for instance, at Ebury Hill, Worcester, and in various other places. In France it was, and is still, much more common than in England, as might be expected. Tallemant des Réaux tells of a miraculous tavern sign of Notre Dame, on the bridge of that name, in Paris, which was observed by the faithful to cry and shed tears, probably on account of the bad company she had to harbour. It was taken down by order of the archbishop. At the end of the seventeenth century there was, in the Rue de la Seine, Paris, a quack doctor, who pretended to cure a great variety of complaints. He put up a holy Virgin for his sign, with the words, “Refugium Peccatorum,” which is one of the usual epithets of the holy Virgin in the Roman Catholic Church service, very wittily, although profanely, applied in this instance. The sign of the Virgin was also called Our Lady, as: “Newe Inne was a guest Inne, the sign whereof was the picture of our Lady, and thereupon it was also called Our Lady’s Inne.”[395] Our Lady of Pity was the sign of Johan Redman, a bookseller in Paternoster Row, in 1542. Johan Byddell, also a bookseller, had introduced this sign in the beginning of that century. This Byddell, or Bedel, (who lived in Fleet Street, next to Fleet Bridge,) had evidently borrowed it from a nearly similar figure in Corio’s History of Milan, 1505. He afterwards lived at the Sun, in Fleet Street, the house formerly occupied by Wynkyn de Worde.

The prevalence of the Baptist’s Head probably dated from the time when pilgrimages across the sea were considered good works, and the head of St John the Baptist at Amiens Cathedral came in for a large share of visits from English worshippers. The old monkish writers say that in 448 after Christ, the head was found in Jerusalem; in 1206 it was transferred to Amiens, where it was kept in a salver of gold, surrounded with a rim of pearls and precious stones.[396] Various other reasons may be adduced for the prevalence of this sign, as the conspicuous place occupied by St John in the Roman Catholic hagiology, and hence in mediæval plays and mysteries; the festivities of Midsummer, (a day of great moment in London for setting the watch;) and, finally, his being the patron saint of the Knights of Jerusalem. It was doubtless in compliment to those knights that the Baptist’s Head in St John’s Lane, Clerkenwell, was named. This house seems to be the remainder of some noble mansion of Queen Elizabeth’s time; it contains many Elizabethan ornaments, particularly a chimney-piece, with the coats of arms of the Radcliff and Forster families. When the house was adapted to its present purpose, it was distinguished by the head of St John the Baptist in a charger, now gone. Doctor Johnson is said to have been an occasional visitor here, when returning from Edward Cave’s, the editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, whose office was close by at St John’s Gate. Goldsmith is also reported to have made frequent calls here, when business of a similar nature led him to the same spot. In later years it became the house of call of the prisoners on their way to the new prison in the parish—a circumstance commemorated by Dodd in the “Old Bailey Registers.” Another St John’s Head is mentioned by Stow in the following accident:—

“The 11th of July (1553) Gilbert Pot, drawer to Ninion Saunders, vintner, dwelling at St John’s Head within Ludgate, who was accused by the said Saunders, his maister, was set on the pillory in Cheape, with both his ears nailed and cleane cut off, for wordes speaking at the time of the proclamation of Lady Jane; at which execution was a trumpet bloune and a herault in his coat of armes redd his offence, in presence of William Garrard, one of the Sheriffes of London. About 5 of the clocke the same day, in the afternoone, Ninion Saunders, master to the said Gilbert Pot, and John Owen, a gunmaker, both gunners of the Tower, comming from the Tower of London by water in a whirrie and shooting London Bridge, towards the Black Fryers, were drowned at S. Mary Loch[397] and the whirry-man saved by their oars.”

To this same saint also refers the John of Jerusalem, a sign at the present day in Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, put up, like the Baptist Head, in remembrance of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who formerly had their priory in this locality.

In France this sign was equally common. Jean Carcain, one of the early Parisian publishers and printers, (1487,) adopted it for his shop. One of his books has the following quaint impress:—

“Parisii Sancti Pons est Michaelis in Urbe;
Multae illic aedes; notior una tamen;
Hanc cano, quae Sacri Baptistae fronte notata est
Hic respondebit Bibliopola tibi;
Vis impressoris nomen quoque nosse? Joannis
Carcain nomen ei est. Ne pete plura, Vale.”[398]

It was an old signboard jocularity in France to represent St John the Baptist by a monkey with cambric (batiste) ruffles and wristbands, (singe en batiste.) From the parables the sign of the Good Samaritan was borrowed, which, even at the present day, may be seen in Turner Street, Whitechapel; Grimshaw Park, Blackburn, &c. When barbers combined with their trade the practice of letting blood—otherwise than by “easy shaving,”—of drawing teeth, and setting bones, they frequently adopted this sign. In the seventeenth century, a barber-surgeon at Leeuwarden, in Holland, wrote under his device of the Good Samaritan the following poetical effusion:—

“Gelyk den Wyn, fyn,
Dryft zorgen uit der herten
Zoo geneest Medicyn, pyn,
En ontlast van Smarten.”[399]

The Samaritan Woman (la Samaritaine) is the French version of our Jacob’s Well, and was a common sign in Paris; everybody knows the Bains de la Samaritaine, in which the luxurious Parisian indulges in a fresh water bath in his Seine, which at that place is about as clear as the Thames at Blackwall. In the Rue Caquerel at Rouen there is a stone bas-relief of the Samaritan woman at the well, with the date 1580. Jacques Dupuy, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, also used the Samaritan woman as his sign, evidently because it was a subject in which he could introduce a well, and so have the satisfaction of punning on his name. This kind of pun was none the less relished for being far-fetched; thus there is a stone bas-relief in the Rue Froid, at Caen, of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, (la Pêche Miraculeuse,) which, in the early part of the seventeenth century, was placed there by a bookseller of the name of Poisson, (Fish,) who, being an “odd fish,” adopted this sign as a pun on his own name. At the present day, the house is still inhabited by a bookseller of the same name and family.

Christ’s Passion does not seem to have suggested any signs in England, although the great symbol of His death, the [Cross], was comparatively common. In Paris there was, in 1640, a bookseller, George Josse, in the Rue St Jacques, who had the Crown of Thorns (la Couronne d’Epine) for his sign, probably on account of the original Crown of Thorns being one of the relics kept at Paris. Coryatt’s remarks on this relic are rather amusing:—

“They report in Paris that the Thorny Crown, wherewith Christ was crowned on the Crosse, is kept in the Palace, which vpon Corpus Christi Day, in the afternoone, was publickly shewed, as some told me; but it was not my chance to see it. Truely, I wonder to see the contrarieties amongst the Papists, and most ridiculous varieties concerning their reliques, but especially about this of Christ’s Thorny Crowne. For whereas I was after that at the Citie of Vicenza in Italy, it was told me that in the monastery of the Dominican Fryers of that Citie, this Crowne was kept, which Saint Lewes, King of France, bestowed upon his brother Bartholomew, Bishop of Vicenza, and before one of the Dominican family. Wherefore I went to the Dominican Monastery and made suit to see it, but I had the repulse; for they told me that it was kept vnder three or four lockes, and neuer shewed to any by any favour whatsoeuer, but only upon Corpus Christi Day. If this Crowne of Paris, whereof they so much bragge, be true, that of Vicenza is false. Ho! the truth and certainty of Papistical reliques.”[400]

Crosses of various colours were probably amongst the first signs put up by the newly-converted Christians, (as soon as they could effect this with impunity,) on account of the recommendation of the early fathers, and for their beneficial influence. Father Lactantius, who lived in the fourth century, writes—“As Christ, whilst He lived amongst men, put the devils to flight by His words, and restored those to their senses whom these evil spirits had possessed; so now His followers in the name of their Master, and by the sign of His passion, even exercise the same dominion over them.” St Ephrem says—“Let us paint and imprint on our doors the life-giving cross; thus defended no evil will hurt you.” St Chrysostom says the same—“Wherefore let us with earnestness impress this cross on our houses, and on our walls, and our windows.” St Cyril of Alexandria introduces the Emperor Julian the apostate saying, “You Christians adore the wood of the cross, you engrave it on the porches of your houses,” &c. Hence the still prevalent custom in Roman Catholic places of painting crosses on the walls of houses, to drive away witches, as it is said; and these crosses being painted in different colours, might easily serve as a sign by which to designate the house. At the Crusades the popularity of this emblem increased: a red cross was the badge of the Crusader, and would be put up as a sign by men who had been to the Holy Land, or wished to court the patronage of those on their way thither. Finally, the different orders of knighthood settled each upon a particular colour as their distinctive mark. Thus the knights of St John wore white crosses, the Templars red crosses, the knights of St Lazarus green crosses, the Teutonic knights black crosses, embroidered with gold, &c. But the most common in England was the red cross, which was the cross of St George, and also of the red cross knights, who acted as a sort of police on the roads between Europe and the Holy Land to protect pilgrims. This badge, therefore, could not fail to be very popular.

In France it used to be, and in all probability is still, a common rebus to see le signe de la croix represented by a swan with a cross on his back, (cygne de la croix.)

Only very few signs of the cross are now remaining. The Golden Cross in the Strand is one of these, and has been in that locality for centuries. It was one of the first upon which the Puritans brooked their ill-humour and hatred of popery; for in 1643 it was taken down by order of a committee from the House of Commons, as “superstitious and idolatrous.” This was the precursor of the fall of old Charing Cross itself. The sign, however, was put up again at the Restoration, and figures prominently in Canaletti’s well-known view of Charing Cross, in the Northumberland Collection. The tavern was probably pulled down at the formation of Trafalgar Square.

At a point on the road between Dunchurch and Daventry, where three roads meet, there was formerly an inn with the sign of the Three Crosses, in allusion to the three roads. Swift, in one of his pedestrian excursions, happened to stop at that inn. Not being very elegantly dressed, and rather importunate to be served, the landlady told him that she could not leave her customers for “such as he,” upon which the Dean, who was not the most modest, nor the most patient of men, wrote the following epigram on one of the windows:—

“TO THE LANDLORD.
There hang three crosses at thy door,
Hang up thy wife and she’ll make four.”

The Resurrection was the sign of John Day, a bookseller, who, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, dwelt in St Sepulchre’s parish, a little above Holbourne Conduit. It was a sort of conundrum or charade on his name, which was carried out by his colophon, representing a man asleep, who is wakened by another with the words, “Arise, for it is day.” This, although somewhat profane, according to our present notions of such things, was nothing strange in a time when the people, though Protestants by name, were still strongly imbued with Roman Catholic ideas. John Cawoode, also a printer and publisher of St Paul’s Churchyard in 1558, had a still more profane sign—viz., the Holy Ghost. And this even continued till the beginning of the seventeenth century, for in 1602 we find this identical sign used by another printer, William Leake, who was probably his successor, and published in that year Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” Worse still was the sign of another bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1520, which was the Trinity.[401] We must bear in mind, however, that in Roman Catholic countries conversation upon matters of religion is not nearly so strict and guarded as amongst believers in Protestant nations. An amusing instance of this once occurred to the writer in Jerusalem, the great head-quarters of Christianity. Usually the pilgrims or travellers staying at the Latin convent there, which serves as an hotel, dine all together in a kind of table-d’hôte fashion; but for some reason it so fell out that our party one day dined in private. The holy brother who attended us happened to be a Spaniard, and as we had visited that country, and were tolerably acquainted with Valladolid, his native town, worldly recollections began to overcome the sanctity of the good monk, and he became inexhaustible in reminiscences of his younger days. Whilst talking with him, and refreshing ourselves with a meal of salad, grown in the garden of Gethsemane, we had indulged in two tumblers of a pithy white wine, quite strong enough to justify our resisting the pressing invitations of the reverend butler to take a third glass; but the jovial monk was not to be beaten, and finally convinced us with the following argument: “Oh come, brother, you must take another glass, remember you are in Jerusalem, and so take one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost!”

Although the English ale and refreshment houses continue to select fresh signs from the notabilities of the hour, the Palmerston’s Head and the Gladstone Arms for instance, they rarely choose anything of a religious or devotional cast. One instance, however, occurs to us, and that in the neighbourhood of London, which deserves mention. In Kentish Town, under the Hampstead hills, the noisiest and most objectionable public-house in the district bears the significant sign of the Gospel Oak. It is the favourite resort of navvies and quarrelsome shoemakers, and took its name, not from any inclination to piety on the part of the landlord, but from an old oak tree in the neighbourhood, near the boundary line of Hampstead and St Pancras parishes, a relic of the once general custom of reading a portion of the gospel under certain trees in the parish perambulations, equivalent to “beating the bounds.” “The boundaries and township of the parish of Wolverhampton are,” says Shaw, in his “History of Staffordshire,” (vol. ii., p. 165,) “in many points marked out by what are called Gospel Trees;” and Herrick, in his “Hesperides,” (Ed. 1859, p. 26,) says:—

“Dearest, bury me
Under that holy oak, or gospel tree;
Where, though thou see’st not, thou may’st think upon
Me, when thou yeerly go’st procession.”

The old Kentish Town Gospel Oak was removed a short time since, but not until it had given a name to the surrounding fields, to a village, (Oak village,) and to a chapel, as well as to the public-house alluded to.

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[366] New Essays and Characters, by John Stephens the younger, of Lincoln’s Inn, Gent. London, 1631, p. 221.

[367] Randle Holme, “Academy of Armour and Blazon,” p. 52.

[368] Postman, Feb. 1-3, 1711.

[369] “Notandum quoq. eius (pavonis) carnem quod D. Augustinus quoq., lib. xxi. de civitate Dei, cap. iii., et Isidorus, lib. xii., affirmant non putrescere.”—Camerarius, Centur., iii. 20, 1697. How to make this agree with Skelton’s idea it is not very easy to explain—

“Then sayd the Pecocke,
All ye well wot,
I sing not musycal,
For my breast is decay’d.”—Skelton’s Armory of Birds.

[370] See Fosbrooke’s Encyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 673.

[371] For particulars of [Topham], the Strong Man, see under [Historical Signs].

[372] This statement is made on the authority of Hone, in his “Ancient Mysteries.” Doubts, however, have been expressed as to the accuracy of his data upon this particular subject.

[373] Diary of John Evelyn, Feb. 3, 1684.

[374] Bagford Collection, Bib. Harl., 5931.

[375]

“The wood is cut in order to be burned,
Therefore is this Abraham’s sacrifice.”

[376] Jacob’s Inn is mentioned by Hatton, 1708, “on the east side of Red Cross Street near the middle.”

[377] “Amusements for the Meridian of London,” 1706.

[378]

“Moses was found in the water.
Whosoever purchases his bread here shall have yeast for nought,
Besides a currant-loaf at Easter, and a spice-cake at Christmas time.”

[379] “A Step to Stirbitch Fair,” 1708.

[380] Randle Holme, B. ii., ch. xviii.

[381] Weekly Journal, August 4, 1722.

[382]

“Though Samson by his strength could overcome the lion,
Defeat the Philistines and master the foxes,
Yet a woman deprived him of his sight;
Never, therefore, believe a woman unless she has no head.”

This alludes to the Good Woman, described [elsewhere] in this work.

Samson’s history was not only painted on the signboard, but also sung in ballads, “to the tune of the Spanish Pavin.” Amongst the Roxburgh ballads (vol. i. fol. 366) there is one entitled “A most excellent and famous ditty of Sampson, judge of Israel, how hee wedded a Philistyne’s daughter, who at length forsooke him; also how hee slew a lyon and propounded a riddle, and after how hee was falsely betrayed by Dalila, and of his death.”

[383] See Bibliographia Britannica, voce Golias, and Wright’s History of Caricature.

[384]

“Like to the hart which comes to the water brook to refresh himself,
So you enter my house to quench your thirst.”

[385] The first six words are literally the beginning of the psalm in the Dutch version,—

“Like a hart the hunt escaped, wishes for the limpid water brooks,
So there is here tobacco, beer, and brandy for sale to strengthen the stomach.”

[386] For the true origin of this sign, see under [Miscellaneous Signs].

[387] A Royalist paper, entitled, “The Man in the Moon discovering a world of wickedness under the Sun,” July 4, 1649.

[388] Cromwell’s History of Clerkenwell, p. 32.

[389] “As soon as I had seen your theatre I left it, to go to an Angel whom I adore on account of his good wine.”

[390] Even in the most remote periods of history three was considered a mystic number, and regarded with reverence. The Assyrians had their triads. In Ancient Egypt every town or district had its own triad, which it worshipped, and which was a union of certain attributes, the third member proceeding from the other two. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, in his “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. iv., ch. xii., p. 230, mentions a stone with the words “one Bail, one Athor, one Akori, hail father of the world, hail triformous God.” Thoms, in his “Dissertation on Ancient Chinese Vases,” says:—“The Chinese have a remarkable preference for the number three; they say one produced two, two produced three, and three produced all things. There is something remarkable in this last phrase; perhaps it conveys an indistinct idea of the Trinity. The Buddhists, who are of modern date in China, use the term ‘the three precious ones’—‘the Deity that has ruled, the ruling Deity, and the Deity that shall rule.’ The Taore sect have also their ‘three pure ones.’ The number three has many associations, as the three bonds—a prince and minister, father and son, husband and wife; the three superintendents—the treasurer, judge, and collector of customs; the three powers—heaven, earth, and man,” &c. In the Hindoo religion combinations of three are equally frequent: they have several trimustis or trinities; three principal deities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahadeva; another triad is Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, or matter, spirit, and destruction; there are three plaited locks on the head of Radha, representing a mystical union of three principal rivers, Ganges, Yamuna, and Sarawati. Siva has three eyes; the sun is called three-bodied; the triangle with the Hindoos is a favourite type for the triune co-equality, hence the pentagram (a figure composed of two equilateral triangles, placed with the apex of the one towards the base of the other, and so forming six triangles by the intersections of their sides) is in great favour with them; further, they use three mystic letters to denote their deity; have 3 × 7 hells, (seven is also a mystic number with them and other ancient races,) and many other combinations of three. The same preference for this number is observable in the Greek and Roman mythology, which mentions three theocraties, three graces, three fates, three harpies, three syrens, three heads of Cerberus, three eggs of Leda, &c. And, taking 3 as a unit, 3 × 3 muses, 3 × 4 principal gods, (Dii Majores,) 3 × 4 labours of Hercules, &c.

[391] London Gazette, Nov 8 to 11, 1680.

[392] Cunningham’s Handbook to London, p. 470.

[393] Soap, wax, tallow, and similar articles were part of the merchandise in which the Hanse merchants dealt.

[394] Kingdom’s Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1663.

[395] Stow’s Survey of London.

[396] See a woodcut of an Amiens pilgrim’s token in the Journal of Brit. Arch. Assoc., vol. i., Oct. 1848; also a detailed account of this venerable relic in Coryatt’s Crudities vol. i, p. 17.

[397] Name of one of the arches of old London Bridge.

[398]

“In the town of Paris there is a bridge named St Michael,
On which there are many houses; but one of them is more known than the others.
That is the house I mean, which is known by the sign of the Baptist Head.
There the bookseller will answer you.
Would you also like to know the name of the printer? John
Carcain is his name. Now, do not ask any more. Farewell.”

[399]

“Like wine, fine,
Driveth away care;
So medicine cureth pain,
And delivers us from suffering.”

[400] Coryatt’s Crudities, vol i., p. 41.

[401] From his colophon we see that the Trinity on his sign was represented by a triangle with a circle at each angle, respectively containing the words PATER, FILIUS, SPIRITUS, and, between the circles, on each of the sides of the triangle, the words NON EST, a mystical way of representing the Trinity, very common in the middle ages.

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CHAPTER IX.
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC.

At the end of the last chapter we spoke of the profane application of some of the most sacred things to signboard purposes. In France this was still worse than in England. That amusing gossip, Tallemant des Réaux, in his “Contes et Historiettes,” tells us how an innkeeper of the Rue Montmartre, in Paris, put up for his sign the God’s head, (la Tête Dieu,) and notwithstanding all the efforts of the curé of St Eustache to make him take it down he would not comply until compelled by the magistrates. Though two centuries have elapsed, the French of the present day are not much better; for in Paris, in the Rue Mondétour, there is actually a café known as the Nom de Jesus.

Boursault, a clever writer of the time of Louis XIV., whose indignant letter about the Royal Arms we have noticed in a [former chapter], addressed a letter to Bizoton, one of the police magistrates, in which he vents his anger at some of the religious signs, and complains of the profanity of a lodging-house with the sign of the Annunciation in the Rue de la Huchette, in which there were as many rogues and reprobates as there were honest lodgers. Amongst the signs that shocked him most he names le Saint Esprit, (the Holy Ghost,) la Trinité, (the Trinity,) l’Image Notre Dame, &c.; but particularly one, representing Christ taken prisoner, with the profane motto, “Au juste prix.” This contains a blasphemous pun,—juste prix at once signifying a fixed price, and “just caught.” The sign was set up at a little ordinary in a lane between the Rue St Honoré and the Rue Richelieu. And, though Boursault says in his letter that he had so fumed and thundered against the landlord that he had taken it down, yet it made its appearance again afterwards, and was handed down to our time, since not many years ago it might have been observed in the Cour du Dragon, above the shop of an ironmonger.

Saints are still in full feather on the signboards in Roman Catholic countries. Amongst hundreds of others the following may be seen in Paris on cafés and hotels in the present day:—St Barbe, St Christophe, St Eustache, St Joseph, St Laurent, St Marie, St Louis, St Merri, St Michel, St Paul, St Phar, St Pierre, St Quentin, St Roc, St Thomas d’Aquin, St Vincent de Paul, &c., &c.

A curious French sign is mentioned by Coryatt, which he saw at Amiens. “I lay at the signe of the Ave Maria, where I read these two verses, written in golden letters upon the linterne of the doore, at the entry into the Inne. This in Greeke, Της φιλοξενιας μη ἐπιλανϐανεσθε, that is, Forget not your good entertainment; and this in Latine, Hospitibus hic tuta fides.”[402]

Saints were formerly very common on signboards, and this abuse also was wittily ridiculed by the pungent satire of Artus Desiré, a French poet of the fifteenth century:—

“En leur logis plein de vers et de teignes,
Où est logé le grand diable d’enfer,
Mettent de Dieu et de saints les enseignes,
Leurs ditz logis où n’y a que desroys.
Pendre font tous sur le pavé du roy
De grands tableaux et enseignes dorées,
Pour des montres qu’ils ont fort bien de quoy,
Et qu’il y a de tres grasses porées.
L’un pour enseigne aura la Trinité,
L’autre Saint Jehan, et l’autre Saint Savin,
L’autre Saint Maure, l’autre l’Humanité
De Jesus Christ notre Sauveur divin,
De Dieu, des saintz, sont leurs crieurs de vin,[403]
Tant aux citez que villes et villages,
Des susditz sainctz les devotes images,
En prophanant leur préciosité.”[404]

Many of these saints were patrons of particular trades, and were constantly adopted as the signs of those that followed them. Thus St Crispin was generally a shoemaker’s sign. At the present day, the gentle craft represented by this saint live up to the proverb, and keep to the “last;” but many publicans still have the sign of Crispin, Saint Crispin, Jolly Crispin, or [Crispin and Crispian], and occasionally King Crispin, (as at Morpeth.) And well may they put their houses under the protection of this saint, since the proverb says, “Cobblers and tinkers are the best ale drinkers.” Crispin and Crispian were two Roman brothers, sons of a king; they travelled to France to preach Christianity, and worked at the trade of shoemakers, making sandals for the poor, which they gave away, the angels supplying them with leather. Hence they are considered the patrons of shoemakers. They were beheaded at Soissons in 308. What may have contributed to their popularity in this country is the fact of the battle of Agincourt having been fought on their day, October 25, 1415:—

“And Crispin Crispian shall never go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition,
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks
That fought with us upon St Crispin’s day.”

Henry the Fifth, iv. 3.

From Shakespeare we turn to the homely rhymes of a Dutch shoemaker at the Hague, who, in the seventeenth century, had this couplet over his door:—

“Dit is Sint Crispyn, maar ik hiet Stoffel,
Ik maak een laars, schoen en pantoffel.”[405]

A more spirited one about the same time was in Bergen op Zoom, which is not bad satire for a Dutchman:—

“Hier in Krispyn kan men de mensch uit beestevellen
Elk schoenen na zyn voet voor gelt terstond bestellen,
Doch menig beest alheir steekt in een menschevel,
Draagt zelf zyn broeder’s huid en ’t staat dat beest nog wel.”[406]

The St Hugh’s Bones was another sign of the gentle craft; it seems to be extinct now, but a trades token shows that, in 1657, it was the sign of a house in Stanhope Street, Claremarket. From a little chapbook, entitled,—

“The Delightful, Princely, and Entertaining History of the Gentle Craft, &c. London printed for J. Rhodes, at the corner of Bride Lane, in Fleet Street, 1725,”

we gather that Saint Hugh was a prince’s son,[407] deeply in love with a saintly coquette called Winifred. Having been jilted by this lady in a very pious manner, he went travelling, resisted the temptations of Venice,[408] like another St Anthony, passed through numberless adventures, compared to which those of Baron Munchausen sink into insignificance, and was finally, by a jumble of most amusing anachronism, martyred in the reign of Diocletian, by being made to drink a cup of the blood of his lady-love, mixed with “cold poison,” after which, his body was hung on the gallows. But among other misfortunes in his travels, he had been shipwrecked and lost all his wealth, so that he had to choose a profession, which was that of shoemaker, and so well he liked his fellow-workmen that, having nothing else to give, he bequeathed his bones to them. After they had been “well picked by the birds,” some shoemakers took them from the gallows, and made them into tools, and hence their tools were named St Hugh’s Bones. They are specified in the following rhyme, which appears to have been the shoemakers’ shibboleth:—

“My friends, I pray, you listen to me,
And mark what Saint Hugh’s Bones shall be:
First a Drawer and a Dresser,
Two Wedges, a more and a lesser.
A pretty Block, Three Inches high,
In fashion squared like a die;
Which shall be called by proper name
A Heelblock, ah! the very same;
A Handleather and a Thumbleather likewise,
To put on Shooe-thread we must devise;
[283] The Needle and the Thimble shall not be left alone,
The Pinchers, the Pricking Awl, and Rubbing Stone;
The Awl, Steel and Jacks, the Sowing Hairs beside,
The Stirrop holding fast, while we sow the Cow hide;
The Whetstone, the Stopping Stick, and the Paring Knife,
All this does belong to a Journeyman’s Life:
Our Apron is the shrine to wrap these Bones in,
Thus shroud we S. Hugh’s Bones in a gentle lamb’s skin.

“Now you good Yeomen of the Gentle Craft,” the story goes on, “tell me (quoth he) how like you this? As well (replied they) as Saint George does of his horse: for as long as we can see him fight the Dragon, we will never part with this poesie. And it shall be concluded, That what journeyman soever he be hereafter that cannot handle his Sword and Buckler, his long Sword and Quarterstaff, sound the Trumpet, or play upon the Flute, or bear his part in a Three Man’s song, and readily reckon up his Tools in Rhime, (except he have borne colours in the Field, being a Lieutenant, a Sergeant or Corporal,) shall forfeit and pay a Bottle of Wine, or be counted a Colt; to which they answered all viva voce, Content, Content. And then, after many merry songs, they departed. And never after did they travel without these tools on their backs, which ever since have been called Saint Hugh’s Bones.”

Bishop Blaze, or Blaize, otherwise St Blasius, is another patron of a trade to be met with on the signboard. This worthy, Bishop of Sebaste, in Cappadocia, is considered the patron of woolcombers, whence the sign is very common in the clothing districts. He is represented with the instrument of his martyrdom in his hands, an iron comb, with which the flesh was torn from his body in 289; from this implement has been attributed to him the invention of woolcombing. His holiday is celebrated every seventh year by a procession and feast of the masters and workmen of the woollen manufactories in Yorkshire and Bedfordshire; in sheep-shearing festivals, also, a representation of him used to be introduced; a stripling in habiliments of wool was seated on a milk-white steed, with a lamb in his lap, the horse, the youthful bishop, and the lamb all covered with a profusion of ribbons and flowers.

St Julian, the patron of travellers, wandering minstrels, boatmen, &c., was a very common inn sign, because he was supposed to provide good lodgings for such persons. Hence two Saint Julian’s crosses, in saltier, are in chief of the innholders’ arms, and the old motto was:—“When I was harbourless ye lodged me.” This benevolent attention to travellers procured him the epithet of “the good herbergeor,” and in France “bon herbet.” His legend in a MS., Bodleian, 1596, fol. 4, alludes to this:—

“Therfore yet to this day, thei that over lond wende,
They biddeth Seint Julian, anon, that gode herborw he hem sende,
And Seint Julianes Pater Noster ofte seggeth also
For his faders soule and his moderes that he hem bring therto.”

And in “Le dit des Heureux,” an old French fabliau:—

“Tu as dit la patenotre
Saint Julian à cest matin,
Soit en Roumans, soit en Latin,
Or tu seras bien ostilé.”[409]

In mediæval French, L’hotel Saint Julien was synonymous with good cheer.

“Sommes tuit vostre.
Par Saint Pierre le bon Apostre,
L’ostel aurez Saint Julien,”[410]

says Mabile to her feigned uncle, in the fabliau of “Boivin de Provins;” and a similar idea appears in “Cocke Lorell’s bote,” where the crew, after the entertainment with the “relygyous women” from the Stews’ Bank, at Colman’s Hatch,

“Blessyd theyr shyppe when they had done
And dranke about a Saint Julyan’s torne.”

St Martin’s character as a saint was not unlike St Julian’s; hence we find him frequently on the signboard. The most favourite representation being the saint on horseback cutting off with his sword a piece of his cloak, in order to clothe a naked beggar. Not only inns, but booksellers also used his sign, as for instance Dionis Rose, (1514,) printer in the Rue St Jacques, Paris; and Bernard Aubrey, another printer in the same street.

“Avoir l’hotel St Martin,” in old French, meant exactly the same as “avoir l’hotel St Julian:” thus, in the romance of Florus and Blanche:—

“Flor. Sovent dient par le bon vin
“Flor.Qu’ils ont l’ostel Saint Martin.”[411]

And in the story of “L’Anneau,” by Jean de Boves, (which is the same as Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale,”) it is said of the two students at the end:—“C’est ainsi qu’ils eûrent à ses depens l’ostel Saint Martin.”[412] These two saints, it is believed, are no longer to be found on the signboard, but another powerful patron of travellers, St Christopher, may still occasionally be met with, as for instance in Bath, where in the seventeenth century it was still very common. Taylor the Water poet mentions it as the sign of an inn at Eton, and it occurs on various trades tokens of London shops, inns, and taverns. This saint’s intercession was thought efficacious against all danger from fire, flood, and earthquake, whence it became a custom to paint his image of a colossal size on walls of churches and houses, sometimes occupying the whole height of the building, so that it might be seen from a great distance. Generally he was represented wading through a river, with the infant Christ on his shoulders, and leaning on a flowering rod. Such representations are met with in every part of Western Europe; they still remain in many places in England, as at St James’ Church, South Elmham, Suffolk; Bibury Church, Gloucestershire; Beddington, Surrey; Croydon; Hengrave; West Wickham, &c., &c., &c. They were also very numerous on the Continent; in the porch of St Mark’s, Venice, there is a mosaic bust of him, with these words:—

“Christophori Sancti speciem quicumque tuetur
Illo namque die nullo languore tenetur.”[413]

A somewhat similar inscription occurs under one of the very earliest block prints, (now in the possession of Earl Spencer,) evidently made for pasting against the walls in inns, and other places frequented by travellers and pilgrims. Under it are the following words:—

“Cristofori faciem die quacumque tueris
Illo nempe die morte malâ non morieris.

millesimo ccccxx. tercio.”[414]

Travellers even carried his figure about with them, either on their hat or on their breast, as we gather from Chaucer’s “Yeoman”—

“A Cristofre on his brest of silver shene.”

In the “Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson the Londoner,” 1607, a jest is related, made by that dry old joker at the expense of Saint Christopher, which again illustrates the levity with which religious matters were treated in those days:—

“Maister Hobson and another of his neighboris on a time walking to Southwarke faire, by chance dranke in a house, which had the signe of Sa. Christopher, of the which signe the goodman of the house gave this commendation, Saint Christopher (quoth he) when hee lived upon the earth bore the greatest burden that ever was, which was this, he bore Christ over a river; nay, there was one (quoth Maister Hobson) that bore a greater burden. Who was that? (quoth the innkeeper) Marry, (quoth Maister Hobson) the asse that bore him and his mother. So was the innekeeper called asse by craft.”

The house in which this joke was perpetrated is enumerated by Stowe amongst the principal inns of Southwark.

St Luke still figures as the sign of two or three public-houses in London. Being the patron of painters, it certainly was the least the sign-painters could do to honour his portrait with an occasional appearance on the signboard. Yet it must be confessed St Luke was but a sorry hand at painting. There is a portrait of the Holy Virgin painted by him preserved in the Church of Silivria, on the shores of the Sea of Marmora; but such a daub! the most modest village sign-painter would be ashamed of the production. Yet, for all that, the thing works miracles, and the only wonder is that its first effort in this line was not to change itself into a good picture. We wonder at the Virgin, too, and expected better from her taste; for in Valencia Cathedral there is another portrait of her painted by Alonzo Cano, which is one of the most lovely female heads we ever had the happiness to gaze upon. And so well pleased was the Holy Virgin with this likeness, that she deigned to descend from heaven to compliment the blessed artist upon his work. So says the legend, and so the old beadle tells the travellers. But Luke possessed other attributes. Aubrey tells us: “At Stoke Verdon, in the Parish of Broad Chalke, was a chapell (in the chapell close by the farm-house) dedicated to Saint Luke, who is the Patron or Tutelar Saint of the Horne Beasts, and those that have to do with them,” &c.[415] This arose evidently from the Ox being his emblem, as the Lion was of St Mark, the Eagle of St John, and the Angel of St Matthew. For this reason St Luke was doubtless often chosen as the sign of inns frequented by farmers and graziers.

Simon the Tanner of Joppa is an old-established house in Long-lane, Bermondsey, and, as a sign, is supposed to be unique. It seems to have been adopted with reference to the tanners, who frequented the house, or it may have been the former occupation of the landlord, who gave the sign to his house. Simon is named in Acts x. 32, “Send therefore to Joppa, and call hither Simon, whose surname is Peter; he is lodged in the house of one Simon a tanner, by the sea-side.”

But of all the signs coming under this class, Saint George and the Dragon is undoubtedly the greatest favourite in England, and it is equally well represented in other countries; for of this saint may be said what Velleius Paterculus said about Pompey: “Quot partes terrarum sunt, tot fecit monumenta victoriæ suæ.” In London alone there are at present not less than sixty-six public-houses and taverns with this name, not counting the beer-houses, coffee-houses, &c. Yet, after all, it is very doubtful if St George ever existed, and he may be only a popular corruption of St Michael conquering Satan, or Perseus’ romantic delivery of Andromeda. Hence the little rhyme recorded by Aubrey, and various other seventeenth century collectors of ana:

“To save a mayd St George the Dragon slew—
A pretty tale, if all is told be true.
Most say there are no dragons, and ’tis sayd
There was no George; pray God there was a mayd.”

St George is mentioned by Bede, who calls the 23d of April “Natale S. Georgii Martyris.” He was, however, at that time a very recent importation, for Adamnanus (690), who lived just before Bede, says, speaking of Arnulphus after his return from the East: “Etiam nobis de quodam martyre Georgio nomine narrationem contulit.” In the reign of Canute, there was already a house of regular canons sacred to St George at Thetford, in Norfolk. The church of St George, Southwark, is also thought to have existed before the Conqueror. But after the Conquest, chapels were frequently erected to him, and on the seals of this period he is often represented without the Dragon. Edward III. had a particular veneration for him. Many of his statutes begin: “Ad honorem omnipotentis Dei, Sanctæ Mariæ Virginis gloriosæ, et Sancti Georgii Martyris.” It was after the foundation of the Order of the Garter that it became such a favourite sign. The fact that he was the patron of soldiers also assisted his popularity on the signboard.

There still exists an old and much dilapidated stone sign of St George and the Dragon in the front of a house on Snowhill. Frequently this sign is abbreviated to the George. There was an inn of this name, mentioned in 1554 as being situate on the north side of the Tabard. This inn was very much damaged by the great fire of Southwark in 1670, and completely burned down in 1676. But it was rebuilt, and has come down to our time.

Machyn, in his Diary, mentions several Georges; one of them in connexion with an occurrence which gives a good view of these lawless times:—

“The viij day of December 1559 was the day of the Conception of owre Lade was a grett fyre in the Gorge in Bred stret; itt begane at vj of the cloke at nyght and dyd gret harm to dyvers houses. The 9th of December cam serten fellows unto the Gorge in Bred stret where the fyre was and gutt into the howse and brake up a chest of a clothear and toke owt xl. lb. and after cryd fyre, fyre, so that ther cam ijc pepull, and so they took one.”

The George in Lombard Street was a very old house, once the town mansion of the Earl Ferrers, in which one of that family was murdered as early as 1175, (see Stow.) At this house died, in 1524, Richard Earl of Kent, who had wasted his property in gaming and extravagance; it was then an inn, where the nobility used to put up at. George Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, (1558,) was buried from this house. Finally, we may mention a George Inn at Derby, in connexion with the following advertisement from the Daily Advertiser, Oct. 1758:—

“A YOUNG LADY STRAYED.—A young Lady, just come out of Derbyshire, strayed from her Guardian. She is remarkably genteel and handsome. She has been brought up by a farmer near Derby, and knows no other but that they are her parents; but it is not so, for she is a lady by birth, though of but little learning. She has no cloathes with her, but a riding habit she used to go to market in. She will have a fine estate, as she is an heiress, but knows not her birth, as her parents died when she was a child, and I had the care of her, so she knows not but that I am her mother. She has a brown silk gown that she borrowed of her maid—that is, dy’d silk, and her riding dress a light drab, lin’d with blue Tammy, and it has blue loops at the button-holes; she has outgrown it; and I am sure that she is in great distress both for money and cloaths; but whoever has relieved her I will be answerable if they will give me a letter, where she may be found; she knows not her own sirname. I understand she has been in Northampton for some time; she has a cut in her forehead. Whosoever will give an account where she is to be found shall receive twenty guineas reward. Direct for M. W. at the George Inn, Derby.”

Besides the Dragon, St George is found in various other combinations, as the George and Blue Boar, High Holborn, an old inn lately come to its end. In the seventeenth century this house was called the [Blue Boar], and is said to have been the house in which Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as common troopers, intercepted a letter of King Charles to his queen. Cromwell, the story goes on to say, finding by this letter that his party were not likely to obtain good terms from the king, “from that day forward resolved his ruin.”[416] Unfortunately for lovers of the romantic, there is no foundation for this dramatic incident.

PLATE XII.

GRINDING OLD INTO YOUNG.
(From an old woodcut, circa 1720.)

FIVE ALLS.

(From an old print by Kay. The figures represent Dr Hunter, a famous Scotch clergyman; Erskine the lawyer; a farmer; His Sacred Majesty George III.; and the gentleman whose name should never be mentioned to ears polite.)

The George and Thirteen Cantons, kept by the great Bob Travers, is another odd combination, occurring in Church Street, Soho; it is, however, easily explained when we learn that there is another public-house called the Thirteen Cantons, in King Street, also in Soho. This sign was put up in reference to the thirteen Protestant cantons of Switzerland—a compliment to the numerous Swiss who inhabit the neighbourhood.

But the strangest combination of all is that of the George and Vulture. At present there are three public-houses in London with this sign: one in St George-in-the-East, one in Wapping, and one in Haberdasher Street, Hoxton. As in the “Live Vulture,” (see [p. 224],) the only obvious explanation for this strange combination seems to be the possibility of a vulture having been exhibited at this house. Vultures were still considered great curiosities as late as the eighteenth century. In 1726, one of the attractions at Peckham Fair was a menagerie, and amongst the animals exhibited the vulture was described in the following terms:—

“The noble Vulture Cock, brought from Archangall, having the finest talons of any bird that seeks her prey; the forepart of his head is covered with hair; the second part resembles the wool of a black; below that is a white ring, having a ruff that he cloaks his head with at night.”

It is a name of some standing. “Near Ball Alley was the George Inn, since the Fire, rebuilt with very good houses, well Inhabited, and warehouses, being a large open yard, and called George Yard, at the farther end of which is the George and Vulture Tavern, which is a large house and of a great trade, having a passage into St Michael’s Alley,” [Cornhill].[417] There was another tavern of this name on the east side of the high road, nearly opposite Bruce Green, Tottenham, in early times much frequented by the citizens of London taking their recreations. It is mentioned in the “Search after Claret” as early as 1691. Several coins of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I. were discovered on pulling down the old house. A coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth was fixed over the front door, but at the demolition of the building it was put up at the back of a house in Hale Lane. After the fashion of the time, the house was duly puffed up in newspaper poems. The following is copied from a newspaper-cutting circa 1761-62, and as it enumerates the attractions of a suburban tea-garden of the period, may be quoted here at full length:—

“If lur’d to roam in Summer Hours,
Your Thoughts incline tow’rd Tott’nham Bow’rs.[418]
Here end your airing Tour and rest
Where Cole invites each friendly Guest:
Intent on signs, the prying Eye,
The George and Vulture will descry;
Here the kind Landlord glad attends
To wellcome all his chearfull Friends
Who, leaving City smoke, delight
To range where various scenes invite.
The spacious garden, verdant Field,
Pleasures beyond Expression yield,
The Angler here to sport inclined
In his Canal may Pastime find.
Neat racy Wine and Home-brew’d Ale
The nicest Palates may regale,
Nectarious Punch—and (cleanly grac’d)
A Larder stor’d for ev’ry Taste.
The cautious Fair may sip with Glee
The fresh’st Coffee, finest Tea.
Let none the outward Vulture fear,
No Vulture host inhabits here,
If too well us’d you deem ye—then
Take your Revenge and come again.”

St Paul, the patron saint of London, was formerly a common sign in the metropolis. One of the trades tokens of a house or tavern in Petty France, Westminster, represents the saint before his conversion, lying on the ground, with his horse standing by him; this house was called “the Saul.” Perhaps this was a monkish pleasantry of the period, (as Westminster was under the patronage of St Peter,) representing an unpleasant event in the history of the great patron, and showing, by simple analogy, the vast superiority of the converted St Peter. The usual way, however, of commemorating the saint on the signboard was the St Paul’s Head. This was the sign of a very old inn in Great Carter Lane, (Doctors’ Commons,) opposite which Bagford lived in 1712. As an inn, it is mentioned by Machyn, in his Diary, in 1562. “The 25 may was a yonge man did hang ymseylff at the Polles Head, the inn in Carterlane.” Trades tokens of this house are extant in the Beaufoy Collection. In the eighteenth century, most of the celebrated libraries were sold at this inn:[419] amongst others that of the bibliomaniac, Tom Rawlinson—the Tom Folio of the Tatler, whose books were brought to the hammer between 1721-33—the sale extending to seventeen or eighteen separate auctions. The disposal of his MSS. alone occupied sixteen days. To this tavern formerly the new sheriffs, after having been sworn in, used to resort to receive the keys of the different jails; that ceremony terminated, they were regaled with sack and walnuts by the keeper of Newgate. The St Paul’s Coffee-house is built on the site of this old inn. About 1820 there was another Paul’s Head in Cateaton Street, where a literary club used to be held “for the cultivation of forensic eloquence.” It was under the patronage of several distinguished characters, and had for a motto the modest words, “Sic itur ad astra.” The vicinity of the cathedral evidently had suggested both these signs, as well as that exhibited by Philip Waterhouse, a bookseller “at the St Paul’s Head in Canning Street near Londonstone” in 1630. On another sign, in the same locality, the two saints were united, viz., the Saint Peter and Saint Paul, St Paul’s Churchyard. Of this house, also, trades tokens are extant.

Although St Peter was, doubtless, as common on the signboard before the Reformation as the other great saints of religious history, yet no instances of this have come down to us. His keys, however—the famous Cross Keys—are very common. At Dawdley, and on the road between Warminster and Salisbury, there is a very curious sign called Peter’s Finger, which is believed to occur nowhere else. In all probability this refers to the benediction of the Pope, the finger of his Holiness being raised whilst bestowing a blessing. St Peter being the first of the Papal line, was doubtless often represented with his finger raised in old pictures and carvings. The following passage from Bishop Hall’s “Satires” alludes to the finger:—

“But walk on cheerly ’till thou have espied
St Peter’s finger, at the churchyard side.”—Book v., sat. 2.

St Dunstan, the patron saint of the parish of that name in London, was godfather to the Devil,—that is to say, to the sign of the famous tavern of the Devil and St Dunstan, within Temple Bar. The legend runs, that one day, when working at his trade of a goldsmith, he was sorely tempted by the devil, and at length got so exasperated that he took the red hot tongs out of the fire and caught his infernal majesty by the nose. The identical pinchers with which this feat was performed are still preserved at Mayfield Palace, in Sussex. They are of a very respectable size, and formidable enough to frighten the arch one himself. This episode in the saint’s life was represented on the signboard of that glorious old tavern. By way of abbreviation, this house was called The Devil, though the landlord seems to have preferred the other saint’s name; for on his token we read: “The D—— (sic) and Dunstan,” probably fearing, with a classic dread, the ill omen of that awful name.

Allusions to this tavern are innumerable in the dramatists; one of the earliest is in 1563, in the play of “Jack Jugeler.” William Rowley thus mentions it in his comedy of a “Match by Midnight,” 1633:—

“Bloodhound. As you come by Temple Bar make a step to the Devil.

Tim. To the Devil, father?

Sim. My master means the sign of the Devil, and he cannot hurt you, fool; there’s a saint holds him by the nose.

Tim. Sniggers, what does the devil and a saint both on a sign?

Sim. What a question is that? What does my master and his prayer-book o’ Sundays both in a pew?”

So fond was Ben Jonson of this tavern, that he lived “without Temple Bar, at a combmaker’s shop,” according to Aubrey, in order to be near his favourite haunt. It must have been, therefore, in a moment of ill-humour, when he found fault with the wine, and made the statement that his play of the “Devil is an Ass,” (which is certainly not amongst his best,) was written “when I and my boys drank bad wine at the Devil.” But surely he would not have established his favourite Apollo Club at a place where they sold bad wine. He himself composed the famous “Leges Conviviales” for this club, which are still preserved, with the respect due to so sacred a relic, in the banking house of Messrs Child & Co., erected in 1788 on the place where the tavern formerly stood. They are twenty-four in number, some of them rather characteristic:—

“4. And the more to exact our delight whilst we stay,
“4. Let none be debarr’d from his choice female mate.

“5. Let no scent offensive the chamber infest.

10. Let our wines without mixture or scum be all fine,
10. Or call up the master and break his dull noddle.

[293]

16. With mirth, wit, and dancing, and singing conclude,
16. To regale every sense with delight in excess.

21. For generous lovers let a corner be found,
21. Where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve.”

The last clause was, “Focus perennis esto,” which proves that rare old Ben understood comfort. Latin inscriptions were also in other parts of the house. Over the clock in the kitchen might have been seen, as late as 1731, “Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibis iterum, et erit medicina.”[420] An elegant rendering of the well-known phrase, “A hair of the dog that bit you.” Not only Ben Jonson, but almost all the great poets of two centuries, honoured this house with their presence. “I dined to-day,” says Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, “with Dr Garth and Mr Addison, at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, and Garth treated.” Numerous similar quotations might be found, showing the visits to this place of nearly all the great literary stars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Simon Wadloe was one of the most famous landlords of this tavern. Pepys, April 22, 1661,—“Wadlow, the Vintner at the Devil, in Fleet Street, did lead a fine company of soldiers, all young comely men, in white Doublets” (this was on Charles II. going from the Tower to Whitehall.) Ben Jonson called him the king of skinkers.[421] Among the verses on the door of the Apollo room occurred the lines—

“Hang up all the poor hop drinkers,
Cries old Sim, the king of skinkers.”

Camden, in his “Remains,” records the following epitaph on this worthy:—

“Apollo et cohors Musarum,
Bacchus vini et uvarum,
Ceres pro pane et cervisia,
Adeste omnes cum tristitia.
Diique, Deæque, lamentate cuncti,
Simonis Vadloe funera defuncti,
Sub signo malo bene vixit, mirabile!
Si ad cœlum recessit gratias Diaboli.”[422]

In opposition to this Old Devil a Young Devil Tavern was opened, also in Fleet Street, in 1707, and here the first meetings of the Society of Antiquaries were held, but the “Young Devil” was not a success, and the house was soon closed.

Though the Devil is not a promising name for a public-house, owing to his near connexion with evil spirits, yet there was a third tavern named after—if not devoted to him—the Little Devil, Goodman’s Fields, Whitechapel. Ned Ward, in 1703, highly commends the punch of this house, which he partook of in “a room neat enough to entertain Venus and the graces.” It was a house entirely after jolly Ned’s fancy. “My landlord was good company, my landlady good humoured, her daughter charmingly pretty, and her maid tolerably handsome, who can laugh, cry, say her prayers, sing a song, all in a breath, and can turn in a minute to all sublunary points of a female compass.”[423]

The Devil (le Diable) was also a celebrated tavern in Paris, near the Palais de Justice. It is thus named in the “Ode à tous les Cabarets:”—

“Lieux sacrés où l’on est soumis
Aux saints oracles de Themis,
Encor que vous ayez la gloire,
De voir tout le monde à genoux,
Sans le Diable et la Tête-Noire;[424]
Je n’approcherais pas de vous.”[425]

In the seventeenth century Paris also had its Petit Diable, (Little Devil,) a tavern of some renown.

The Devil’s House was the name of a favourite Sunday resort in the last century, in the Hornsey Road, Islington. It is said to have been the retreat of Claude Duval (unde Duval’s house, Devil’s house,) the elegant highwayman in the reign of Charles II., who infested the lanes about Islington; but from a survey taken in 1611, it appears that the house bore already at that time the name of “Devil’s House.” From its general appearance it seemed to date from Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It was surrounded by a moat filled with water, and passed by a wooden bridge. Its attractions are held forth in the following laudatory epistle, an example of the florid and poetical advertising in vogue when Richardson wrote novels of six volumes all in letters—compositions too painfully pathetic for our matter-of-fact age:—

“To the Printer of the Publick Advertiser.

“Sir,—Returning yesterday from a rural excursion to Hornsey, I casually stopped for a little refreshment at an house, commonly known by the name of Devil’s House, situated within two fields of Holloway-Turnpike. I own that I was vastly surprised at so charming and delightful a place, so near town, and at the great improvements lately made there. The garden is well laid out, encompassed with a beautiful moat, and a good canal in the orchard. On inquiry, I found the landlord (remarkable for his civil and obliging behaviour) had stocked the same with plenty of tench, carp, and other fish, with free liberty for his customers to angle therein. Tea and hot loaves are ready at a moment’s notice, and new milk from the cows grazing in the pleasant meadows adjoining, with a good larder, and the best wines, &c. In short, I know not a more agreeable place, where persons of both sexes of genteel taste may enjoy a more innocent and delightful amusement. But what surprised me most, was that the landlord, by a peculiar turn of invention, had changed the Devil’s House to the Summer House,—a name I find it is for the future to be distinguished by. I wish, Mr Printer, your readers as much pleasure as myself, and am, sir, your constant reader,

“H. G.

“May 25, 1767.”

At Royston, Herts, there is a public-house known as the Devil’s Head. There is no signboard, but a carved representation of his satanic majesty’s head projects from the building, the name being underneath.

St Patrick is exclusively an Irish sign. He is generally represented in the costume of a bishop, driving a flock of snakes, toads, and other vermin before him, which he is said to have banished from Ireland. His life is more replete with miracles than any of the other saints.

“St Patrick was a gentleman,
And came of dacent people,”

for his father was a noble Roman, who lived at Kirkpatrick, in Scotland. The saint’s life was very active; he founded 365 churches, ordained 365 bishops, and 3000 priests, converted 12,000 persons in one district, baptized seven kings at once, established a purgatory, and with his staff expelled every reptile that stung or croaked. This last feat, however, has been performed by a great many saints in different parts of the world. Not so the feat he performed at his death, when, having been beheaded, he coolly took his head under his arm, (or, according to the best authorities, in his mouth,) and swam over the Shannon. In such cases as the Bishop of Narbonne said about St Denis, (who walked from Montmartre to St Denis with his head under his arm,) “il n’y a que le premier pas qui coute.”[426]

In many instances, no doubt, before the Reformation, the shopkeeper would choose his patron saint for his sign, to act as a sort of lares and penates to his house. An example of this occurs on the following imprint:—“Manual of Prayers, 1539. Imprynted in Bottol [St Botolph’s] Lane, at the sygne of the Whyt Beare, by me, Jhon Mayler, for John Waylande, and be to sell in Powles Churchyarde, by Andrew Hester, at the Whyt Horse, and also by Mychel Lobley, at the sygne of the Saint Mychel;” this last bookseller, therefore, had chosen his own patron saint for his sign. For the same reason another bookseller adopted, in the early part of the sixteenth century, Saint John the Evangelist—“The Doctrynall of Good Servauntes. Imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sygne of Saynt Johan Evangelyste, by me, Johan Butler.” This Butler was a judge of the Common Pleas, as well as a bookseller. About the same period the Evangelist was also the sign of another man of the same profession—“Robert Wyce, dwellinge at the sygne of Seynt Johan Euāgelyst, in Seynt Martyns parysshe, in the filde besyde Charynge Crosse, in the bysshop of Norwytche rentys.” He was the printer of the well-known “Pronostycacion for ever of Erra Pater; a Jewe borne in Jewry, a doctor in Astronomye and Physicke,” which was continued for ages after him. Robert Wyce must have been about the first bookseller and printer in this neighbourhood, as in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the parish contained less than one hundred people liable to be rated.[427] We find the same as one of the oldest printer’s signs in France, on an edition of Merlin’s Prophecies, printed at Paris in 1438, by Abraham Verard, dwelling near the church of Notre Dame, at the sign of St John the Evangelist.

Other saints, again, have a local reputation, and are perpetuated on the signboards in certain localities only, as for instance St Thomas of Canterbury; St Edmund’s Head, at Bury St Edmunds; and St Cuthbert, at Monk’s house, near Sunderland. This saint was the first bishop of Northumberland.

“But fain St Hilda’s nuns would learn,
If on a rock by Lindisfarne,
[297] St Cuthbert sits and toils to frame
The seaborn weeds which bear his name,”

says Sir Walter Scott, alluding to the stalks of the Encrinites, which are called St Cuthbert’s Beads, the saint, as the story goes, amusing himself by stringing them together.

Hugh Singleton, a bookseller in the sixteenth century, lived at the sign of the St Augustine; probably he had chosen this saint from the fact of his being a distinguished writer as well as saint. George Carter, a shopkeeper in the seventeenth century, adopted St Alban, the protomartyr, as his sign, evidently for no other reason but because he lived in “St Alban’s Street, near St James’s Market;” and another, William Ellis of Tooley Street, had the sign of St Clement, perhaps on account of his being a native of the parish of St Clement’s. Trades tokens of both these houses are to be seen in the Beaufoy Collection.

St Laurent was the sign of an inn in Lawrence Lane, Cheapside, but from a border of blossoms or flowers round it, it was commonly called Blossoms, or by corruption, Bosom’s Inn—such at least is the explanation of Stow:—

“Antiquities in this lane—[St Laurence Lane, Cheapside]—I find none other than that, among many fair houses, there is one large inn for the receipt of travellers called Blossom’s Inn, but corruptly Bosom’s Inn, and hath to sign St Laurence the deacon in a border of blossoms or flowers.”

Flowers are said to have sprung up at the martyrdom of this saint, who was roasted alive on a gridiron. But in the “History of Thomas of Reading,” ch. ii., another version is given, which seems, however, little else than a joke:—

“Our jolly clothiers kept up their courage and went to Bosom’s Inn, so called from a greasy old fellow who built it, who always went nudging with his head in his bosom winter and summer, so that they called him the picture of old Winter.”

In 1522 the Emperor Charles V. honoured Henry VIII. with a visit; at first his intention was to come with a retinue of 2044 persons and 1127 horses, but subsequently he reduced them to 2000 persons and 1000 horses. To lodge these visitors, various “inns for horses” were “seen and viewed,” amongst which “St Laurance, otherwise called Bosoms Yn,” is noted down to have “xx beddes and a stable for lx horses.”[428] It is curious, in this list of inns, to observe the proportion of beds as compared with stabling room, showing how most of the followers of a nobleman on a journey had to shift for themselves and sleep in the straw or elsewhere. On the occasion of this imperial visit, the city authorities were evidently afraid of being drunk dry by the many Flemings in the train of the Emperor. To avoid this calamity, a return was made of all the wine to be found at the eleven wine merchants, and the twenty-eight principal taverns then in London, the sum total of which was 809 pipes.[429]

In the sixteenth century the house seems already to have been famous as a carrier’s inn, (which it continued for three centuries,) as appears from the following allusion:—“Yet have I naturally cherisht and hugt it in my bosome, even as a carrier at Bosome’s Inne doth a cheese under his arms.”[430] A satirical tract about Banks and his horse “Marocius Extaticus,” (reprinted by the Percy Society,) gives the names of its authors as “John Dando the wiredrawer of Hadley, and Harrie Hunt, head ostler of Besomes Inne.” Another domestic of this establishment is handed down to posterity in Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Christmass,” presented at Court in 1616, where the following lines occur:—

“But now comes Tom of Bosom’s Inn,
And he presenteth Misrule.”[431]

The Catherine Wheel was formerly a very common sign, most likely adopted from its being the badge of the order of the knights of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai, created anno 1063, for the protection of pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Sepulchre. Hence it was a suggestive, if not eloquent sign for an inn, as it intimated that the host was of the brotherhood, although in a humble way, and would protect the travellers from robbery in his inn,—in the shape of high charges and exactions,—just as the knights of St Catherine protected them on the high road from robbery by brigands. These knights wore a white habit embroidered with a Catherine wheel, (i.e. a wheel armed with spikes,) and traversed with a sword stained with blood.[432] There were also mysteries in which St Catherine played a favourite part, one of which was acted by young ladies on the entry of Queen Catherine of Arragon (queen to our Henry VIII.) in London in 1501; in honour of this queen the sign may occasionally have been put up. The Catherine wheel was also a charge in the Turners’ arms. Flecknoe tells us, in his “Enigmatical Characters,” (1658,) that the Puritans changed it into the Cat and Wheel, under which name it is still to be seen on a public-house at Castle Green, Bristol. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Catherine Wheel was a famous carrier’s inn in Southwark; and at the present day there is still an old public-house in Bishopsgate Street Without, inscribed, “Ye old Catherine Wheel, 1594.”[433]

Besides these, there were other signs expressing a religious idea, such as the Heart in Bible, which occurs under one of the Luttrell Ballads:—“The Citizens’ joys for the Rebuilding of London, printed by P. Lillicross, for Richard Head, at the Heart in Bible, in Little Britain, where you may have Mr Matthews, his approved and universal pills for all diseases, 1667.” Another bookseller on London Bridge, Eliz. Smith, 1691, had the Hand and Bible. Biblical phrases also were employed, as for instance, the Lion and Lamb, which occurs on several seventeenth century trades tokens of Snowhill, Southwark, &c., and is still much in vogue. It is an emblematical representation of the Millennium, when “the lion shall lie down by the kid.” In the last century there was a Lion and Lamb on a signboard at Sheffield, with the following poetical effusion:—

“If the Lyon show’d kill the Lamb,
We’ll kill the Lyon—if we can;
But if the Lamb show’d kill the Lyon,
We’ll kill the Lamb to make a Pye on.”

The antithesis to this sign, namely, the Wolf and Lamb, occurs occasionally, as in Charles Street, Leicester, and in a few other places. In Grosvenor Street it was probably once represented by a lion and a kid, but the public, not minding the text, called the sign the Lion and Goat, and that name it still bears. The Lion and Adder, Nottingham, Newark, and various other places, or the Lion and Snake, as at Bailgate, Lincoln, come from Psalm xci. 13, where the godly are reminded:—“Thou shalt tread upon the Lion and Adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” These two signs apparently came in use during the Commonwealth. They have a decided flavour of the time when Scripture language formed the common speech of every day life.

The Lamb and Flag is another sign common all over England, representing originally the holy lamb with the nimbus and banner, but now so little understood by the publicans, that on an alehouse at Swindon, it is pictured with a spear, to which a red-white-and-blue streamer is appended. It may also be of heraldic origin, for it was the coat of arms of the Templars, and the crest of the merchant tailors. The Lamb and Anchor, Milk Street, Bristol, seems to be a mystical representation of hope in Christ; both these last signs date from before the Reformation. From that period also dates the sign of the Bleeding Heart, the emblematical representation of the five sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, viz., the heart of the Holy Virgin pierced with five swords. There is still an ale-house of this name in Charles Street, Hatton Garden, and Bleeding Heart Yard, adjoining the public-house, is immortalised in “Little Dorrit.” The Wounded Heart, one of the signs in Norwich in 1750,[434] had the same meaning. The Heart was a constant emblem of the Holy Virgin in the middle ages; thus, on the clog almanacs, all the feasts of St Mary were indicated by a heart. It was not an uncommon sign in former times. The Heart and Ball appears on a trades token as the sign of a house in Little Britain, the Ball being simply some silk mercer’s addition; and the Golden Heart[435] was a sign in Greenwich in 1737, next door to which Dr Johnson used to live when he was newly come to town, and wrote the Parliamentary articles for the Gentleman’s Magazine. At present there are three public-houses with this sign in Bristol, and in other places it may be met with.

Heaven was a house of entertainment near Westminster Hall; the present committee rooms of the House of Commons are erected on its site. Butler alludes to this house in “Hudibras,” p. 3:—

“False Heaven at the end of the Hall.”

Pepys records his dining at this house in the winter of 1660, and with due respect for the place, he put on his best fur cap for the occasion. “I sent a porter to bring my best fur cap, and so I returned and went to Heaven; where Luellin and I dined.”

Paradise was a messuage in the same neighbourhood, and Hell and Purgatory subterranean passages; but in the reign of James I. Hell was the sign of a low public-house frequented by lawyers’ clerks. Heaven and Hell are mentioned, together with a third house called Purgatory, in an old grant dated the first year of Henry VII.[436] The [Three Kings] is a sign representing the three Eastern magi or kings, who came to do homage to our Saviour. We find it used as early as the sixteenth century by Julyan Notary, in St Paul’s Churchyard, one of the earliest London printers. The Three Kings was formerly a constant mercer’s sign. Bagford gives the following reason for this:—

“Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Marchantes and traded in all sortes of Rich Goodes, besides those of scelckes (silks) as they do nou at this day: but they brought into England fine Leninn thered (linen thread) gurdeles (girdles) finenly worked from Collin[437] (Cologne.) Collin, the city which then at that time of day florished much and afforded rayre commodetes, and these merchāts that vsually traded to that citye, set vp ther singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the three kinges of Collin, with the Armes of that Citye, which was the Three Crouens of the former kings in memorye of them, and by those singes the people knew in what wares they deld in.”[438]

There is and was until lately such a sign carved in stone in front of a house in Bucklersbury, which street was once the head quarters of the mercers and perfumers. The three kings stood in a row, all in the same garb and position, with their sceptres shouldered. The history of the Three Kings was a favourite story in the middle ages. Wynkyn de Worde printed, anno 1516, “The Lives of the Three Kinges of Collen.” The same subject had been printed in Paris in 1498 by Tresyrel: “La Vie des Troys Roys, Balchazar, Melchior, et Gaspard.” They also appeared in many of the ancient plays and mysteries. In one of the Chester pageants, acted by the shearmen and tailors, they are called Sir Jasper of Tars; Sir Melchior, king of Araby; Sir Balthazer, king of Saba; they enjoy the same names and kingdoms in the “Comédie de l’Adoration des Trois Roys,” by Marguerite de Valois. Their offerings are recorded in the following charm against falling sickness:—

“Jaspar fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazar aurum,
Hæc tria qui secum portabit nomina regum
Solvitur a morbo, Christi pietate, caduco.”[439]

Another Latin distich has—

“Tres Reges Regi Regum tria dona firebant
Myrrham Homini, uncto aurum, thura dedere Deo.”[440]

Melchior was usually represented as a bearded old man, Jasper as a beardless youth, and Balchazar as a Moor with a large beard.

This sign was as common on the Continent as in England, and at the present day it may often be met with. Eustache Deschamps, in the sixteenth century, thus celebrated the good cheer of one of the taverns in Paris:—

“Prince, par la Vierge Marie,
On est à la Cossonerie,
Aux Caunettes ou aux Trois Rois.”

L’Adoration des Trois Rois was, in 1674, the sign of François Muguet, one of the Parisian booksellers.

Not unlikely the sign of the Kings and Keys, a tavern in Fleet Street, is an abbreviation of the Three Kings and Cross Keys. At Weston-super-Mare, and at Chelmsforth, there is another sign which owes its origin to the Three Kings, namely, the Three Queens. When, in 1764, the Paving Act for St James’ was put into execution, the sign of the Three Queens, in Clerkenwell Green, was removed at a cost of upwards of £200; it extended not less than seven feet from the front of the house. Lloyd’s Evening Post, January 12-14, 1761, tells how two sharpers came to this ale-house and stole the silver tankard in which their drink was served them. Each tavern in those days possessed a number of silver tankards, in which the well-dressed customers were served with sack and canary. It may be imagined that the thieves were quietly on the look-out for such a prize. The same paper gives an advertisement about two silver pints stolen from the Jolly Butchers at Bath; in fact, similar advertisements were of almost daily occurrence. “The Praise of Yorkshire Ale,” 1685, also mentions—

“Selling of Ale, in Muggs,
Silver Tankards, Black Pots, and Little Juggs.”

One other semi-religious legend has provided a subject for many a signboard, namely, the [Man in] [the Moon]. Though this cannot strictly be styled a religious legend, yet it may be included in this class, as the idea is said to have originated from the incident given in Numbers xv. 32, et seq., “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day,” &c. Not content with having him stoned for this desecration of the day, the legend transferred him to the moon. It is, however, a Christian legend, for the Jews had some Talmudical story about Jacob being in the moon; in fact, almost every nation, whether ancient or modern, sees somebody in it. The Man in the Moon occurs on a seventeenth century token of a tavern in Cheapside, represented by a half-naked man within a crescent, holding on by the horns. There is still a sign of this description in Little Vine Street, Regent Street, and in various other places. Generally he is represented with a bundle of sticks, a lanthorn (which, one would think, he did not want in the moon,) and frequently a dog. Thus Chaucer depicts him in “Cresseide,” v. 260:—

“Her gite was gray and full of spottes blacke,
And on her breast a chorl painted full even,
Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe,
Which for his theft might clime no ner y^e heven.”

Shakespeare also alludes to him:—

“Steph. I was the Man in the Moon when time was.

“Caliban. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee; my mistress showed me thee, thy dog and bush.”—Tempest, ii., sc. 2.

Also—

“Quince. One must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of moonshine.”—Midsummer Night’s Dream, iii., sc. 1.

This bunch of thorns is alluded to by Dante, “Inferno,” canto xx. 124, where the Man in the Moon is spoken of as Cain—

“Ma viene omai: che gia tiene il confine
D’amendue gli emisperi e tocca l’onda
Sotto Sibilia Caino è le spine.”[441]

And again in “Paradiso,” canto ii. 49, speaking of the moon, he asks—

“Ma detemi, che sono i segni bui
Di questi corpo, che laggiuso in terra
Fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?”[442]

And the annotators of Dante say that Cain was placed in the moon with a bundle of thorns on his back, similar to those he had placed on the altar when he offered to the Lord his unwelcome sacrifice. This Man in the Moon, whether Cain, Jacob, or the Sabbath-breaker, has been celebrated by innumerable songs. Alex. Neckham (recently edited by Mr T. Wright) refers to him from a very ancient ballad, and one of the oldest songs is in the Harl. MSS., 2253, beginning:—

“Mon in the mone stond and streit,
On is bot-forke is burthen he bereth,
Hit is muche wonder that he na doun slyt
For doute lest he valle he shoddreth and skereth.
When the forst freseth muche chele he byd
The thornes beth kene is hattren to-tereth
N’is no wytht in the world that wot when he syt
Ne, bote hit bee the hegge, whot wedes he wereth.”

For all this, his life seems to be very merry, for one of the Roxburghe Ballads (i. f., 298) informs us that—

“Our Man in the Moon drinks Clarret,
With powderbeef, turnep and carret;
If he doth so, why should not you
Drink until the sky looks blue.”

From whence they obtained the information it is difficult to say, but it was a well-established fact with the old tobacconists that he could enjoy his pipe. Thus he is represented on some of the tobacconists’ papers in the Banks Collection puffing like a steam-engine, and underneath the words, “Who’ll smoake with y^e Man in y^e Moon?” If these frequent allusions in songs and plays were not enough to remind the Londoners that there was such a being, they could see him daily amongst the figures of old St Paul’s—

“The Great Dial is your last monument; where bestow some half of the three score minutes to observe the sauciness of the Jacks[443] that are above the Man in the Moon there; the strangeness of their motion will quit your labour.”—Decker’s Gull’s Hornbook.

---

[402] Coryatt’s Crudities, London, 1776, p. 15, reprinted from the edition of 1611.

[403] In those early days the sign alone of a house was not thought to give sufficient publicity. Touters (crieurs) were therefore sent about town (a custom dating from the Romans.) Thus in the “Crieries de Paris,” (Barbazan, Fabliaux et Contes, vol. ii., p. 277,)—

“D’autres cris on fait plusieurs,
Qui long seraient à reciter.
L’on crie vin nouveau et vieux,
Duquel l’on donne à tater.”

These touters had their statutes and privileges granted to them by Philip Auguste in 1258, some of which are very curious.

[404] Not only had the innkeepers saints on their signboards, but the different reception-rooms in their houses were also sanctified with some holy name. Artus Desiré quaintly inveighs against this practice in his “Loyaulté Consciencieuse des Tavernières:”—

“Semblablement toutes leurs chambres painctes,
Où il n’y a qu’ordure et ivrognise,
Portent les noms de benoistz sainctz et sainctes
Contre l’honneur de Dieu et son Eglise.
L’une s’apelle, à leur mode et devize,
Le Paradis et l’autre Sainct Clement.
Et quant quelqu’un rabaste fermement,
L’hostesse crie André, Guillot, Mornable,
Laisse-moy tout, et va legerement
En Paradis, compter de par le Diable.
S’on si veut chauffer,
Portent le faggot
Robin avec Margot,
De par Lucifer.”

(“In the same manner all their painted rooms, in which there is nothing but filth and drunkenness, are named after some blessed saint, contrary to the respect due to the Lord and His Church. According to this custom one is called the Paradise, and another St Clement. And if anybody higgles about his bill the hostess calls out, Andrew, Will, Mornable, leave everything, and run quickly up to the Paradise to make out the bill, in the Devil’s name. And if anybody wants a fire, Bob or Maggy has to carry up a faggot in the name of Lucifer.”)

[405]

“This is Saint Crispin, but my name is Kit,
I make boots, shoes, and slippers.”

[406]

“Here at the Crispin any man may for his money
Immediately obtain shoes made out of animals’ skins;
But many a brute in this town wears a human skin,
Nay, wears his own brother’s skin, and the brute looks even well in it”

[407] So were Crispin and Crispian, and hence the trade is called the “Gentle Craft.”

[408] The gayest city in Europe three centuries ago.

[409]

“You have said
St Julian’s prayer this morning,
Either in French or in Latin,
Now you are sure to be well lodged.”

[410]

“We are entirely at your service.
By S. Peter the good apostle
You shall have St Julian inn (or welcome.)”

[411]

“Often good wine makes them say,
That they have the inn of St Martin.”

[412]

“Thus they had at his expense the inn of St Martin.”

[413]

“Whosoever sees the image of St Christopher,
Shall that day not feel any sickness.”

[414]

“The day that you see St Christopher’s face,
That day shall you not die an evil death. 1423.”

[415] Aubrey, Remains of Judaism and Gentilism. Lansdowne MSS., No. 231.

[416] Memoirs of Roger Earl of Orrery, by Rev. Mr Th. Morris, (Earl of Orrery’s State Letters,) 1742, fol. 15.

[417] Strype, B. ii., p. 162.

[418] Tottenham High Cross.

[419] The first library sold by auction in this country was that of Dr Seaman, of Warwick Court, Warwick Lane, in 1676.

[420] “If your potations overnight do not agree with you, take another glass of wine in the morning, and it will cure you.”

[421] Skinker, an old English word, synonymous to tapster, drawer.

“Bacchus the win him skinketh all about.”—Chaucer, Marchant’s Tale, 9696

[422]

“Apollo and you, band of Muses,
Bacchus, god of wine and grapes,
Ceres, goddess of bread and beer,
You all must share our sorrow.
Weep all ye gods and goddesses,
Over the bier of the defunct Simon Wadloe,
He lived well under an evil sign,
If he goes to heaven, O miracle! thanks to the Devil.”

[423] Ned Ward’s “London Spy,” 1703.

[424] La Tête Noire, (the Moor’s head,) another famous tavern in that locality.

[425]

“Sacred precincts, where are delivered
The holy oracles of Themis,
Though you may boast
To see everybody kneel to you,
Were it not for the Devil and the Moor’s head
I would never come near you.”

[426] St Justin, another martyr, after his head was struck off, picked it up, and, holding in his hand, conversed with the bystanders.

[427] Cunningham’s London.

[428] Our Harry VIII. was fully as extravagant in his retinue. When he went over to meet Francis I. at the Camp du Drap d’or, he required 2400 beds, and stabling for 2000 horses.

[429] “Rutland Papers,” reprinted for Camden Society.

[430] Epistle Dedicatory to “Have at you to Saffron Walden,” 1596.

[431] “Misrule in a velvet cap, a sprig, a short cloak, a great yellow ruff, like a reveller, his torch bearer bearing a rope, a cheese, and a basket.” The names given were the real designations of the performers in private life. Kit, the cobbler of Philpot Lane; Cis, a cook’s wife from Scalding Alley; Nell, a milliner from Threadneedle Street; and Tom, our drawer from Blossom’s Inn.

“And he presenteth Misrule,
Which you may know by the very show,
Albeit you never ask it;
For there you may see, what his ensignes bee,
The rope, the cheese, and the basket.”

[432] St Catherine was beheaded after having been placed between wheels with spikes, from which she was saved by an angel descended from heaven.

[433] Several of the old carriers and coaching inns still remain in Bishopsgate Street, under their old names, as the Black Bull, the Green Dragon, the Four Swans, and (until a few months ago) the Flowerpot, &c.

[434] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842.

[435] It is said that this sign, put up in French somewhere as the cœur doré, was Englished into the “queer door.”

[436] Note in Gifford’s Ben Jonson, vol iv., p. 174.

[437] They were called the three kings of Cologne because they were buried in that city. The Empress Helena brought their bones to Constantinople, from whence they were removed to Milan, and thence in 1164 to Cologne, where they are still kept as sacred and miracle-working relics.

[438] Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193.

[439]

“Jasper brings myrrh, Melchior frankincense, Balthazar gold.
He who carries these three names of the kings about with him
Will, through Christ’s favour, be delivered of the falling sickness.”

In the trial of the smugglers for the murder of Chater and Galley, excisemen of Chichester, in the last century, one of the prisoners was found with this charm in his pocket. With this scrap of paper in his possession, he had considered himself quite safe from detection.

[440]

“Three kings brought three gifts to the King of Kings.
They gave myrrh to him as man, gold as king, and frankincense as God.”

[441]

“But come now, for already hovers Cain with his bundle of thorns
On the confines of the two hemispheres, and touches the
Waves beneath Seville.”

[442]

“But tell me, what are the dark spots
On that body, which makes them down there on earth
Talk of Cain and the bundle of thorns!”

[443] Paul’s Jacks were the little automaton figures that struck the hours in old St Paul’s. Similar puppets, or figures, were also on other London churches.

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CHAPTER X.
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS.

Tools and utensils, as emblems of trade, were certainly placed outside houses at an early period, to inform the illiterate public of the particular trade or occupation carried on within. Centuries ago the practice, as a general rule, fell into disuse, although a few trades still adhere to it with laudable perseverance: thus a broom informs us where to find a sweep; a gilt arm wielding a hammer tells us where the gold-beater lives; and a last or gilt shoe where to order a pair of boots. Those houses of refreshment and general resort, which sought the custom of particular trades and professions, also very frequently adopted the tools and emblems of those trades as their distinguishing signs. At other houses, again, signs were set up as tributes of respect to certain dignities and functions. Amongst the latter, the King’s Head and Queen’s Head stand foremost, and none were more prominent types than Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, even for more than two centuries after their decease. Only fifty or sixty years ago, there still remained a well-painted, half-length portrait of bluff Harry, as a sign of the King’s Head, before a public-house in Southwark. His personal appearance, doubtless, more than his character as a king, were at the bottom of this popular favour. He looked the personification of jollity and good cheer, and when the evil passions, expressed by his face, were lost under the clumsy brush of the sign-painter, there remained nothing but a merry, “beery-looking” Bacchus, eminently adapted for a public-house sign.

A very respectable folio might be filled with anecdotes connected with the various King’s Head inns and taverns up and down the country and in London—some connected with royalty, others with remarkable persons. Thus, for instance, when the Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth came forth from her confinement in the Tower, November 17, 1558, she went into the church of All Hallows, Staining, the first church she found open, to return thanks for her deliverance from prison. As soon as this pious duty was performed, the princess and her attendants went to the King’s Head in Fenchurch Street to take some refreshment, and there her Royal Highness dined on pork and peas. A monument of this visit is still preserved at the above house in an engraving of the princess, from a picture by Hans Holbein, hung up in the coffee-room; and the dish from which she ate her dinner still remains, it is said, affixed to the kitchen dresser there. There is a tradition that the bells of All Hallows were rung on this occasion with such energy, that the queen presented the ringers with silken ropes.

A more painful association is connected with another King’s Head:—

“In a secluded part of the Oxfordshire hills, at a place called Collins End, situated between Hardwicke House and Goring Heath, is a neat little rustic inn, having for its sign a well-executed portrait of Charles I. There is a tradition that this unfortunate monarch, while residing as a prisoner at Caversham, rode one day, attended by an escort, into this part of the country, and hearing that there was a bowling-green at this inn, frequented by the neighbouring gentry, struck down to the house, and endeavoured to forget his sorrows for a while in a game at bowls. This circumstance is alluded to in the following lines, written beneath the signboard:—

“Stop, traveller, stop, in yonder peaceful glade,
His favourite game the royal martyr play’d.
Here, stripp’d of honours, children, freedom, rank,
Drank from the bowl, and bowl’d for what he drank;
Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,
And changed his guinea ere he lost his crown.”[444]

The sign, which seems to be a copy from Vandyke, though much faded from exposure to the weather, evidently displayed an amount of artistic skill not usually met with on the signboard; but the only information the people of the house could give was, that they believed it to have been painted in London. His son, Charles II., is also connected in an anecdote with a King’s Head Tavern, in the Poultry, for it is reported that he stopped at this inn on the day of his entry at the Restoration, at the request of the landlady, who happened just then to be in labour, and wished to salute his majesty. Mrs King, the lady so honoured, was aunt to William Bowyer, “the learned printer of the eighteenth century.” In Ben Jonson’s time there was a famous King’s Head Tavern in New Fish Street, “where roysters did range.” It is this tavern, probably, that is alluded to in the ballad of “The Ranting Wh——’s Resolution:”—

“I love a young Heir
Whose fortune is fair,
And frollick in Fish Street dinners,
[307] Who boldly does call,
And in private paies all,
These boyes are the noble beginners.”[445]

At the King’s Head, the corner of Chancery Lane, Cowley the poet was born in 1618; it was then a grocer’s shop kept by his father. Subsequently it became a famous tavern, of which tokens are extant. It was at this house that Titus Oates’s party met, and trumped up their infamous story against the Roman Catholics, trying to implicate the Duke of York in the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. In the reign of William III., it was a violent Whig club. The distinction adopted by the members was a green ribbon worn in the hat. When these ribbons were shown, it was a sign that mischief was on foot, and that there were secret meetings to be held. North gives an amusing and lively description of this club:—

“The house was double balconied in front, as may be yet seen, for the clubsters to issue forth, in fresco, with hats and no perruques, pipes in their mouths, merry faces and diluted throat for vocal encouragement of the canaglia below, at bonfires, on unusual and usual occasions.”

Here the Pope-burning manifestations were got up, the Earl of Shaftesbury being president. In opposition to this Green Ribbon Club, the Tories wore in their hat a scarlet ribbon, with the words, Rex et Haeredes. Ned Ward, with his usual humour, describes a breakfast given in 1706 by the master of this house to his customers, consisting of an ox of 415 lb., roasted whole, and at the same time embraces the opportunity of praising the landlord as “the honestest vintner in London, at whose house the best wine in England is to be drunk.” This was probably Ned’s way of settling an old score.

Another King’s Head is mentioned by Pepys, 26th March 16634:—

“Thence walked through the ducking-pond fields, but they are so altered since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the old man’s at the Kings-head, to eat cakes and ale (his name was Pitts,) that I did not know which was the ducking-pond, nor where I was.”

It was a very different “ducking” in which the landlady of the Queen’s Head ale-house was concerned, as shown by the following newspaper paragraph:—

“Last week, a woman that keeps the Queen’s Head ale-house at Kingston, in Surrey, was ordered by the Court to be ducked for scolding, and was[308] accordingly placed in the chair and ducked in the river Thames, under Kingston Bridge, in the presence of 2000 or 3000 people.”—London Evening Post, Ap. 27, 1745.

Full particulars of such an operation are given by Misson:—

“They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two strong beams, twelve or fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other. The chair hangs upon a sort of axle, on which it plays freely, so as to remain in the horizontal position. The scold being well fastened in her chair, the two beams are then placed as near to the centre as possible, across a post on the water side, and being lifted up behind, the chair of course drops into the cold element. The ducking is repeated according to the degree of shrewdness possessed by the patient, and generally has the effect of cooling her immoderate heat, at least for a time.”

At the King’s Head, Strutton, near Ipswich, about ten years ago, there was the following inscription:—

“Good people, stop, and pray walk in,
Here’s foreign brandy, rum, and gin,
And, what is more, good purl and ale,
Are both sold here by old Nat Dale.”

Old Nat had lived for a period of eighty years under the shadow of the King’s Head.

Combinations with the King’s Head are not very frequent. The King’s Head and Lamb, an ale-house in Upper Thames Street, is evidently a quartering of two signs. The Two Kings and Still, sign of Henry Francis in Newmarket, 1667,[446] representing a still between two kings crowned, holding their sceptres, may have originated from the distillers’ arms, the two wild men, serving as supporters, being refined into two kings, the garlands on their heads into crowns, and their clubs into sceptres.

That Queen Elizabeth was for more than two centuries the almost unvarying type of the Queen’s Head need not be wondered at when we consider her well-deserved popularity. A striking instance of the veneration and esteem in which she was held, even through all the tribulations and changes of the Commonwealth, is exhibited in the fact of the bells ringing on her birthday, as late as the reign of Charles II.:—

“The Earl of Dorset coming to court, one Queen Elisabeth’s birthday, the king [Charles II.] asked him what the bells rung for? which having answered, the king farther asked him, ‘how it came to pass that her holiday was still kept, whilst those of his father and grandfather were no more thought of than William the Conqueror’s?’ ‘Because,’ said the frank peer[309] to the frank king, ‘she being a woman, chose men for her counsellors; and men, when they reign, usually chuse women.’”[447]

During the queen’s lifetime, however, the sign-painters had to mind how they represented “Queen Bess,” for Sir Walter Raleigh says that portraits of the queen “made by unskilful and common painters” were, by her own order, “knocked in pieces, and cast into the fire.”[448] A proclamation had been issued to that effect, in the year 1563, saying that:—

“Forasmuch as thrugh the natural desire that all sorts of subjects and people, both noble and mean, have to procure the portrait and picture of the Queen’s Majestie, great nomber of Paynters, and some Printers and Gravers have allredy, and doe daily, attempt to make in divers manners portraictures of hir Majestie, in paynting, graving, and pryntyng, wherein is evidently shewn, that hytherto none hath sufficiently expressed the naturall representation of hir Majesties person, favor, or grace, but for the most part have also erred therein, as thereof daily complaints are made amongst hir Majesties loving subjects, in so much, that for redress hereof hir Majestie hath lately bene so instantly and so importunately sued by the Lords of hir Consell, and others of hir nobility, in respect of the great disorder herein used, not only to be content that some special coning payntor might be permitted by access to hir Majestie to take the naturall representation of hir Majestie, whereof she hath been allwise of hir own right disposition very unwillyng, but also to prohibit all manner of other persons to draw, paynt, grave, or pourtrayit hir Majesties personage or visage for a time, until by some perfect patron and example the same may be by others followed.

“Therfor hir Majestie, being herein as it were overcome with the contynuall requests of so many of hir Nobility and Lords, whom she can not well deny, is pleased that for thir contentations, some coning persons, mete therefore, shall shortly make a pourtraict of hir person or visage, to be participated to others, for satisfaction of hir loving subjects; and furdermore commandeth all manner of persons in the mean tyme to forbear from payntyng, graving, printing, or making of any pourtraict of hir Majestie, untill some speciall person that shall be by hir allowed, shall have first fynished a pourtraicture thereof, after which finished, hir Majestie will be content that all other painters, printers, or gravers that shall be known men of understanding, and so thereto licensed by the hed officers of the plaices where they shall dwell, (as reason it is that every person should not without consideration attempt the same,) shall and maye at their pleasures follow the sayd patron or first portraicture. And for that hir Majestie perceiveth that a grete nomber of hir loving subjects are much greved and take grete offence with the errors and deformities allredy committed by sondry persons in this behalf, she straightly chargeth all her officers and ministers to see to the observation hereof, and, as soon as may be, to reform the errors allredy committed, and in the mean tyme to forbydd and[310] prohibit the shewing and publication of such as are apparently deformed, until they may be reformed which are reformable.”[449]

That there were signboards, however, representing her Majesty’s “person, favour, and grace,” during her lifetime, is evident from the fact that an ancestor of Pennant, the London topographer, made his fortune as a goldsmith at the sign of the Queen’s Head, in Smithfield, during the reign of good Queen Bess.

The irascible Mr Boursault, whose bile was so often deranged by signboard irregularities, took also sycophantic exception at royal heads being represented in that way:

“Je souffre impatiemment que le portrait du Roy, celuy de la Reine, de Monseigneur et des autres Princes et Princesses, servent d’enseignes de boutiques; eux qui ne devroient faire l’ornement que des plus célèbres galeries et des plus illustres cabinets. Monsieur d’Argenson et Vous même, Monsieur le Commissaire, n’auriez-vous pas juste raison de vous facher de voir vôtre portrait servir d’enseigne à, la Maison d’un cabaretier, ou à la boutique d’un Fripier; et pourquoi donc ne vous fachez-vous pas de ce que celui du Roy y est?”[450]

Of celebrated Queen’s Heads we must begin with the highly respectable inn of that name, in which, before the reign of Queen Elizabeth, lived the canonists and professors of spiritual and ecclesiastical law. It was situated in Paternoster Row, where its name is still preserved in Queen’s Head Alley. From this place the lawyers removed to Doctors’ Commons.

Nearly as ancient a building was the old Queen’s Head, Lower Street, Islington, at the corner of Queen’s Head Lane, one of the most perfect specimens of ancient domestic architecture in the vicinity of London. It is said that it was built by Sir Walter Raleigh, after he had obtained “lycense for keeping of taverns and retayling of wynes throughout Englande,” and that it was called by him the Queen’s Head in compliment to his royal mistress. Essex is also said to have resided there, and to have been visited by the queen. The same tradition is current about the Lord Treasurer Burleigh. In the reign of George II. it was used as a playhouse, and bills are still extant of plays acted there at that period.

It was a strong wood and plaster building, three lofty stories high, projecting over each other, and forming bay windows supported by brackets and caryatides. Inside it was panelled with wainscot, and had stuccoed ceilings, adorned with dolphins, cherubims, and acorns, bordered by a wreath of flowers. The porch was supported by caryatides of oak, crowned with scroll-capitals.[451] This time-honoured structure was pulled down in October 1829, and nothing of it remains in the new building erected on its site but the name, the carved oak panels of the parlour, and a bust of Queen Elizabeth at the top front. A carved mantelpiece, (formerly in the parlour of the old house,) with the history of Dian and Actæon on it, (a favourite subject with the virgin queen,) was sold for more than £60 at the sale of the building materials, most of which were bought by antiquaries.

There used to be a large pewter tankard in this house, with an inscription engraved on it, which is much too highly spiced to be given here. It was signed John Cranch, and bore date 1796.

At the Queen’s Head, Duke Court, Bow Street, the English language was enriched with two new terms, though one of them seems to have been still-born. This tavern was once kept by a facetious individual of the name of Jupp. Two celebrated characters, Annesley Shay and Bob Todrington—the latter a sporting man—meeting late in the day at the above place, went to the bar and asked for half a quartern each, with a little cold water. In the course of the evening they drank twenty-four, when Shay said to the other, “Now we’ll go.” “Oh no,” replied his companion, “we’ll have another, and then go.” This did not satisfy the Hibernian, and they continued drinking on till three in the morning, when they both agreed to go; so that under the idea of going they made a long stay, and this was the origin of drinking goes; but another preferring to eke out the measure his own way, used to call for a quartern at a time, and these in the exercise of his humour he called stays.[452]

In the beginning of this century, when Marylebone consisted of “green fields, babbling brooks,” and pleasant suburban retreats, there was a small but picturesque house of public entertainment, yclept the Queen’s Head and Artichoke, situated “in a lane nearly opposite Portland Road, and about 500 yards from the road that leads from Paddington to Finsbury”—now Albany Street. Its attractions chiefly consisted in a long skittle and “bumble puppy” ground, shadowy bowers, and abundance of cream, tea, cakes, and other creature comforts. The only memorial now remaining of the original house is an engraving in the Gentleman’s Magazine, November 1819. The queen was Queen Elizabeth, and the house was reported to have been built by one of her gardeners, whence the strange combination on the sign.

Besides Crowns (see [p. 101]) other royal paraphernalia are occasionally used as signboard decorations. The Sceptre is not uncommon; the Sceptre and Heart was the sign of Samuel Grover, chirurgical instrument maker, on London Bridge, in the latter end of the seventeenth century. It is engraved on his shop-bill, and represents a circle surrounded by fruit and foliage, having two Cupids standing at the upper corner, and containing in the centre two palm branches enclosing a sceptre surmounted by a heart. Round the whole are suspended lancets, trepans, saws, &c. In all probability it is simply a quartering of two signs.

The Royal Hand and Globe was the loyal sign of a stationer at the corner of St Martin’s Lane, in 1682.[453] It doubtless refers to the royal hand holding the golden orb, surmounted by a cross. It is still the sign of an ale-house near the Soho Theatre. The same orb or globe seems to be alluded to in the sign of the Sword and Ball, on Holborn Bridge, in the seventeenth century. What stands in the way of this explanation, however, is that on the token of this house the sword is represented piercing the ball; but this may merely have been a fancy of the sign-painter, who did not understand its meaning. As for the Sword and Mace, the meaning is perfectly clear; it is the sign of a public-house in Coventry.

The Church is almost as abundantly represented as royalty. Even long after the Reformation the Pope’s Head was still very common. Nash’s “Anatomie of Absurdities” was printed by T. Charlwood for Thomas Hacket, and was “to be sold at his shop in Lumbard Street, vnder the signe of the Popes Heade, 1590.” Taylor, the Water poet, in his “Travels through London,” 1636, mentions four Pope’s Head taverns; but the most famous of all was the Pope’s Head tavern in Cornhill.

“I have read[454] of a countryman that, having lost his hood in Westminster Hall, found the same in Cornhill hanged out to be sold, which he challenged, but was forced to buy, or go without it, for their stall they said was their market. At that time also the wine drawers at the Pope’s Head tavern (standing without the door in the High Street,)[455] took the same man by the sleeve, and said, ’Sir, will you drink a pint of wine?’ Whereunto he answered, ‘A penny spend I may,’ and so drank his pint, for bread nothing did he pay, for that was allowed free.[456] This Pope’s Head tavern, with other houses adjoining, strongly built of stone, hath of old time been all in one, pertaining to some great estate, or rather to the king, as may be supposed both by the largeness thereof, and by the arms, to wit, three leopards passant gardant, which were the whole arms of England before the reign of Edward III., that quartered them with the arms of France three flower de lys. Some say this was King John’s house, which might be, for I find in a written copy of ‘Matthew Paris’s History’ that in the year 1232, Henry III. sent Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent, to Cornehill in[314] London, there to answer all matters objected against him: when he wisely acquitted himself. The Pope’s Head tavern hath a footway through from Cornhill into Lumbard Street.”—Stow’s Survey, p. 75.

In this tavern, in the fourth of Edward IV. (1464,) a trial of skill was held between Oliver Davy, goldsmith of London, and White Johnson, “Alicante Strangeour,” also of London,—the London goldsmiths being divided into native and “foren” workmen. These last, though they might be Englishmen, were so named merely as a distinction with respect to the work they produced, which consisted frequently in counterfeit articles and bad gold. The trial consisted in making, in four pieces of steel the size of a penny, a cat’s face in relief, and another cat’s face engraved, a naked man in relief, and another engraved, which work was to be performed in five weeks. Oliver Davy, the native goldsmith, won the wager, as White Johnson, the foreign workman, after six weeks could only produce the two “inward engraved” objects. The forfeit was a crown, and a dinner to the wardens, the umpires, and all those concerned in the wager. The works were kept in Goldsmith’s Hall, “to y^at intent that they be redy iff any suche controursy herafter falls, to be shewede that suche traverse hathe be determyn’d aforetymes.”[457] In Pepys’s time this tavern, like many others of that period and later, had a painted room. “18 January 1668.—To the Pope’s Head, there to see the fine-painted room which Rogerson told me of, of his doing, but I do not like it at all, though it be good for such a publick room.” Here in 1718 Quin killed his brother actor Bowen. “On Thursday s’ennight at night, Mr Bowen and Mr Quin, two comedians, drinking at the Pope’s Head tavern in Cornhill, quarrelled, drew their swords, and fought, and the former was run into the guts; he languished till Sunday last, and then died. Bowen, before he expired, desired that Mr Quin might not be prosecuted, because what had happened to him was his own seeking.”[458] The jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter, and Quin for the offence was burned in the hand.[459] The quarrel was rather a foolish one, arising out of a wager which of the two was the honester man, which had been decided in favour of Quin; inde iræ. This tavern seems to have continued in existence till the latter part of the last century.

The emblem of another class of high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church, the Cardinal’s Hat or Cap, was at one time common in England. Bagford says: “You have not meney of them, they war set up by sume that had ben saruants to Tho. Wolsey.”[460] But we find the sign long before Wolsey’s time, for in 1459, Simon Eyre

“Gave the Tavern called the Cardinal’s Hat in Lumbard Street, with a tenement annexed on the East part of the tavern, and a mansion behind the East tenement, together with an alley from Lumbard Street to Cornhill, with the appurtenances, all which were by him new built, towards a brotherhood of our Lady in St Mary Woolnots.”—Stow, p. 77.

This tavern and another of the same name, also in Lombard Street, were still extant in the seventeenth century. It was also the sign of one of the Stairs on the Bankside, the name of which is still preserved to that locality in Cardinal Cap’s Alley.

“But at the naked stewes
I understands howe that
The sygne of the Cardinall’s hat
That inne is now shit up.”

Skelton’s Whye come ye not to Courte.

These houses, by proclamation of 37, Henry VIII., were “whited and painted with signes on the front for a token of the said houses;” they were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, whence Pennant makes some sly remarks upon the sign of the Cardinal’s Cap:—

“I will not give into scandal so far as to suppose that this house was peculiarly protected by any coeval member of the sacred college. Neither would I by any means insinuate that the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, or the abbots of Waverley, or of St Augustine in Canterbury, or of Battel, or of Hyde, or the Prior of Lewis, had there their temporary residences for them or their trains, for the sake of these conveniences, in that period of cruel and unnatural restriction,” &c.[461]

The Bishop’s Head was, in 1663, the sign of J. Thompson, a bookseller and publisher in St Paul’s Churchyard. At this house, in 1708, was published Hatton’s “New View of London;” it was then in the occupation of Robert Knaplock.

More general, however, was the Mitre, which was the sign of several famous taverns in London in the seventeenth century. There was one in Great Wood Street, Cheapside, (called on the trades token of the house the Mitre and Rose,) mentioned by Pepys as “a house of the greatest note in London.”[462] The landlord of this house, named Proctor, died at Islington of the plague in 1665, in an insolvent state, though he had been “the greatest vintner for some time in London for great entertainments.” There was another Mitre near the west end of St Paul’s, the first music-house in London. The name of the master was Robert Herbert alias Forges. Like many brother-publicans, he was, besides being a lover of music, also a collector of natural curiosities, as appears by his

“Catalogue of many natural rarities, with great industrie, cost, and thirty years’ travel into foreign countries, collected by Robert Herbert, alias Forges, Gent., and sworn servant to his Majesty; to be seen at the place called the Musick house at the Mitre, near the West End of S. Paul’s Church, 1664.”

This collection, or at least a great part of it, was bought by Sir Hans Sloane. It is conjectured that the Mitre was situated in London House Yard, at the north-west end of St Paul’s, on the spot where, afterwards, stood the house known by the sign of the Goose and Gridiron. Ned Ward[463] describes the appearance of another music-house of the same name in Wapping, which he calls “the Paradise of Wapping,” though more probably it was in Shadwell, where there is still a Music House Court, which seems to point to some such origin. His description of this prototype of the Oxford and Alhambra music-halls is not a little amusing. The music, consisting of fiddles, hautboys, and a humdrum organ, he compares to the grunting of a hog added as a base to a concert of caterwauling cats in the height of their ecstacy. The music-room was richly decorated with paintings, (Hornfair was one of the pictures,) carvings, and gilding; the seats were like pews in a church, and the orchestra railed in like a chancel. The musicians occasionally went round to collect contributions, as they still do in the Cafés Chantants of the Champs Elysées, Paris. The other rooms in the house were “furnished for the entertainment of the best of companies,” all painted with humorous subjects. The kitchen, used at that period in many taverns as a sitting room by the customers, was railed in and ornamented in the same gaudy style as the rest of the houses; a quantity of canary birds were suspended on the walls. Underground was a tippling sanctuary painted with drunken women tormenting the devil, and other somewhat quaint subjects. The wine of the establishment was good. Here, then, we may imagine our great-great-grandfathers listening to the woeful fiddles scraping “Sillenger’s Round,” “John, come kiss me,” “Old Simon the King,” or other old tunes, until flesh and blood could stand it no longer, and a dance would be indulged in to the music of “Green Sleeves,” “Yellow Stockings,” or some other equally comic dance and tune; after which everybody went home, through the dirty dark streets, doubtless “highly pleased with the entertainment.”

Older than either of these was the Mitre in Cheap, which is mentioned in the vestry books of St Michael’s, Cheapside, before the year 1475.[464] In “Your Five Gallants,” a comedy by Middleton, about 1608, Goldstone prefers it to the Mermaid:—“The Mitre in my mind for neat attendance, diligent boys and—push, excels it [the Mermaid] far.” But the most famous of the inns with this name, was the Mitre in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, one of Doctor Johnson’s favourite haunts, “where he loved to sit up late,”[465] and where Goldsmith, and the other celebrities, and minor stars that moved about the great doctor, used to meet him. This house is named in the play of “Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks,” in 1611. It was one of those houses which, for more than two centuries, was the constant resort of all the wits about town; even the name of Shakespeare throws its halo around this place:—

“Mr Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street,” says Mr J. P. Collier, “is in possession of a MS. full of songs and poems in the handwriting of a person of the name of Richard Jackson; all prior to the year 1631, and including many unpublished poems by a variety of celebrated poets. One of the most curious is a song of five-seven-lines stanzas thus headed: ’Shakespeare’s Rime which he made at the Mytre in Fleete Street.’ It begins—‘From the rich Lavinian shore,’ and some few of the lines were published by Playford, and set as a catch. Another shorter piece is called in the margin: ’Shakespeare’s Rime:’—

‘Give me a Cup of rich Canary Wine,
Which was the Mitre’s (drink) and now is mine;
Of which had Horace and Anacreon tasted
Their lives as well as lines till now had lasted.’

I have little doubt that the lines are genuine, as well as many other songs.”

In this same tavern Boswell supped, for the first time, with his idol, and the description of the biographer’s delight on that grand occasion has a festive air about it that cannot fail to make a lively impression on his readers:—

“He agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I called on him, and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper, and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox high church sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson—the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation and the pride from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ever experienced.”

There, also, that amusing scene with the young ladies from Staffordshire took place, which would make an excellent companion picture to Leslie’s “Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman.”

“Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. Come (said he) you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject, which they did; and after dinner, he took one of them on his knees and fondled them for half an hour together.”

Hogarth, too, was an occasional visitor at this tavern. A card is still extant, wherein he requested the company of Dr Arnold King to dine with him at the Mitre. The written part is contained within a circle, (representing a plate) to which a knife and fork are the supporters. In the centre is drawn a pie with a Mitre on the top of it, and the invitation—

Mr Hogarth’s compliments to Mr King, and desires the honour of his company to dinner, on Thursday next, to η. β. π. [Eta beta py.][466]

In this tavern the Society of Antiquaries used to meet, before apartments were obtained in Somerset House.

“The Society hitherto having no house of their own, meet every Thursday evening, about seven o’clock, at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, where antiquities are produced and considered, draughts and impressions thereof taken, dissertations read, and minutes of the several transactions entered, and the whole economy under such admirable regulations, that probably in a short time they may apply for a royal power of incorporation.”[467]

In the bar of the Mitre Tavern in St James’ Market, which was kept by her aunt, (Mrs Voss, formerly the mistress of Sir Godfrey Kneller,) Captain Farquhar overheard Miss Nancy Oldfield read the play of “The Scornful Lady,” and was so struck with the proper emphasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage. Captain (afterwards Sir John) Vanbrugh, a friend of the family, recommended her to Rich, and shortly after she made her debut at Covent Garden, with an allowance of fifteen shillings a week.

Though a dozen other famous Mitre Taverns might be mentioned, these are sufficient to show how general a sign it was; the partiality of tavern-keepers for it is somewhat accounted for in the following stanza of the “Quack Vintners,” 1712:—

“May Smith, whose prosperous mitre is his sign,
To shew the church no enemy to wine;
Still draw such Christian liquor none may think,
Tho’ e’er so pious, ’tis a sin to drink.”[468]

The Mitre also is found in a few combinations, as the Mitre and Dove, i.e., the Holy Ghost, in King Street, Westminster; the Mitre and Keys, in Leicester—evidently the Cross Keys, which are a charge in the arms of several bishoprics; and the Mitre and Rose, which, from trades tokens, appears to have been the sign of a tavern in the Strand, as well as in Wood Street, Cheapside.

That the friars were also honoured on the signboard appears from “Fryar Lane, on the south side of Thames Street, near Dowgate. It was formerly called Greenwich Lane, but of later years Fryar’s Lane, from the sign of a Fryar sometime there.”[469] Probably it was a Black Friar, or Dominican Monk, for that order, above all others, had the reputation of being great topers, and therefore were not out of place on a signboard. There is a prayer extant of the holy fathers, addressed to St Dominic:—

“Sanctus Dominicus sit nobis semper amicus
Qui canimus nostro jugiter præconia rostro,
De cordis venis, siccatis ante lagenis;
Ergo tuas laudes si tu nos pangere gaudes,
Tempore paschali, fac ne potu puteali
Conveniat uti; quod si fit, undique muti
Semper erunt patres qui, non curant nisi fratres.”[470]

And an old French couplet gives the following gradations of the potatory capacities of the different orders, in which the Franciscans only are said to beat the Dominicans:—

“Boire à la Capucine,
C’est boire pauvrement;
Boire à la Célestine,
C’est boire largement;
Boire à la Jacobine,
C’est chopine à chopine;
Mais boire en Cordelier,
C’est vider le cellier.”[471]

Tokens are extant of a music-house, with the sign of the Black-friar, dated 1671. In Paris also, the Bacchic propensities of the Black-friars made a tavern-keeper of the seventeenth century choose St Dominic as the patron saint of his tavern. His principal customers, who formed a sort of club, were called Dominicans; a contemporary song thus gives the rule of this order:—

“Nous sommes dix, tous grands buveurs;
Bons ivrognes et grands fumeurs,
Qui ne cessant jamais de boire,
Et de remuer la machoire,
Méprisons d’amour les faveurs.”[472]

Nuns also figured on the signboard as the [Three Nuns], which was constantly used by drapers; not exactly, as Tom Brown says, “very dismally painted to keep up young women’s antipathy to popery and” single blessedness, but because the holy sisterhoods were generally very expert in making lace embroidery, and other fancy work—as the handkerchiefs made by the nuns of Pau, and sold by our drapers, fully prove even at the present day. In the seventeenth century, the Three Nuns was the sign of a well-known coaching and carriers’ inn in Aldgate, which gave its name to Three Nuns’ Court close at hand; near this inn was the “dreadful gulf, for such it was rather than a pit,” in which, during the Plague of 1665, not less than 1114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from the 6th to the 20th of September.[473] Not improbably this sign, after the Reformation, was occasionally metamorphosed into the Three Widows: Peter Treveris, a foreigner, erected a press and continued printing until 1552 at the Three Widows in Southwark; he printed several books for William Rastell, John Reynor, R. Copeland, and others in the city of London. It is still the sign of a cap and bonnet shop in Dublin. The Matrons, also, may have originally represented Nuns; this last hung, in the seventeenth century, at the door of John Bannister, crutch and bandage maker, near the hospital, (Christ’s Hospital School,) Newgate Street.[474]

PLATE XIII.
MERCURY AND FAN. (Banks’s Collection, 1810.)	NOBODY. (From an old print, circa 1600.)
RUNNING FOOTMAN. (Charles Street, Berkeley Square, circa 1790.)	QUEEN ELIZABETH. (Banks’s Collection.)

At the present day the Church is a very common ale-house sign, either on account of the esteem in which good living has been held by churchmen in all ages, “superbis pontificum potiore cœnis,” or, from the proximity of a church to the ale-house in question; thus, one inn in the town would be known as the “Market House,” whilst another might be known as the “Church Inn.” It has been said the name was given that topers might equivocate and say that they “frequently go to church.” Be this as it may, there is generally an ale-house close to every church, (in Knightsbridge the chapel of the Holy Trinity is jammed in between two public-houses,) whereby a good opportunity is offered to wash a dry sermon down. In Bristol, at the beginning of the present century, it was still worse—a Methodist meeting-room was immediately over a public-house, which gave rise to the following epigram:—

“There’s a spirit above and a spirit below,
A spirit of joy and a spirit of woe—
The spirit above is the spirit divine;
But the spirit below is the spirit of wine.”

Other signs connected with the church are the Chapel Bell, at Suton, in Norfolk, and the Church Stile or Church Gates, which is very common. The origin of this last comes from an old custom of drinking ale on the parish account, on certain occasions, at the church stile. Pepys mentions this when he was at Walthamstow, April 14, 1661:—“After dinner we all went to the church stile, and there eat and drank.” To this a correspondent in the Gent. Mag. (Nov. 1852, p. 442) makes the following note:—“In an old book of accounts belonging to Warrington parish, the following minute occurs:—“Nov. 5, 1688. Paid for drink at the church steele, 13s.;” and in 1732, “It is ordered that hereafter no money be spent on ye 5th of November or any other State day on the parish account, either at the church stile or any other place.” Though certainly the parish now does not pay for any ale drunk at the church stile, the sign is evidently set up in remembrance of the good old time when such things were.

Belonging to the church was also the sign of the Three Brushes, or Holy Water Sprinklers, which was that of an old house near the White Lion prison, Southwark, in which there was a room with panelled wainscoting and ceiling ornamented with the royal arms of Queen Elizabeth. Probably it had been the court-room at the time the White Lion Inn was a prison. Amongst the Beaufoy trades tokens there is one of “Rob. Thornton, haberdasher, next the Three Brushes in Southwark, 1667.”

Innumerable signs were borrowed from the army and navy; thus, at the present day, every uniform in the service is represented near barracks or in other haunts of soldiers. The Recruiting Sergeant is generally the sign of the public-house, where that worthy spreads his nets. Cross Guns, Cross Lances, Cross Swords, and Cross Pistols, respectively, are meant to allure artillerymen, lancers, and various cavalry men. But above all the Standard, the Banner, or the Waving Flag—“the glorious rag that for a thousand years has stood the battle and the breeze,” is of common occurrence, not only in the neighbourhood of military quarters, but everywhere in towns and villages. At the Standard Tavern in the Strand, Edmund Curll the bookseller used to meet the mysterious Rev. Mr Smith, who sold him Pope’s correspondence.

“I am just going to the Lords to finish Pope,” writes Curll to this person. “I desire you to send me the sheets to perfect the first fifty books, and likewise the remaining three hundred books, and pray be at the Standard Tavern this evening and I will pay you £20 more.”

The Kettledrum is a sign at St George-in-the-East; the Drum and the Trumpet are both of frequent occurrence, and the last is of old standing. One of the characters in “The Ball,” a play by Shirley, 1633, thus commends the beer of the Trumpet:—

“Their strong beere is better than any I
Ever drunke at the Trumpet.”—The Ball, Act v.

Possibly this was the Trumpet in Shire Lane, immortalised in the Tatler, and one of the favourite haunts of merry good-natured Dick Steele. Bishop Hoadley was once present at one of the meetings in this tavern, when Steele rather exposed himself in his efforts to please, a double duty devolving upon him, as well to celebrate the “glorious memory” of King William III., it being the 4th of November—as to drink up to conversation pitch his friend Addison, the phlegmatic constitution of whom was hardly warmed for society by the time Steele was no longer fit for it. One of the company, a red hot Whig, knelt down to drink the health with all honours. This rather disconcerted the bishop, which, Steele seeing, whispered to him—“Do laugh, my lord, pray laugh; it is humanity to laugh.” Shortly after Steele was put into a chair and sent home. Next morning he was much ashamed, and sent the Bishop this distich:—

“Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons though he none commits.”

Some trades tokens are extant of houses with the sign of the Trumpet in King Street, Wapping, and in the Minories. At the same period there was a sign of the Trumpeter in Trump Alley, probably suggested by the name of the thoroughfare.

The Buckler is a very old sign, and occurs in “Cocke Lorell’s Bote:”—

“Here is Saunder Sadeler of Froge Street Corner, With Jelyan Joly at signe of the Bokeler.”

More general was the sign of the Sword and Buckler, which was frequently set up by haberdashers for the following reason:—

“And whereas, until about the twelve or thirteenth yeere of Queene Elisabeth, the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was only had in use, the bucklers then being only a foot broad, with a pike of four or five inches long; then they beganne to make them full half ell broad, with sharpe pikes 10 or 12 inches long, wherewith they meant either to breake the swordes of their enemies, if it hitte uppon the pike, or else sodainely to runne within them and stabbe, and thrust their buckler with the pike into the face, arme, and body of their adversary, but this continued not long;[475] every haberdasher then sold bucklers”.—Stow’s Chronicle.

The great prevalence of this sign originated in the so-called sword and buckler play, once so common in England. Misson, who visited this country in the beginning of the eighteenth century, says:—

“Within these few years you should often see a sort of gladiators marching through the streets, in their shirts to the waste, their sleeves tucked up, sword in hand, and preceeded by a drum to gather spectators. They give so much a head to see the fight, which was with cutting swords and a kind of buckler for defence. The edge of the sword was a little blunted, and the care of the prize fighters was not so much to avoid wounding one another, as to avoid doing it dangerously; nevertheless as they were obliged to fight till some blood was shed, without which nobody would give a farthing for the show, they were sometimes forced to play a little roughly. The fights are become very rare within these eight or ten years.”[476]

In the seventeenth century it was not a little rough play, which is evident from those matches at which Pepys was present, and which he describes at large. Jouvin, another Frenchman who visited England in 1672, gives a detailed account of these divertisements, which, at that period, at all events, were anything but play; and Maitland was right when he designated them as “a barbarous performance, by those whom necessity (occasioned by a scandalous laziness and indolence) induces to expose themselves to be horribly mangled for a little money, while the bloodily-minded spectators satiate themselves with human gore to the great reproach of religion.”

In the Spectator, No. 436, there is an amusing essay on those “Hockley-in-the-Hole Gladiators,” and in No. 449 a letter appears, in which the deceits of the champions are shown:—

“I overheard two masters of the science agreeing to quarrel on the next opportunity. This was to happen in the company of a set of the fraternity of the basket hilts who were to meet that evening. When this was settled, one asked the other: ‘Will you give cuts or receive?’ The other answered, ‘Receive.’ It was replied, ‘Are you a passionate man?’ ‘No, provided you cut no more, nor no deeper than we agree.’”

A few other instances of the Sword occur on signs, as the Sword and Cross, a sort of emblem of the Church militant, or perhaps an inversion of the Cross Swords: this was a sign “next door to the Savoy Gate in 1711.” The Swordblade, a coffee-house in Birchen Lane in 1718, and the Sword and Dagger, a combination of arms that evokes the phantom of many a desperate duel amongst the ruffling gallants of the reign of James I. This sign of ill omen was, in the seventeenth century, in St Catherine Lane, Tower, as appears from the traded tokens issued there.

The Dagger was once common in London—

“My lawyer’s clerk I lighted on last night
In Holborn at the Dagger,”

says Captain Face, in Ben Jonson’s “Alchymist,” and various trades tokens testify the prevalence of the sign. Probably this arose from its being a charge in the city arms, which was supposed to represent the dagger Sir William Walworth used in slaying Wat Tyler. This at least was asserted in the inscription below the niche in which Sir William’s statue was erected in Fishmonger’s Hall:—

“Brave Walworth knyght Lord Mayor yt slew
Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes—
The king therefore did give in lieu
The Dagger to the Cytyes armes.”

Stow says that this is erroneous, as, when in the 4 Richard II. a new seal was made for the city, “the armes of this city were not altered, but remayne as afore; to witte, argent, a playne cross gules a sword of Saint Paul in the first quarter and no dagger of William Walworth as is fabuled.”[477] The Dagger and Pie was in the seventeenth century the sign of a celebrated pie-shop in Cheapside, the Pie being added to the original sign; but from the trades tokens of this house we see that this was represented by a rebus of a dagger with a magpie on the point. Dagger-pies are frequently mentioned in the plays of that period; for instance, in Decker’s “Satyro-Mastrix:”—“I’ll not take thy word for a dagger-pie;” and in Prynne’s “Histrio-Mastrix,” “and please you, let them be dagger-pies.” The London apprentices appear to have been good customers to this house. Whenever, for example, old Hobson, the merry haberdasher, went abroad, “his prentices wold ether bee at the Taverne filling their heds with wine or at the Dagger in Cheapside cramming their bellies with minced pyes.”[478] And in Heywood’s comedy of “If you Know not me you Know Nobody,” the worthy citizen bitterly inveighs against the temptations held out to apprentices by the dainties of this house:—

“Ten pounds a morning! Here is the fruit
Of Dagger-pies and Ale-house guzzling.”—Act i. sc. i., 1606.

A rather curious sign was that of the Red M and Dagger. The letter M was the initial of Mrs Milner’s name, who, at this sign in Pope’s Head Alley, “over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhill,” sold the “Grand Restorative,” which cured consumption, stone, dropsy, and all evils flesh is heir to. The sign occurs among the Bagford bills; there is a similar one amongst the Banks bills, the Pistol and C, the sign of John Crook, a razor-maker at the Great Turnstile, Holborn, circa 1787: the bill represents a renaissance scutcheon with a pistol, above it a C, and surgical instruments disseminated on the field.

Though we have the authority of Cicero that cedant arma togæ, yet booksellers, who flourish by the arts of peace, choose the Helmet for their sign. Humphrey Joy, a bookseller and printer in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1550, and another, celebrated in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary, Rowland Hall by name, had both a Helmet for their sign. This Hall changed his sign more frequently than is generally the custom; thus, besides the Helmet, he is known to have traded at the signs of the Cradle, in Lombard Street; the Half Eagle and Key, in Gutter Lane; and the Three Arrows, in Golden Lane, near Cripplegate. There is still a stone carving of the helmet fixed in the front of a house in London Wall, with the date 1668 and the initials H. M. Ned Ward mentions the Helmet in Bishopsgate; he says at the battles without bloodshed of the Trainbands in Moorfields, the gallant warriors wish

“For beer from the Helmet in Bishopsgate.
And why from the Helmet? Because that sign
Makes the liquor as welcome t’ a soldier as wine.”

Trades tokens are extant of the Blue Helmet in Tower Street. From the same source we learn that there was, in the seventeenth century, a sign of the Plate, i.e., the Breastplate, in Upper Shadwell; and a Handgun in Shadwell. This weapon was a sort of musket of early times, fired in the hand without a rest; “gunners with handguns or half-hakes” are named by Stow in his enumeration of the troops marching in the city watch on St John’s night.

A few other old weapons remain to be mentioned, as the Arrow, once a great favourite when this weapon made the English name terrible whenever our troops took the field. In the last century there was a beer-house at Knockholt, in Kent, the sign an Arrow, with the following poetical effusion beneath:—

“Charles Collins liveth here,
Sells rum, brandy, gin, and beer;
I make this board a little wider,
To let you know I sell good cyder.”

The Cross-bullets, a name puzzling at first sight, was a sign in Thames Street in the seventeenth century, representing two bar-shot crossed, which the trades token elucidates by the equally puzzling legend, “at the Crose bvlets;” this was an instrument of destruction formerly used in naval engagements, and for that reason set up in the neighbourhood of the shipping.

If we may believe a jocular article on a quack handbill in the Spectator, No. 444, there was a Cannon-ball in Drury Lane; for he mentions that—

“In Russell Court, over against the Canonball, at the Surgeons’ Arms, in Drury Lane, is lately come from his travels a surgeon who has practised surgery and physic both by sea and land these twenty-four years. He (by the blessing) cures the Yellow Jaundice, Green sickness, Scurvey, Dropsy, Surfeits, Long sea voyages, Campaigns, and women’s miscarriages, lyings in, etc., as some people that has been lamed these thirty years can testify; in short he cureth all diseases incident on man, women, or children.”

Undoubtedly this bill had been slightly touched up in passing through the hands of the Spectator, who, like the mythological king, “quodcunque tetigit inaurat,” for it is rather “too good to be true.”

The Halbert and Crown was, in 1791, the sign of Paul Savigne, a cutler in St Martin’s Churchyard; whilst the Spear in Hand is at the present day the sign of a public-house at Norwich, being undoubtedly a popular version of some family crest.

In Jews’ Row, or Royal Hospital Row, Chelsea, there is a sign which greatly mystifies the maimed old heroes of the Peninsula and Waterloo, and many others besides; this is the Snow-shoes. It is the sign of a house of old standing, and was set up during the excitement of the American war of independence, when snow-shoes formed part of the equipment of the troops sent out to fight the battles of King George against “Mr Washington and his rebels.”

One of the low public-houses that stood on the outskirts of London, towards Hyde Park Corner, at the end of the last century, was called the Triumphal Car. There were a great many other houses of the same description in that neighbourhood, viz., the Hercules Pillars, the Red Lion, the Swan, the Golden Lion, the Horse-shoe, the Running Horse, the Barleymow, the White Horse, and the Half-moon, which two last have given names to two streets in Piccadilly. The sign of the Triumphal Car was in all probability bestowed upon the house in honour of the soldiers who used to visit it.

“These public-houses, about the middle of last century, were much visited on Sundays, but those contiguous to Hyde Park were chiefly resorted to by soldiers, particularly on review days, when there were long wooden seats fixed in the street before the houses for the accommodation of six or seven barbers, who were employed on field days in powdering those youths who were not adroit enough to dress each other’s hair. Yet it was not unusual for twenty or thirty of the older soldiers to bestride a form in the open air, where each combed, soaped, powdered, and tied the hair of his comrade, and afterwards underwent the same operation himself.”[479]

The grenadiers of Frederick the Great managed those things still better, for twenty or thirty of them used to sit in a circle, each dressing, plaiting, and powdering the pigtail of the man before him, so that all hands were employed at the same time, and none was lost in waiting. There is still a Triumphant Chariot public-house in Pembroke Mews, Chelsea, a house of more than fifty years’ standing.

The Bombay Grab in High Street, Bow, belongs to military signs, as “Grab,” or “Crab,” is a slang expression for a foot soldier; perhaps the landlord at one time may have been in the Bombay army.

Objects relating to the navy, or rather to shipping, are still more common in this seafaring nation of ours than the attributes or emblems of any other trade or profession. Ned Ward describes Deptford in 1703 as every house being distinguished by either the sign of the Ship, the Anchor, the Three Mariners, Boatswain and Call, or something relating to the sea.

“For as I suppose [says he] if they should hang up any other, the salt-water novices would be as much puzzled to know what the figure represented as the Irishman was, when he called the Globe the Golden Cabbage, and the Unicorn the White Horse with a barber’s pole in his forehead.”[480]

There is scarcely a town in the kingdom that has not a Ship inn, tavern, or public-house. Tokens exist of “the Ship without Templebar, 1649,” probably the inn granted in 1571 to Sir Christopher Hatton, along with some lands in Yorkshire and Dorsetshire, and the wardship of a minor.[481] William Faithorne the engraver (ob. 1691) seems to have occupied the same house afterwards, for Walpole informs us that—

“Faithorne now set up in a new shop at the sign of the Ship, next to the Drake, opposite to the Palsgrave Head, without Temple Bar, where he not only followed his art, but sold Italian, Dutch, and English prints, and worked for booksellers.”[482]

This sign of the Ship, next to the Drake, seems to have constituted a sort of a pun or a rebus on Admiral Drake, as observed by Mr Akerman. Among the trades tokens there was “Will Jonson at y^e Drake, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, 1667.” The Drake stood next to the Ship. It was doubtless a rebus, and alluded to the Admiral, who was very popular in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the mint-mark of the martlet on her coins being termed by the vulgar a Drake. The situation of this sign near the Ship was appropriate enough. In the seventeenth century there was a sign of the Ship at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, (Netherlands,) with the following inscription:—

“Die in de ly, my vaart voorby
Zal hebben een Ryxdaalder en ’t gelach vry.”[483]

At the Ship tavern in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr Thomas Amps, on Tuesday the 14th of February 1654, a plot against Cromwell was discovered. Carlyle[484] forcibly pictures the conspirators as eleven truculent, rather threadbare persons, sitting over small drink there on that Tuesday night, considering how the Protector might be assassinated. Poor broken Royalist men, payless old captains, and such like, with their steeple hats worn very brown, and jackboots slit, projecting there what they could not execute. The poor knaves were found guilty, but not worth hanging, and got off with being sent to the Tower for a while to ponder over their wickedness.

Names of famous men-of-war are often found on the signboard, in seaports; either in honour of some brilliant feat performed by them, or simply in compliment to the crew, in the hopes of obtaining their liberal patronage. Thus the Albion, the Saucy Ajax, the Circe, and Arethusa, with innumerable others, may be met with in the vicinity of Plymouth, Portsmouth, and other seaports. The naming of signboards in this way was an old custom; as two examples among the London trades tokens very sufficiently prove. Thus, for instance, The Speaker’s Frigate, the sign of a shop in Shadwell in the seventeenth century. The frigate had been named after Sir Richard Stainer, speaker in the House of Commons in the time of the Commonwealth, who had done good service under command of Admiral Blake, in some of the naval engagements with the Spaniards. In 1652, this ship was sent to “Argier in Turkey,” (Algiers,) under command of Captain Thorowgood, with the sum of £30,000 to redeem English captives from slavery. Upon this occasion the Puritan newspapers made the following punning prayer:—

“A prosperous gale attend his motion; and a Christian vote and blessing be present, in all their debates and consultations, for doubtless, ’tis a sacrifice pleasing both to God and man, and plainly denotes unto the people of England, that our magistrates had rather bring home exiles, than make more.”[485]

After the Restoration the name of this ship was changed into the Royal Charles, (which also occurs as a sign,) that ill-fated ship taken by the Dutch in 1667, when, under Admiral de Ruyter, they made their descent on Chatham and Sheerness, and burnt a part of our fleet. The Royal Charles was one of the ships they took away. Its stern is still kept as a trophy in Rotterdam.

Ships occur in various conditions, as the Full Ship, Hull; Ship in Dock, Dartmouth; and the Ship on Launch, in every ship-building locality. The Ship in Full Sail was the sign of the first shop of Murray the publisher, in Fleet Street—probably in opposition to Longman, who had the Ship at Anchor. The Ship in Distress is a touching appeal to the good-natured wayfarer to assist in keeping the pump going. At Brighton, there was such a sign in the last century, on which the poet had assisted the painter to invoke the sympathy of the thirsty public:—

“With sorrows I am compass’d round,
Pray lend a hand, my ship’s aground.”

The Ship is to be met with in innumerable combinations: the Ship and Pilot Boat, Narrow Quay, Bristol; the Ship And Anchor is not uncommon, and in one place, at Chipping Norton, it is quaintly corrupted into the Sheep and Anchor;[486] the Ship and Whale, in compliment to the Greenland Fishery, occurs at South Shields, and the Ship and Notchblock is a sailor’s coffee-house in the Ratcliff Highway. All these explain themselves; most of the other combinations seem to result from the quartering of two signs, as the Ship and Bell, Horn Dean, Hants; the Ship and Fox, “next door but one to the Five Bells tavern, near the Maypole in the Strand,” in 1711; the Ship and Star on a trades token of Cornhill, may be the north star by which ancient mariners used to navigate; the Ship and Rainbow is common to many places; the Ship and Shovel, Tooley Street; said to be a deterioration of the Sir Cloudesley Shovel, but more likely alluding to the shovels used in taking out ballast, coal, corn, (when in bulk) and various other cargoes; the Ship and Plough, Hull; the Ship and Blue Coat Boy, Walworth Road, although susceptible of explanations, are doubtless only but quarterings. The Ship and Castle, though of common occurrence, seemed to puzzle the public already in the seventeenth century:—

“What resemblance the Ship and the Castle may bear
To ships floating on clouds, or to castles in air,
We know not; but this we are sure of, ’tis plain
Their clarets are perfectly Leger-de-Main.”

Search after Claret, 1691, canto I.

If not a combination of two signs, it may have some reference to our national defences. It was a sign in Cornhill as early as 1716, when, on November 9, the newspapers conveyed the following information to the metropolis:—

“We are informed that this day a fowl was roasted in a wonderful sun-kitchen on the top of the Ship and Castle tavern, Cornhill, in view of many gentlemen. The artist performer, who is a gentleman newly come from France, proposes to roast and boil meat, bake bread, prepare tea and coffee, and all kitchenwork done without common fire; some particular thing to be seen every day that the sun shines out brightly. ’Twas observable that when the fowl was dressed, it had the same taste and smell as if done by a common fire. The machine is composed of about a hundred small looking or convex-glasses.”

The scheme, seemingly, did not succeed in dethroning “old king coal,” for if we had to depend on the sun for our cookery, it is to be feared we would often have cold cheer.

Amongst all these ships, of course, Jack tar could not be forgot. The Ship Friends occur in Sunderland; the Three Mariners is an old sign, of which there are examples among the trades tokens, and which is still to be seen on two or three public-houses in London. There was formerly a tavern known by this sign in Vauxhall.

“On repairing it in 1752, in it was found a remarkably high-elbowed chair covered with purple cloth, and ornamented with gilt nails. An old fisherman told Mr Buckmaster that he had heard his grandfather say, that King Charles II. disguised, used on his water tours with his ladies to frequent the above tavern to play at chess, &c., and that the chair found, was the same as the king sat in. The chair was repaired and kept as a curiosity by the late John Dawson, Esq., but by neglect was, at the pulling down of his old dwelling at Vauxhall in 1777, destroyed. Mr Buckmaster sat in the chair many times, but his feet would not touch the ground. King Charles was very tall. No tavern of this name is known to exist now in Lambeth, but there is one of the sign of the Three Merry Boys,[487] probably a corruption of the above name.”[488]

In other places we meet with the Three Jolly Sailors; at Castleford there used to be one representing the jolly sailors “with a sheet in the wind,” and under it the following professional invitation:—

“Coil up your ropes and anchor here,
Till better weather does appear.”

In North Street, Hull, there is a sign of Jack on a Cruise, not on board H.M. ship, but “out on” what the lands folk call “a spree;” the cruises, however, are generally confined to rather low latitudes. The Boatswain appears to have been a public-house in Wapping in the reign of Charles II., for Wycherly in the “Plain Dealer,” 1676, makes Jerry Blackaire say:—“I should soon be picking up all our own mortgaged apostle spoons, bowls, and beakers, out of most of the ale-houses betwixt Hercules Pillars and the Boatswain in Wapping.” The Boatswain’s Call is a public-house sign in Frederick Street, Portsea, whose invitation the sailors, no doubt, accept with much more pleasure than the boatswain’s call of “all hands on deck” on a frosty winter morning. It was the name of a patriotic sea song during one of the wars with France. Red, White, and Blue, and its synonyme, the Three Admirals, both occur in more than one instance in Liverpool.

The Anchor was, perhaps, set up rather as an emblem than as referring to its use in shipping. It is frequently represented in the catacombs, typifying the words of St Paul, who calls hope “the anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.” St Ambrose says, “it is this which keeps the Christian from being carried away by the storm of life.” Other early writers use it as a symbol of true faith, and one of them has this beautiful idea:—

“As an anchor cast into the sand will keep the ship in safety, even so hope, ever amidst poverty and tribulation, remains firm, and is sufficient to sustain the soul; though, in the eyes of the world, it may seem but a weak and frail support.”[489]

It was a favourite sign with the early printers, probably in imitation of Aldus.[490] Thus Thomas Vautrollier, a scholar and printer from Paris and Rouen, who came to England about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and established his printing-office in Blackfriars, had an anchor for his sign, with the motto, “Anchora Spei.” At West Bromwich there is an ale-house having the sign of the Anchor with the following inscription:—

“O sweet ale, how sweet art thou,
Thy chearing streams new life impart,
Esteemed by all extremely good,
To quench our thirst and do us good.”

Sometimes a female figure in flowing garments is represented holding the anchor, in which case it is called the Hope and Anchor. The Blue Anchor was painted of that colour as a “difference” from other anchors; it is a common sign; it was the trade emblem of Henry Herringman, of the “New Exchange,” the principal London bookseller and publisher in the reign of King Charles II., the friend of Davenant, Dryden, and Cowley. The Blue Anchor and Ball was the sign of a mercer’s shop near the Conduit in Cheapside in 1707, the ball being the usual addition to intimate the sale of silks. Other distinctions are the Sheet Anchor, at Whitmore, in Staffordshire; the Foul Anchor, a sign of two public-houses at Wisbeach, implying, no doubt, that the lotus-eaters, who anchor in that harbour, get so entangled in the luxurious weeds of pleasure, that it becomes impossible for them to leave; the Raffled Anchor, Swan’s Quay, North Shields; and the Rope and Anchor, which is very common, the anchor being generally represented with a piece of cable twined round the stem.

A few combinations also occur: the Anchor and Can, at Ross, and at Putson, Hereford, which seems to allude to the Anchor as a measure; the Anchor and Shuttle, Luttendenfoot, Warley, Manchester, the shuttle being added in compliment to the weavers; the Anchor and Castle, a quartering of two signs in Tooley Street, &c.

Sometimes instead of the ship, some peculiar vessel is chosen, as, for instance, the Sloop, or the Leigh Hoy, a sort of smack, which occurs amongst the trades tokens as a sign near St Catherine’s Docks, and is still to be seen in Church Street, Mile End; the Coble, a sort of fishing-boat, common in Northumberland; the Tiltboat, Sommers Quay, Thames Street, in the XVIIth. century, and still at Billingsgate. This last was an open passenger boat for Greenwich, Woolwich, Gravesend, and other places down the river. It took twelve hours to perform the voyage to Gravesend, and much more if the wind was contrary, and the boat had not arrived before the tide turned. The tiltboats were superseded by steamers in 1815. The Dark House, Billingsgate, was their starting-place, and passengers would probably patronise the tavern with this name in the immediate neighbourhood, as they go now for a glass of ale and a sandwich to the Railway, or Steamboat Inn, during the quarter of an hour preceding departure.

The Fishing Smack was a public-house formerly standing near St Nicholas Church, Liverpool. The sign represented a man standing in a cart loaded with fish, and holding in his right hand what the artist intended to represent as a salmon. Underneath were the following lines:—

“This salmon has got a tail,
It’s very like a whale;
It’s a fish that’s very merry;
They say it’s catch’d at Derry;
It’s a fish that’s got a heart,
It’s catch’d and put in Dugdale’s cart.”

This truly classic production of the Muse of the Mersey continued for several years to adorn the host’s door, until a change in the occupant of the house induced a corresponding change of the sign, and the following lines took the place of the preceding:—

“The cart and salmon has stray’d away,
And left the fishing-boat to stay,
When boisterous winds do drive you back,
Come in and drink at the Fishing-Smack.”[491]

The Old Barge was a sign in Bucklersbury: “When Walbrooke did lye open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed up so farre; and therefore the place has ever since been called the Old Barge, of such a sign hanging out over the gate thereof.”[492] The Old Barge, or the Old Boat, is still frequently seen as a sign on the banks of some of the canals through which boats and barges are towed.

The Boat, an isolated tavern in the open fields, at the back of the Foundling Hospital, was the head-quarters of the rioters and incendiaries, who, excited by the injudicious zeal of Lord George Gordon, set London in a blaze during the “No Popery” riots in 1780.

Next Boat by Paul’s, in Upper Thames Street, may be seen on the trades token of an ale-house, evidently kept by a waterman, who used to ply with his boat near St Paul’s. The token of this house represents a boat containing three men, over it the legend, “Next Boat.” “Next Oars” was the cry of the watermen waiting for a fare. Tom Brown in his walk round London, says, “I steered him down Blackfryars towards the Thames side till coming near the stairs, up started such a noisy multitude of grizly old Tritons, hollowing and hooting out Next Oars and scullers, &c. And with that I bawled out as loud as a speaking trumpet, ‘Next Oars,’ and away ran Captain Caron, and hollowed to his man Ben to bring the boat near.” “Next Boat,” was also the sign of a public-house of note adjoining Holland’s Leaguer in Blackfriars, where Holland Street is now.

The Law is very badly represented—the Judge’s Head seems to be the only sign in honour of this branch of the Commonwealth. It was the sign of Charles King, a bookseller in Westminster Hall in 1718,[493] and may be readily accounted for in that locality. It was also the first sign of Jacob Tonson, the well-known bookseller and secretary of the Kit-Kat Club, when he lived near Inner Temple gate, Fleet Street. In 1697 when he removed to Gray’s Inn gate, he adopted the Shakespeare’s Head, under which he became famous. After 1712, he took a shop in the Strand, opposite Catherine Street, but without altering his sign, and there he died in March 1736 possessed of a splendid fortune. This was that famous Tonson who published the works of the most celebrated authors and poets of the day. Dryden was one of them. Liberality in those days was a word not to be found in the dictionary of a publisher, as Dryden often experienced; in one of his ill tempers, when Tonson had been putting on the screw rather too much, the incensed poet began a satire upon him:—

“With leering look, bullfac’d, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, with Judas-colour’d hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.”

These three lines he sent as a sample of his savoir faire to the publisher, with the gentle addition: “Tell the dog that he who wrote this can write more.” Tonson did not wish to see more, however, and Dryden obtained what he desired. About the year 1720, Jacob Tonson left the business to his nephew, Jacob Tonson, jun., son of his brother Richard, who, through the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle, became stationer, bookbinder, and printer to the Public Board, and this lucrative appointment was enjoyed by the Tonson family, or their assignees, till the month of January 1800.

Lot Goodal, Beadle of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in 1680, had, like other celebrities, taken his own goodly person for the sign of his house in Rupert Street, as appears from his advertisement, in which, like a true Dogberry, the public are informed that he had taken a silver watch with a studded case “in custody.” The Brown Bill was another constable’s sign:—

“Which is the constable’s house
At the sign of the Brown Bill?”

Blurt, Master Constable or the Spaniard’s Nightwalk. Tho. Middleton. 1602.

This brown bill was a kind of battle-axe, or hatchet affixed to a long staff, used by constables. The name was transferred from the weapon to the men who carried it:—

“Const. Come, my brown bills, we’ll roar,
“Const. Bounce loud at the tavern door.”—Ibid.

They were also called Billmen:—

“To us billmen relate,
Why you stagger so late,
And how you came drunk so soon.”

John Lilly’s Endymion. 1591.

Lawyers are only commemorated in the complimentary sign of the [Good Lawyer],[494] and in the Rolls, a tavern kept by Ralph Massie, in Chancery Lane, in the reign of Charles II. In various parts of the house, and particularly in the great room up stairs, the coats of arms of the Carew family spoke of its former possessors. Further back still, we have it as a timber tenement belonging to the knights of St John of Jerusalem, by whom it was sold to Cardinal Wolsey, who for a time inhabited it, before he had reached the summit of his pride and fame. Behind this building was the house and garden of Sir Walter Raleigh. But all these remnants of bygone glory were swept away in 1760, when the house was rebuilt, and the name changed into the Crown and Rolls. The name of Rolls, it is needless to observe, was adopted from the neighbouring Rolls House, where the rolls and records of Chancery have been kept since the reign of Richard III.

The liberal arts are as badly represented on the signboard as the Bar. The Poet’s Head was a sign in St James’s Street in the seventeenth century; who the poet was it is impossible to say now; perhaps it was Dryden, since the trades tokens represent a head crowned with bays. The same sign had been used during the Commonwealth by Taylor the Water poet, but in his case the poet was Taylor himself, (see [p. 48].) The Five Inkhorns, we gather from the trades tokens, was the sign of Walter Haddon, in Grub Street, a very appropriate trade emblem in that scribbling locality. There was also a house with this sign in Petticoat Lane, opposite which Strype’s mother lived; letters of his are extant addressed:—

These for his honoured Mother,
Mrs Hester Stryp, widow
dwelling in Petticoat Lane over
against the five Inkhorns, without
Bishopsgate
in London.

Petticoat Lane in that time was the great manufacturing place for inkhorns. The Hand and Pen was a scrivener’s sign, which was adopted by Peter Bales, Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated penman. Hollinshed says[495] that

“He writ within the Compasse of a Penie in Latine, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandements, a praise to God, a Prayer for the Queéne, his posie, his name, the daie of the month the yeare of our Lord, and the reigne of the Queéne. And on the seuenteenth of August next following, at Hampton Court, he presented the same to the Queenes maiestie in the head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall, and presented therewith an excellent spectacle, by him devised, for the easier reading thereof; wherewith her maiestie read all that was written therein with great admiration, and commended the same to the Lords of the Councill and the ambassadors, and did weare the same manie times vpon her finger.”

Bale was employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, and afterwards kept a writing school at the upper end of the Old Bailey. In 1595, when nearly fifty years old, he had a trial of skill with one Daniel Johnson, by which he was the winner of a golden pen, of a value of £20, which, in the pride of his victory, he set up as his sign. Upon this occasion, John Davis made the following epigram in his “Scourge of Folly:”—

“The Hand and Golden Pen, Clophonion
Sets on his sign, to shew, O proud, poor soul,
Both where he wonnes, and how the same he won,
From writers fair, though he writ ever foul;
But by that Hand, that Pen so borne has been,
From Place to Place, that for the last half Yeare,
It scarce a sen’night at a place is seen.
That Hand so plies the Pen, though ne’er the neare,
For when Men seek it, elsewhere it is sent,
Or there shut up, as for the Plague or Rent,
Without which stay, it never still could stand,
Because the Pen is for a Running Hand.”[496]

The sign of the Hand and Pen was also used by the Fleet Street marriage-mongers, to denote “marriages performed without imposition.”

Music-shops always adhered to the primitive custom of using the instruments they sold as their signs; for instance, the Harp and Hautboy, the sign of John Walsh, “servant to his Majesty,” in Catherine Street in the Strand, in 1700.[497] Other music-shops had the French Horn and Violin; the Violin, Hautboy, and German Flute; the Hautboy and Two Flutes; all these instruments in the woodcut above the shopbill, which was a copy of the sign, are placed perpendicularly beside each other, without any attempt at grouping. The Hautboy was one of the most constant music-shop signs; it was formerly a favourite street instrument, and might be heard at the Christmas “waits,” and on occasions of popular rejoicing. Waits even are said to have derived their name from it, that, according to one authority, being the old English name of the hautboy.[498] This, however, we believe to be a mistake. The Waits were “watches”—guêts, who went round at certain hours of the night with music, to let it be known they were on the look-out, and make people feel secure.

Novello, the well-known music publisher, still adheres to the old tradition, and carries on business in the Poultry under the sign of the Golden Crotchet. Somewhat similar was the Sol La, or the Merry Song (le chant Gaillard) of Guyot or Guy Marchant, a bookseller and printer in Paris circa 1490. His colophon here represents the two notes sol la, surmounting two conjoined hands, in evident allusion to the words of the Pange Lingua “Sola Fides.” At the side are represented two merry cobblers, a class of mechanics, who, from time immemorial, have been noted above all others for merriment, and a habit of singing whilst at their work. It is a curious fact, that on the title-page of one of the books printed by Marchant, the “Epistola de Insulis de novo repertis,” his chant Gaillard is translated into “Campo Gaillardo,” which seems to lead to the inference that this work had been printed by some one who had heard of Marchant’s sign, but had never seen it, and merely adopted his name as being well known in the literary world,—a fraud frequently complained of by the old printers.

The French Horn was once a very common sign, and is still of frequent occurrence; thus, there is a French Horn and Rose in Wood Street, Cheapside; a French Horn and Half-moon at Wandsworth; and a French Horn and Queen’s Head in Smithfield. This last house was, for many years, kept by Peter Crawley, a noted member of the P. R., and there John Leech the artist, and a friend, used to study low life and boxiana under the tutelage of Black Sam. Finally, in the seventeenth century, there was a Horn and Three Tuns in Leadenhall Street. The trades tokens represent it as a French horn; but a drinking horn would certainly have been a more useful instrument in the company of three tuns. It was evidently a corruption of the Bottle-makers’ arms, which were argent on a chevron sable, three bugle-horns of the first between three leather-bottles of the second. These leather-bottles might easily be mistaken for tuns, and the bugle-horn be modernised into a musical instrument.

This frequency of the Horn rather jars with the unpleasant signification that instrument had in seventeenth century slang. Among the Roxburghe Ballads (ii. 138) there is one entitled “The Extravagant Youth, or an Emblem of Prodigality,” with a woodcut representing a youth jumping into the mouth of a large horn. On one side stands the father, seemingly in distress; on the other is a mad-house, with the sign of The Fool, two of the inmates looking out from behind the bars. The extravagant youth, after expatiating on his mad career, says:—

“But now all my glory is clearly decay’d,
And into the horn myself have betray’d.
......
All comforts now from us are flown,
My father in Bedlam makes his moan,
And I in the counter a prisoner thrown,
This Horn is a figure by which it is known.”

The Bugle Horn is fully as common; it occurs on a trades token of 1667 as the sign of a house in Aldersgate Street, and is still to be seen on many inns by the roadside, where the mail coach, in the good old coaching time, used to announce its arrival by a cheerful tune from the guard’s horn. Sometimes the Horn was used in a different sense. It was the sign and badge of the cattle doctor and village gelder, and came to be exhibited as such either from its use in drenching animals, or from the fact of such an instrument being blown by the doctor, to give notice to the villagers of his approach. At Messingham, Lincoln, the Horn Inn, a century ago, was kept by such a personage. Further on, at [p. 369], this professional is mentioned in connexion with Tom of Bedlam.

The Harp, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the sign of a bird-fancier, “over against Somerset House in the Strand;”[499] and is still used as the sign of many public-houses, generally denoting an Irish origin. The Jew’s Harp (an instrument formerly called jeu trompe, Jew’s trump, i.e., toy trumpet) was in former times the sign of a house with bowery tea-gardens and thickly-foliated “snuggeries,” in what was once Marylebone Park, near the top of Portland Place, but removed on the laying out of Regent’s Park. Mr Onslow the Speaker used to go there in plain attire, and sitting in the chimney-corner, join in the humours of the customers, until, being recognised by the landlord one day, as he was riding in his golden coach to the House in state, he found, on going in the evening for his quiet pipe and glass, that his incognito was betrayed. This broke the charm, and like the fairies in the legend, he never more returned after that day. At the end of the last century there was another Jew’s Harp Tavern [and Tea-gardens] in Islington. It consisted of a large upper room, ascended by a staircase on the outside for the accommodation of the company on ball nights, and in this room large parties dined. Facing the south front of the premises was a large semicircular enclosure, with boxes for tea and ale drinkers, guarded by deal-board soldiers, between every box, painted in proper colours. In the centre of this opening were tables and seats placed for the smokers; a trap-ball ground was on the eastern side of the house, whilst the western side served for a tennis court; there were also public and private skittle-grounds. We find a clue to this rather odd sign in Ben Jonson’s play of the “Devil is an Ass,” Act i., scene 1, from which it appears that it was formerly a custom to keep a fool in a tavern, who, for the edification of the customers, used to play on a Jew’s harp, sitting on a joint-stool.

One of the signs originally used exclusively by apothecaries was the Mortar and Pestle, their well-known implements for pounding drugs. Among the celebrities who sold medicines under this emblem was the noted John Moore, “author of the celebrated Worm Powder,” to whom Pope addressed some stanzas beginning:—

“How much, egregious Moore, are we
Deceived by shows and forms;
Whate’er we think, whate’er we see,
All human kind are worms.”

His shop was in St Lawrence Poultney Lane. Every week the newspapers contained advertisements proving, by the most wonderful cures, the efficacy of his powders.

In the sixteenth century a publican in Paris adopted the sign of the Pestle, on account of his living in the Rue de la Mortellerie, (Mortar Street.) His house was in high repute amongst the gallants of the period, which procured him a visit from Master Villon, who thus describes it:—

“S’en vint en une hotellerie,
Rue de la Mortellerie.
Ou pend l’enseigne du Pestel,
A bon logis et bon hostel.”[500]

Villon, Franches Repues.

The Apothecary leads us to the Barber, or rather Barber-Surgeon, and the Barber’s Pole, which dates from the time when barbers practised phlebotomy: the patient undergoing this operation had to grasp the pole in order to make the blood flow more freely. This use of the pole is illustrated in more than one illuminated MS. As the pole was of course liable to be stained with blood, it was painted red; when not in use, barbers were in the habit of suspending it outside the door with the white linen swathing-bands twisted round it; this, in latter times, gave rise to the pole being painted red and white, or black and white, or even with red, white, and blue lines winding round it. It was stated by Lord Thurlow in the House of Peers, July 17, 1797, when he opposed the Surgeon’s Incorporation Bill, that, “by a statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue and white striped, with no other appendage, but the surgeons [which were the same in other respects] were to have a gallipot and a red flag in addition, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”

Besides the well-known brass soap-basins appended to the pole, the barbers in former times used to have other and more repulsive signs of their profession:—

“His pole with pewter[501] basons hung,
Black, rotten teeth in order strung,
Rang’d cups that in the window stood,
Lined with red rags to look like blood,
Did well his threefold trade explain,
Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein.”

In Constantinople, where the barber still acts as surgeon and dentist, the teeth drawn by him are worked in ornamental patterns intermixed with blue beads, and hung as trophies in the window. Some of our London dentists even yet follow this disgusting custom, for in no less a thoroughfare than Sloane Street there is a certain chemist-dentist who exhibits in his window a whole bottleful of decayed teeth. Instead of cups “lined with red rags to look like blood,” the genuine article was formerly exhibited in the windows; but this was already prohibited at an early period, since the “Liber Albus” enjoins “that no barber be so bold or so daring as to put blood in their windows openly or in view of folks; but let them have it carried privily unto the Thames, under pain of paying two shillings unto the use of the Sheriffs.”

As “a little learning is dangerous,” the barber of the olden times generally contrived to make himself more or less ridiculous. Steele says:—“The particularity of this man [Don Saltero, see [p. 95]] put me into a deep thought whence it should proceed that of all the lower orders barbers should go further in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men. Watermen brawl, cobblers sing: but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician?” This love of music was at all times an idiosyncrasy of the knights of the brass basin. Morley, in his “Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke,” says:—“It should seem you came lately from a barber’s shop, where you heard Gregory Walker or a Corranta plaide in the new proportions.” Henry Bold, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, speaks of ancient tunes “still sung to Barbers’ citterns”, viz., the “Lady’s Fall;” “John come kiss me now;” “Green Sleeves and Pudding Pies;” “The Punk’s Delight,” &c. And Tom Brown, in his “Amusements for the Meridian of London,” remarks:—

“In a Barber’s shop I saw a Beau so overladen with wig that there was no difference between his head and the wooden one that stood in the window. The fop it seems was newly come to his Estate, though not to the years of Discretion, and was singing the Song: ‘Happy the child whose father is gone to the Devil;’ and the Barber was all the while keeping time on his Cittern, for, you know, a Cittern and a Barber is as natural as milk to a calf, or the bears to be attended by a Bagpiper.”

The cittern is also mentioned by Ned Ward:—“I would sooner hear an old barber sing ‘Whittington’s Bells’ upon a cittern.”

But enough of their musical parts; as for their learning no examples are wanting: Partridge, the classical scholar, in Fielding’s “Tom Jones;” Vossius’ barber, who used to comb his hair in iambics;[502] and Smollett’s Hugh Strap, are excellent specimens. This last one was sketched from life; his real name was Hugh Hughson; he died in the parish of St Martin’s-in-the-Field, at the advanced age of eighty-five, having kept a barber-shop in that locality upwards of forty years. His shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his customers the several scenes in “Roderick Random” pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting at the barber-shop in Newcastle, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friends, were all facts. He is said to have left behind him an interleaved copy of “Roderick Random,” showing how far we are indebted to the creative fancy of Doctor Smollett, and to what extent the incidents recorded were founded upon fact.

Not many years ago there was a hairdresser in the Rue Racine, who, probably on account of his proximity to the universities of the Collège de France and the Sorbonne, had this inscription on his window: “κειρω τακιστα και σιναω,” “I shear quickly and am silent.” This classical hairdresser was evidently acquainted with the answers given by Anaxagoras to a barber who asked him, “How do you wish to have your beard shaved?” and who received the laconic answer, “without talking.” The shutters and windows of our Parisian worthy were covered with inscriptions in foreign languages, the number of which was only surpassed by the Bible shop in Brompton, during the time of the International Exhibition in 1862.

An eccentric barber opened a shop under the walls of the King’s Bench Prison; the windows being broken when he entered the house, he mended them with paper, on which appeared, “Shave for a penny,” with the usual invitation to customers; whilst on his door was scrawled the following rhymes:—

“Here lives Jemmie Wright,
Shaves almost as well as any man in England,
Almost—not quite.”

Foote, who delighted in anything eccentric, saw this inscription, and hoping to extract some wit from the author, whom he justly concluded to be an odd character, he pulled off his hat, and thrusting his head through a paper pane into the shop, called out, “Is Jimmy Wright at home?” The barber immediately forced his own head through another pane into the street, and replied: “No, sir, he has just popt out.”

Numerous more or less witty barbers’ inscriptions are recorded; one of the best is that attributed to Dean Swift, penned by him for a barber, who at the same time kept a public-house:—

“Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here,
Where nought excels the shaving but the beer.”

A variation often met is:—

“Rove not from pole to pole, but here turn in,
Where nought excels the shaving but the gin.”

Sir Walter Scott in his “Fortunes of Nigel,” vol ii., as a motto to chap. iv., gives the following version:—

“Rove not from pole to pole—the man lives here,
Whose razor’s only equall’d by his beer;
And where, in either sense, the Cockney-put,
May, if he pleases, get confounded cut.”

The amalgamation of the two trades has led to some other rhymes and jokes. A barber-publican in Dudley has the following barbarous joke:—

“What do you think
I’ll shave you for nothing and give you some drink?”

The point of this joke lies in the punctuation, which the illiterate shavers coming to the shop are sure to treat with supreme contempt; but a barber in Ratcliffe Highway, circa 1825, had the following bona fide invitation:—

“Hair cut with despatch,
Shave well in a minute,
And a glass in the bar—gain
With a thimbleful in it.”[*]

[* ]Note—Of gin and bitters, all for a penny 12d.
* Note—Come in, Jolly Tars, and be scraped across the line.”

Another common inscription is the following:—“I tell U there is no shaving to X L——’s” (name of the barber.) The Parisian barbers are much on a par with their English colleagues in brilliancy of wit and inventive power: “Ici on rajeunit,”[504] used to be a frequent inscription with them; others have:—

“La nature donne barbe et cheveux,
Et moi je les coupe tous les deux.”

or—

“A toutes les figures dédiant mes rasoirs,
Je nargue la critique des fidèles mirroirs.”[505]

Tools belonging to various handicrafts are common public-house signs at the present day. The Axe is a very old sign; it was a well-known carriers’ inn in Aldermanbury in the seventeenth century, and was one of the places visited in 1634 by that thirsty tourist, Drunken Barnaby. From this inn, the first regular line of stage waggons from London to Liverpool was established towards the middle of the seventeenth century. There were constantly some of them on the road, for they left every Monday and Thursday, and it took them ten days in summer, and as many as twelve in winter to perform the journey.

In 1642 there appeared “A Petition from the Towne and County of Leicester unto the King’s most excellent Majestie,” which was “printed for William Gay, and to be sold at his shop in Hosier Lane, at the signe of the Axe, July 29, 1642.” When we consider that “the King’s most excellent Majestie,” was Charles I., we may come to the conclusion that there is something in a sign, as well as in a name; it was certainly an ominous and bad sign for the king. The Cross Axes is a sign at Preston, Bolton, &c. The axe is also found combined with various other carpenter’s tools, as the Axe and Saw, Carlton, Newmarket; Axe and Compasses in many places; Axe and Cleaver, in Boston, Yorkshire. Another sign, complimentary to the same class of workmen, was the Two Sawyers, which, at the end of the last century, was to be seen near the garden wall of the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth; not unlikely, this was the same house, of which trades tokens are extant from the time of Charles II., when it was kept by John Raines, and its locality is described as the “New Plantation, Narrow Wall, Lambeth.”

Signs referring to iron in its various states are very common on public-houses, as the smith is generally a good customer to them. Iron seems to have a dyspeptic effect even in the bowels of the earth, if we may judge from the quantity of Miners’ Arms in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and the black country, in which latitudes teetotalism evidently has made but little progress; the Davy Lamp is another sign intended to court the custom of miners, but being almost exclusively for workmen in coal pits, it only occurs in Northumberland. The Forge, or the Three Forges, is common in the Midland iron districts. The Cinder-oven occurs in Norwich. The Anvil, the Anvil and Blacksmith, the Anvil and Hammer, the Smith and Smithy, &c., are all common about Sheffield. So are Hammers, combined with various instruments, as Pincers, Vice, Stithy, &c. The Two Smiths was a sign in the Minories in 1655; the trades tokens of the house represent two men working at the anvil. Hobnails is a sign in Dudley, that town having been famous for the manufacture of nails of every description, even as early as the time of Henry VIII., for the nails used in building the hall at Hampton Court came from there, and the original accounts preserved in the Public Record Office state that there was “Payde to Raynalde Warde, of Dudley, for 7350 of dubbyll tenpenny nayles inglys at 11s. the 1000.”

The Bag of Nails was once a very common sign; there is one still remaining in Arabella Row, Pimlico. “About fifty years ago, the original sign might have been seen at the front of the house, which was a satyr of the woods, and a group of jolly dogs, ycleped Bacchanals. But the satyr having been painted with cloven feet, and painted black, it was by the common people called the Devil, while the Bacchanalians were transmuted by a comical process into a Bag of Nails.”[506] This was, however, only an old slang name for the house, for, in the trial of Catlin, Patterson, and others, for conspiracy, one of the witnesses describing the place where the conspirators used to meet, says: “He went into a public-house, the sign of the Devil and Bag of Nails, for so that gentry called it amongst themselves, (though it was the Blackmoor’s Head and Woolpack,) by Buckingham Gate.”[507]

A bona fide representation of a bag of nails was also used as a sign, as may be seen on the trades token of Henry Hurdam in Tuttle (Tothill) Street, Westminster, 1663, where the bag of nails is combined with a hammer crowned. And as it would be difficult to guess what the bag contained, and nobody cares to buy “a pig in a poke,” the nails were sometimes represented protruding through it, as on the token of Samuel Hincks of Whitechapel, 1669. A somewhat similar sign is expressed in Rouen, Rue des Bons Enfans; it is carved in stone, and represents a bag, with smith’s tools protruding out of it.

Bakers and millers also are represented by a variety of signs. Beginning at the Bushel, a sign on the Bankside in the seventeenth century, and the Shovel and Sieve, the sign of a brush and turnery warehouse among the Bagford Bills, we next accompany the corn to the mill, where we meet the Dusty Miller, a favourite sign in some parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. A reminiscence of childhood may have suggested the epithet in this sign, for there is the well known nursery rhyme,

“Millery, Millery, Dusty poll,
How many sacks have you stole?”

The Millstone may be seen at Stockport and Macclesfield.

The Windmill itself is a very old sign. It was a tavern in Lothbury, Old Jewry, frequented by fast men in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Wellbred, in “Every Man in his Humour,” (a play by Ben Jonson,) dates his letter to Edward Knowell from this house:—

“Why, Ned, I beseech thee, hast thou forsworn all thy friends in the Old Jewry, or doest thou think us all Jews that inhabit there,” &c.

It is named amongst the list of inns “viewed” previous to the visit of Charles V. in 1522.

“Hugh Clapton, Mercer, mayor, in 1492, dwelt in this house and kept his Mayoralty there; it is now a tavern, and has to sign a Windmill. And thus much for this house, sometime a Jew’s synagogue [in 1262,] since a house of friars, [fratres de penitentia Jesu or de Sacca, 1275,] then a nobleman’s house, [Robert Fitz Walter, 1305,] after that a merchant’s house, wherein Mayoralties have been kept, and now a wine taverne.”—Stow.

The Peel, i.e., the wooden shovel with a long handle used by bakers to place bread in the oven, was the sign of John Alder, in Leadenhall Street, 1668. Next comes the basket or Panyer, to bring bread round, which gave its name to “a passage out of Paternoster Row—called of such a sign Panyer Alley.”[508] This is the highest spot in the City of London, as we are informed from an inscription under a stone figure of a boy sitting on a pannier, eating a very questionable bunch of grapes:

“When you have sought the City round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.

Aug. 26, 1688.”

The Pannier was not an uncommon trade emblem. The Baker and Basket is the sign of a public-house in Leman Street, and another in Worship Street. The claims to superior usefulness of the Baker and Brewer are held forth triumphantly to the advantage of the latter in some signs of this name. One, in Wash Lane, Birmingham, gives a pictorial representation of it; the baker’s hand is resting on what is usually called the “Staff of Life,”—namely, a loaf of very respectable dimensions; the brewer exhibits “with artful pride,” a foaming tankard, when the following dialogue ensues:—

“The Baker says, I’ve the Staff of Life,
And you’re a silly elf;
The Brewer replied, with artful pride,
Why, this is life itself.”

The Two Brewers, or the Two Jolly Brewers, used to be very common, but is now gradually becoming obsolete. It represented two brewers’ men carrying a barrel of beer slung between them on a pole; it was also frequently called the Two Draymen. In the bar of the Queen’s Head Tavern, Great Queen Street, is preserved a carved wooden sign, which formerly hung before this house, representing two men standing near a large tun. The Dray and Horses, meaning of course the brewer’s dray, has now in some instances superseded the Two Jolly Brewers. The Still, the chief implement in the manufacture of spirits, is very appropriate before the houses where the produce of the still is sold: frequently it is combined with other objects.

The Boy and Barrel, to be seen in Dagger Lane, London, and in many country places, is all that remains of the little Bacchus on a tun, formerly in almost every ale-house:—

“A little Punch-
Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch,
Sits loftily enthron’d upon
What’s called (in Miniature) a Tun.”

Compleat Vintner. London, 1720, p. 86.

The Boy and Cup at Norwich, in 1750, was a variation of this sign. Other brewers and distillers’ measures also are exhibited, as the Barrel; the Porter Butt, (three in Bath;) the Brandy Casks, (three in Bristol;) the Rum Puncheon, at Boston, Lincoln, and such like. Promises of fair dealing are held out in the sign of the Full Measure, (four in Hull;) the Golden Measure, Lowgate, Hull; and the Foaming Tankard; or, an appeal is made to public joviality by such a sign as the Parting Pot, at Stamford, Lincoln.

Shoemakers generally follow the advice of the proverb, ne sutor ultra crepidam, and confine themselves to the sign of the Last, which, for variety’s sake, they paint red, blue, gold, &c. But since “cobblers and tinkers are the best ale drinkers,” many alehouses have adopted this sign also. A Crispin who keeps an ale-house near Liscard, Chester, has shown himself “true to the last,” by putting under his sign of a Wooden Shoe or Last:—

“All day long I have sought good beer,
And, at the last, I have found it here.”

The Shears was originally a tailor’s sign, though like most other trade emblems it had become common in the seventeenth century.

“Snip, snap, quoth the tailor’s shears;
Alas, poor Louse, beware thy ears.”

This elegant little verse is quoted by Randle Holme, and seems to have been thought such a good joke, that a canny Scotchman, buried in Paisley Abbey, had a pictorial representation of it on his headstone. Charles Mackie, who wrote the history of that Abbey, says it is an obliterated cross; more probably, however, it is a fleur de luce: this would also agree with the Scottish pronunciation of the name of the insect, which is exactly the same as the last part of that heraldic charge.

The Hand and Shears, in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, played an important part at the opening of Bartholomew Fair. It was customary to make the proclamation for opening the fair late in the afternoon of August 23d, but the showmen and traders opened their booths early in the morning:—

“Lawful objections being made to this, a riotous assembly met the night before the day of the Mayor’s Proclamation at the public-house within Cloth Fair, in which the Court of Piepoudre was held,[509] the Hand and Shears—now transformed into a tall brick gin-palace—and at midnight sallied forth, bearing along, in later years, the effigy of a woman to represent Lady Holland, (who must have been instigator, and it would seem, first leader of the mob,) and the mob—knocking at doors, ringing bells, clamouring and rioting, some five thousand strong, during three hours of the middle of the night—proclaimed for itself, in its own way, that Bartholomew Fair was open. The first irregular proclamation was for many years made by a company of tailors, who met the night before the legal proclamation at the Hand and Shears, elected a chairman, and as the clock struck twelve went out into Cloth Fair, each with a pair of shears in his hand. The chairman then proclaimed the Fair to the expectant mob, who all sped on their errand of riot, to arouse with the news of it the sleepers in the neighbourhood of Smithfield.”[510]

The Three Crowned Needles looks also like a tailor’s sign, and from the evidence of a trades token of 1669 we know that it was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate. Hatton thinks that a similar sign may have given its name to Threadneedle Street, (Three Needle Street.) Three Crowned Needles was a charge in the needle-makers’ company’s arms. It is a curious fact that all the needles used in England up to the time of Queen Elizabeth were of foreign make; those sold in Cheapside in the reign of Queen Mary were made by a Spanish negro, who carried the secret of their manufacture with him to the grave. In 1566 they were manufactured under the direction of a German, Elias Grause, and after that time only it seems that we had learned how to make them.

Among agricultural signs, the Plough leads the van, sometimes accompanied by the legend “Speed the Plough.” Of two inscriptions on the sign of the Plough that have come under our observation, both contain sound advice. That of the Plough at Filey might well be remembered by “afternoon” farmers: it says:—

“He who by the Plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive;”

whilst on the Plough Inn, Alnwick, the following is cut in stone:—

“That which your father old
Hath purchased and left you to possess,
Do you dearly hold
To shew your worthiness. 1717.”

In the inventory of church goods made at Holbeach, in Lincoln, at the time of the Reformation:—

Wm. Davy bought the sygne whereon the plowghe did stond for xvj^d.

This probably refers to the signs or badges exhibited by the religious guilds in the middle ages over the altars and as decorations in their churches, which were in some measure of the nature of other signs, in pointing out certain fraternities or trades, besides possessing a secondary and religious meaning.

The Plough and Horses is a sign at Branston, Lincoln. The Plough and Harrow is very common. Two doors west from the Harrow Inn lived Isaac Walton, about 1624, carrying on the business of “milliner and sempster,” or what we should now call a linen-draper. He afterwards resided at a house in Chancery Lane, until he left London, for fear of having his morals corrupted—as he himself asserted. Goldsmith’s tailor, who lived at the sign of the Harrow, has gained immortality by the bad taste of poor Goldy. On one occasion—

“Goldsmith strutted about, bragging of his dress, and, I believe, was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impressions. ‘Come, come,’ said Garrick, ‘talk no more of that, you are perhaps the worst—eh, eh.’ Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, ‘Nay, you will always look like a gentleman, but I am talking of being well or ill drest.’ ‘Well, let me tell you,’ said Goldsmith, ‘when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, “Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When anybody asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention, John Filby, at the Harrow in Water Lane.”’ Johnson. ‘Why, sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and then they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.’”[511]

Near Bagshot there is a public-house called the Jolly Farmer, a corruption of the Golden Farmer, a nickname obtained by one of the former possessors on account of his wealth, and his custom of paying his rent always in guineas, which—so says the legend—he obtained as a footpad on Bagshot Heath. That some such thing happened is evident from the Weekly Journal, March 29, 1718, where allusion is made to “Bagshot Heath, near the Gibbet where the Golden Farmer hanged in chains.” The use of this word Jolly, on the signboard, formerly so common in our “Merry England,” is now gradually dying away. Whatever be the opinion of our workmen upon the subject of national good humour, they no longer desire to be advertised as Jolly; it is vulgar, and they prefer Arms like their betters—hence those heraldic anomalies of the Graziers’ Arms, the Farmers’ Arms, the Chaff-Cutters’ Arms, the Puddlers’ Arms, the Paviors’ Arms, and so forth.

The Shepherd and Shepherdess is one of those signs reminding us of—

“The tea-cup days of hoop and hood
And when the patch was worn.”

calling up pictures of rouged shepherdesses with jaunty straw hats on the top of powdered hair a foot high, short quilted petticoats and high-heeled boots, courted in madrigals by shepherds dressed in the height of the elegance of the New Exchange gallants, with ribboned crooks and flowered-satin waistcoats. It was the sign of a pleasure resort in the City Road, Islington, much frequented in the eighteenth century for amusement, and by invalids for the pure, healthy, country air of Islington, which was then a charming village, more rural in the midst of its meadows and rivulets than Richmond is now. Cakes, cream, and furmity were its great attractions:—

“To the Shepherd and Shepherdess then they go
To tea with their wives for a constant rule,
And next cross the road to the Fountain also,
And there they sit so pleasant and cool,
And see in and out
The folks walk about,
And gentlemen angling in Peerless Pool.”[512]

PLATE XIV.
BRAZEN SERPENT. (Reynold Wolfe, circa 1550.)	GREEN MAN. (Banks’s Collection, 1760.)
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. (Banks’s Collection, 1780.)	ASS PLAYING ON THE HARP. (Chartres Cathedral, circa 1420.)

More business-like is the sign of the Shepherd and Dog; he, too, wears patches, but not on his face; so with the Shepherd and Crook, and the Crook and Shears. All these may be found in most villages, and refer to the inferior farm-labourer, to whom the care of the flock is intrusted, and not the elegant Corydon or Alexis.

The merry, thirsty time of haymaking is commemorated in the usual signs of a Load of Hay and the Cross Scythes. There is a Load of Hay tavern on Haverstock Hill, a favourite place for Sunday afternoon excursionists in the summer time. Many years ago the eccentricity of Davies the landlord was one of the attractions of the place. Lately the house has been re-built, and it is now only a suburban gin-palace. The Mattock and Spade, and the Spade and Becket, refer to field labour; the first is very general, the second less so; but an example occurs at Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. The Peat Spade, Longstock, Hants, tells its own tale. The Dairy Maid was in great favour with the London cheesemongers of the seventeenth century. Akerman gives a trades token of such a sign in Catherine Street, in 1653, which is an amusing specimen of the liberties the token engravers took with the king’s English, the country Phillis being transformed into a “Deary Made.” The Dutch in the seventeenth century used the sign for a rather heterogenous trade: it seems that the process of sucking or inhaling the tobacco smoke carried back their ideas to tender years of innocence and milk diet, and so the Dairy Maid became the sign, par excellence, of tobacco shops. Even at the present day that idea is not quite forgotten; tobacco boxes or other smoking implements are sometimes seen amongst that nation, with the words, “Troost voor Zuigelingen,” “consolation for sucklings.” The inscriptions under these signs were occasionally very curious:—

“Toebak dat edel kruyt soveel daarvan getuygen
Al die lang zyn gespeent beginnen weer te zuygen.”[513]

On the Goudsche Melkmeid in Amsterdam:—

“Goede Waar en goed bescheid
Krygt gy hier in de Goudsche Melkmeid
Puyk van Verinas en Virginia Tabac
Kunt gy hier rooken op uw gemak.”[514]

Another had:—

“Leckere Neusen, eele baasen,
Die by ’t klinken van de glaasen
Tot het smooken zyt bereyt;
Zoek je ’t beste van den acker
Puyk verynis? komt dan wacker
By de walsse mellik-meid.”[515]

Harvest-home, the pleasant time of congratulation and feasting, must be an alluring sign for the villagers, calling up recollections of all the festivities yearly celebrated on that grand occasion, when—

“the harvest treasures all
Are gather’d in beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain.”—Thomson.

One of the misfortunes of the “nimium fortunati sua si bona norint” is pictured in the Cart Overthrown, which is a public-house sign at Lower Edmonton; though how it came to be such is difficult to guess. On Highgate Hill there is an old roadside inn, the Fox and Crown, which displays on its front a fine gilt coat of arms with the following inscription underneath:—

6th July 1837.

This Coat of Arms is a Grant
from Queen Victoria, for Ser-
vices rendered to Her Majesty
when in Danger Travelling
down this Hill.

The carriage conveying Her Majesty was proceeding down the hill without a skid on the wheel, when something started the horses, and the occurrence above narrated took place. The late landlord died in distressed circumstances, and he stoutly asserted to the last, that although he made repeated applications to the Government for recompense, he having imperilled his own life to save that of Her Majesty, all he ever received for his pains was permission to display the royal arms on his house front.

The Woodman is another very common sign, invariably representing the same woodman copied from Barker’s picture, and evidently suggested by Cowper’s charming description of a winter’s morning in the “Task.” The Drover’s Call is still seen on many roadsides, though the profession that gave rise to it is well-nigh extinct; the herds of steaming, fierce-looking oxen, formerly driven from all parts of the kingdom, along the main roads leading to London, there to be devoured, being now nearly all sent here by rail. A yet older practice produced the sign of the String of Horses, which may still be seen on many a highroad in the North, and dates from times before mail coaches and stage waggons existed, when all the goods-traffic inland had to be performed by strings of packhorses, who carried large baskets, hampers, and bales slung across their backs, and slowly, though far from surely, wound their way over miles and miles of uninhabited tracts, moors, and fens, which lay between the small towns and straggling villages.

Many signs still recall those bygone days: the Old Coach and Six may yet be seen in some places. There is one, for instance, in Westminster, but it is no longer a “sign of the times,” for alas!—

“No more the coaches shall I see
Come trundling from the yard,
Nor hear the horn blown cheerily
By brandy-bibbing guard.”

The names of the coaches were often adopted by inns on the road; for instance, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Defiance, the Balloon, the Tally-Ho, the Bang-up, the Express, &c., &c.; but alas! the modern railroad has swept away the signs as well as the coaches.

In London, there are not less than fifty-two public-houses known as the Coach and Horses, exclusive of beer-houses, coffee-houses, and similar establishments. Stow says, in his “Summary of English Chronicles,” that in 1555, Walter Ripon made a coach for the Earl of Rutland, “which was the first that was ever used in England.” But in his larger Chronicle he says:—

“In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen’s coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jalousy of the queen’s displeasure, made them coaches, and rid up and down the country in them, to the great admiration of all the beholders, but then by little they grew usual among the nobility and others of sort, and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking.”

Taylor the Water poet, who, as a waterman of course, bore a grudge to coaches, said, “It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time.” How common they became in a short time appears from all the satirists of that period; not only the nobility, but even the citizens could no longer do without them, after they were once introduced. Not forty years after their first appearance Pierce Pennyless, speaking of merchants’ wives, says: “She will not go unto the field to coure on the green grasse, but she must have a coach for her convoy.”[516] No wonder, then, that, according to the “Coach and Sedan,” a pamphlet of 1636, there were then in London, the suburbs, and four miles’ compass without, coaches to the number of 6000 and odd. These were nearly all private carriages, for the hackney coaches were only established in 1625 by one Captain Bailey. Their first stand was at the Maypole in the Strand. They numbered about twenty, and were attached to the principal inns. In 1636, the number of hackney coaches was confined to 50; in 1652, to 200; in 1654, to 300; in 1662, to 400; in 1694, to 700; in 1710, to 800; in 1771, to 1000; in 1802, to 1100; but in 1833 all limitation of number ceased. Besides cabs of various kinds, there are now above a thousand omnibusses regularly employed in the Metropolis, and the commissioners of stamps are authorised to license all such carriages without limitation as to number; the proprietor paying the duty of £5 for the licence, and 10s. per week during its continuance. What a difference just two centuries ago, when by proclamation of the “Merry Monarch:”—

“The excessive number of hackney coaches [about 400] and coach horses in London, are found to be a common nuisance to the public damage of our people, by reason of their rude and disorderly standing, and passing to and fro, in and about our cities and suburbs; the streets and highways being thereof pestered and much impassable, the pavement broken up, and the common passages obstructed and made dangerous.” Hence orders are[357] given, that “henceforth none shall stand in the street, but only within their coach-houses, stables, and yards.”

At the Coach and Horses, Bartholomew Close, some vestiges of the ancient buildings of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Convent still remain—viz., a clustered column in the beer cellar, walls of immense thickness, and an early English window in the taproom, &c. This building occupies the site of the north cloister.[517] Another Coach and Horses, in Ray Street, Clerkenwell, is also built on classic ground, for it occupies the site of the once famous Hockley-in-the-Hole of bear-baiting memory. A comical alehouse keeper in Oswestry has travestied the sign of the Coach and Horses into the Coach and Dogs.

The Wheel, an object sometimes seen on signboards, may have been derived from the Catherine Wheel, (the name of a favourite old coaching inn in Bishopsgate Street,) or from the wheel of fortune; the Saddle and the Spur are both very general on roadside inns, owing to the ancient mode of travelling on horseback; the Whip occurs in Briggate, Leeds.

In Norwich there was (and we believe is still) a curious combination, the Whip and Egg, which existed in that locality as early as the year 1750,[518] and which is enumerated in London, under the name of the Whip and Eggshell, amongst the taverns in the black letter ballad of “London’s Ordinarie, or Everie Man in his Humour,” whilst a still earlier mention occurs in Mother Bunch’s Merriment, (1604,) when the transformation of pigs into fowls, whereby one of the gulls was so “sweetly deceyved,” is laid at the Whip and Eggshell. It has been explained as a corruption of the Whip and Nag, but the combination of these two would be so obvious that a corruption would scarcely be possible. In “Great Britain’s Wonder, or London’s Admiration,” a ballad on the frost of 1685, when the Thames was frozen over, and a fair held upon it, the following lines occur:—

“In this same street, before the Temple made,[519]
There seems to be a brisk and lively trade,
When ev’ry booth hath such a cunning sign
As seldom hath been seen in former time;
The Flying P—— pot is one of the same,
The Whip and Eggshell, and the Broom by name.”

The Whip and Egg, therefore, figured on the ice, and may have been brought together from the whipping of eggs, in making egg-punch, egg-flip, and similar beverages, much drunk on the ice in Holland; and as there were always crowds of Dutchmen on the ice, whenever the river was frozen over, they may have introduced their favourite drink as well as their Dutch whirlings, whimsies, and flying boats, and the sign have been invented in order to indicate the sale of those liquors.

The Three Jolly Butchers used to be seen in the neighbourhood of markets and shambles, either in allusion to the three merry north-country butchers, who killed nine highwaymen, according to the ballad, or simply that favourite combination of three which is of such frequent recurrence. The Cleaver seems also to be in compliment to this profession, as well as the Marrowbones and Cleaver. This last is a sign in Fetter Lane, originating from a custom, now rapidly dying away, of the butcher boys serenading newly married couples with these professional instruments. Formerly, the band would consist of four cleavers, each of a different tone, or, if complete, of eight, and by beating their marrowbones skilfully against these, they obtained a sort of music somewhat after the fashion of indifferent bell-ringing. When well performed, however, and heard from a proper distance, it was not altogether unpleasant. A largesse of half-a-crown or a crown was generally expected for this delicate attention. The butchers of Clare market had the reputation of being the best performers. The last public appearance of this popular music was at the marriage of the Prince of Wales, when small bands of them perambulated the town, playing “God Save the Queen.” This music was once so common that Tom Killigrew called it the national instrument of England. In 1759 a burlesque Ode on St Cecilia’s day, written by Bonnell Thornton, was performed at Ranelagh. Amongst the instruments employed in this there was a band of marrowbones and cleavers, whose endeavours were admitted by the cognoscenti to have been “a complete success.”

As the use of coaches gave rise to the sign of the Coach and Horses, so the Sedan produced some signs, as the Sedan Chair, Broad Quay, Bristol; North Searle, Newark; the Two Chairmen, &c., Warwick Street, Cockspur Street, and other parts of London; and the Three Chairs in the seventeenth century, a famous tavern in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden. The Sedan, says Randle Holme, “is a thing in which sick and crazy persons are carried abroad, which is borne up by the staves by two lusty men.”[520] The first sedan chair used in England was one that the Duke of Buckingham had received as a gift from Charles I., when Prince of Wales, on his return from that romantic “Jean-de-Paris” expedition to Spain.[521] The use of it got the Duke into trouble, and he was accused of “degrading Englishmen into slaves and beasts of burden.” Lysons, in his “Magna Britannia,” gives another origin for them; speaking of Duncombe at Battlesden, in Bedfordshire, he says:—

“It was to one of this family, Sir Saunders Duncombe, a gentleman pensioner to King James and Charles I., that we are indebted for the accommodation of the sedans or close chairs, the use of which was first introduced by him in this country in the year 1634, when he procured a patent which vested in him and his heirs the sole right of carrying persons up and down in them for a certain time.”

Sir Saunders hereupon got forty or fifty sedans made, and sent them about town, but differences soon arose between the chairmen and the coachmen. Pamphlets were written,[522] ballads were sung on the occasion, and the public sided with one or the other, according to individual taste. A ballad in favour of the sedan said:—

“I love sedans, cause they do plod
And amble everywhere,
Which prancers are with leather shod,
And neere disturb the care.
Heigh downe, dery, dery, downe,
With the hackney coaches downe,
Their jumpings make
The pavement shake,
Their noyse doth mad the towne.”[523]

De Foe, in 1702, says, “We are carried to these places [coffee-houses] in chairs, which are here very cheap—a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour—and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice.” The chairmen of the aristocracy wore gaudy liveries and plumed hats, and their chairs were richly gilt and painted, and provided with velvet cushions. They used to be kept in the halls of their large mansions. As for the chairmen, we may infer from Gay’s “Trivia” that they were an insolent set of fellows:—

“Let not the chairman with assuming stride
Press near the wall and rudely thrust thy side,
The laws have set him bounds; his servile feet
Should ne’er encroach where posts defend the street.
Yet, who the footman’s arrogance can quell,
Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall Mall,
When in long rank a train of torches flame,
To light the midnight visits of the dame.”

The trumpet-like instruments in which these torches were extinguished, when arrived at their place of destination, are still seen attached to the area railings of most of the houses in Grosvenor and St James’ Squares, and various other parts of the town fashionably inhabited at that period.

Another creature of this class, now as completely extinct as the Plesiosaurus and the Megatherion, or any other monster of the pre-Adamite world, was the [Running Footman]. We cannot say that there is not a “sign” of him left, for there is one in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, representing a man in gaudy attire, running, with a long cane in his hand—under it, “I am the only Running Footman.” This was a class of servants used by rich families in former days to run before the carriage, to clear the way, bear torches at night, pay turnpikes, and serving also in a great measure for pomp. Generally their livery was very rich, being somewhat of the Jockey dress, with a silk sash round the waist; sometimes, instead of breeches, they wore a sort of silk petticoat with a deep gold fringe. They carried long sticks with silver heads, which have now descended to their successors the footmen. The Duke of Queensberry was one of the last noblemen who kept running footmen. A good story is told of him in connexion with one of these servants. Whenever his grace wanted to engage one it was his custom to make him put on his livery and run up and down Piccadilly, whilst he, from his balcony, watched their paces; and so it happened on a time, that after one of those fellows had gone through all his evolutions and presented himself under the balcony, the Duke said: “That will do; you will suit me very well.” “And so your livery does me,” was the answer, and off the fellow went running like a deer and was never heard of afterwards. Another feat on record, somewhat more to the credit of the fraternity, was that one of them ran for a wager to Windsor against the Duke of Marlborough in a phaeton with four horses, and lost only by a short distance; but it cost the poor fellow his life, for he died very soon after. Most of these running footmen were Irish, hence Decker[524] says—“The Devil’s footeman was very nimble of his heeles, for no wild Irishman could outrunne him,” and Brathwaite remarks:—

“For see those thin-breech’d Irish lackies run.”[525]

St Patrick’s day was generally given to them as a holiday, which they invariably celebrated by purging themselves. In various country places the sign of the Running Footman has been corrupted into the Running Man.

Another “domestic” sign is the [Trusty Servant] at Minstead, Hants:—

“A trusty servant’s portrait would you see,
This emblematic figure well survey;
The porker’s snout not nice in diet shows,
The padlock shut, no secret he’ll disclose.
Patient the ass his master’s rage will bear,
Swiftness in errand the stag’s feet declare.
Loaden his left hand apt to labour saith,
The vest his neatness: open hand his faith.
Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm,
Himself and master he’ll protect from harm.”

The origin of this sign is a picture on the wall of one of the rooms, near the kitchen of Winchester College, where it is accompanied by the above verses in English and Latin.

Further, there is the Stave-Porter, Dockhead, London; the Ticket-Porter, near London Bridge; the Porter’s Lodge, Leicester; and the Porter and Gentleman in three different places in London.

The Huntsman is common in the hunting districts. To the hunt, also, we must refer such signs as—Hark to Bounty, Staidburn, Clitheroe; Hark up to Nudger, Dobcross, Manchester; Hark the Lasher, near Castleton, Derby; Hark up to Glory, Rochdale, and the Chase Inn in Leamington. In Cambridge there are two signs of the Birdbolt, an implement formerly used to shoot birds; consequently it must be a sign of some antiquity. In Nightingale Lane, East Smithfield, there is an Experienced Fowler, who, no doubt, well knows the value of “a bird in the hand,” and at Oldham and Rochdale there is an equally satirical sign, that of the Trap. The Angler is common enough in the neighbourhood of trout streams and other fishing resorts frequented by the disciples of Isaak Walton.

Many professions are only represented by one or two objects relating to them. The Tallow Chandler, very common among the trades tokens, was always represented by a man dipping candles. To that trade also seems to belong the Bowls and Candle Poles, which occurs in the following rambling advertisement:—

“Stolen,
Lost, or Mislaid,

A Promissory Note for one hundred and twenty Pounds, signed by John Smallwood and indorsed by John Addams. Whoever will bring the same note to the House known by the Bowls and Candlepoles in Duke Street, in the Park, Southwark, shall receive five Guineas Reward; and if offered to be paid away or any Writ to be taken out for payment of the said Note, pray stop it and the party, and you shall have the same Reward.

^*_*^* The House is in Tenements, and some part thereof being a Pawnbroker’s, was broke open and several things of value missing. Note, This mischief arrises from a country Butcher, who did strike and kick an old Gentleman at London Bridge, about three quarters of a year ago. And all persons who did see the said Assault and will speak the truth, (for Christ’s sake,) are desired to send their Names and Place of Abode to the Bowls and Candlepoles and the favour shall be thankfully acknowledged.”[526]

The Scales is a common sign referring to various trades: one of the engraved bill-heads in the Bagford Collection gives the Hand and Scales—viz., a hand holding a pair of scales; this antiquated mode of representing a hand issuing from the clouds to perform some action, has given name to a great many signs—all combinations of the hand with some other object. The Spinning Wheel was formerly much more common than now; there is still a public-house with this sign at Hamsterley near Darlington. The Woolsack was originally a wool-merchant’s sign; it is often accompanied by the Black Boy. Machyn mentions this sign in 1555: “The xx day of July was cared to the Toure in the morning erlee iiij men; on was the goodman of the Volsake with-owt Algatt.” It seems to have been one of the leading taverns in Ben Jonson’s time, who often alludes to it in his plays; like the Dagger, it was famous for its pies.

“And see how the factors and prentices play there
False with their masters, and geld many a full pack,
To spend it in pies at the Dagger and the Woolpack.”

The Devil is an Ass, act i., sc. 1.

“Her Grace would have you eat no more Woolsack pies nor Dagger furmety.”—Alchymist, act v., sc. 2.

In the year 1682, the Woolsack Tavern in Newgate Market attracted great attention, owing to a wonderful phenomenon there exhibited, and set forth in the following handbill from the Sloane Collection, No. 958:—

“At the sign of the Woolpack in Newgate Street, is to be seen a strange and wonderful thing, which is, an elm-board, being touch’d with a hot iron, doth express itself, as if it was a man dying, with grones and trembling, to the great admiration of all the hearers. It has been presented before the King and his nobles, and hath given them great satisfaction. Vivat Rex.”

Such a curiosity could not fail to prove an object of immense attraction with our wonder-loving ancestors, particularly after the house had been visited by his Majesty, and thus acquired additional respectability. Very soon, however, numerous London taverns claimed public attention for similar wonders. It was as if the wood used in their construction had been cut from the myrtle-tree which conversed with Æneas near the river Hebrus, (“Æneid,” lib. iii. 19,) or from the “fiera selvaggia” Dante saw in the second circle of Hades, where he

“sentia da ogni parte tragger guai
E non vedea persona che’l facesse.”[527]

Inferno, canto xiii.

The mantel-piece at the Bowman Tavern, Drury Lane, expressed its aversion of a red hot poker as unequivocally as the elm-board at the Woolsack, and the dresser at the Queen’s Arms in St Martin’s Lane was evidently a “chip of the same block.” Indeed, boards were cauterised and groaned all over London.

The Block was a hatter’s sign, or as that trade was sometimes called, Bever-cutter, the block being the mould on which the hat is formed. Beatrix, in “Much Ado about Nothing,” says: “He wears his faith, but as the fashion of his hat it ever changes with the next block.” And Decker, in the “Gull’s Hornbook:” “John, in Paul’s Churchyard, shall fit his head for an excellent block.” The word was also often used as a synonym for “hat.”

The Postboy was the sign of a fishmonger’s shop in Sherborne Lane, where in 1759 Green-native Colchester oysters were sold at 3s. 3d. a barrel, and exceeding fine “Pyfleet oysters” at 4s. 3d. a barrel. The Up and Down Post used to be, in the good old coaching times, a thriving inn on the now deserted highway between Birmingham and Coventry. The picture represented an erect and a prostrate pillar, which after all was only a rebus or a misunderstanding. In former times, before the mail-coaches were instituted, the equestrian letter-carriers of the up and down mail used to meet at this house, exchange their bags and each return whence they came, thus effecting a considerable saving of time and trouble. Even washerwomen have been exalted to the signboard, for in Norwich there was the sign of the Three Washerwomen in 1750. And one of the implements of their trade, the Golden Maid, (better known as “the Dolly,”) may still be seen at a turner’s shop in Dudley.

A few others remain, which cannot, strictly speaking, be called professions, yet are they—or at least they were—means of making a living, as the [Three Morris-dancers], once a very common sign, but now, like the custom that gave rise to it, almost extinct. There is one still left, however, at Scarisbrook, Lancashire, and in a few villages a remnant of the dance is also kept up on certain occasions. They were called Morris, or Moors, from the Spanish Morisco. Black faces were required for the dance:—

“Nam faciem plerumque inficiunt fuligine et peregrinum vestium cultum assumunt, qui ludicris talibus indulgent ut Mauriesse videantur, aut e longius remota patria credantur advolasse atque insolens recreationis genus advenisse.”[528]

There is a painted glass window at Betley, in Staffordshire, on which the characters performing the dance in the early part of the sixteenth century are represented; to these afterwards others were added. The earliest performers appear to have been called Robin Hood and Little John, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the May queen, the fool, the piper, and the plain rank and file of dancers variously dressed. To these afterwards were added a dragon, a hobby-horse, and other quaint types. Among the characters represented on the painted window are also a franklein, a churl, or peasant, and a nobleman. The hobby-horseman occupies the middle of the window, and is said to represent a Moorish king: he has two swords thrust into his cheeks, which seem to represent a feat of dexterity performed by Indian and Egyptian jugglers of throwing a somersault with two swords balanced on each side of the cheek. The horse (merely a frame covered with long trappings, and only showing the neck and limbs of a horse, in which the man capered about) held a ladle in his mouth for collecting money.

The fool was one of the features of the pageant, and on him rested a great deal of the duties to amuse the public, particularly when the hobby-horse was not present; hence Ben Jonson:—

“But see the Hobby-Horse is forgot,
Fool, it must be your lot
To supply your wont with faces
And some other buffoon graces.
You know how.”

On May-day, which in those merry days was the merriest of all the year, they came out in full force, and, along with the milkmaids dancing with piles of plate on their heads, contributed not a little to give the streets and thoroughfares a merry aspect. The May-dance of the sweeps is perhaps the “last stage of decomposition” of this amusement of our forefathers; their sooty complexions, their clowns, their Lord and Lady and Jack in the Green, may be all that remain of the morris-dance, the fool, the Lord and Lady, the hobby-horse, and the rest.

In treating of games, we may advert to a rendering of the [Flying Horse], overlooked on a former occasion. Besides its mythological and heraldic origin, there was another reason which sometimes prompted the choice of this sign. It was the name of a popular amusement, which consisted in a swing, the seat of which formed a wooden horse. This the flying equestrian mounted, and as he was swinging to and fro he had to take with a sword the ring off a quintain. If he succeeded, his adroitness was no doubt rewarded either with a number of swings gratis, or a quotum of beer. Such a Flying Horse served for a sign to an ale-house of that denomination in Moorfields, in the time of Queen Anne. Swings, round-abouts, and such-like amusements, were in those days the usual appendages of suburban ale-houses, and to a certain extent have even come down to our time.

Oil and colour-shops generally, and some public-houses—mostly near theatres—adopt the sign of the Harlequin. One of the most noted amongst the latter was kept in the beginning of this century in Drury Lane, by the eccentric Richardson, the showman, or, rather, the “Prince of Showmen,” as he called himself. In this tavern he saved some money, which enabled him to fit up a travelling theatre, by which he realised so much, that when he died in 1836, he left £20,000. It used to be one of his boasts that he had brought out Edmund Kean, and several other eminent actors. He desired in his will to be buried at Marlow, in Bucks, (where he was born in the workhouse,) in the same grave with the “Spotted Boy,” a natural phenomenon which had been one of his luckiest hits, and brought him a considerable amount of money.

It is curious to observe how the same simple thing has made mankind laugh for nearly thirty centuries, and that is a black face. In our age a large proportion of the public seem to find inexhaustible pleasure in pseudo-negroes, their songs and antics. The Greeks on their stage had a young satyr, dressed in goat or tiger-skin, with a short stick in his hand, a white hat on his head, his hair cut short, and a brown mask. This satyr performed some antics, and was the prototype of the harlequin. The Romans adopted a somewhat similar character under the name of planipes, because he did not wear the tragic cothurna; he also wore a variegated dress, for Apuleius, in his “Apology,” speaks of the “mimus centunculus.” From the Romans it descended to the Italians, and as early as the sixteenth century we find the whole troop complete, playing in Spain, namely, Harlequin, Pantaloon, Pagliacico, the Doctor, &c. At a masked ball at the court of Charles IX., in 1572, the king represented Brighella; the Cardinal of Lorraine, Pantaloon; Catherine de Medici, Columbine; and the Duke of Anjou, (afterwards Henry III.,) Harlequin. At that time, or shortly after, the troop of the Gelosi played the Italian pieces in Paris, in which these characters were introduced.

For the sign of the Green Man there is a twofold explanation. 1^o. That it represents the [green, wild, or wood men] of the shows and pageants, such as described by Machyn in his Diary on Lord Mayor’s Day, October 29, 1553:—“Then cam ij grett wodyn with ij grett clubes all in grene and with skwybes [squibs] bornyng . . . . with gret berds and ryd here and ij targets a-pon their bake.” This green in which they were dressed consisted of green leaves. When Queen Elizabeth was at Kenilworth Castle, in 1575, “on the x of Julee met her in the Forest as she came from hunting one clad like a savage man all in ivie,”[529] who made a very neat speech to the queen, in which he was kindly assisted by the echo. Besides wielding sticks with crackers in pageants, these green men sometimes fought with each other, attacked castles and dragons, and were altogether a very favourite popular character with the public. One of their duties seems to have been to clear the way for processions. In one of the Harleian MSS., entitled “The maner of the showe, that is, if God spare life and health, shall be seen by all the behoulders upon St Georges Day next, being the 23 of Aprill, 1610,” we see amongst the requirements:—

“It. ij men in greene leaves set with work upon their other habet with black heare & black beards very owgly to behould, and garlands upon their heads with great clubs in their hands with fireworks to scatter abroad to maintaine way for the rest of the show.”[530]

This interpretation is also given as the origin of the Green Man by Bagford:—

“They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou’ at thes day we in ye signe call them Green Men, couered with grene bones: and are used for singes by stillers of strong watters and if I mistake not are y^e sopourters of y^e king of Deanmarks armes at thes day; and I am abpt to beleve that y^e Daynes learned us hear in England the use of those tosticatein lickers [intoxicating] as well as y^e breweing of Aele and a fit emblem for those that use that intosticating licker which berefts them of their sennes.”[531]

The Wild Man, therefore, on a sign at Quarry Hill, Ladybridge, Leeds, is the same as the Green Man.

2^o. The second version of this sign is, that it is intended for a forester, and in that garb the [Green Man] is now invariably represented; even as far back as the seventeenth century, it is evident from the trades tokens that the Green Man was generally a forester, and, in many cases, Robin Hood himself, which may be inferred from the small figure frequently introduced beside him, and meant for Little John. The ballads always described Robin and his merry men as dressed in green, “Lincoln green.” When Robin meets the page who brings him presents from Queen Katherine:—

“Robin took his mantle from his backe,
It was of the Lincoln greene
And sent that by this lovely page
For a present unto the queene.”[532]

And in the same ballad, when he is going to court, “he clothed his men in Lincolne greene,” &c. Drayton, in his “Polyolbion,” says:—

“An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
All clad in Lincoln green which caps of red and blue.”

Sometimes it is called Kendal green:—

“All the woods
Are full of outlaws, that in Kendal green
[368] Follow the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon.”

Richard, Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, (i.e., Robin Hood)

It was, in fact, the ordinary dress of foresters and woodmen, and is so still in Germany.

“All in a woodman’s jacket he was clad,
Of Lincoln Green, belayed with silver lace.”

Spenser’s Faery Queene.

One of the most noted Green Man taverns was that on Stroud Green, Islington, formerly the residence of Sir Th. Stapleton, of Gray’s Court, Bart., whose initials, with those of his wife, and the date 1609, were to be seen on the façade. It was one of the suburban retreats frequented by the fashion in the days of Charles I., when it had been converted into a tavern. A century ago the sign bore the following inscription:—

“Ye are wellcome all
To Stapleton Hall.”

A club used to meet annually at this place, styling themselves the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation of Stroud Green.[533] At Dulwich, in the reign of George II., there was another Green Man, a place of amusement for the Londoners during the summer season; it is enumerated, with other similar resorts, in the following stanza:—

“That Vauxhall and Ruckholt and Ranelagh too,
And Hoxton and Sadlers both Old and New,
My Lord Cobham’s Head and the Dulwich Green Man
May make as much pastime as ever they can.[534]
Derry Down,” &c.

Musick in Good Time, a new Ballad, 1745.

The Merry Andrew was a card-maker’s sign; in the Banks Collection there is a shopbill of the time of Queen Anne, of Edward Hall, card-maker to her Majesty at the Merry Andrew, in Piccadilly. The playing-cards at that time used to have certain heads on the wrapper, according to which they were denominated. Merry Andrew was one of them. Other sorts had the Great Mogul, Henry VII., Henry VIII., and the Duke of Savoy, (Prince Eugene;) second-class cards had the Queen of Hungary, the Spaniard, the beau, and the Merry Andrew. The original Merry Andrew is said to have been a certain Doctor Andrew Borde, born at Pevensey in the fifteenth century, and educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, but who obtained his doctor’s degree at Montpellier. His writings abound with witticisms, which are reported also to have pervaded his speech. He is said to have frequented fairs, markets, and other “busy haunts of men,” haranguing the people in order to increase his practice in physic. He had many followers and imitators, whence it came that those who affected the same language and gestures were called Merry Andrews. Notwithstanding all this mirth and animal spirits, he professed himself a Carthusian, lived in celibacy, drank water three days in the week, wore a hair shirt, and nightly hung his shroud at the foot of his bed. He is said to have been physician to King Henry VIII., and member of the College of Physicians in London. He died a prisoner in the Fleet in 1549. More celebrated than his works on physic are his “Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham,” and the “Merry History of the Miller of Abingdon.”

Lower down still in the sphere of callings and professions the signs will take us. At Oswald Wistle, Accrington, we meet with the Tinker’s Budget. The budget is the tinker’s bag of instruments; we see the word thus used in Randle Holme:[535]—“A Tinker with his budget on his back, having always in his mouth this merry cry:—‘Have you any work for a Tinker?’” And Shakespeare, in the “Winter’s Tale:”

“If tinkers may have leave to live
And bear the sowskin budget.”

This inn, then, is certainly very modest in its pretensions; but we shall descend lower still. Even “poor Tom’s flock of wild geese,” otherwise Tom of Bedlam, we have now to introduce. We find him at Balsall, Warwick, and no doubt it was formerly not an uncommon sign, since he was such a favourite in ballads; the Merry Tom, at Kirkcumbeck, Cumberland, evidently refers to the same individual. Notwithstanding all the fantastic ballads that went under Tom’s name, he was but a sorry rogue. Randle Holme[536] says:—

“The Sow gelder and Tom of Bedlam are both wandering knaves alike, and such as are seldom or never out of their way, having their home in any place. The first is described as carrying a long staff, with a head like[370] a spear or a half pike, and a horn hung by his side from a broad leather belt or girdle cross his shoulders. Tom of Bedlam is in the same garb, with a long staff, and a Cow or Ox Horn by his side, but his cloathing is more fantastic or ridiculous, for being a mad man he is madly decked and dressed all over with Rubins, Feathers, cuttings of cloth and what not; to make him seem a madman or one distracted, when he is no other but a dissembling knave.”

“The Canting Academy,” 1674, gives them a similar attire and character:—

“Abram-men, otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down a long stick, with ribands streaming and the like; yet for all their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.”[537]

Aubrey says:—

“Before the Civil Warre, I remember Tom o’ Bedlams went about a begging. They had been such as had been in Bedlam and there recovered and come to some degree of soberness, and when they were licensed to goe out they had on their left arme an armilla of tinne (printed) about three inches breadth, which was sodered on.”[538]

This permission, if ever it was granted, was retracted after the Restoration, for in the year 1675 the London Gazette contained in several numbers the following advertisement:—

“Whereas several Vagrant Persons do wander about the city of London and countries, pretending themselves to be Lunaticks under cure in the Hospitall of Bethlem, commonly called Bedlam, with brass plates upon their arms and inscriptions thereon, These are to give notice that there is no such liberty given to any Patients kept in the Hospital for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put upon any Lunatick during their being there or when discharged thence. And that the same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and begging and deceive the people to the dishonour of the Government of that Hospital.”

Not only men but also women of a roving disposition, adopted poor Tom’s horn, and went wandering, begging, and pilfering under the name of Bess of Bedlam, which is still seen as a sign in Oak Street, Norwich. Bess was an old companion of poor Tom, for in the play of King Lear, Tom sings a snatch of a song with the words, “Come over the bourn, Bessy, to me,” and in the jollities of Plough Monday the fool and Bessy are two of the principal personages.[539]

A third class of beggars called Mumpers, is also found on the signboard under the name of the Three Mumpers.

Thus, after having gone through all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage, and from the sceptre to Tom’s staff with a fox-tail, we now come to the great leveller Death, who also was represented on the signboard. There were the Three Death’s-heads in Wapping, of which house trades tokens are extant; probably it was an apothecary’s, though it was a ghastly sign for his customers. Undertakers were also strictly professional in their choice. In the eighteenth century there were the Four Coffins over against Somerset House,[540] and another in Fleet Street, the sign of Stephen Roome,[541] whose son was the unfortunate author whom Pope has “gibbeted” in the Dunciad, as afflicted with a “funereal frown.” Savage, one of Pope’s literary sicarii, calls Roome “a perfect town-author,”[542] and has drawn his portrait in “An Author to be let, by Iscariot Hackney:”—

“Had it not been more laudable for Mr Roome, the son of an undertaker, to have borne a link and a mourning staff, in the long procession of a funeral—or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms according to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the Jovial Crew or Merry Beggars into a wicked imitation of the Beggars’ Opera?”

Another undertaker, James Maddox, clerk and coffin-maker of St Olave’s, had for a sign the Sugar-loaf and three Coffins. The addition of the sugar-loaf has, of course, nothing to do with his profession, for when death calls, the sweets of life are past. It was simply the sign of a former tenant, suspended in front or fixed in the wall of the house. Although the undertakers of the present day do not display signs as of old, they advertise their calling quite as effectually. The men who in their handbills solicit us to try their “economic funerals,” or to test one of their “three guinea respectable interments,—one trial only asked,” are commercial with the rest of the age, although we might wish that they would force themselves a little less upon our attention. One undertaker recently hit upon what he deemed a brilliant method of advertising his cheap funerals. He selected some good names from the “Court Guide,” and sent out hundreds of telegrams announcing the low prices at which a “body” could be interred. Some reached their destination just as the lady or gentleman “body” was sitting down to dinner, others as the “parties” were dressing, or in the act of leaving home; but although the scheme failed, the name of the undertaker and his prices were firmly fixed in people’s memories, and he received, instead of orders, numerous cautions not to telegraph in that way again.

An undertaker in Islington, some years ago, exhibited in his window some pleasing artistic efforts of his children, which must have greatly comforted the father. “Master A., aged 12 years,” had produced a grinning skeleton, garnished with worms and cross-bones; and “Miss B., aged 10,” had painted in colours a section of a vault, with coffin heads, skulls, and sexton’s tools, neatly arranged right and left. The drawings were framed and glazed, and parental pride had placed them in the best spot in the windows.

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[444] Notes and Queries.

[445] Roxburghe Ballads, iii., fol. 253.

[446] Akerman’s Trades Tokens.

[447] “Richardsoniana,” London, 1776, p. 159.

[448] Preface to his “History of the World.”

[449] Archæologia, ii., p. 169. In an article in “Notes and Queries,” No. 150, a document is quoted by which George Gower was appointed “the Queen’s Sargeant Paynter,” and Nicolas Hilliard her miniature portrait painter. No portraits of the queen painted by Gower appear, however, to be known.

[450] Lettre à M. Bizotin. “I cannot bear to see the portraits of the king, of the queen, of the dauphin, and of the other princes and princesses used as signs for shops; they whose portraits ought to be reserved for the most celebrated galleries and the most famous collections only. Would not M. d’Argenson, and you as well, M. le Commissaire, have very serious reason to be annoyed if you were to see your portrait as a sign to a public-house or to a rag-shop? Why, then, are you not annoyed in seeing the king’s portrait in such places?” Mr Boursault’s flattery is much more evident than his logic.

[451] There is a print of it in Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1794.

[452] “Memoirs of J. Decastro, comedian,” London, 1824. See under “Go,” (as “a go of gin,” “a go of rum,”) in the “Slang Dictionary,” 3d edition: John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, London.

[453] London Gazette, Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, 1682.

[454] In Lydgate’s ballad of “London Lyckpenny,” temp. Henry VI.

[455] This touting, or standing at the door inviting the passers by to enter, was at one time a universal practice with all kind of shops, both at home and abroad. The regular phrase used to be “What do ye lack? What do ye lack?” The French dits and fabliaux teem with allusions to this custom. In the story of “Courtois d’Arras,”—a travesty of the prodigal son, in a thirteenth century garb—Courtois finds the host standing at his door shouting, “Bon vin de Soissons à 6 deniers le lot.” And in a mediæval mystery, entitled “Li jus de S. Nicholas,” the innkeeper roars out, “Céans il fait bon diner, céans il y a pain chaud et harengs chauds et vin d’Auxerre à plein tonneau.” In “Les trois Aveugles de Compiegne,” mine host thus addresses the thirsty wanderers:—

“Ci a bon vin fres et nouvel,
Ça d’Ancoire, ça de Soissons
Pain et char et vin et poissons,
Céens fet bon despendre argent,
Ostel i a à toute gent,
Céens fet moult bon heberger.”

And in the “Debats et facétieuses rencontres de Gringalet et de Guillot Gorgen son maistre,” the servant who had taken advantage of the host’s invitation, excuses himself, saying, “Le tavernier a plus de tort que moy, car passant devant sa porte, et luy étant assiz, (ainsi qu’ils sont ordinairement), il me cria me disant: Vous plaist-il de dejeuner céans? Il y a de bon pain, de bon vin et de bonne viande.” This touting at tavern doors was still practised in the last century, as appears from the following passage in Tom Brown:—“We were jogging forward into the city, when our Indian cast his eyes upon one of his own complexion, at a certain coffee-house which has the Sun staring its sign in the face, even at midnight, when the moon is queen regent of the planets, and, being willing to be acquainted with his countryman, gravely inquired what province or kingdom of India he belonged to; but the sooty dog could do nothing but grin, and show his teeth, and cry, Coffee, sir, tea, will you please to walk in, sir; a fresh pot, upon my word.”—Tom Brown, vol iii., p. 17. Not only taverns but all sorts of shops kept these barking advertisements at the door. The ballad of “London Lyckpenny” enumerates a quantity of them. “What do you lack?” was the stereotype phrase. The “Buy, buy, what’ll you buy?” of the butchers, is one of the last remains in London of this custom. At Greenwich, the practice of touting at the doors of the small coffee-houses is still kept up; and throughout the United States and Canada the custom of waiting at steamboat wharves and railway termini, to catch passengers, and worry them with recommendations to this or that hotel, is unpleasantly prevalent. The touters there are known as hotel runners.

[456] “Wine one pint for a pennie, and bread to drink it was given free in every tavern.”—Note by Stow. The imperfect tense shows that this excellent custom had already fallen into disuse in Stow’s time.

[457] Will Herbert, “History of the Twelve Great Living Companies,” vol. ii. p. 197.

[458] Weekly Journal, April 26, 1718.

[459] Ibid., July 12, 1718.

[460] Harl. MSS. 5910, part II.

[461] “Account of London,” p. 60, 1813.

[462] Pepys’s Memoirs, Sept 18, 1660.

[463] “London Spy,” 1706.

[464] Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata.”

[465] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. i., p. 272.

[466] Erskine used to send somewhat similar cards of invitation when on the Bench, by drawing a turtle on a card, and sending it to a friend, with the day and hour.

[467] Maitland’s History of London, 1739, p. 647.

[468] “The Quack Vintners, or a Satyr against Bad Wine,” 1713; probably a pamphlet got up by the London vintners against Brook and Hilliers, the famous wine merchants recommended by the Spectator.

[469] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 32.

[470]

“Saint Dominic be always our friend,
Who sing thy praises daily in our pulpit,
From the veins of our hearts, after we have emptied our flagons;
Therefore if thou rejoicest to hear us set forth thy praise,
Make that in Easter time we of spring water
Need not drink, for if that were to happen, everywhere
They will be mute monks, who do not run about unless they be friars.”

[471]

“To drink like a Capuchin,
Is to drink poorly;
To drink like a Benedictine,
Is to drink deeply;
To drink like a Dominican,
Is pot after pot;
But to drink like a Franciscan,
Is to drink the cellar dry.”

[472]

“We are ten, all deep drinkers,
Jolly topers, and good smokers,
Who, never giving over drinking
And eating,
Scorn the favours of love.”

[473] The Plague, by De Foe.

[474] Beaufoy Trades Tokens.

[475] A proclamation of Queen Elizabeth restricted the length of the sword, rapier, and such like weapons to “one yard and half a quarter of the blade at the uttermost,” and the point of the buckler not above two inches in length, under the penalty of a “fine at the Queen’s pleasure, and the weapon to be forfayted, and if any such persons shall offend a second time, then the same to be banished from the place and towne of his dwelling.”

[476] Misson’s Travels, p. 307.

[477] Stow’s Chronicle, Thom’s edition, p. 83.

[478] Merry Jests of old Hobson the Londoner, 1611

[479] J. T. Smith’s Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London, edited by Charles Mackay, 1846.

[480] Nicolas’s Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, p. 7.

[481] Ned Ward’s Frolic to Horn Fair, 1703.

[482] Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting, p. 132.

[483]

“Whoever outsails me under the lee,
shall have a dollar and drink scot-free.”

[484] Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.

[485] Intelligencer, Jan. 27—Feb. 4, 1652.

[486] Unless it be another version of the Lamb and Anchor, see [p. 300]. Ship and Sheep, however, were formerly used promiscuously. Thus there is a token of William Eye “at the Sheep,” in Rye, 1652, representing a ship, whilst Decker, in Histrio-mastrix, 1602 says, “and this shipskin cap shall be put off.”

[487] Still in existence in Upper Fore Street, Lambeth.

[488] Thomas Allen’s History of Lambeth, 1827, p. 367.

[489] See Louisa Twining’s Symbols of Christian Art.

[490] See [p. 228].

[491] Hone’s Every Day Book, vol. ii.

[492] Stowe’s Survey of London.

[493] Daily Courant, Dec. 17, 1718.

[494] See under [Humorous Signs].

[495] Hollinshed’s Chronicles, iv., p. 330.

[496] The whole history of this calligraphic contest, written by Bale himself, is preserved amongst the Harl. MSS., No. 675.

[497] “Twelve Sonatas in two parts; the first part solos for a violin, a bass violin, viol and harpsichord; the second Preludes, Almands, Corants, Sarabands and Jigs, with the Spanish Folly. Dedicated to the Electress of Brandenburgh by Archangelo Corelli; being his fifth and last opera, etc. Price 8 shillings, or each part single 5 shillings.”—London Gazette, August 26-29, 1700. The use of the word opera here is somewhat peculiar.

[498] Hawkins’s History of Music, vol. ii., p. 107.

[499] London Gazette, December 30 to January 2, 1700.

[500]

“He came to an inn,
In the Rue de la Mortellerie,
Where the sign of the Pestle hangs out,
At which place there is good entertainment to be had.”

This poet-swindler, Villon, used to go about with a few friends, who robbed and cheated landlords, and obtained good dinners without paying for them, whence he called them “Repues Franches.” Too frequently he got off safe, but occasionally he would get a caning in the bargain to assist his digestion. These predatory dinners he has related in an épopée which has come down to us.

[501] It is to be observed that these soap-basins are now always of brass, and also that on the continent their place is taken by a shallow brass basin to contain hot water—Don Quixote’s helmet of Mambrino, held under the chin of the person to be shaved, with a hollow space in the rim to fit the neck, and a cavity into which the soap is deposited during the operation.

[502] Vossius, “De Poematum Cantu et viribus Rythmi,” Oxford, 1673, p. 62. Isaac Vossius was an eccentric Dutchman, who died a canon of Windsor in 1689. In the above treatise on rhythm he says:—“I remember that more than once I have fallen into the hands of men of this sort who could imitate any measure of song in combing the hair, so as sometimes to express very intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c., from whence there arose to me no small delight.”

[504] “People made younger here,” alluding to the youthful appearance of a man without a beard.

[505]

“Nature gives beard and hair,
And I cut them both.”

or—

“I devote my razors to all faces,
And can stand the test of the truest looking-glasses.”

[506] Tavern Anecdotes, 1825.

[507] Remarkable Trials, vol. ii., p. 14. 1765.

[508] Stow. p. 128.

[509] The court before which persons aggrieved in the Fair might have a “speedy relief.”

[510] H. Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, p. 237. See also Hone’s Every-day Book, Sept. 5, vol. i.

[511] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. ii., p. 63.

[512] Formerly a dangerous pond in Old Street Road, in which a number of people were drowned, whence it obtained its name of perilous Pond. In 1713 it was walled in by one Kemp, who on that occasion altered its name into Peerless Pool, by a similar process as the Pontus αξενος, inhospitable, was called ευξεινος, hospitable, by the Greeks.

[513]

“Tobacco is a noble weed, as many can testify.
Numbers of people who were long since weaned begin to suck again.”

[514]

“Here at the Milkmaid of Gouda
You will receive good articles and civil treatment,
Here you may smoke at your ease
Tip-top Varinas and Virginia tobacco.”

[515]

“Dainty noses, noble masters,
Who, by the jingling of the glasses,
Are prepared for a ’smoke;’
If you look for the finest growth,
The best Varinas? Come then at once
To the Walloon Milkmaid,” &c.

[516] Pierce Pennyless, Supplication to the Devil, 1593.

[517] These remains are engraved in Archer’s Vestiges of Old London.

[518] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842.

[519] A row of booths on the ice opposite the Temple.

[520] Randle Holme, book iii, ch. viii., p. 345.

[521] Dr Johnson’s explanation that they received their name from the town of Sedan, whence they were introduced into England, is evidently a mistake—for the French copied them from us. See Tallemant des Réaux, “Contes et Historiettes,” vol. vii., p. 102.

[522] Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for Place and Precedence. 4to, 1636.

[523] Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., fol. 546, entitled “The Coaches Overthrow, or a joviall Exaltation of divers tradesmen and others for the suppression of troublesome Hackney Coaches.”

[524] Decker’s English Villanies, 1632.

[525] Brathwaite’s Strapado for the Diuell, 1615. Notes in Percy Society edition.

[526] Newspaper cutting of the year 1762, probably from the London Register.

[527] “—heard groans from every side, but saw nobody who uttered them.”

[528] Junius’ Etymologia: “For those that take part in these games, besmear their faces with soot and adopt outlandish garments, so that they may look like Moors, or as if they had come from distant countries, and thence had introduced this quaint amusement.”

[529] Nicholl’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., p. 494.

[530] Harl. MSS., No. 2150, fol. 356.

[531] Harl. MSS., No. 5900.

[532] Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., f. 375.

[533] Lewis’s History of Islington, p. 281.

[534] Ruckholt was a reputed mansion of Queen Elizabeth, at Leyton, in Essex. Being opened to the public in 1742, it became a fashionable summer drive during a couple of seasons; public breakfasts, weekly concerts, and occasional oratorios were numbered amongst its attractions. The house was pulled down in 1745. Old and New Sadler’s Wells relates to the well-known place in Islington, at that period a music house. Lord Cobham’s Head has been noticed on [p. 97].

[535] Book iii., ch. iii., p. 181

[536] Book iii., ch. iii., p. 181.

[537] Canting Academy, second edition, 1674, as quoted in Malcolm’s “Manners and Customs,” vol. i., p. 322.

[538] Lansdowne MS., No. 231 “Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme.”

[539] There is a very unfavourable parallel between the Ladies and Besses of Bedlam in the Muse’s Recreation, 1656, entitled:—“Upon the naked Bedlams and spotted Beasts we see in Covent Garden,” beginning:—

“When Besse! she ne’re was half so vainly clad,
Besse ne’re was half so naked, half so mad;
Again, this raves with lust, for love Besse ranted,
Then Besse’s skin is tanned—this is painted.”

[540] Advertisement in the original edition of the Spectator, No. clxxxvi.

[541] City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade. November 4, 1675.

[542] London Gazette, May 30-June 3, 1681, where he gives a most dismal catalogue of what he could do.

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CHAPTER XI.
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE.

Instead of carved or painted signs hung above the doors, many shop and tavern keepers preferred to designate their houses after some external feature, such as the colour of the building—thus we find the Red house, the White house, the Blue house, the Dark house, &c. Others painted their door-posts a particular colour, whence the origin of the well-known Blue Posts. In still older times painted posts or poles in front of the houses seem occasionally to have served as signs; to some such distinction, at least Caxton’s Red Poles, as mentioned in one of his advertisements, seems to refer:—

“If it please ony man spirituel or temporel to bye our pyes of two or thre comemoracio’s of salisburi use, emprynted after the form of this prese’t letre whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come Westmonester into the almonestrye at the Reed Pale, and he shal have them good and chepe:

Supplico stet cedula.”

Even in the seventeenth century such a distinction was still occasionally used, as the Green Pales in Peter Street, Westminster;[543]—and Stukeley[544] speaks of Mr Brown’s garden at the Green Poles, where an urn was dug up lined with lead and filled with earth and bones. In Etheredge’s play “She Would if she Could,” the Black Posts in James Street are named, (Act i., sc. 1, 1703;) whilst the newspapers in the beginning of the eighteenth century contain advertisements stating that the mineral water from Hampstead Wells might be obtained, at the rate of 3d. a flask, from the lessee of the wells, who lived at the Black Posts in King Street, near Guildhall.

Garden-houses, or Summer-houses, attached to a building, were also used to designate shops and residences, as appears from a trades token “at the garden-house in Blackfriars,” and also from a newspaper advertisement of 1679, where the garden-house in King Street, St Giles, is mentioned. Frequent allusions to these garden-houses are found in the old plays; they appear to have been similar in all intents and purposes to the petites maisons of the profligate French nobility in the times of the Régence. Stubbe, in his “Anatomy of Abuses,” severely attacks them:—

“In the suburbes of the citie they have gardens either paled or walled round about very high, with their harbers and bowers fit for the purpose; and lest they might be espied in those open places, they have their banqueting houses, with galleries, turrets, and what not, therein sumptuously erected, wherein they may, and doubtless do, many of them, play the filthy persons.”

The young Rake in Shakespeare’s spurious play of the “London Prodigal,” (1604,) says to the lady:—

“Now, God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or a garden-house where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all sweet service.”

And Corisca in Massinger’s “Bondsman,” (Act i., sc. 3):—

“And if need be I have a couch and banqueting-house in my orchard, where many a man of honour has not scorned to spend an afternoon.”

He also alludes to it in the “City Madam.” A remnant of this custom is still to be traced in a few country towns, (Sunderland for instance,) where the middle classes have little gardens, in the outskirts of the town, with bowers and wooden summer-houses for tea-drinkings. In Holland they still flourish; the family usually take tea in them, whilst paterfamilias placidly smokes his pipe and listens to the croaking of the frogs and the lowing of the cows in the flat meadows beyond.

The Well and Bucket is a sign in Shoreditch, not badly chosen, as it intimates an inexhaustible supply; it is of very old standing in London, for it is mentioned in the “Paston Letters” in the year 1472.[545]

“I pray God send you all your desires and me my mewed goss-hawk in haste, or, rather than fail, a scar-hawk; there is a grocer dwelling right over against the Well with Two Buckets, a little from St Helen’s Church, hath ever hawks to sell.”

The anxiety about the bird, expressed in this letter, is most amusing:—“I ask no more good of you for all the services that I shall do you, while the world standeth, but a goss-hawk,” is the commencement of the letter, which concludes:—

“Now, think on me, good lord, for if I have not an hawk I shall wax fat for default of labour, and dead for default of company by my troth.”

In old times the ale-house windows were generally open, so that the company within might enjoy the fresh air, and see all that was going on in the street; but, as the scenes within were not always fit to be seen by the “profanum vulgus” that passed by, a trellis was put up in the open window. This trellis, or lattice, was generally painted red, to the intent, it has been jocularly suggested, that it might harmonise with the rich hue of the customers’ noses; which effect, at all events, was obtained by the choice of this colour. Thus Pistol says:—

“He called me even now by word through a red lattice, and I could see no part of his face from the window.”

The same idea is expressed in the “Last Will and Testament of Lawrence Lucifer,” 1604:—

“Watched sometimes ten hours together in an ale-house, ever and anon peeping forth and sampling thy nose with the red lattice.”

So common was this fixture, that no ale-house was without it:—

“A whole street is in some places but a continuous ale-house, not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red lattice.”—Decker’s English Villanies Seven Times Pressed to Death.

At last it became synonymous with ale-house:—

“As well known by my wit as an ale-house by a red lattice.”[546]

“Trusty Rachel was drinking burnt brandy with a couple of tinder-box cryers at the next red lattice.”[547]

The lattices continued in use until the beginning of the eighteenth century, and after they disappeared from the windows were adopted as signs, and as such they continue to the present day. The Green Lattice occurs on a trades token of Cock Lane, and still figures at the door of an ale-house in Billingsgate, whilst not many years ago there was one, in Brownlow Street, Holborn, which had been corrupted into the Green Lettuce.

When balconies were newly introduced, they were also used in the place of signs. Lord Arundel was the inventor of them, and Covent Garden the first place where they became general. “Every house here has one of ’em,” says Richard Broome, in 1659. Trades tokens “of the Bellconey,” in Bedford Street, are still extant, and also tokens of “John Williams, the king’s chairman, at y^e lower end of St Martin’s Lane, at y^e Balconey. 1667.” The first house that adopted a balcony was situated at the corner of Chandos Street, “which country people were wont much to gaze on;” soon, however, they became so common that further distinctions had to be added, as the Iron Balcony, (St James’ Street, 1699,) the Blue and Gilt Balcony, (Hatton Street, 1673.) Lamps have also, for two or three centuries, frequently done duty as signs, and continue still to act as beacons to those who want the assistance of the doctor, the chemist, or the sweep. Ale and coffee-houses, too, are frequently decorated with gorgeous lamps: this was already the custom in Tom Brown’s time:—

“Every coffee-house is illuminated both without and within doors; without by a fine Glass Lanthorn, and within by a woman so light and splendid you may see through her without the help of a Perspective.”[548]

The Moorfield quacks had always lamps at their doors at night, with round glasses, having the same colours as the balls in their signs, and this custom has been handed down to our day by the chemists, who still have circular, red, green, and yellow bull’s-eye glasses in their lamps.

In Paris, in the sixteenth century, the pastry-cooks used at nights to place a kind of lamp in their windows, which acted as magic lanterns. They were made of transparent paper, covered with rudely-painted figures of men and animals. Regnier mentions them in his eleventh satire:—

“Ressemblait transparent une lanterne vive,
Dont quelques patissiers amusent les enfants,
Où des oysons bridez, guenuches, elefans,
Chiens, chats, lièvres, renards, et mainte estrange beste
Courent l’une après l’autre.”[549]

A Dutch grocer, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the Burning Lamp, and wrote under it the following distich:—

“Myn lampje brant uyt den Orienten,
Ik verkoop oly, vygen en krenten.”[550]

The Brass Knocker in the Great Gardens, Bristol, is another sign taken from the exterior of the house; also the Flower-pot, which was very common in old London: one of the last remaining stood at the corner of Bishopsgate and Leadenhall Streets. It dated from an early period, and was, in the heyday of its fame, a celebrated coaching inn. The introduction of railroads, however, gave it a death-blow; for some time it continued to languish as a starting-point for omnibuses, and was finally demolished to make room for merchants’ offices in 1863. Trades tokens of this inn are extant in the Beaufoy collection. Mr Burn, the compiler of the catalogue of this collection, suggests that the Flower-pot was originally the vase of lilies, always represented in the old pictures of the Salutation or Annunciation; according to his theory the Angel and the Virgin were omitted at the Reformation, and nothing but the vase left. This, however, seems somewhat improbable. There is no apparent reason why it should not have been a real flower-pot, or rather vase, which our ancestors frequently had on the top of the pent-houses above their shops. In order to distinguish them from ordinary flower-pots, some painted theirs blue, thus the sign of the Blue Flower-pot, as appears from the advertisement of Cornelius a Tilborgh, who styles himself “sworn chirurgeon in ordinary to King Charles II., to our late sovereign King William, as also to her present majesty Queen Anne.” This worthy lived in Great Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn Row, and besides the Blue Flower-pot at his front door, his customers might recognise the house, by “a light at night over the door,” and a Blue Ball at the back-door. The Two Blue Flower-pots used to be a sign in Dean Street, Soho; and the Two Flower-pots and Sun Dial in Parker’s Lane, near Drury Lane, (London Gazette, Sept. 16-19, 1700.)

Innumerable objects from the interior of the house were likewise adopted as signs, such as furniture of all kinds, and domestic utensils. The upholsterers, for instance, generally selected pieces of furniture. At the end of the last century The Royal Bed was a great favourite, as may be seen from engravings on several of the shop bills in the Banks collection; the bed in olden times was a very important article in a household, and was always particularly named in the will. Upholsterers in those days were also frequently called bed-joiners. Next we have the Board or Table, still a great favourite in the north—in Durham alone at least sixty public-houses with that sign could be named.

The mention of the Table affords an opportunity for particularising those good things which usually grace the festive board. First of all there is the Salt Horn, (at Bradford and Leeds,) which formerly at dinner marked the line of demarcation; for whether a guest was to be placed above or below the salt was a matter of etiquette strictly to be attended to. In Dudley we find a very substantial and tempting Round of Beef, with the following rhymes:—

“If you are hungry or a-dry,
Or your stomach out of order,
There’s sure relief at the Round of Beef,
For both these two disorders.”

The roast beef of old England is further represented by The Ribs of Beef, in Wensum Street, Norwich. The Flank Of Beef at Spalding, the much less tempting Cow Roast at Hampstead, besides a couple of unpretending Beef-steaks in Bath. Our bill of fare also contains plenty of mutton, sometimes rehaussé with a poetic sauce, as one that was at Hackney in the last century, The Shoulder of Mutton and Cat, having the following rhymes:—

“Pray Puss, don’t tear,
For the Mutton is so dear;
Pray Puss, don’t claw,
For the Mutton yet is raw.”

The sign is still there, but the verses are gone. This suggested to another innkeeper on the common at Horsham, the sign of the Dog and Bacon. An epicurean publican at Yapton, Arundel, has a more gastronomic combination, viz.:—the Shoulder Of Mutton and Cucumbers. It was at the Shoulder of Mutton in Brecknock that Mrs Siddons, England’s greatest tragic actress, was born, July 14, 1755. “Fancy,” writes an enthusiastic biographer, “the English Melpomene behind the bar of such a place!” Legs of Mutton on the signboard do not appear to be so common as Shoulders. But by far the finest of all the dishes represented on the signboard was the [Boar’s Head], in Eastcheap, for the character of the famous inn patronised by Jack Falstaff makes the association of an excellent dish much more natural than any heraldic origin. The first mention of this inn occurs in the testament of William Warden, in the reign of Richard II., who gave “all that tenement called the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap,” to a college of priests, or chaplains, founded by Sir W. Walworth, the Lord Mayor, in the adjoining church of St Michael, Crooked Lane. The presence of “Prince Hal” in this house was no invention of Shakespeare; history records his pranks, how one night, with his two brothers, John and Thomas, he made such a riot that they had to be taken before the magistrate. No wonder, then, at the proud inscription on the sign, which still existed in Maitland’s time:—“This is the chief tavern in London.” At one time the portal was decorated with carved oak figures of Falstaff and Prince Henry; and in 1834 the former was in the possession of a brazier of Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop he then occupied since the great fire. The last great Shakespearian dinner-party at the Boar’s Head took place about 1784, on which occasion Wilberforce and Pitt were present, and though there were many professed wits, Pitt was the most amusing of the company.

On the removal of a mound of rubbish at Whitechapel, brought there after the great fire, a carved boxwood bas-relief boar’s head was found, set in a circular frame formed by two boars’ tusks, mounted and united with silver. An inscription to the following effect was pricked in the back:—“Wm. Brooke, Landlord of the Bore’s Hedde, Estchepe, 1566.” This object, formerly in the possession of Mr Stamford, the celebrated publisher, was sold at Christie and Manson’s, on January 27, 1855, and was bought by Mr Halliwell.[551]

The original inn having been destroyed by the fire, was rebuilt and continued in existence until 1831, when it was finally demolished to make way for the streets leading to new London Bridge. Its site was between Small Alley and St Michael’s Lane. The ancient sign, carved in stone, with the initials I. T. and the date 1668, is now preserved in the City of London Library, Guildhall.

In the month of May 1718, one James Austin, “inventor of the Persian ink powder,” desiring to give his customers a substantial proof of his gratitude, invited them to the Boar’s Head to partake of an immense plum-pudding. This pudding weighed 1000 lbs.; a baked pudding of 1 foot square, and the best piece of an ox roasted: the principal dish was put in the copper on Monday, May 12, at the Red Lion Inn, by the Mint in Southwark, and had to boil fourteen days. From there it was to be brought to the Swan Tavern, in Fish Street Hill, accompanied by a band of music playing—“What lumps of pudding my mother gave me;” one of the instruments was a drum in proportion to the pudding, being 18 feet 2 inches in length, and 4 feet diameter, which was drawn by “a device fixt on six asses.” Finally the monstrous pudding was to be divided in St George’s Fields, but apparently its smell was too much for the gluttony of the Londoners; the escort was routed, the pudding taken and devoured, and the whole ceremony brought to an end, before Mr Austin had a chance to regale his customers.

Puddings seem to have been the forte of this Austin. Twelve or thirteen years before this last pudding, he had baked one for a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near Rotherhithe, by enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a sack of lime: it was taken up after about two hours and a half, and eaten with great relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat overdone. The bet was for more than £100. Austin was also noted for his fireworks.

The back windows of the Boar’s Head looked out upon the burial-ground of St Michael’s Church,[552] and there rested all that was mortal of one of the waiters of this tavern. His tomb, in Purbeck stone, had the following epitaph:—

“Here lieth the bodye of Robert Preston, late Drawer at the Boar’s Head Tavern, Great Eastcheap, who departed this Life, March 16, Anno Domini, 1730, aged 27 years.”

“Bacchus, to give the topeing world surprize,
Produc’d one sober son, and here he lies.
Tho’ nurs’d among full Hogsheads, he defy’d
The charm of wine and ev’ry vice beside.
O Reader, if to Justice thou ’rt inclin’d,
Keep Honest Preston daily in thy Mind.
He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots,
Had sundry virtues that outweighed his fauts (sic)
You that on Bacchus have the like dependance,
Pray, copy Bob, in measure and attendance.”[553]

Amongst other Boar’s Head Inns, we may notice one in Southwark, the property of Sir John Falstolf of Caistor Castle, Norfolk, who died in 1460, and whose name Shakespeare adopted in the play. Then there was another one without Aldgate, as appears from the following curious document:—

“At St James’s the v daye of September, an. 1557.

“A letter to the Lord Mayor of London, to give order forthwith that some of his officers do forthwith repaire to the Boreshed w^hout Aldgate, where the Lordes are enformed a lewde Playe, called ‘A Sacke full of Newse,’ shall be plaied this daye, the Playeres whereof he is willed to apprehende and to comitt to safe warde, untill he shall heare further from hence, and to take their Playsbook from them, and to send the same hither.

“At West^r the vj daye of Sep. 1557.”[554]

At the beginning of this century there was a noted tavern in Bond Street, called THE Brawn’s Head, and the general opinion was, that at one time it had a brawn or boar’s head for its sign; this, however, was a mistake; the house was named after the head of a noted cook whose name was Theophilus Brawn, formerly landlord of Rummer Tavern in Great Queen Street, and the article (as the letters THE were usually supposed to be) was simply an abbreviation of the man’s magnificent Christian name.

All these gastronomic signs, doubtless, originated in the old custom of landlords selling eatables:—

“You brave-minded and most joviall Sardanapalitans,” saith Taylor the Water poet, addressing the country tavern-keepers, “have power and prerogative (cum privilegio) to receive, lodge, feast, and feed, both man and beast. You have the happinesse to Boyle, Roast, Broyle, and Bake, Fish, Flesh, and Foule, whilst we in London have scarce the command of a Gull, a widgeon, or a woodcock.”

In a little volume of 1685, entitled “The Praise of Yorkshire ale,” we are told that Bacchus held a parliament in the Sun, behind the Exchange in York, to consider the adulteration of wine, the various drinking vessels, and other matters sold in alehouses, as:—

“Papers of sugar, with such like knacks,
Biskets, Luke olives, Anchoves, Caveare,
Neats’ tongues, Westphalia Hambs, and
Such like cheat, Crabs, Lobsters, Collar Beef,
Cold puddings, oysters, and such like stuff.”

Hence, then, the once common sign of the [Three Neats’ Tongues], one of which still exists in Spitalfields; another one in the eighteenth century was very appropriately situated in Bull and Mouth Street.[555] The Ham is the usual porkman’s sign, though at Walmyth, in Yorkshire, there is a public-house sign of the Ham and Firkin. The Crab and Lobster Inn occurs at Ventnor; the Lobster is a sign on trades tokens of a shop in Bearbinder (now St Swithin’s) Lane, and also near the Maypole in the Strand; the Crawfish at Thursford Guist, in Norfolk, and the Butt and Oyster at Chelmondiston, Ipswich. Those eatables, all more or less salt, were sold as incitements to drink, and went by the cant term of shoeing horns, gloves, or pullers-on. They are often alluded to by ancient authors:—

“Then, sir, comes me up a service of shoeing-horns of all sorts, salt cakes, red herrings, anchoves, and gammon of bacon, and abundance of such pullers-on.”—Bishop Hall’s Mundus alter et idem.

The Pie was a sign in very early times, and gave its name to Pie Corner, “a place so called from such a sign, sometimes a fair inn for receipt of travellers.”—Stow, p. 139. One of the most famous inns with that sign was the Pie in Aldgate.

“One ask’d a friend where Captain Shark did lye,
Why, sir, quoth he, at Aldgate at the Pye.
Away, quoth th’ other, he lies not there, I know’t.
No, sayes the other, then he lies in ’s throat.”

Wits’ Recreation, p. 185, vol. ii.

De Foe, in his “History of the Plague,” tells of “a dreadful set of fellows” who used to revel and roar nightly in that inn during the time the plague was at its height, but within a fortnight all of them were buried. The Cock and Pie was once common. At an inn in Ipswich there used to be a rude representation of a cock perched on a pie, which was discovered whilst the house was undergoing some repairs. It was also, about the middle of last century, the sign of a house famed for conviviality, which stood on the site of the present Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, and was the resort of the “fancy” of those days. A row of fine elms connected this house with another, noted for the manufacture of Bath buns and Tunbridge water-cakes, the latter a dainty now almost obsolete, but which then was so famous, that it was one of the London cries, being sold by a man on horseback. With regard to the origin of the sign Cock and Pie, both the ancient Catholic oath, to swear by Cock and Pie, (by God and the Pie, or Roman Catholic service book,) and the fable of the magpie (Old English pie, or pye) and the peacocks, have each been duly considered by us; but the sign is probably only an abbreviation of the Peacock and Pie. In ancient times the peacock was a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie; the head, with gilt beak, being elevated above the crust, and the beautiful feathers of the tail expanded. As a dainty dish, then, it may have been put up, like the other good things of this world, just mentioned, as a trap to hungry or epicurean passers-by; at last the dish went out of fashion, the name even became a mystery, and was rendered by the sign-painters, according to their own understanding, by a Cock and Magpie, which is still very common. There is a public-house with such a sign in Drury Lane, which was already in existence more than two centuries ago, when the rest of Drury Lane was still occupied by farms and gardens, and the mansions of the Drury family. Hither the youths and maidens of the metropolis, who, on May-day, danced round the Maypole in the Strand, were accustomed to resort for cakes and ale, and other refreshments. This ale-house gave its name to the Cock and Pye Fields, between Drury Lane and St Giles’ Hospital. At Chatsworth, the original name was mutilated by a provincialism into the Cock and Pynot, (Derbyshire, for Magpie.) In this ale-house, still existing, the Revolution of 1688 was plotted, between Thomas Osborne Earl of Danby, William Cavendish Earl of Devonshire, and Mr John d’Arcy. They met by appointment on a heath adjoining the house, but a shower of rain coming on, they adjourned to the inn. The room is still shown in which the conspirators met. In Hone’s “Table Book” there is a woodcut of the inn, showing the wooden construction across the road, by which the signs in villages were generally suspended.

Lastly, we may mention the Pickled Egg, in Clerkenwell. As the origin of this sign, it is said that Charles II. here once partook of the dish, which so flattered the landlord, that he adopted it as his sign, and so it has remained till this day. It has given its name to a lane called Pickled Egg Walk, in which there was a notorious cocking-house, frequently mentioned in advertisements circa 1775.

We may very appropriately terminate the gastronomic signs with the [Cheshire Cheese], which is still very common; there is a famous tavern of this name in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, and numerous public-houses in the country have adopted it as their signs. And as we began with the Salt Horn we will end with the Mustard-pot, which was the sign of a mustard shop in Holland, in the seventeenth century, with these rhymes:—

“Ik lever uyt
Een zeldzaam kruyt
Daar zyn der weinig in de stad
Of ik heb ze by de neus gehad.”[556]

This reminds us of a rather indelicate sign of a mustard shop, formerly in the Rue du Chatel, at Beauvais, but now in the Musée d’Antiquités of that town, representing a fool stirring mustard in a barrel with a large stick, whilst a tall grinning monkey stands just opposite, assisting him in a way we need not describe.

Drinkables are not frequent as signs, if we except such as the Rhenish Wine House, and the Canary House; two taverns of Old London, named after the wines they sold. Barley Broth, Bee’s-wing, and Yorkshire Stingo, are at present all three common: the first applies either to whisky or beer; the second is the delicate crimson film left in bottles by old port wine, and Yorkshire stingo is the well-known name of a kind of ale. From a house with this name in the New Road, the first pair of London omnibuses were started, July 4, 1829, running to the Bank and back: they were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, all inside; the fare was one shilling, or sixpence for half the distance, together with the luxury of a newspaper. A Mr J. Shillibeer was the owner of these carriages, and the first conductors were the two sons of a British naval officer.

Drinking vessels are very appropriate ale-house signs. Amongst the oldest certainly ranks the [Black Jack], common even in the present day, although the vessel that it represented is long since fallen into disuse: it was a leather bottle, sometimes lined with silver or other metal, and perhaps took its name from a part of the soldiers’ armour. Sometimes it was ornamented with little silver bells “to ring peales of drunkeness,” in which case it was called a “gyngle boy.”[557] This primitive bottle has been celebrated in one of the Roxburghe Ballads, (vol. iii., fol. 433:)—

“God above that made all things,
The heaven, and earth, and all therein,
The ships that on the sea do swim
For to keepe the enemies out that none come in,
And let them all do what they can,
It is for the use and pains of man;
And I wish in heaven his soul may dwell,
Who first devized the leather bottle.”

Its various good qualities are next explained, and finally:—

“Then when this bottle doth grow old,
And will no longer good liquor hold,
Out of its side you may take a clout,
Will mend your shoes when they are worn out,
Else take it and hang it upon a pin,
It will serve to put odd trifles in,
As hinges, awls, and candle ends,
For young beginners must have such things.”

PLATE XV.
BELL AND HORNS. (Formerly in Brompton Road, circa 1830.)	RASP AND CROWN. (1780.)	HAND AND GLOVE. (Harleian Collection, 1708.)
GREEN MAN AND STILL. (Harleian Collection, 1630.)
THE PUMP. (Harleian Collection, 1710.)		CROWN AND PATTEN. (Banks’s Collection, 1790.)

There is another ballad in the same collection, (vol i., fol. 107,) entitled “Time’s Alteration, or the Old Man’s Rehearsal,” which speaks of the black jack in the following terms:—

“Black jacks to euery man
Were filled with wine and Beere,
No pewter Pot nor Canne
In those days did appeare:
...... We took not such delight
In cups of silver fine;
No pewter Pot nor Canne
In those days did appeare:
...... None under the degree of a knight
In Plate drunk Beere or Wine.”

But we may glean more full and complete particulars from Heywood’s “Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized,” 1635, where we get a detailed inventory of all the various drinking vessels of the day:—

“Of drinking Cups divers and sundry sorts we have; some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, etc. Mazers, broad mouthed dishes, naggins, whiskins, piggins, creuzes, alebowles, wassel bowles, court dishes, tankards, kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest people of the countrey: small jacks wee have in many alehouses of the citie and suburbs lipt with silver: blackjacks and bombards at the Court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their return into their countrey that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of hornes of beastes, of cockernuts,[558] of goords, of eggs of estriches; others made of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feaste to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flaggons, tankards, beere cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”

That they were of ancient use and high in price appears from an entry in the expenses of John, King of France, when prisoner in England after the battle of Poictiers, 1359-60:—

“Pour deux bouteilles de cuir achetées a Londres pour Monseigneur Philippe9s. 8d.”

Though these vessels are now completely superseded by pewter and glass, yet their memory still lives on the signboard, and the Leather Bottle is anything but an uncommon ale-house emblem at the present day. There is one still to be seen, carved in wood, suspended in front of an old ale-house at the corner of Charles Street, Hatton Garden. In Germany, also, the leather bottle was once in use; drinking vessels of various materials, in the shape of a boot, are common in that country, usually with this inscription:—

“Wer sein Stiefel nit drinken kan,
Der ist führwahr kein Teutscher Man.”

The Black-jack Tavern, in Clare Market, still in existence, acquired some celebrity from being the favourite haunt of Joe Miller, the reputed author of the famous Jest Book. The house was also for a long time known by the cant name of the Jump, which it had received from the fact of Jack Sheppard one day escaping the clutches of Jonathan Wild’s emissaries by jumping from a window into the street, and so making his escape. From the Leather Bottle to the Golden Bottle is not so great a step as would appear at first sight, the golden bottle being simply the leather bottle gilt, as may be seen above the door of Messrs Hoare the bankers, in Fleet Street, a firm established for centuries under the same sign, although not always occupying the same premises. In the “Little London Directory for 1677” we find:—“James Hore at the Golden Bottle in Cheapside,” one of the goldsmiths that kept “running cashes.” In 1693 we find Mr Richard Hoare, a goldsmith, “at the Golden Bottle” in Cheapside, but in 1718 the house in Cheapside seems to have had a second occupant:—

“DROPT or taken from a Ladies’ side on Tuesday, the 25^th of March, coming from the Spanish ambassadour’s at St James’ Square, a gold watch and chain, with a seal to it, a pendulum[559] on the outside; Windmill the maker. Whoever brings it to Mr Madding, Goldsmith at the Golden Bottle, the upper end of Cheapside, or to Jonathan Wilde, over against the Duke of Grafton’s Head in the Old Bailey, shall have 8 Guineas and no questions asked.”—Daily Courant, April 5, 1718.

That the Golden Can was also an old sign may be concluded from a mention in the nursery rhyme:—

“Little Brown Betty lived at the Golden Can,
Where she brewed good ale for gentlemen.
And gentlemen came every day,
Till little brown Betty she hopt away.”

Where the fact of little brown Betty brewing good ale points to a very old custom, when ale-wives flourished, and Eleanor Rumying and her gossips brewed their own ale. The Golden Can is still to be seen on two public-houses in Norwich. The Guilded Cup in Houndsditch is mentioned in a quaint little pamphlet on the virtues of “Warme Beere,” 1641.

The Flask was the sign of an old-established tavern in Ebury Square, Pimlico. In the last century there were two famous Flask taverns in Hampstead; the one called the Lower Flask was an inn at the foot of the hill, and is mentioned in the following advertisement, printed on the cover of the original edition of the Spectator, No. 428:—

“THIS IS TO GIVE NOTICE that Hampstead Fair is to be kept upon the Lower Flask Tavern Walk, on Friday, the first of August, and holds for four days.”

The Upper Flask was a place of public entertainment near the summit of Hampstead Hill, and is now a private residence. Here Richardson sends his Clarissa:—“The Hampstead coach, when the dear fugitive came to it, had but two passengers in it, but she made the fellow go off directly, paying for the vacant places. The two passengers directing the coachman to set them down at the Upper Flask, she bid them set her down there also.” The well-known Kit-Kat Club used to meet at this tavern in the summer months; and here, after it became a private abode, George Steevens, the celebrated critic and antiquary, lived and died.

Besides these, more homely vessels occur as publicans’ signs at the present day, which it requires no stretch of imagination to understand the meaning of, as the Pitcher and Glass, the Brown Jug, the Jug and Glass, the Bottle and Glass, the Foaming Quart, &c. At Newark the Bottle is accompanied by the following inscription:—

“From this Bottle I am sure
You’ll get a glass both good and pure,
In opposition to a many,
I’m striving hard to get a penny.”

The Pewter Pot, an old sign, is thus alluded to by Randle Holme.[560]

“This should be looked upon by all good artists to be the most ignoble and dishonourable bearing; but as the custom takes away the sense of dislike, so the frequent use takes away the dishonour, which is seen by those[388] multitudes that have it for their cognizance, in so much that it is painted over their doors by the wayside.”[561]

The Pewter Pot, in Leadenhall Street, was a famous carriers’ and coaching inn in 1681. There are also the Six Cans, in High Holborn, (a sign evidently suggested by the Three Tuns;) and, in the same locality, the Six Cans and Punchbowl. This last object, the Punchbowl, was introduced on the signboard at the end of the seventeenth century, when punch became the fashionable drink; in one instance, at Penalney Kea, near Truro, we have the Punchbowl and Ladle, but most generally it is found in combination with other very heterogeneous objects. The reason of this is that punch, like music, had a sort of political prestige, and was the Whig drink, whilst the Tories adhered to sack, claret, and canary, connected in their memory with bygone things and times. Hence it followed that the punchbowl was added as a kind of party-badge to many of the Whig tavern signs, and hence such combinations as the following, all of which still survive at the present day:—

The Crown and Punchbowl, Somersham, St Ives.

The Magpie and Punchbowl, Bishopsgate Within.

The Rose and Punchbowl, Redman’s Row, Stepney, and elsewhere.

The Ship and Punchbowl, Wapping.

The Red Lion and Punchbowl, St John’s Street, Clerkenwell.

The Union Flag and Punchbowl, High Street, Wapping.

The Dog and Punchbowl, Lymm, Warrington, Cheshire.

The Halfmoon and Punchbowl, Buckle Street, Whitechapel.

The Parrot and Punchbowl, Aldringham, Suffolk.

The Fox and Punchbowl, Old Windsor, (perhaps meant for the great statesman, who was not disinclined to the beverage.)

The Two Pots is the sign of a public-house at Boxworth, St Ives, accompanied by the following verses, which are enough to set the teeth of a Bœotian on edge: how then must they shock the refined ears of the Cambridge dons?—

“Rest, traveller, rest; lo, Cooper’s hand
Obedient brings two pots at thy command;
Rest, traveller, rest; and banish thoughts of care,
Drink to thy friends and recommend them here.”

Another Two Pots, at Leatherhead, can boast a most venerable antiquity, for it is believed to be the very ale-house where the notorious Eleanor Rumying tunned her “noppy ale,” and made

“thereof fast sale
To travellers, to tinkers,
To sweaters, to swinkers,
And all good ale-drinkers.”

There was, at the end of the last century, a painted sign still remaining, which, under a coating of summer’s dust and winter’s sludge, faintly showed two pots of beer placed in the same position as they are on the title-page of the original edition of Skelton’s poem.

The sign of the Two Pots again gave rise to that of the Three Pots, at Horseway Bridge, Chatteris, in the same county, and at Burbage, near Hinckley.

The Rummer, another drinking vessel, is also common: there is one in Old Fish Street, and there are three Rummer public-houses in Bristol alone. A tavern of that name was kept by Samuel Prior, uncle of Matthew Prior the poet. Uncle Sam took his nephew as an apprentice to learn the business, and be his successor. Prior alludes to this uncle and his little professional tricks in the following lines:—

“My uncle, rest his soul, when living,
Might have contrived me ways of thriving;
Taught me with cider to replenish
My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish;
So, when for Hock I drew pricked white Wine,
Swear ’t had the flavour and was right wine.”

To his stay in this tavern also alludes the bitter Whig satire in “State Poems,” (ii., p. 355,) beginning—

“A vintner’s boy the wretch was first preferr’d
To wait at vice’s gates and pimp for bread;
To hold the candle, and sometimes the door,
Let in the drunkard, and let out the w——.”

In 1709 there was another Rummer tavern “over against Bow Lane, in Cheapside,” where “the surprizing Mr Higgins, the posture master, that lately performed at the Queen’s Theatre Royal in the Haymarket,” was to be seen every evening at six; admission 18d. and 1s.

This sign was also common in Holland two centuries ago; at that time there was one in Amsterdam with this inscription:—

“Als gy dees Roemer ziet, gy kunt ze pryzen of laken,
Maar komt in, proeft zyn nat, dat zal u beeter smaaken.”[562]

And another one at the Hague had this same idea, but added a caution to it on a double-sided signboard:—

“Dees Roemer die gy ziet en kan u niet vermaken,
Komt in en proeft het nat het zal u beter smaken
Maar siet eens wat hier achter staat.”

On the other side:—

“Betaal eerst, eer je henen gaat
Of anders hoed of mantel laat.”[563]

A near relative of the Rummer was the Bumper, a tavern in St James’ Street, Covent Garden, kept by Estcourt the actor. His drawer was “his old servant Trusty Anthony, who has so often adorned both the theatres in England and Ireland; and as he is a person altogether unknown in the Wine Trade, it cannot be doubted but that he will deliver the wine in the same natural purity as he receives it from the said merchants,” (Brooke & Hillier.)—Estcourt’s advertisements on the last page of the original Edition of the Spectator, cclx., 1711. To this occupation of Estcourt, Parnell alludes in the beginning of his poems:—

“Gay Bacchus liking Estcourt’s wine,
A noble meal bespoke us;
And for the guests that were to dine
Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus.”

This same Estcourt was sometime provedore of the Beefsteak Club.

Finally, we may conclude this notice of drinking vessels on the signboard with the Tankard, which is still of frequent occurrence. There is a public-house at Ipswich with this sign, which was formerly part of the house of Sir Anthony Wingfield, one of the legal executors of Henry VIII.

The hanap or tankard was generally of silver, and was formerly one of the most valuable properties of an ale-house, for in the Act 13 Edw. I., it says that “if a tavern-keeper keep his house open after curfew he shall be put on his surety the first time by the hanap of the tavern, or by some other good pledge therein found.”[564] Silver tankards were more or less common in all the London taverns. In some houses they were reserved for the more distinguished visitors; in others, as at the Bull’s Head in Leadenhall Street, “every poor mechanic drank in plate.” They were of different sizes, and experienced topers well knew for which name to call when ordering a tankard proportionate to their thirst. From a curious old tippler’s handbook, published in the reign of Queen Anne or George the First, entitled, “A Vade Mecum for Maltworms,” we gather that the names of the tankards at the Sweet Apple, in Sweet Apple Yard, were “the Lamb,” “the Lion,” “the Peacock,” (in honour of the brewer,) “Sacheverell,” (in memory of the notorious divine of St Andrew’s, Holborn,) and “Nan Elton.” The same work also relates a curious instance of enthusiasm in a publican. His house, the Raven, in Fetter Lane, was famous for

“Massy tankards form’d of silver plate,
That walk throughout his noted house in state;
Ever since Eaglesfield in Anna’s reign,
To compliment each fortunate campaign,
Made one be hammer’d out for every town was ta’en.”

We may suppose each tankard named after a victory—the greater the victory, the greater the tankard; and can imagine the gratifying display of loyalty in emptying those tankards to the perdition of “Popery and wooden shoes.”

Besides the tankard for drinking beer or wine, there was also the Water Tankard. In Ben Jonson’s comedy of “Every Man in his Humour,” 1598, Cob, the water-carrier of the Old Jewry, says:—“I dwell, sir, at the sign of the Water Tankard, hard by the Green Lattice. I have paid scot and lot there many time this eighteen years.” These water-tankards were used for carrying water from the conduits to the houses, and were therefore a professional sign of the water-carriers. The measures held about three gallons, and were shaped like a truncated cone, with an iron handle and hoops like a pail, and were closed with a cork, bung, or stopple. In Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata,” there is an engraving of Westcheap as it appeared in the year 1585, copied from a drawing of the period, in which the Little Conduit is seen with a quantity of water-tankards ranged round it.

Amongst the other articles of furniture which are represented on the signboard we must first of all notice that useful article the Looking Glass, which was the favourite sign of the booksellers on London Bridge. Thus, one of John Bunyan’s works, “The Saints’ Triumph, or the Glory of Saints with Jesus Christ discovered in a Divine Ejaculation by J. B.,” was printed by J. Millet for J. Blare, at the Looking Glass on London Bridge, in 1688. The French booksellers also used it: for instance, Nicholas Despréaux, or Dupré, a bookseller of the seventeenth century, who lived near the church of St Etienne du Mont, at Paris. Its origin was this:—Speculum, a looking-glass, was in the middle ages a common name for a certain class of books. We find, as early as 1332, a work entitled “Speculum Historiale in consuetudine Parisiensi;” then there is the “Grand Speculum Historiale,” the great historical work of Vincent of Beauvais, one of the most celebrated books of the Middle Ages; “Speculum Humanæ Salvationis;” “Speculum Humanæ Vitæ;” “Speculum Vitæ Christæ,” “a boke that is clepid the Myrrour of the blessed lyffe of our Lorde J’hu cryste;” the “Mirrour of Magistrates;” “Le miroir de l’ame pécheresse,” and innumerable other Speculums. These Speculums were amongst the first books that were printed; many of the early booksellers adopted the Bible as their sign, whilst others chose the Speculum, which they translated and made more fit for the signboard under the name of the Looking Glass.

A curious fact is connected with this so common title of the Speculum for early religious books. When the first pioneers in the art of printing were pondering over their new invention, during the transition period from block-printing to printing with detached letters, Guttenberg, in 1436, entered into an agreement with John Riffe, Anthony Heilman, and Andrew Dreizehn, in which speculation the three associates were to furnish the necessary funds, whilst Guttenberg was to pay them one half of any profits, the other half being for himself. After a certain time the association broke up, differences arose about the liquidation, and a lawsuit was the consequence. The documents of this lawsuit are still in existence; from them it appears that they kept their invention a secret, and called themselves “Spiegelmachers,” (makers of looking-glasses,) which looking-glasses, according to the evidence of witnesses, had found a very ready sale amongst the pilgrims who at that period congregated at Aix-la-Chapelle on the occasion of some religious festival. But as apparently no extra number of mirrors were sold on that occasion, and there does not appear to have been any new invention in the art of making them, it is evident that the looking-glasses sold were the Speculum books, which undoubtedly would be readily purchased by the pilgrims to the holy shrine. This opinion is still more corroborated by the mention made in the evidence of a Press, which could scarcely be used in the manufacture of looking-glasses. It is therefore most probable that, as the art of printing was at this period still in its infancy, and the printed works were sold rather as an imitation or facsimile[565] of the written manuscripts, this art was still kept a secret; by so doing, its early practitioners were not only safe from competition, but also from the attacks and opposition by which the new invention would have been assailed by all those connected with the business of transcribing and illuminating.[566]

Other pieces of furniture are the Cabinet, a common upholsterer’s sign in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the Three Crickets, or little stools, which we gather from a trades token of the seventeenth century, was in Crooked Lane; and the Cradle, a peculiar sign, occurs in Taylor’s “Carrier’s Cosmography,” 1637, where he gives a rather curious insight into the postal arrangements of that time:—

“Those that will send any letter to Edinbourgh, that so they may be conveyed to and fro to any parts of the kingdome of Scotland, the poste doth lodge at the signe of the kings armes or the Cradle at the upper end of Cheapside, from whence every Monday any that have occasion may send.”

Generally, however, it did not designate so respectable a business; the “Compleat Vintner,” 1720, explains the secret arcana of that sign:—

“The pregnant Madam drawn aside,
By promise to be made a bride,
If near her time and in distress
For some obscure convenient place,
Let her but take the pains to waddle
About till she observes a Cradle
[394] With the foot hanging towards the door,
And there she may be made secure
From all the parish plagues and terrors,
That wait on poor weak woman’s errors.
But if the head hang tow’rds the house,
As very often we see it does,
Avaunt, for she’s a cautious bawd
Whose business only lies abroad.”

From the last interpretation of this sign to the [Colt in the Cradle] (see under [Humorous Signs]) is but a step.

The Trunk was the sign of Caleb Swinock, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1684, for which it is difficult to find any rational explanation; almost equally incomprehensible is the sign of the Green Bellows, (le soufflet vert,) which was that of Johan Stoll and Peter Cesaris, booksellers and printers in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in 1473.[567] This sign was also to be seen in other towns of France, as in Abbeville, where a stone bas-relief sign of the seventeenth century, with the inscription “le vert soufflet,” remains at the present day in the front of a house in the Rue des Jacobins. It may have been adopted in allusion to the occult sciences and alchemy, green being the emblematical colour of Hope.

The Golden Candlestick was the sign of a Marriage Insurance office in Newgate Street, in 1711, a time when there was a mania for insurance offices of every description; the Three Candlesticks occurs on a trades token of the Old Bailey in 1649. A publican in Tamworth, Staffordshire, has taken the Coffee-pot for a sign, probably on the strength of the derivation of “lucus a non lucendo,” because he sells no coffee; the Royal Coffee-mill was the more appropriate sign of Paul Greenwood, in Clothfair, for he was a seller of “Coffee-powder.”[568] Then there is the Sugar-loaf, a common grocer’s sign of former times, the selection of which showed great disinterestedness on their part, the article being that on which the least profit was made. Campbell said, in 1757:—

“There is indeed one article which they [the Grocers] must sell to their loss, sugars. A custom has prevailed (but why?) amongst the Grocers, to sell sugar for the prime cost, and are out of pocket by the sale,[395] with paper, packthread, and their labour in breaking and weighing it out. The expense of some shops in London, for the article of paper and packthread for sugars, amounts to £60 or £70 per annum; but this they lay upon the other articles. The customer had much better allow him a profit upon his sugars, than pay extravagant prices for tea and other comodities.”

At present, we understand, loaf-sugar is not sold exactly at cost price, but moist sugar is, whence many grocers refuse to sell that article to strangers unless something else be bought at the same time. At No. 44 Fenchurch Street, a very old established grocery firm still carries on business under the sign of the Three Sugar Loaves. The house presents much the same appearance it had in the last century, with the gilt sugar-loaves above the doorway, and is one of the few places of business in London conducted in the ancient style. The small old-fashioned window panes, the complete absence of all show and decoration, the cleanliness of the interior, and the quiet order of the assistants in their long white aprons, betoken the respectable old tea-warehouse, and impress the passer-by with a complete conviction as to the genuineness of its articles. That the sugar-loaf was not always exclusively a grocer’s sign, nor the Three Balls a pawnbroker’s, appears from the following advertisement in the Postman, February 3-6, 1711:—

“THOMAS SETH at the Sugarloaf in Fore Street, Pawnbroker, is going to leave his house, and to leave off the said business: all persons concerned are desired to fetch away their Goods on or before the fourth of March next, else they will be disposed off and sold.”

Here is another curious advertisement:—

“A TANNY MORE [tawny Moor] with short bushy hair, very well shaped, in a grey livery lined with yellow, about 17 or 18 years of age, with a silver collar about his neck with these directions:—‘Captain George Hastings’ Boy, Brigadier in the King’s Horse guards.’ Whosoever brings him to the Sugarloaf in the Pall Mall shall have forty shillings Reward.”—London Gazette, March 23, 1685.

The Sugar-loaf is also a public-house sign, though not a very appropriate one. The Blue Bowl, suggestive of punch-making, occurs on three public-houses in Bristol; but much more significant for a resort of thirsty souls is that of the Three Funnels, (les Trois Entonnoirs,) which in the time of Louis XIV. was the sign of a tavern in Paris, mostly patronised by the University people. An equally expressive sign, the Sieve, was used by John Johnson, in Aldermansbury, 1669, and “Richard Harris in Trinity Minories.”

We now arrive at kitchen utensils: foremost amongst these ranks the Gridiron, which was very common in the sixteenth century, and may perhaps have been a jocular rendering of the Portcullis. The Frying Pan is still a constant ironmonger’s sign—thus in Highcross Street, Leicester, there is a gigantic gilt specimen with the inscription “the Family Fry Pan.” There are trades tokens of “John Vere, at y^e Frying Pan in Islington, Mealman,” which, considered in connexion with pancakes, one can understand; but it certainly looks out of place at the door of Samuel Wadsell, bookseller at the Golden Frying Pan, in Leadenhall Street, 1680. The Copper Pot (le Pot de Cuivre) at Dijon, in France, was the sign of one of the oldest inns in that country. It was opened in 1250 and continued till the middle of the seventeenth century. The society of the Mère Folle held their meetings at this house.

The [Pewter Platter] occurs both in France and in England; it was famous as a carriers’ inn in St John Street, Clerkenwell, in 1681. At this inn Curll’s translators, in pay, were lodged, and had to sleep three in a bed, and there “he and they were for ever at work to deceive the publick.”[569] In mediæval Paris it was a common sign, and gave its name to several streets. Two of the inns victimised by that incorrigible scamp Villon, bore this sign:—

“Le cas advint au Plat d’etain
Emprès saint Pierre-des-Arsis.”[570]—Repues Franches.

Probably it was a very early sign for eating-houses.

The [Pump] is a common ale-house sign, and occurs as such on a token of Tooley Street, with the following lines:—

“The Pump runs cleer
Wh. Ale and Beer.”

which, as Mr Burn (Beaufoy Tokens) observes, may be a travesty of a verse in Histrio-Mastrix, 1610:—

“Yet a verse may run cleare,
That is tapt out of Beere.”

Another token belonging to Chick Lane, West Smithfield, represents a hand grasping the handle of a pump; and a publican in Old Swinford, who combines engineering with his trade, has a similar sign with the words, “Hands to the Pump.” In the reign of Charles I. there was a public-house, the Blue Pump, in Blackfriars, near the famous Hollands Leaguer. It represented a man, evidently a sailor, pumping with all his might, and the legend ran:—“Poor Tom’s last refuge.”[571] With the pump we may place the Bucket, which was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate Street, of which there are trades tokens extant, and the Tub, the name of a tavern in Jermyn Street, in the reign of Charles II., as appears from a letter sent, (not written, for she could not write,) by Nell Gwynn, from Windsor in 1684, to her milliner and factotum, addressed “To Madam Jennings, over against the Tub tavern in Jermyn Street, London.” Another utensil, the Dust-pan, is common with hardware shops. There is one in Islington, at a shop next to the house in which Charles Lamb lived; at night it is illuminated, and hence called the Illuminated Dust-pan. Lastly, there is the Hour-glass, a colossal specimen carved in wood, in Upper Thames Street, near All Hallows Church, and the Golden Jar, which was the sign of a china shop, as we see in the Country Journal, or Craftsman, for April 25, 1730, where Anne Cibber acquaints the public that she is removed from Charles Street to the Golden Jar in Tavistock Street, carrying on two trades which now are rarely associated in London, viz., “All sorts of chinaware, and the best teas, coffees, chocolate,” &c. Now-a-days the jars, painted red and green, are the usual oilman’s sign, representing those vessels in which oil is kept in Eastern countries, and in which Ali Baba’s forty thieves came to such an untimely end. Formerly oil used to be imported in this country in similar jars, hence their adoption as trade emblems.

We may close this chapter, not inappropriately with the Key, a sign once largely used, not only by locksmiths, as at present, but by all manners of shops; thus there was a celebrated tavern, at the corner of Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, circa 1690, and many others that could be mentioned. The Golden Key is named in an old advertisement, speaking of some sports and pastimes which many English gentlemen are now attempting to revive:—

“RICHARD FENNEY, Esquire of Alaxton in Leicestershire, about a forthnight since, lost a lanner from that place; she has neither Bells nor Varvels; she is a white Hawk, and her long feathers and sarcels are both in the blood. If any one give tidings thereof to Mr Lambert at the Golden Key, in Fleet Street, they shall have 40 shillings for their pains.”—Mercurius Publicus, August 30 to September 6, 1660.

The Lock and Key is a sign of a public-house in West Smithfield, and was, during the Commonwealth, that of a house in the parish of St Dunstan, belonging to Praise God Barebones, citizen and leather-seller of London. There is a MS. in the British Museum,[572] containing a petition of Barebones against Elisabeth and James Spight, the latter an infant under age, offered to the court of judicature for determination of differences touching houses burned or demolished by the fire of 1666. From that paper it appears that Elisabeth Spight paid £40 a year for the rent of the Lock and Key.

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[543] London Gazette, August 28 to Sept. 1, 1679.

[544] “Itinerarium Curiosum,” 1776, p. 14.

[545] Letter of John Paston to Sir John Paston, Sept. 21, 1472.

[546] Marston’s Antonio and Mellida, 1633.

[547] Tom Brown’s Works, vol. iii, p. 243.

[548] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1706.

[549] “It represented a burning lamp, such as some pastry-cooks have to amuse the children, on which geese, monkeys, elephants, dogs, cats, hares, foxes, and many strange animals are to be seen running after each other.”

[550]

“My lamp is kept burning by the produce of the East.
Oil, figs, and currants sold here.”

[551] There is a drawing of this very curious relic in a number of the Illustrated London News, published shortly after the sale.

[552] Also demolished to make room for the streets leading to London Bridge.

[553] Lansdowne MSS. No. 889, art. 73.

[554] Harleian MSS No. 256.

[555] Bagford Bills, Harleian MSS.

[556] This loses much by translation:—

“I contain
A curious kind of condiment—
There are not many people in this town
Which I have not had by the nose.”

This is a pun in Dutch, on the sensation produced in the nose by mustard, the expression meaning, at the same time, “to take in.”

[557] Decker’s English Villanies Seven Times Pressed to Death.

[558] Cocoa-nuts. The word is still pronounced in that manner by the lower classes.

[559] A face or dial-plate, sometimes also called pendulum dial.

[560] Book iii., p. 294.

[561] What would old Randle Holme have said, had he seen the elegant (!) breast-pins displayed in the shop-windows of one of the principal West End jewellers, forming the tasteful device of a tobacco-pipe on a quart pot; another with a rebus for: “You are an artdistingué ornaments.

[562]

“When you see this Rummer you may praise or blame it,
But come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better.”

[563]

“This Rummer which you see here cannot give you much pleasure.
Come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better,
But first, see what is written on the other side.”

On the other side:—

“Pay before you go away,
Otherwise you will have to leave your hat or your cloak.”

[564] Liber Albus, Book iii., Part ii.

[565] Even after the art got to be known, it continued to be still called writing. Thus, Gaspar Hedion (Paral. ad Chron. Conradi) calls it “novo scribendi genere reperto,” and Fulgosus (Lib. viii., Dict. & Fact. Memor.) says that Guttenberg could “uno die imprimendo plura scribere quam uno anno calamis.”

[566] See the whole of the documents of this law-suit in Count Leon de Laborde’s Débuts de l’Imprimerie à Strasbourg.

[567] This De Cesaris family seemed to have a predilection for puzzling signboards. When Peter de Cesaris, a bookseller and printer in the Rue St Jacques, circa 1480, had for a sign the Swan and Soldier, (le cygne et soldat,) in the absence of his colophon, we can only suppose that it was a representation of the legend of the Knight of the Swan, i.e., a knight in a boat drawn by a swan. The steel armour of the knight might easily have bestowed upon him the title of “the soldier.”

[568] London Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1679.

[569] Loyd’s Evening Post, Jan 9-12, 1767.

[570]

“It happened at the Pewter Platter,
Near Saint Pierre des Arsis.”

[571] Whether it would be just to conclude from this that sailors in that time went by the generic name of Tom instead of Jack, we leave to the reader to judge. That Tom was in former times a more common name than now, (owing, it is said, to the respect at one time paid to the great saint Thomas a-Becket,) appears from the many words to which it is an affix, and from many imaginary names, as:—Tomtit, Tomcat, Tomfoolery, Tomboy, Tommyshop, Tommy, (slang for bread,) double Tom, (a sort of plough,) Tom the Piper, (in the morris dance,) Tom Tiddler, Tom of Bedlam, Tom of Westminster, (a bell,) Tom and Jerry, Tom Telltruth, Tom Hickathrift, Tom, (the knave of Trumps,) Whipping Tom, an itinerant flogger of wandering maids, Tom Tapster, “Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefingers,” (all’s well that ends well.)

“Then every wanton may dance at her will,
Both Tomkin with Tomlin and Jenkin with Gill.”

Tusser’s Plowman’s Fasting Day

[572] Additional MSS., 5079.

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CHAPTER XII.
DRESS; PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL.

Of this class only a few signs are to be found; one of the most common is the Hat, the usual hatter’s sign, although it may also be found before taverns and public-houses, in which case, however, it is probable that it was the previous sign of the house, which the publican on entering left unaltered; or it may have been used to suggest “a house of call” to the trade. The age of each individual hat-sign may sometimes be gathered from its shape; thus there is one in Whitechapel, made out of tin, representing the cocked hat worn at the end of the last century; it is evidently a relic of that time. The continental hatters using this sign, occasionally indulged in a little humour. A hatter at Ghent in the sixteenth century added to it this distich:—

“Onder den Hoedt
Schuylt quaedt & goet.”[573]

And a Dutch hatter made a still more unpleasant allusion to the brains of his customers:—

“Hier maakt men sterke hoeden om de hersens in te sluyten
Opdat het los verstand daar niet mag vliegen buyten.”[574]

Dr Franklin used to tell an amusing story of a journeyman hatter, his companion when young, who on commencing business for himself, was anxious to get a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. This he composed himself as follows:—

JOHN THOMPSON, HATTER,
Makes and Sells Hats
for Ready Money

Above the inscription was the ordinary figure of a hat. But he thought he would submit the composition to his friends for amendment. The first he showed it to thought the word “hatter” tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats,” which showed he was a hatter; it was struck out. The next observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats; if good, and to their mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck that out also. A third said he thought that the words “for ready money” were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit—every one who purchased expected to pay. These, too, were parted with, and the inscription then stood, “John Thompson sells Hats.” “Sells Hats!” says his next friend; “why, who expects you to give them away? What, then, is the use of the word?” It was struck out, and HATS was all that remained attached to the name John Thompson. Even this inscription, brief as it was, was reduced ultimately to “John Thompson,” with the figure of the hat above it.

The Hat and Feathers was almost equally common in those days, when no full-fledged gallant could be deemed complete without his fluttering ribbons and plume. The puritanical Philip Stubbe in his “Anatomie of Abuses,” 1585, is very hard upon this fashion:—

“Another sort, (as phantasticall as the rest,) are content with no kind of hat, without a great bunch of feathers of divers and sondrie colours, peaking on top of their heades, not unlike (I dare not saie) cockes combes, but as Sternes of Pride and ensignes of vanitie and these fluttering sailes and feathered flagges of defiaunce to virtue, (for so they are,) are so advanced in Ailgnia [Anglia] that euery child has thē in his Hatte or Cappe. Many get good living by deying and selling of them, and not a fewe proue themselues more than fooles in wearyng of them.”

Decker calls the “swell” of his day “our feathered ostrich,” and in his comedy of the “Sun’s Darling” he mentions “some alderman’s son wondrous giddy and light-headed, one that blew his patrimony away in feathers and tobacco.” There is one sign of the Hat and Feathers still in existence, a publican’s, at Grantchester, in Cambridgeshire.

Another old hatter’s sign is the [Hat and Beaver], which at present may be seen at the door of a publican’s in Leicester. Shopbills of this once common sign occur amongst the Banks Collection, representing a beaver seated on the edge of a stream, with a hat above him. The relation between the two is evident, and about as gratifying to the beaver as it was to the widow of the hanged man to hear the gallows named. The beaver hats worn in England at the time of Edward III., and long after, were made in Flanders and Picardy. From the Privy Purse expenses of Henry VIII. we see that the king paid in 1532:—

“Item, the xxiij day [of October] for a hath and plume for the King in Boleyn, xv shillings.”

“On 27 May MDLV. (ij of Queen Mary) Sir William Cecil [afterwards Lord Burghley] being then at Callice [Calais] bought [as appears from his MS. Diary] three hats for his children at xxd each.”

The Protestant refugees, however, from Flanders and France, introduced the manufacture of these hats into England when they settled in Norwich; by a statute 5 and 6 Edw. VI., the manufacture of felt and thrummed hats was confined to Norwich and the corporate and market towns in that county.[575] As for the shapes of the hats worn at that period we must again refer to Stubbe’s satirical account:—

“Some tymes they use them sharpe on the crowne, pearking up like the speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yarde above the crowne of their heades, some more, some lesse, as pleases the fantasies of their inconstant mindes; othersome be flat and broad in the crowne like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round crownes, sometymes with one kinde of bande, sometymes with another, now blacke, now whyte, now russet, now red, now green, now yellowe, now this, now that, never content, with one colour or fashion two daies to an ende.”[576]

Felt hats for a long time were exclusively worn by the aristocracy. Stow tells us that “about the beginning of Henry VIII. began the making of Spanish feltes in England, by Spaniardes and Dutchmen, before which time, and long since the English used to ride, and goe winter and sommer in knitcapps, cloth hoods, and the best sort in silk throm’d Hatts.” These caps were enforced by a statute of 13th Queen Elizabeth, which gives, at the same time, a curious picture of the fashions of that period:—

“If any person above six yeares of age, (except maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have borne office of worship,) have not worn upon the Sundays and Holidays, (except it be in the time of his travell out of the citie, towne, or hamlet, where he dwelleth,) uppon his head one cap of wool knit, thicked, and dressed in England, and onely dressed and finished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be fined 3s. 4d. for each day’s transgression.”

These caps, termed statute caps, are frequently alluded to by the dramatists and authors of that period. Rosalind, for instance, in “Love’s Labour Lost,” taunts her lover with the words: “Well, better wits have worn plain statute caps.” The act was repealed in the year 1597. The sign of the Cap and Stocking, still in Leicester, commemorates the once-flourishing trade of that town in those articles. The quantity of workmen who found occupations in the manufacture of the above-named “statute caps,” (which came chiefly from Leicestershire and the surrounding districts,) was one of the principal reasons why it was so often protected by parliamentary statutes. Fuller enumerates not less than fifteen callings, “besides other exercises,” all employed in the trade of capmaking, beginning with the woolcarder, and ending with the bandmaker. The Hat and Star, which occurs on the bill of Master Bates in St Paul’s Churchyard, who sold all sorts of fine “caines, whippes, spurres,”[577] &c., if not a simple quartering of two signs, possibly originated in the clasp ornament of precious stones, formerly worn in the hat. The Leghorn Hat, at the end of the last century, was generally a turner’s sign, because the members of that trade sold straw hats imported from Leghorn. In St John Street, Clerkenwell, there was an old established public-house, and place of resort, called the Three Hats. It is mentioned by Bickerstaff in his comedy of “The Hypocrite,” where Mawworm thus alludes to it:—

“Till I went after him, [Dr Cantwell,] I was little better than the devil, my conscience was tanned with sin, like a piece of neat’s leather, and had no more feeling than the sole of my shoe; always a roving after fantastical delights; I used to go every Sunday evening to the Three Hats at Islington; it’s a public-house . . . mayhap your Ladyship may know it. I was a great lover of skittles, too, but now I cannot bear them.”

At this house the earliest prototypes of Astley used to perform in 1758. There was Thomas, an Irishman, surnamed Tartar; then came Johnson, Sampson, Price, and Cunningham. The great Dr Johnson went here to see his namesake.

“Such a man, sir, said he, should be encouraged; for his performance show the extent of human powers in one instance, and thus tend to raise our opinion of the faculties of man. He shows what may be obtained by persevering application; so that every man may hope, by giving as much application, although, perhaps, he may never ride three horses at a time, or dance upon a wire, yet he may be equally expert in whatever profession he has chosen to pursue.”

Royalty also visited the place: “Yesterday his Royal Highness the Duke of York was at the Three Hats, Islington, to see the extraordinary feats of horsemanship exhibited there. There were near five hundred spectators.”[578] Sampson’s wife was the first female equestrian.

Horsemanship

At Mr Dingley’s, the Three Hats, Islington.

“MR SAMPSON begs leave to inform the public, that besides the usual feats which he exhibits, Mrs Sampson, to diversify the entertainment, and prove that the fair sex are by no means inferior to the male, either in Courage or Agility, will, this and every Evening during the Summer, perform various exercises in the same art, in which she hopes to acquit herself to the universal approbation of those Ladies and Gentlemen whose curiosity may induce them to honour her attempt with their company.”[579]

The Three Hats occurs amongst the trades tokens of the seventeenth century. There is one of the Three Hats and Nag’s Head in Southwark. In the seventeenth century the sign of the Three Hats at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, was accompanied by the following stanza:—

“Dit is in de drie Hoeden
Om ’t hoofd te behoeden,
Voor wind en koud.
Tromp was stout,
Voor der staten kroon,
Hier maakt men hoeden schoon.”[580]

The Locks of Hair was the very appropriate sign of John Allen, a hairdresser on London Bridge in the last century, who sold “all sorts of hair, Curled or Uncurled; Bags, Roses, Cauls, Ribbons, Weaving Silk, Sewing Cards, and Blocks. With all Goods made use of by Peruke makers, at the lowest prices.”[581] The locks of hair were represented curled and tied. This sign appears to have been not unusual with the hairdressers of a former age. In 1649, there was one in St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, who had the Lock and Shears; which are represented on his trades token by a lock of hair between a pair of shears, intimating that the “unlovely lovelocks” were curtailed by him. What he would require the tokens for in his profession (they were used as farthings) it is difficult to guess, as apparently no such small change was needed. This sign was in accordance with the spirit of the times; short hair was the unmistakable mark of the godly puritan, just as the straggling love-lock hanging over the shoulder denoted the cavalier. For this reason, Decker advises the young cavalier Gull:—

“Thy hair, whose length before the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair of scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three house-wifely spinsters of Destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life. Oh, no! long hair is the only net that women spread abroad to entrap man in, and why should not men be as far above women in that comodity as they go far beyond them in others.”[582]

The Periwig was another common hairdresser’s sign. Even this had to submit to the favourite blue colour, for amongst the Banks bills there is one of John Thompson, in Brewer Street, Golden Square, who lived at the Blue Peruke and Star. The star evidently was the original sign, to which the wig had been added on account of the profession of the occupant of the house.

The White Peruke, in Maiden Lane, was the sign of the barber, at whose lodgings Voltaire lived when on a visit to London; some of his letters to Swift are dated from that place. A white periwig was a highly fashionable object:—“Now, I think he looks very humorous and agreeable; I vow, in a white periwig he might do mischief; could he but talk and take snuff, there’s never a fop in town wou’d go beyond him.”—Cibber’s Double Gallant, 1707. So Shadwell, in “The Humorist,” 1671, describes Brisk, one of the dramatis personæ, as “a fellow that never wore a noble and polite garniture, or a white periwig.” Well might the barbers give the peruke the honour of this signboard, for the profits on that article must have been enormous. In Charles II.’s time, for instance, a fine peruke cost as much as £50; and hence the great respect Cibber paid to the one he wore in the character of Sir Fopling Flutter, which was brought on the stage in a sedan, and put on before the public. As the glory of Miltiades prevented Epaminondas from sleeping, so the beauty of this periwig disturbed the slumbers of Mr (afterwards Colonel) Brett, who in the end bought it from Cibber.[583] The thieves as well as the beaux knew the value of those wigs, and practised all manner of tricks to obtain them. Sometimes a boy, carried in a basket on the shoulders of a man, would snatch the “curly honour” off the head of the unsuspecting beau;[584] at other times they would cut holes in the leather backs of the coaches,[585] whilst the highwaymen were sure to include the periwig with the rest of the booty captured on the road. Though this article is now shorn of its honours, there is still a publican at Great Redisham, Suffolk, who carries on his trade under the sign of the Wig.

The French have a sign quite as absurd as our Blue Peruke—viz., The Golden Beard, (la barbe d’or,) which is carved in stone in the Rue des Bourdonnais, Paris, and also in the Marché aux Herbes, Amiens: both these signs date from the eighteenth century, but their origin is much older, as appears from the following:—

“The Duke of Lorraine, after the Battle of Nancy, wherein he killed Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, went in procession to visit the body, clothed in deep mourning, with a golden beard fixed on, that reached down to his waist, (after the manner of the old heroes that were knighted for their prowess, who, on a signal victory over an enemy, were honoured with such a beard.)”—Richardsoniana, London, 1776, p. 47.

The Anodyne Necklace was as notorious in the eighteenth century, as Holloway’s Pills and Rowland’s Macassar Oil are in our day. Advertisements concerning it were continually appearing in the papers:—

“THE Anodyne Necklace for children’s teeth, women in labour, and distempers of the head; price 5s. Recommended by Dr Chamberlain. Sold up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, without Temple Bar; at the Spanish Lady at the Royal Exchange, next Threadneedle Street; at the Indian Handkerchief, facing the New Stairs in Wapping,” &c.[586]

To attract attention, there was frequently some book of not very delicate character, advertised as “given away gratis” at this house. But as this kind of literature was sure to find a great many readers—more especially when the book could be had for nothing—a restriction was sometimes added that “this curious book will not be given away to any boys or girls, or any paultry person.” Such a pamphlet, for instance, was:—

“THE RABBIT-AFFAIR made clear in a full account of the whole matter, with the pictures engraved of the pretended rabbit-breeder herself, Mary Tofts, and of the rabbits, and of the persons who attended her during her pretended deliveries, showing who were and who were not deceived by her. ’Tis given gratis nowhere, but only up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, recommended by Dr Chamberlain,” &c.—Daily Courant, Jan. 11, 1726.

This alluded to one of the most impudent frauds ever committed. A certain profligate woman, Mary Tofts by name, a native of Godalming, in Surrey, pretended to give birth to rabbits. The first delivery was a family of seventeen; she actually found people who believed her, and gave their attention to this phenomenon. Amongst them were Sir Richard Manningham, Dr St André, surgeon and anatomist to his Majesty, Dr Mowbray, &c. By these gentlemen she was brought to Lacy’s Bagnio, and the case was watched with intense interest; yet she succeeded in baffling and deluding their attention. At last the fraud came out by one of her accomplices informing upon her. Prints, books, and ballads were published upon the subject, Dr St André coming in for an extra share of ridicule; but whether the woman was in any way punished, is not on record. The last information respecting her was in the Weekly Miscellany, April 19, 1740:—“The celebrated rabbit-woman, of Godalmin’, in Surrey, was committed to Guilford gaol for receiving stolen goods.” She died in January 1763.

The Pearl of Venice is named in an advertisement of a watch lost, “made at Paris, not so broad as a shilling, in a case of black leather with gold nails.”[587] It was the sign of “Mr Leroy, in St James’ Street, Covent Garding.” The pearls of Venice were celebrated:—

“Is your pearl orient, sir?
Corv. Venice was never owner of the like.”

—Ben Jonson, The Fox, a. i., s. i.

At the same time that city was celebrated for its mock jewellery and glass imitations.

From the Bagford shopbills, it appears that the Blue Boddice was, in Queen Anne’s reign, a milliner’s shop in the Long Walk, near Christchurch Hospital. At the same period another member of the same fraternity (there were men-milliners in those days) had the Hood and Scarf, articles of female apparel; this shop was in Cornhill, “over against Wills’ Coffee-house.”[588] At the present time there is in the North a public-house called the Blue Stoops; this also seems to refer to an ancient garment, worn in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and named by Ben Jonson—“Alchymist,” a. iv., s. ii.—“Your Spanish stoop is the best garment.”

The Bonny Cravat, at Woodchurch, Tenterden, to judge from the adjective, seems rather to have been suggested by the old song of “Jenny, come tie my bonny cravat,” than by the introduction of the cravat as an article of dress. The fashion is said to have been brought over from Germany, in the seventeenth century, by some of the young French nobility, who had served the emperor in the wars against the Turks, and had copied this garment from the Croats, whence the name.

The Doublet, formerly the [Harrow and Doublet],[589] is still the sign of an iron warehouse in Upper Thames Street; it bears the date 1720, and the letters T. C., the initials of one of the Crowley family, to whom this warehouse has belonged “time out of mind.” It is made of cast and painted iron, and is said to represent the leather doublet in which the founder of the firm came to London as a day-labourer. The doublet was a kind of vestment which originated from the gambason or pourpoint worn under the armour; sleeves were added when it was worn without armour, and so it became a universal garment.

There are trades tokens extant of the Child-coat, in Whitecross Street, probably a shop where children’s apparel was sold. Randle Holme, in his heraldic Omnium Gatherum, b. iii., ch. i, p. 18, gives a representation of a child’s coat, which is very similar to the “Knickerbocker” suit of the present day, with a short kilt added to it. He adds the following explanation:—“A boy’s coat is the last coat used for boys, after which they are put into breeches. If it has hanging sleeves, they would term it a child’s coat.” In the same manner as the child’s coat, the Minister’s Gown figured at the door of the shop where this article was sold. There is a shopbill of such a one in Booksellers’ Row, St Paul’s Churchyard, among the Bagford bills.

The Tabard was the well-known inn in Southwark whence Chaucer and the other pilgrims started on their way to Canterbury. Mr Edmund Ollier has recently contributed a very interesting paper on this old inn to All the Year Round, and several paragraphs have appeared in other journals upon the same subject. A very few words, therefore, will be sufficient for the present purpose. Originally, it was the property of the Abbot of Hyde, near Winchester, who had his town residence within the inn-yard. The earliest record relating to this property is in 33d Edw. I., (1304,) when the Abbot and convent of Hyde purchased of William of Lategareshall two houses in Southwark, held by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the annual rent of 5s. 112d., and suit to his court in Southwark, and 1d. a year for a purpresture of one foot wide on the king’s highway; £4 per annum to John de Tymberhutts, and 3s. to the Prior and convent of St Mary Overie, in Southwark; value clear, 40s.

It is a fact on record that Henry Bayley, the hosteller of the Tabard, was one of the burgesses who represented the borough of Southwark in the Parliament held in Westminster in the 50th Edw. III., (1376;) and he was again returned to the Parliament held at Gloucester in the 2d Richard II., in 1378.[590] The tavern itself is named, at the very period when Chaucer’s poem is supposed to have been written, in one of the rolls of Parliament, where, 5th Richard II., (1381,) in a list of malefactors who had participated in the rebellion of Jack Cade, occurs the name of “Joh’es Brewersman, manens apud le Tabbard, London.” Stow thus notices the old inn:—

“From thence to London, on the same side, be many fair inns for receipt of travellers, by their signs—the Spurre, Christopher, Bull, Queen’s Head, Tabarde, George, Hart, King’s Head, &c. Amongst the which the most ancient is the Tabard; so called of the sign, which, as we now term it, is a jacket or sleeveless coat, whole before, open on both sides, with a square collar, winged at the shoulders, a stately garment of old time, commonly worn of noblemen and others, both at home and abroad in the wars, but then, (to wit, in the wars,) their arms embroidered or otherwise depict upon them, that any man by his coat of arms might be known from others; but now these tabardes are only worn by the heralds, and be called their coate of armes in service.”—Stow, p. 154.

Formerly there stood in the road, in front of the Tabard, a beam laid crosswise upon two uprights, upon which was the following inscription:—“This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, anno 1583.” Over this the sign was hung, but that disappeared with the rest of them in 1766. The writing of this inscription seemed ancient, yet Tyrwhitt is of opinion that it was not older than the seventeenth century, since Speght, who describes the Tabard in his edition of Chaucer 1602, does not mention it. Perhaps it was put up after the fire of 1676, when the Tabard changed its name into the Talbot.

At the present day the inn is known by the name of the Talbot; and although the building is by no means the same that sheltered Chaucer and his merry pilgrims, yet it is full of traditionary lore concerning them. In the centre of the gallery there was a picture, said to be by Blake, and well painted, representing the Canterbury Pilgrimage, almost invisible from dirt, age, and smoke. Behind this picture was a door opening into a lofty passage, with rooms on either side, one of which, on the right hand, was still designated as the Pilgrims’ Room. The house was repaired in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from that period, probably, dated the fireplace, carved oak panels, and other parts spared by the fire of 1676, which were still to be seen in the beginning of this century.

As leather breeches were much used for riding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the occupations of breeches-maker and glover were frequently combined; hence the sign of the Breeches and Glove on old London Bridge, the shop of “Walter Watkins, Breeches-maker, Leather-seller, and Glover.” But what made a Cornish publican of the present day, (at Camelford,) choose the sign of the Cotton Breeches, is more than we can pretend to explain.

Stockings or Legs are of constant occurrence in the seventeenth century trades tokens, as the signs of hosiers—frequently real, not painted, stockings were suspended at the door.

“On hosier’s poles depending stockings ty’d,
Flag with the slacken’d gale from side to side.”—Gay’s Trivia.

Boots and shoes occur in greater variety and abundance than any other article of dress. The Boot is a very common inn sign, either owing to the thirsty reputation of cobblers, or from the premises where they are found having been at one time occupied by shoemakers. The Boot and Slipper may be seen at Smethwick, near Birmingham; the Golden Slipper at Goodrange, in West Riding; the Hand and Slippers was a sign in Long Lane, Smithfield, in 1750. The Shoe and Slap occurs in the following handbill:—

“AT MR CROOME’S, at the sign of the Shoe and Slap, near the Hospital
Gate, in West Smithfield, is to be seen
The Wonder of Nature,

A Girl above Sixteen Years of Age, born in Cheshire, and not above Eighteen inches long, having shed her Teeth seven several Times, and not a perfect Bone in any Part of her, only the Head, yet she hath all her senses to Admiration, and Discourses, Reads very well, Sings, Whistles, and all very pleasant to hear.

“Sept. 4, 1667.

‘God save the King.’”

A slap was a kind of “ladies shoe, with a loose sole,”[591] the origin, probably, of the present word slipper. Another kind of shoe is also mentioned in an advertisement—the Laced Shoe in Chancery Lane.[592] “Laced shoes,” says Randle Holme, “have the over leathers and edges of the shoe laced in orderly courses with narrow galloon lace of any colour;” this places the use of laced boots much earlier than we would have been apt to imagine. The Clog is often used as a shoemaker’s sign in Lancashire and the midland counties, and also in those parts of London where that article is worn. The Five Clogs was, in 1718, the sign of William Wright, a quack, who lived over against Prescott Street, Goodman’s Fields.[593] Perhaps he occupied apartments at a clog-maker’s. Even the primitive Wooden Shoe (sabot) of France has figured as a tavern sign in that country. In a farce of the fourteenth century, entitled, “Pernet qui va au Vin,” the husband names the following taverns:—

“Au Sabot ou à la Lanterne
J’ai mis en oubli la taverne.”

Ronsard addressed some of his verses to the hostess of this tavern, which was situated in the Faubourg St Marcel:—

“Je ne suis point, ma guerrière Cassandre,
Ni Mirmidon, ni Dolope soudard.”

“Il n’y a personne,” says Furretière in his Roman Bourgeois, “qui ne se figure qu’on parle d’une Pentasilée ou d’une Talestris; cepandant cette guerrière Cassandre n’était reellement qu’une grande hallebreda qui tenit le cabaret du Sabot dans le faubourg Saint Marcel.”[594]

This sign has given its name to a street in Paris.

The [Patten], the quaint little contrivance in which our great-grandmothers tripped through the winter’s sludge, was the sign of a toy-shop in the Haymarket, “over against Great Suffolk Street, and by Pall Mall;”[595] at the present day it is still extant as a fishmonger’s shop in Whitecross Street, near the prison.

The very common sign of the Star and Garter refers to the insignia of the Order of the Garter. Anciently it was simply called the Garter, and thus it is designated by Shakespeare in his “Merry Wives of Windsor.” Charles I. added the star to the insignia, and his example was followed on the signboard. At that time the Garter was treated with a great deal more respect than at present, for Sandford, Lancaster Herald in 1686, complained that several coffee-houses had the sign of the Garter with coffee-pots, &c., painted inside, which he considered downright desecration; hence, order was given to those offenders, “to amend the same, or else they should be pulled down.”

The Garter Inn at Windsor, where Falstaff lived in such grand style, “as an emperor in his expense,” was not a creation of Shakespeare’s fancy, but did really exist, and most probably on the same site at present occupied by the Star and Garter.[596] The first Star and Garter at Richmond was built in 17389, on what was then a portion of the waste of Petersham Common; it was rented at 40s. a year. A drawing by Hearne, of the comparatively insignificant tenement then raised, is still preserved at the hotel.

It was also the sign of a famous ordinary in Pall Mall. Here the Duke of Ormond, in the reign of Queen Anne, gave a dinner to a few friends, and was charged £21, 6s. 8d. for the two courses, each of four dishes, without any wine or dessert, which, considering the value of money in those days, was certainly a considerable sum. In this house, in 1765, Lord Byron, the poet’s grandfather, killed Mr Chaworth in an irregular duel, the result of a dispute whether Mr Chaworth, who preserved his game, or Lord Byron, who did not, had more game on his estate. About the same time there was another Star and Garter tavern at the end of Burton Street, near the famous Five Fields in Chelsea, “a place where robbers lie in wait,”[597] the site now occupied by Eaton Square and Belgrave Square. At this tavern, Johnson the equestrian rode in July 1762, for the gratification of the Cherokee king, when on a visit in this country. The newspapers of the day describe the feats he performed:—“He rides three horses, and when in full speed, tosses his cap and catches it several times; he stands with both feet on the horse whilst it goes three times round the green in full speed,” and similar “astounding” acts, which would now be thought very little of.

The Glove is, in France, the common sign of the glove-makers; generally it is a colossal representation of a glove in tin painted red. This article of dress has had more honour conferred upon it than any other; anciently it was given, by way of delivery or investiture, in sales and conveyances of lands and goods; it was worn by magistrates on certain occasions, presented to them on others; it was the challenge and sacred pledge of a duel; the rural bridegroom in the time of Queen Elizabeth wore gloves on his hat as a sign of good husbandry; noblemen wore their ladies’ gloves in front of their hats; in some parts of England it used to be the custom to hang a pair of white gloves on the pew of unmarried villagers, who had died in the flower of their youth; it is used in marriage by proxy, and is connected with innumerable other customs and ceremonies.

The Fan, the Crowned Fan, the Two Fans, &c., were the ordinary signs of milliners who sold fans.

The Pincushion is the sign of a public-house at Wyberton, Boston, but why chosen it is difficult to say; and the Purse occurs amongst the trades tokens of W. Smithfield, with the date 1669. This last object was also the sign of one of the taverns visited at Barnet by Drunken Barnaby, where he had the misfortune with the bears.

The Ring was the sign of one of the booksellers in Little Britain, in the reign of Queen Anne; and the Golden Ring was, in 1723, the sign of G. Coniers on Ludgate Hill, who published a black letter edition of “The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam.” An old tradition that Guttenberg received the first idea of printing from the seal of his ring impressed in wax, may have led those booksellers to adopt that object for their sign.

“Respicit archetypos auri vestigia lustrans,
Et secum tacitus talia verba refert:
Quam belle pandit certas hæc orbita voces,
Monstrat et exactis apta reperta libris.”[598]

A red or a bipartite Umbrella or Parasol is the invariable sign of the umbrella-maker. This now indispensable article was brought into fashion by Hanway the philanthropist, towards the end of the eighteenth century. Before his time, a cloak was the only protection against a shower. Pepys writes in his Diary, “This day in the afternoon, stepping with the Duke of York into St James’ Park, it rained, and I was forced to lend the duke my cloak, which he wore through the park.” On another occasion Pepys was out with no less than four ladies, “and it rained all the way, it troubled us; but, however, my cloak kept us all dry.” Pepys sheltering the four ladies under his cloak of charity would make a very pretty picture. In the reign of Queen Anne, good housewives defied the winter’s shower, “underneath th’ umbrella’s oily shed,”[599] but Hanway was the first who, braving laughter and sarcasm, accustomed the Londoners to the sight of a man carrying that useful contrivance. John Pugh, who wrote Hanway’s life, says:—

“When it rained, a small parapluie defended his face and wig; thus he was always prepared to enter into any company without impropriety or the appearance of negligence. And he was the first man who ventured to walk the streets of London with an umbrella over his head; after carrying one near thirty years he saw them come into general use.”

There is a small umbrella shop in Old Street, Shoreditch, called the Umbrella Hospital; two placards are in the window, one setting forth the analogy between a human being and an umbrella, the second giving a list of the prices charged for curing the several ills an umbrella is heir to, thus:—

	s.	d.
Restoring a broken rib,	0	6
Restoring a spine,	0	6
Inserting a new spine,	1	0
Resuscitating the muscularia,	0	6
A new membranous attachment,	2	6
Restoring a shattered constitution,	1	0
Setting a dislocated neck,	0	6
Restoring a broken neck,	0	9
A new set of nerves,	1	0
A new rib,	0	6
A new muscle,	0	3
A new motive power,	0	6
A crenated attachment,	0	6
Restoring the muscular power,	1	6
Fixing on a new head,	0	3
Supplying a new head,	1	0

---

[573]

“The hat
Covers evil and good.”

[574]

“Strong hats made here to enclose the head,
In order that the soft (loose) brains may be kept together.”

[575] J. S. Burn, History of Foreign Refugees, p. 257.

[576] Stubbe’s Anatomie of Abuses, p. 21.

[577] Bagford Bills.

[578] British Chronicle, July 17, 1766.

[579] Publick Advertiser, July 1767.

[580]

“This is in the Three Hats,
Which are worn on the head,
To keep it from cold and wind.
Tromp was a brave man
Who supported the crown of the states
Hats cleaned here.”

[581] Shopbill, quoted in Thomson’s Chronicles of London Bridge, vol. ii., p. 277.

[582] Decker’s Gull’s Hornbook.

[583] Cibber’s Apology, p. 303.

[584] Gay’s Trivia, book iii.

[585] Weekly Journal, March 30, 1717.

[586] Weekly Journal. Jan. 4, 1718.

[587] Mercurius Publicus, Jan. 8 to 15, 1662.

[588] London Gazette, March 12 to 16, 1673. This was not the famous Will’s Coffee-house, which was situated in Bow Street, Covent Garden.

[589] Banks Bills.

[590] G. A. Corner, on the Inns of Southwark.

[591] Randle Holme, b. iii., ch. i., p. 14.

[592] London Gazette, July 31 to Aug. 4, 1679.

[593] Weekly Journal, Jan. 4, 1718.

[594]

“I am, my warlike Cassandra,
Neither a Myrmidon nor a Dolopian warrior.”

“Everybody that reads those lines,” says Furretière in his Roman Bourgeois, “will certainly imagine that he alludes to some Pentasilea or Talestris; yet this warlike Cassandra was after all neither more nor less than a tall manly looking wench who kept the Wooden Shoe (Sabot) public-house in the Faubourg Saint Marcel.”

[595] Bagford Bills.

[596] See J. O. Halliwell’s folio Shakespeare, vol. ii., p. 468.

[597] The Tatler.

[598] “He looked intently at the seal, observing the impression left by the gold, and spoke these words to himself, ‘How beautifully and distinctly does this impression render the words,’ and he proved his useful discovery in exact books.”

[599] Gay’s Trivia, book i., p. 221.

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CHAPTER XIII.
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY.

Foremost in this division stands the Globe,—“the great Globe itself,” a trade emblem common to publicans, outfitters, and others, who rely upon cosmopolitan customers. One of the theatres, where Shakespeare used to perform, was called The Globe, from its sign representing Atlas supporting the world. It was accompanied by the motto, Totus Mundus agit Histrionem; upon which Ben Jonson made the following epigram:—

“If but stage actors all the world displays,
Where shall we find spectators to their plays?”

To which Shakespeare is said to have returned this answer:—

“Little or much of what we see we do,
We are all actors and spectators too.”

The house stood on the Bankside, Southwark, and was burnt down in June 1613, having been set on fire during one of the plays by a piece of wadding fired from a cannon falling on the thatched roof. It was rebuilt, but finally taken down in 1644 to make room for dwelling-houses.

One of the most famous Globe taverns stood, till the beginning of this century, in Fleet Street. It had been one of the favourite haunts of Oliver Goldsmith, who, it appears, was never tired of hearing a certain “tun of a man” sing “Nottingham Ale.” Goldsmith’s face was so well known here that a wealthy pork-butcher, another habitué of the house, used to drink to him in the familiar words, “Come, Noll, old boy, here’s my service to you.” Several actors, also, “used” the house,—amongst others, the centenarian Macklin, Tom King, and Dunstall. Many amusing anecdotes concerning the place have been preserved in the “Fruits of Experience,” a delightful book of city gossip, written in his eightieth year by Joseph Brasbridge, a silversmith in Fleet Street. Brasbridge was a constant visitor at this tavern.

At Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, there is a Globe public-house, in which a tessellated pavement, part of a Roman villa, may be seen. The publican informs passers-by of this by the following inscription on his signboard:—

“This is the ancient manor-house, and in it you may see
The Romans work a great curiositee.”

And the absence of the apostrophe certainly makes it so. Finally, John Partridge, the almanac-making shoemaker, so amusingly ridiculed in the Tatler, lived at the Globe in Salisbury Street. From the pursuits of that great man, we may surmise his globe to have been a celestial one.

Sometimes the Globe was gilt, “for a difference.” Thus the Golden Globe was the sign of William Herbert, printseller, and editor of Joseph Ames’s well-known work on “Typographical Antiquities.” This shop was under the Piazza on London Bridge, where he continued till 1758, when the house was taken down.

Of all the signs which may be termed “Geographical,” those referring to our own island are, of course, the most common in this country. Britannia is very general. Hone, in his “Every-day Book,” mentions a public-house in the country where London porter was sold, and the figure of Britannia was represented in a languishing, reclining posture, with the motto,

“PRAY, SUP-PORTER.”

The first inhabitants are commemorated by the sign of the Ancient Briton; but this is not one of the “Cærulei Britanni,” though true blue for all that, but refers simply to a true patriot in the best sense of the word. Thus Boswell uses the expression in one of his letters to Dr Johnson:—

“I trust that you will be liberal enough to make allowance for my differing from you on two points, [the Middlesex election and the American war,] when my general principles of government are according to your own heart, and when, at a crisis of doubtful event, I stand forth with honest zeal as an ancient and faithful Briton.”

That this is the meaning attached to the word is evident from other signs of the same family, as True Briton, Generous Briton, &c., all common signatures to political letters in the newspapers of the Junius period. The modern John Bull, and the still later Old English Gentleman, descend from the same stock, and are all equally common.

England, Scotland, and Ireland was, in 1673, the sign of John Thornton, in the Minories, hydrographer to the Hon. East India Company. As he also sold maps, he had probably a map of the United Kingdom as his sign. Formerly signs representing buildings or localities in London were common, though generally they bore very little resemblance to the places intended. Among the trades tokens we find the Exchange, a tavern in the Poultry in 1651; the East India House, in Leadenhall Street, like most of this description of signs, prompted by the vicinity of the building represented; Charing Cross, the sign of a shop in that locality where they sold canaries in 1699, and also a sign at Norwich in 1750; The Old Prison, in Whitechapel—this Old Prison was intended for King’s Cross; Camden House, in Maiden Lane, 1668,—this must have been in honour of Baptist Hicks, the opulent mercer, at the White Bear, in Cheapside, who died as Viscount Camden in 1628. He built Hicks Hall on Clerkenwell Green, and presented it to the county magistrates as their session-house.

Further, there was the Temple, the sign of Mr Buck, bookseller, near the Inner Temple Gate, in Fleet Street, in 1700; and at the same period, Hyde Park, a shop or tavern in Gray’s Inn Lane. A public-house in Bridge Row, Chelsea, mentioned before 1750, and still in existence, bears the name of the Chelsea Waterworks. The Waterworks, after which it was named, were constructed circa 1724; a canal was dug from the Thames, near Ranelagh, to Pimlico, where an engine was placed for the purpose of raising the water into pipes, which conveyed it to Chelsea, Westminster, and various parts of western London. The reservoirs in Hyde and Green Park were supplied by pipes from the Chelsea Waterworks, which, in 1767, yielded daily 1740 tons.

The Lancashire Witch, a sign of an exhibition of shell-work and petrifactions in Shoreditch, 1754, was doubtless named after our old friend, Mother Shipton, born near the Petrifying Well at Knaresborough.

Even on the Continent we meet with a London sign,—viz., at Verona, where, in 1825, the Tower of London was one of the inns which recommended itself to English travellers in the following grand circular:—

“Circulatory.—The old inn of London’s Tower, placed among the more agreeable situation of Verona’s Course, belonging at Sir Theodosius Ziguoni, restored by the decorum most indulgent to good things, of life’s eases, which are favoured from every art at same inn, with all object that is concern’d, conveniency of stage-coaches, proper horses, and good foragers, and coach-house; do offers at innkeeper the constant hope to be honoured from a great concourse, where politeness, good genius of meats to delight of nations, round table, [table d’hôte,] coffee-house, hackney-coach, men servant of place, swiftness of service, and moderacion of prices, shall arrive to accomplish in him all satisfaction, and at Sir’s who will do the favour honouring him a very assur’d kindness.”

PLATE XVI.
VER GALANT. (Rue Henri, Lyons, 1759.)	GOAT IN BOOTS. (Fulham Road; said to be by Morland.)
A LATTICE. (Roxburghe Ballads, circa 1650.)
THREE PIGEONS. (Banks’s collection.)	UNICORN. (A Bookseller’s at Cologne, 1630.)

York figures more frequently on the signboard than any other place in England. From the trades tokens we see that the City of York was a sign in Middle Row, Holborn, in the seventeenth century. The York Minster is one of the few cathedrals ever seen represented out of its own city, probably for no other reason than because it stands in the capital of the county from whence the Yorkshire stingo comes. York, however, seems to have been a right merry city, second only to the city of London, for one of the oldest Roxburghe ballads, dated 1584, says:—

“Yorke, Yorke, for my monie, of all the cities that ever I see,
For mery pastime and companie, except the cittie of London.”

The Castle being such a general sign, many traders adopted some particular castle. Dover Castle, or Walmer Castle, is amongst the most frequent. The first is mentioned in the following amusing advertisement:—

“For Female Satisfaction.

“WHEREAS the mystery of Freemasonry has been kept a profound secret for several Ages, till at length some Men assembled themselves at the Dover Castle, in the parish of Lambeth, under pretence of knowing the secret, and likewise in opposition to some gentlemen that are real Freemasons, and hold a Lodge at the same house; therefore, to prove that they are no more than pretenders, and as the Ladies have sometimes been desirous of gaining knowledge of the noble art, (sic,) several regular-made Masons, (both ancient and modern,) members of constituted Lodges in this metropolis, have thought proper to unite into a select Body at Beau Silvester’s, the sign of the Angel, Bull Stairs, Southwark, and stile themselves Unions, think it highly expedient, and in justice to the fair sex, to initiate them therein, provided they are women of undeniable character; for tho’ no Lodge as yet (except the Free Union Masons) have thought proper to admit Women into the Fraternity, we, well knowing they have as much Right to attain to the secrets as those Castle Humbugs, have thought proper so to do, not doubting but they will prove an honour to the Craft; and as we have had the honour to inculcate several worthy Sisters therein, those that are desirous, and think themselves capable of having the secret conferred on them, by proper Application, will be admitted, and the charges will not exceed the Expences of our Lodge.”—Publick Advertiser, March 7, 1759.

The sign of the Angel at Beau Silvester’s was certainly well chosen by those gallant soi-disant Masons; but would not the Silent Woman have been still more appropriate? Be that as it may, Lodges for ladies there were—witness the following advertisement, a good specimen of “Stratford-le-Bow” French:—

“C. Loge C.

“AVERTISSEMENT AUX DAMES, etc. Pour vincre que les Francs Massons ne sont pas telles que le public les a representées en particulier la sexe Feminine, cet Loge juge a propos de recevoir des Femmes aussi bien que des Hommes.

[418]

“N.B.—Les Dames seront introduits dans la Loge avec la Ceremonie accoutumée ou le Serment ordinaire et le reel Secret leur seront administrées. On commencera a recevoir des Dames Jeudy 11 de Mars 1762, at Mrs Maynard’s, next door to the Lying-in Hospital, Brownlow Street, Longacre. La Porte sera ouverte a 6 Heures du Soir. Les Dames et Messieurs sont priées de ne pas venir après sept. Le prix est £1, 1s.”—(Newspaper, 1762.)

How the ladies were initiated—or, as the worthy secretary of Beau Silvester’s Lodge calls it, “inculcated,”—we are not informed; but certainly some modification must have been made in the usual ceremony attending the initiation of novices.

Llangollen Castle is painted on a sign in Deansgate, Manchester: under it is the following rhyme:—

“Near the above place in a vault,
There is such liquor fixed,
You’ll say that water, hops, and malt,
Were never better mixed.”

Many other castles occur, such as Jersey Castle, on the token of Philip Crosse in Finch Lane, in the seventeenth century; Rochester Castle, Mitford Castle, Hereford Castle, Warwick Castle, Edinburgh Castle, &c.

Towns are often adopted for signs as a point de ralliement for the natives of such places, the birthplace of the landlord being generally the town which has the honour of his selection. The City of Norwich was the sign of a house in Bishopsgate Street in the seventeenth century, either for the reason just alleged, or because “the fall of Niniveh with Norwich built in an hour,” was one of the penny sights at that period. Coventry Cross was the sign of a mercer in New Bond Street at the end of the last century, evidently chosen on account of the silk ribbons manufactured in that town; and the Chiltern Hundred, a public-house at Boxley, near Maidstone, doubtless refers to the well-known range of hills extending from Henley-on-Thames to Tring in Herts. In old times these hills were covered with forests, and infested by numerous bands of thieves. To protect the people in the neighbourhood, an officer was appointed by the Crown, called the steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, and although the duties have long ceased the office still exists, and is made use of to afford members of the House of Commons an opportunity of resigning their seats when they desire it. Being a Government appointment, though without either duties or salary, the acceptance of it disqualifies a member from retaining his seat.

The Wiltshire Shepherd was a sign in St Martin’s Lane in the seventeenth century. The Wiltshire downs were famous for their flocks of sheep. Aubrey, himself a Wiltshireman, says that the innocent lives of those shepherds “doe give us a resemblance of the golden age.” He also states that their sight inspired Sir Philip Sidney in charming pastorals, which on those very downs he sketched from nature, as some of his old relations well remembered. “’Twas about these purlieus,” says he, “that the muses were wont to appeare to Sir Philip Sidney, and where he wrote down their dictates in his table-book, though on horseback.” Many of the customs of these shepherds Aubrey traces down from the Romans.[600] The Gentle Shepherd of Salisbury Plain is the name given to Farmer Peek’s house, on the road from Cape Town to Simon’s Bay, Cape of Good Hope. On his signboard is the following mosaic inscription:—

“Multum in parvo, pro bono publico
Entertainment for man or beast all of a row.
Lekker host as much as you please;
Excellent beds without any fleas.
Nos patriam fugimus—now we are here,
Vivamus, let us live by selling beer.
On donne à boire et à manger ici;
Come in and try it, whoever you be.
The Gentle Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.”

Near Basingstoke there is a public-house sign representing a grenadier in full uniform, holding in his hand a foaming pot of ale; it is called the Whitley Grenadier, and bears the following disinterested verses:—

“This is the Whitley Grenadier,
A noted house for famous beer.
My friend, if you should chance to call,
Beware and get not drunk withal;
Let moderation be your guide,
It answers well whene’er ’tis try’d.
Then use, but not abuse, strong beer,
And don’t forget the Grenadier.”

This sign seems to have been suggested by the tragical death of a grenadier, which is thus recorded on a tombstone in the churchyard of Winchester Cathedral:—

“Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadeer,
Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer.
Soldiers be warned by his untimely fall,
And when you’re hot, drink strong, or none at all.”

To which a wag appended the following lines:—

“An honest soldier never is forgot,
Whether he die by musket or by pot.”

The Flitch of Dunmow is a common sign in Essex, and is sometimes seen in other counties. The custom of giving a flitch of bacon, on the well-known conditions, is not peculiar to Dunmow. In the reign of Edward III., the Earl of Lancaster, lord of the honour of Tutbury, granted a manor near Wichnor village, Burton-upon-Trent, to Sir Philip de Sommerville, stipulating that he was to give a flitch of bacon on the same conditions as at Dunmow.[601] At the abbey of St Milaine, near Rennes, in Normandy, the same custom was observed, but the practice was still less successful, for Dunmow at least has six times given the side of bacon away, but—

“A l’abbaye de Saint Milaine près Rennes y a plus de six cents ans ont un costé de lard encore tout frais et non corrompu; et néanmoins ont voué et ordonné aux premiers qui par an et jour ensemble mariez ont vescu sans debat, grondement et sans s’en repentir.”[602]

Our next sign is geographical only in its relationship. At Wansford Bridge, which crosses the river Nen in Northampton, there is the Haycock Inn, deriving its name from a curious incident: the river overflowed its banks and carried away a haycock with a man upon it. Taylor, the Water poet, says of the circumstance:—

“On a haycock sleeping soundly,
The river rose, and took me roundly
Down the current; people cried,
As along the stream I hied.
‘Where away?’ quoth they, ‘From Greenland?’
‘No; from Wansford Bridge, in England.’”

The stone bridge, of thirteen arches, carries the Great North Road across the river, so much traversed in the coaching times; and well known to many a traveller in those days was the Haycock Inn, at one end of the bridge, which has on the signboard a pictorial representation of the scene.

Scotland, which, besides Edinburgh ales and Highland whisky, produces a great many publicans, is honoured in numberless signs. Land o’ Cakes, the name given by Burns to the country of the “brighter Scotch,” is a sign at Middle Hill Gate, near Stockport. And here we may observe the popularity of Burns among the publicans, for not only is the poet himself, and several of his amusing heroes, exalted in innumerable places among the “living dead,” but at Kirby Moor some of his verses are even introduced on the sign:—

“When neebors anger at a plea,
An’ just as wud as wud can be,
How easy can the barley bree
Cement the quarrel?
It’s aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee,
To taste the barrel.”

Very good advice indeed.

Since the Highlander’s love for snuff and whisky was such, that he wished to have “a Benlomond of snuff, and a Loch Lomond of whisky,” nobody could make a better public-house sign than the Highland Laddie, nor a better snuff-shop sign than the kilted Highlander who stands generally at the door of these establishments. Two others of the lares and penates of the tobacconist are the Sailor and the Moor or Oriental. The first presiding over the snuff, the second over the chewing, the third over the smoking “department,”—as the drapers term the divisions of their shop. After the rebellion of 1745, when everything was done by the Government to extinguish the nationality of the Scotch, when Scotch ballads were forbidden, and the names of some clans were deemed more odious than the word raka to the Jews, the kilt was forbidden by the legislature as an abomination. On that occasion the following trifle appeared in the newspapers:—

“We hear that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so heroically the doors of snuff-shops, intend to petition the Legislature, in order that they may be excused from complying with the act of Parliament with regard to their change of dress: alledging that they have ever been faithful subjects to his Majesty, having constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch out of their Mulls when they marched by them, and so far from engaging in any Rebellion, that they have never entertained a rebellious thought; whence they humbly hope that they shall not be put to the Expense of buying new cloaths.”

The ubiquity of the Scotch packman produced the sign of the Scotchman’s Pack, St Michael’s Hill, Bristol, and in some other places. From the following passage it appears that these Scottish packmen, in the sixteenth century, penetrated even as far as Poland:—“Ane pedder is called are merchõd or cremar quha beirs are pack or creame[603] upon his bak, quha are called beirares of the puddill be the Scottesmen in the realme of Polonia, quhair I saw an greate multitude in the town of Cracovia, anno Dom. 1569.”[604]

Gretna Green used at one time to be a not very uncommon sign on the Border; there is one at Ayeliffe, Darlington. The origin of marriages at this place is not so generally known that it would be superfluous to introduce it here. Marriages in Scotland at all times having been considered legal if two parties accepted each other for man and wife in the presence of witnesses, a dissipated tobacconist, named Joseph Paisley, about a century ago, conceived the idea of opening an establishment on the Border to unite runaway couples in wedlock. For this purpose he selected the common, or green, between Graitney and Springfield, in Dumfries-shire, a place called Megshill, the first Scottish ground on entering the country from Cumberland; there he commenced business. In 1791 he settled in the then newly-built village of Springfield, but the reputation of his impromptu marriage-temple on Graitney Common, (or Gretna Green, as the English called it,) had already so widely spread that the name of the place had passed into a by-word for clandestine marriages. Paisley died in 1814, but marriage-mongering had become a trade in Springfield, and several self-appointed parsons started up to fill the office. Pennant says that in 1771 a young couple might be united “from two guineas a job to a dram of whisky” by a fisherman, a joiner, or a blacksmith; but the prices rose much higher afterwards, varying from £40 to half-a-guinea, and this last sum was only accepted from pedestrian couples. As a rule, the fee was settled by the post-boys from Carlisle, each patronising certain houses, and the hymeneal priests, knowing the value of their patronage, permitted them to go snacks in the proceeds. It is estimated that about 300 couples a year used to get married in this off-hand manner.

Of our colonies, Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope seem to be almost the only ones considered worthy the honour of the signboard. Gibraltar became popular as soon as the acquisition had been esteemed at its proper value. As for the Cape of Good Hope, the frequency of this sign all over England seems to render it probable that it was not so much adopted in honour of the colony as to express the landlord’s hope of success, and therefore as a sort of equivalent to the Hope and Anchor, or the Hope.[605] The Jamaica tavern, too, may have been christened in compliment to the birth-place of rum. There is a house with this name in Bermondsey, which is one of the many houses stated in our time to have been a residence of Oliver Cromwell. “The building, of which only a moiety now remains, and that very ruinous, the other having been removed years ago to make room for modern erections, presents probably almost the same features as when tenanted by the Protector. The carved quatrefoils and flowers upon the staircase beams, the old-fashioned fastenings of the doors—‘bolts, locks, and bars’—the huge single gable, (which in a modern house would be double,) even the divided section, like a monstrous amputated stump, imperfectly plastered over, patched here and there with planks, slates, and tiles, to keep the wind and weather out, though it be very poorly—all are in keeping; and the glimmer of the gas, by which the old and ruinous kitchen into which we strayed was dimly lighted, seemed to ‘pale its ineffectual fires’ in striving to illumine the old black settles, and still older wainscot.”[606] After the Restoration, this house seems to have become a tavern, and here, according to the homely, kind-hearted custom of the times, Pepys, on Sunday, April 14, 1667, took his wife and her maids to give them a day’s pleasure. “Over the water to the Jamaica house, where I never was before, and then the girls did run wagers on the bowling green, and there with much pleasure spent little, and so home.” Subsequently, he frequently returned to this place, which seems to have been the same he elsewhere calls The Halfway House. Besides this, there is the Jamaica and Madeira coffee-house, a well-known business club or tavern in St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill.

Only a few European nations and towns are represented. Amongst the Bagford shopbills there is one of a perfumer, named Dighton, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, sold “true Hungary Water, all sorts of snuff and perfumes,” &c. His shop was next door to the King’s Head Tavern at Chancery Lane End, and had the sign of the City of Sevilla; the woodcut above his shop-bill presents a distant family resemblance to that place, and with a little goodwill one may recognise the Alcazar, the Giralda, San Clementi, and San Juan de la Palma; the view is taken from the suburb of Triana, on the other side of the river. This “famous Henry Dighton,” as he styles himself in an advertisement in 1718, “sworn perfumer in ordinary to H. M. King George,” had chosen the sign of the City of Sevilla from the fact of his importing Spanish snuff, the fashionable mixture in those days, which the gallants dislodged with such airy elegance from among the lace frills of their shirts and neckties. His successor, Henry Coulthurst, promised “to furnish greater variety of the choicest and truest snuff than any perfumer in England, viz., Havana, Port St Mary’s, Barcelona, Port Mahon, Seville, plain Spanish, and fine Lisbon.” These Spanish snuffs had come greatly into fashion at the capture of Puerta St Maria, near Cadiz, when the fleet, under Sir George Rooke, captured several thousand barrels of snuff. But long before that time enormous quantities of Spanish tobacco had been yearly imported into England.

“There was wont to come out of Spain,” said Sir Edwin Sandys, in 1620, “a great mass of money to the value of £100,000 per annum for our cloths and other merchandises; and now we have from thence for all our cloth and merchandises nothing but tobacco: nay, that will not pay for all the tobacco we have from thence, but they have more from us in money every year, £20,000; so there goes out of this kingdom as good as £120,000 for tobacco every year.”[607]

The Three Spanish Gypsies, in the New Exchange, was the shop of the future “Monkey Duchess,” the nickname given by her aristocratic friends to Anne Monk, Duchess of Albemarle. “She was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy, and horse-shoer to Colonel Monk. In 1632 she was married, in the church of St Lawrence Poultney, to Thomas Radford, son of Thomas Radford, late a farrier, servant to Prince Charles, and resident in the Mews. She had a daughter who was born in 1634, and died in 1638. She lived with her husband at the Three Spanish Gypsies, in the New Exchange, and sold wash-balls, powder, gloves, and such things, and taught girls plain work. About 1647, being a sempstress to Colonel Monk, she used to carry him his linen. In 1648 her father and mother died. The year after she fell out with her husband, and they parted. But no certificate from any parish register appears reciting his burial. In 1652 she was married in the church of St George, Southwark, to General Monk, and in the following year was delivered of a son, Christopher, (afterwards the second and last Duke of Albemarle,) who was suckled by Honour Mills, who sold apples, herbs, and oysters.”[608] What became of her first husband, and when he died, is not known.

Venice was the sign of B. Martin, a bookseller in the Old Bailey, circa 1640, adopted probably in honour of the Aldi, the famous printers, who carried on business in this city. In the reign of Charles II. there was a house of indifferent fame in Moorfields, called the Russia House, whether opened during the time that the Russian ambassadors visited the king, or how it obtained its name, is not known. The house became notorious in 1667 through the trial of Gabriel Holmes and a band of incendiaries, among whom were two young boys, sons of James Montague of Lackham, grandsons of the Earl of Manchester. The boys turned king’s evidence, and Holmes was hanged. Russia House was one of the places where they planned their expeditions and spent their money: the object of their incendiarism, it came out at the trial, was simply that they might steal the goods which would be flung into the streets by the terrified inmates of the burning houses.

The Antwerp tavern was a famous house behind the Exchange, in the seventeenth century, of which tokens are extant, representing a view of Antwerp from the river. The extensive trade of Flanders, in the middle ages and long after, made Antwerp a favourite subject for signboards, it being the best harbour in Flanders. In Dieppe there is still a house on the Quai Henri IV., bearing a stone bas-relief sign of Antwerp, (la ville d’Anvers,) with the date 1697; but this house and sign are named, as early as 1645, in a MS. list of rents of houses in Dieppe, due to the Archbishop of Rouen.

Dutchmen, in some instances, have been appointed the tutelar saints of public-houses, on account of their reputed love for drink; thus we have the Two Dutchmen at Marsden, near Huddersfield, and the Jovial Dutchman at Crick, in Derbyshire. Now, though the Dutchman’s joviality is questionable, yet he certainly has at all times been reputed a heavy drinker. Shakespeare names, “your swag-bellied Hollander,” along with the Dane and German, as the only (though unsuccessful) rival of the English in the art of hard drinking. Massinger, in his “Duke of Florence,” has a similar remark; and Sir Richard Baker, in his “Chronicles,” says that the English “in these Dutch wars learned to be drunkards, and as we do not like to do things by halves in this country, we soon surpassed our masters.” Decker remarks that “Drunkenness, which was once the Dutchman’s headake, is now become the Englishman’s.”[609] Upsy Dutch and upsy freeze (for “op zyn Dutch,” and “op zyn Vriesch,” à la Dutch and à la Vriesch) are terms constantly used by Decker to denote a very drunken condition. Yet there was a time, long before the “Dutch wars,” when the English did not want any foreign masters to teach them drinking; how could it have been otherwise with descendants of the beer-drinking Saxons and Danes? Malmesbury complains that in his time “the English fashion was to sit bibbing whole hours after dinner, as the Normane guise was to walke and get up and downe in the stretes with great waines of idle serving men following them;”[610] and Hollinshed, who wrote at the very time of the Dutch wars, mentions among the improvements which old men in his time observed, was that the farmers could pay their rent without selling a cow or a horse, as they had been wont to do in former times, “owing to too much attention to the ale-house, and too little to work.”

Notwithstanding this, the Jovial Dutchman is a very good sign for licensed victuallers, since the general opinion is:—

“Death’s not to be—, so Seneca doth think,
But Dutchmen say ’tis death to cease to drink.”[611]

Besides drinking, the Dutchman has long had a reputation for smoking, whence the tobacconists of the last century used frequently to have on their sign, a Scotchman, a Dutchman, and a sailor, with the following rhyme:—

“We three are engaged in one cause,
I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws.”

A tobacconist in Kingsland Road had the same men, but a different reading of the text:—

“This Indian weed is good indeed,
Puff on, keep up the joke,
’Tis the best, ’twill stand the test,
Either to chew or smoke.”[612]

The introduction of coffee produced signs of various sultans, but the Turk’s Head may, perhaps, date from earlier times, possessing an origin similar to the Saracen’s Head. The Turks throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, were a common topic of conversation, and the bugbear of the European nations. This is well exemplified in the church-wardens’ accounts of St Helen’s, Abingdon, where the following entry occurs:—“Anno MDLXV—8 of Q. Eliz.—payde for two bokes of common prayer agaynste invading of the Turke, 0. 6.” That year the Turks had made a descent upon the isle of Malta, where they besieged the town and castle of St Michael; but upon the approach of the fleet of the Order, they broke up the siege and suffered a considerable loss in their flight. During the war of Emperor Maximilian against the Turks in Hungary, similar prayer-books were annually purchased for the parish. The first prototypes of newspapers, also, were the printed despatches concerning the battles and engagements of the emperor with the Turks,[613] and even at the end of the seventeenth century no newspaper was complete without its news from the Danube and “movements of the Turks.” One of the earliest patents granted for pistols, contains a clause that square balls are not to be used, “except against the Turks.” The number of Turk’s Heads in London in the seventeenth century was considerable; not less than eight trades tokens of different houses with this sign are known to exist.

In 1667, Robert Boulter, at the Turk’s Head in Bishopsgate, published the first edition of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” It was with difficulty that the author sold the copy for five pounds! he was to receive £5 more after the sale of the 1300 copies which comprised the first impression, and £5 more after the sale of each new impression of 1300 copies each. “And what a poor consideration was this,” says one of his biographers, “for such an inestimable performance,” and how much more do others get by the works of great authors than the authors themselves! And yet we find that Hoyle, the author of the “Treatise on the Game of Whist,” after having disposed of the whole of the first impression, sold the copyright to the bookseller for two hundred guineas.

Dr Johnson used often to take supper at the Turk’s Head in the Strand: “I encourage this house, (said he;) for the mistress of it is a good, civil woman, and has not much business.”[614] At another Turk’s Head, Gerrard Street, Soho, Johnson formed, in 1763, that well-known club, which was long without a name, but which after Garrick’s funeral became distinguished by the name of the Literary Club.

“Sir Joshua Reynolds had the merit of being the first proposer of it, to which Johnson acceded, and the original members were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Johnson, Mr Edmund Burke, Dr Nugent, Mr Beauclerck, Mr Langton, Dr Goldsmith, Mr Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, one evening every week, at seven, and generally continued their conversation till a pretty late hour. This club has been gradually increased to its present [1791] number thirty-five. After about ten years, instead of supping weekly, it was resolved to dine together once a fortnight during the meeting of Parliament.”[615]

After the death of the landlord of this house, the club removed to the Prince in Sackville Street; and after two or three more changes, it finally settled down at the Thatched House, St James’s. The original portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, presented to the club by the painter himself, is still preserved; one of its peculiarities is, that the artist has represented himself wearing spectacles. The club is still in existence, under the name of the Dilettanti Club. “The Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, Soho,” says Moser in his Memorandum-book, “was, more than fifty years since, removed from a tavern of the same sign, the corner of Greek and Compton Streets. This place was a kind of head-quarters for the Loyal Association during the rebellion of 1745.”[616]

About that time there was a waiter in this tavern, who, like Tennyson’s waiter at the Cock, Templebar, had obtained considerable celebrity. His name was Little Will. On an engraving dated 1752, he is represented as a small man with a large head and a periwig, dressed in a long apron, with a pair of snuffers suspended from the waist. The Rev. Mr Huddersford, of Trinity College, Oxford, in a letter to Granger, says,—

“Little Will, as I have heard, was a great favourite with the gentlemen of the coffee-house; there is a print representing him in his constant attitude, apparently insensible to anything around him, but swallowing every article of politicks that dropped, which, I am told, he understands better than any of his masters.”

The Three Turks was a sign at Norwich in 1750,[617] and even now, though the crescent is decidedly in the “last quarter,” there are still signs of Turks to be found, as the Turk and Slave, Brick Lane, Spitalfields; the Great Turk (i.e., the Sultan) at Wolverhampton—the last is of considerable antiquity, for in 1600 it was the sign of John Barnes, a bookseller in Fleet Street. One of the most opulent Turkish towns was commemorated by the Smyrna coffee-house, in Pall Mall, a fashionable coffee-house in the reign of Queen Anne, when the wits and beaux used to take their constitutional in St James’ Park, and then go to the Smyrna, where, sitting before the open windows, they could see the ladies carried past in their sedans or coaches, on their return from the Mall. This coffee-house seems to have had a reputation for politics. In the Tatler, (No. 10,) a “cluster of wise heads” is said to sit every evening from the left side of the fire at the Smyrna to the door; and in No. 78, the public is informed that “the seat of learning is now removed from the corner of the chimney on the left hand towards the window, to the round table in the middle of the floor, over against the fire; a revolution much lamented by the porters and chairmen, who were greatly edified through a pane of glass that remained broken all the last summer.” Prior, Swift, and Pope, were constant visitors at this house.

There was a Grecian coffee-house in Devereux Court, Strand, which for nearly two centuries was equally well frequented. It derived its name probably from having been opened by a Greek, the natives of that country having been among the first to open coffee-houses in London. It was a very fashionable house in the time of the Spectators and Tatlers: “My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian,” says Addison in Spectator, No. 1. It seems generally to have been frequented by literati and savants, some of them rather hot-headed:—

“I remember two gentlemen, who were constant companions, disputing one evening at the Grecian coffee-house, concerning the accent of a Greek word. This dispute was carried to such a length that the two friends thought proper to determine it with their swords; for this purpose they stept into Devereux Court, where one of them (whose name, if I remember right, was Fitzgerald) was run through the body, and died on the spot.”[618]

In this coffee-house Mrs Mapp, the famous bone-setter, (see [p. 113]) performed her cures before Sir Hans Sloane:—

“On Saturday and yesterday, Mrs Mapp performed several operations at the Grecian coffee-house, particularly one upon a niece of Sir Hans Sloane,[430] to his great satisfaction and her credit. The patient had her shoulder-bone out for about nine years.”—Grub Street Journal, October 21, 1736.

The coffee-house was closed in 1843; a bust of Essex is in front of the house it formerly occupied with the inscription, “This is Devereux Court, 1676.”

Various reasons are given to account for the sign of the Saracen’s Head. “When our countrymen came home from fighting with the Saracens, and were beaten by them, they pictured them with huge, big, terrible faces, (as you still see the sign of the Saracen’s Head is,) when, in truth, they were like other men. But this they did to save their own credit.”[619] Or the sign may have been adopted by those who had visited the Holy Land, either as pilgrims or when fighting the Saracens. Others, again, hold that it was first set up in compliment to the mother of Thomas à Becket, who was the daughter of a Saracen: formerly the sign was very general. During the time of the Commonwealth, the Saracen’s Head in Islington was a place of resort for the Londoners. In the “Walks of Islington and Hogsden, with the Humours of Wood Street Compter,” a comedy by Thomas Jordan, gentleman, 1648, the scene is laid at that tavern. It was also the sign of the house occupied by Sir Christopher Wren in Friday Street, which remained almost unchanged till it was taken down in 1844. The Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill, is one of the last remaining, and, at the same time, one of the oldest, being named in Dick Tarlton’s Jests as “the Sarracen’s Head without Newgate;” and Stow says, “next to this church [St Sepulchre’s in the Bailey] is a fair and large inn for receipt of travellers, and hath to sign the Sarrazen’s Head.” The courtyard has still many of the characteristics of an old English inn, with galleries all round leading to the bed-rooms, and a spacious gate, through which the dusty mail-coaches used to rumble in, the tired passengers creeping forth, and thanking their stars in having escaped the highwaymen, and the holes and sloughs of the road. How many hearts, beating with hope on their first entry into London, have passed under this gate, that now lie mouldering in the quiet little churchyards of the metropolis: some finding a resting-place in Westminster, whilst others ceased to beat at Tyburn. It was at this inn that Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited upon Squeers, the Yorkshire schoolmaster. Mr Dickens describes the old tavern as it was in the last years of our mail-coaching, when it was one of the most important places for arrivals and departures in London:—

“Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield also, and the Compter and the bustle and noise of the city; and just on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastwards seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westwards not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coach-yard of the Saracen’s Head Inn, its portals guarded by two Saracens’ heads and shoulders, which it was once the pride and glory of the choice spirits of this metropolis to pull down at night, but which have for some time remained in undisturbed tranquillity, possibly because this species of humour is now confined to Saint James’s parish, where door-knockers are preferred as being more portable, and bell-wires esteemed as convenient toothpicks. Whether this be the reason or not, there they are, frowning upon you from each side of the gateway; and the inn itself, garnished with another Saracen’s Head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard; while from the door of the hind boot of all the red coaches that are standing therein, there glares a small Saracen’s Head with a twin expression to the large Saracen’s Head below, so that the general appearance of the pile is of the Saracenic order.”

Blackamoors and other dark-skinned foreigners have always possessed considerable attractions as signs for tobacconists, and sometimes also for public-houses. Negroes, with feathered headdresses and kilts, smoking pipes, are to be seen outside tobacco-shops on the Continent, as well as in England. Thus, in the seventeenth century, there was one in Amsterdam with the following inscription:—

“Josua badt den Heere van herten aan
Dat de zon en maan bleef stille staan.
Puik van Verinis en gœ Blaan
Haalt men hier in den Indiaan.”[620]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Virginian was the most common in England, owing to the first tobacco having been imported from that country:—

“They returned homewards, passing by Virginia, a colony which Sir Walter Raleigh had there planted, from whence Drake brings home with him Walter Lane, who was the first that brought tobacco into England, which the Indians take against crudities of the stomach.”[621]

Publicans have a strange fancy for Indian Kings, Queens, and Chiefs, thus bearing out Trinculo’s assertion of the nation at large:—“When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.” There is a sculptured sign of an Indian Chief at Shoreditch, having all the appearance of an old ship’s figure-head; and, as a nomen ac præterea nihil, it figures in many places. In Dolphin Lane, Boston, (Linc.,) there used formerly to be a sign with some fanciful, masked-ball dressed figures on it, which were meant to represent the Three Kings of Cologne; but they conveyed so little the idea of those holy personages, that the profanum vulgus called them the Three Merry Devils. Eventually, by a metamorphosis more strange than any in Ovid, these three merry devils were transformed into one very strangely dressed female called the Indian Queen. The African Chief, in Sommerstown, is evidently a variety of these Indian chiefs.

Another sign of venerable antiquity is the Black Boy. That this is of old standing, appears from an entry in Machyn’s Diary: “The XXX day of Desember 1562, was slayne in John Street, Gylbard Goldsmith, dwellyng at the sene of the Blake Boy, in the Cheap, by ys wyff’s sun.”

This Black Boy seems to have been a tobacconist’s sign from the first; for in Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair” we find:—“I thought he would have run mad o’ the Black Boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy roguy tobacco there.”—Act i., Scene 1.

In the seventeenth century, it was the sign of a celebrated ordinary in Southwark:—

“Jove, and all his hous’hold a’ter
Him, yesterday went crosse the water,
To th’ signe of the Black Boy in Southwarke,
To th’ ordinary, to find his mouth worke.
Here he intends to fuddle’s nose
This fortnight yet, under the rose.”

Homer à la Mode, 1665.

At the Black Boy in Newgate Street, the Calves’ Head Club was sometimes held. It was not restricted to any particular house, but moved yearly from one place to another, as it was found most convenient. An axe was hung up in the club-room crowned with laurel: the bill of fare consisted of calves’ heads, dressed in various ways; a large pike, with a small one in his mouth, (an emblem of tyranny;) a large cod’s head; and a boar’s head, to indicate stupidity and bestiality.[622]

One of the early editions of Cocker’s Arithmetic was published at the Black Boy. Such was the fame of this work, that even as the Pythagorians swore in verba magistris, and αυτος ἑφη settled all questions, so our ancestors proved their points “according to Cocker.” The title of the work we must not abbreviate:—

“Cocker’s Arithmetic: Being a plain and familiar method, suitable to the meanest capacity, for the full understanding of that incomparable art, as now taught by the ablest schoolmasters in city and country. Composed by Thomas Cocker, late practioner in the art of writing, arithmetic, and engraving. Being that so long since promised to the world. Perused and published by John Hawkins, writing-master, near St George’s Church, in Southwark. By the author’s correct copy, and commended to the world by many eminent Mathematicians and writing-masters in and near London. Licensed September 1677. London: printed by J. R. for T. P., and are to be sold by John Back, at the Black Boy, on London Bridge. 1694. 12o.”

The Black Girl is a variety of this sign at Clareborough, Notts. So, too, appears to be the Arab Boy, an ale-house on the road between Putney and East-Sheen. The Two Black Boys occurs on one of the London trades tokens, where they are represented shaking hands. The Black Boy and Comb was, in 1730, a shop on Ludgate Hill, either a perfumer’s or a mercer’s, for he advertises “right French Hungary water, at 1s. 3d. a half pint bottle; fine Florence oil, at 2s. per flask; right orange flower water, at 1s. 6d. per flask; Barbadoes citron water, at 14s. per quart; and all sort of Bermudas, Leghorn, and fine silk hats for ladies,” &c.[623] The combination on the sign arose from the combs dangling at the doors of the shops where they were sold.

The Black Boy and Camel (doubtless a black boy leading a camel) was not many years ago the sign of a tavern in Leadenhall Street, where it was already in existence in the year 1700.

“The Annual feast for the Parish of St Dunstan, in Stepney, being revived, will be kept the 29th instant, at the King’s Head, in Stepney, where Tickets may be had, and at Tho. Warham’s, at the Black Boy and Camel, Leaden Hall Street,” &c.—London Gazette, August 15-19, 1700.

These parish feasts show most unmistakably the general conviviality of the time. Natives of the same county used also to have their public feasts. Thus the London Gazette for May 30 to June 3, 1700, advertises “the annual feast for gentlemen of the county of Huntingdon;” and the Gazette for October 21-24, “the anniversary feast for the gentlemen, natives of the county of Kent.” It is easy to imagine the attraction of such festivals in times when travelling was both very expensive and very dangerous,—when the post was badly conducted and extravagant in its charges; and, moreover, but few people could write. Such meetings, then, were the only ties that connected the provincial residing in London with the home of his childhood. At such times friends brought up in the same town or village could meet each other, talk over bygone times, call up the recollections of early years, remember mutual friends, and drink a bumper to those left behind. Sometimes these feasts took a religious turn, when a native of the county or district preached in the neighbouring church or chapel. Blessed occasions were these religious yet merry feasts of the olden time. But the “march of intellect”—that is to say, improved locomotion, the spread of reading, writing, and high notions—have done away with these meetings of warm hearts and jovial tempers as things low and vulgar.

Jerusalem was sure to figure early on signboards of those inns at which pilgrims, on their way to the Holy Land, were wont to put up; and long after pilgrimages were discontinued it was still retained as a sign. In 1657 we find it in Fleet Street. What the sign was like it is impossible now to say, but on the trades token of the house the Holy City is represented by one single building. There is another token extant of a house, also in Fleet Street, without date or name of the shop, on which there is a view of a town, with the usual conventional representation of the temple of Solomon. It was equally common in France. Regnard mentions one in Nogent:—

“Entrant dans la bonne ville
Cité Nogent
Jerusalem fut l’asile
Soleil couchant,
Bon sejour pour le pelerin,
Vin du Vaulx, et le bon vin.”[624]

On a house in the Rue Etoupée, at Rouen, there is a stone carved sign of Jerusalem, represented as a fortified town, with a figure arriving on each side, evidently meant for pilgrims. A similar idea seems to be conveyed by the sign of Trip to Jerusalem, a public-house in Nottingham, and the Pilgrim in Coventry. There is still an Old Jerusalem tavern in Clerkenwell, so called after the Knights of St John, of whose hospital this house was the principal gateway.

Mount Pleasant is a name frequently bestowed upon public-houses, not always with any allusion to such a locality, but simply on account of its being an alluring name of the same maudlin class as Cottage of Content, Bank of Friendship, &c. There is said to be a mountain of that name in America, which obtained some celebrity from being the locality on which the sassafras (Orchis mascula) was gathered, the plant which produces the saloop. This drink came in vogue at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Reide’s coffee-house in Fleet Street was the first respectable house where it was sold. When it was opened in 1719, the following lines, painted on a board, hung in front of the house; in latter times, until the closing of the establishment in 1833, they were preserved in the coffee-room:—

“Come all degrees now passing by,
My charming liquor taste and try;
To Lockyer[625] come and drink your fill,
Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill.
The fumes of wines, punch, drams, or beer,
It will expel; your spirits cheer;
From drowsiness your spirits free;
Sweet as a rose your breath shall be.
Come taste and try, and speak your mind,
Such rare ingredients here are joined.
Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.”

Lockyer had begun life with half-a-crown, and by selling salop, or saloop, at Fleet-ditch, amassed sufficient to open the above place in Fleet Street, where he died worth £1000, in March 1739.[626]

Our old friend Pepys mentions going to China Hall, but gives no further particulars. It is not unlikely that this was the same place which, in the summer of 1777, was opened as a theatre. Whatever its use in former times, it was at that period the warehouse of a paper manufacturer. In those days the West-end often visited the entertainments of the East, and the new theatre was sufficiently patronised to enable the proprietors to venture upon some embellishments. The prices were—boxes, 3s.; pit, 2s.; gallery, 1s.; and the time of commencing varied from half-past six to seven o’clock, according to the season. “The Wonder,” “Love in a Village,” the “Comical Courtship,” and the “Lying Valet,” were among the plays performed. The famous Cooke was one of the actors in the season of 1778. In that same year the building suffered the usual fate of all theatres, and was utterly destroyed by fire.

One name we omitted to notice when speaking of signs derived from European cities—Copenhagen House. Until very recently, this stood isolated in the fields north of the metropolis, near the old road to Highgate. It was said to have derived its name from the fact of a Danish prince or ambassador having resided in it during a great plague in London. Another tradition is to the effect that, early in the seventeenth century, upon some political occasion, great numbers of Danes left that kingdom, and came to London; whereupon the house was opened by an emigrant from Copenhagen, as a place of resort for his countrymen resident in the metropolis. This tradition probably refers to the reign of James I., who was visited in London by his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, at which time it is very probable that there was a considerable influx of persons from the Danish capital. Coopen-Hagen is the name given to the place in the map accompanying Camden’s Britannia, 1695. For many years previous to its demolition, the house had a great reputation amongst Cockney excursionists, and its tea-gardens, skittle-ground, Dutch pins, and particularly Fives Play, were great attractions. For this last game especially the place was very famous. The house possessed another attraction. From its windows a very fine view of London, the Thames, and the Surrey hills beyond, was obtainable. The New Cattle Market now occupies its site, and a modern public-house only perpetuates the name.

Besides the above-mentioned geographical signs, we have others of more modern introduction, such as the South Australian in Cadogan Street, Chelsea, and the North Pole in Oxford Street, which last commemorates one of those equally brave and unsuccessful expeditions that have taken place every now and then since Admiral Frobisher first started on the discovery of the Meta Incognita.

There exists a class of signs in some respects geographical, yet, from their indefinite character, they are more adapted for insertion in the following chapter than here. We allude to such tavern decorations as that picture of the fiery sun going down behind a hill, which is called The World’s End, at St George’s, near Bristol; The First and Last Inn in England, a sign which may be seen in many other localities besides at the Land’s End, in Cornwall; and No Place Inn, a public-house in the suburbs of Plymouth, the sign representing an old woman standing at the door, accosting her husband, just arrived—“Where have you been?” “No place.” Many others of an equally indefinite character might be given here, but they would be found to be even less topographical than those just named.

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[600] Aubrey, Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme. MS. Lansdowne Collection.

[601] See Gent.’s Mag., Jan. 1819, where the conditions are given in extenso.

[602] “At the abbey of Saint Milaine, near Rennes, there has been for more than 600 years a flitch of bacon, still perfectly fresh and good; yet it is promised and ordered to be given to the first couple that has been married for a year and a day without quarrelling, scolding, or regretting that they were married.”—Contes d’Eutrap.

[603] Creame—Dutch, kraam—a temporary booth erected in fair-time to serve as a shop. Even at the present day those men that go from village to village selling cheap jewellery and other articles, which they carry in a box or basket, are called mars-kramers—apparently from marcher, to walk, and the above kraam.

[604] Skene, De Verborum Significatione at the End of his Lawes and Actes. Edinburgh, 1597.

[605] See in this same chapter, [p. 417], for particulars of a signboard at the Cape, exhibited by Farmer Peek.

[606] “Fly Leaves,” 1854.

[607] Parliamentary History, vol. i., p. 1195.

[608] See Gent’s Mag., Jan. 1792, p. 19.

[609] Tho. Decker’s A Knight’s Conjuring.

[610] Quoted in Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent, p. 356.

[611] Witt’s Recreation, 1640.

[612] Banks collection of shopbills, where amateurs of tobacco curiosities may find a very rich collection of all sorts of tobacco-paper rhymes, signs, &c.

[613] In the Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, London 1816, vol. iii., p. 116, such a paper is given, entitled: “The triumphant victory of the Imperyall Mageste against the Turkes the xxvi day of Septembre, the yere of our lord mcccccxxxii. in Steuermarke by a Capytayne named Michael Meschsaer.”

[614] Boswell’s Johnson, vol. i., p. 304.

[615] Ibid., vol. i., p. 327.

[616] Moser’s Memorandum-Book, M.S. dated 1799, as quoted in Notes and Queries, December 22, 1849.

[617] Gent.’s Mag., March 1842.

[618] Dr King’s Anecdotes, p. 117.

[619] Selden’s Table-Talk.

[620]

“Joshua prayed to the Lord from the bottom of his heart,
That the sun and moon might stand still.
The best Varinas and good tobacco in the leaf
Are sold here at the Indian.”

[621] Sir Richard Baker’s Chronicles, anno 1588.

[622] See Secret History of the Calves’ Head Club. London, 1705.

[623] Country Journal, or Craftsman, Saturday, April 25, 1730.

[624] “On entering the good town of Nogent by sunset, I put up at the Jerusalem, which offers good accommodation for travellers, wine of Vaulx, and that good.”

[625] The landlord.

[626] Read’s Weekly Journal, March 31, 1739.

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CHAPTER XIV.
HUMOROUS AND COMIC.

Animals performing human actions, or dressed in human garments, are great items in signboard humour. This is a kind of comicality undoubtedly dating from the first development of human wit. The “Batromyomachia” is one of the oldest performances of the same description in literature, but the joke was already too well understood at the period that piece was produced to have been a first attempt. The Fable was the higher walk of art in this branch, the simple Caricature the lower.

Numerous Egyptian, Greek, and Roman caricatures of animals personating men have come down to us; from them this conceit was borrowed by the mediæval limners. Their MSS. teem with such subjects; and so much was this kind of humour relished at that period, that even in church decoration the caricatures of animals were liberally mixed up with the sacred subjects of biblical history. Not only the fable, conferring a moral lesson, but even the plain and unpretending animal-caricature was admitted indiscriminately with representations of saints and miracles. Thus the well-known sign of Pig and Whistle is seen in more than one church. In the stall carving of Winchester Cathedral a sow is represented sitting on her haunches, playing on a whistle, the companion carving to which is a pig playing on a violin, in accompaniment to which another pig appears to be singing. These musical pigs are also common in illustrated MSS. In Harl. MS., 4379, a sow is represented dressed in the full fashion of the fifteenth century, with horned head-dress and stilted heels, playing on a harp.

In old towns, such as Chester, Macclesfield, Coventry, &c., the Pig and Whistle is still found on signboards. Very different and learned explanations have been given for its origin, some saying it was a corruption of the pig and wassail bowl, or of the pix and housel; others that it is a facetious rendering of the Bear and Ragged Staff. Very lately the correspondents of a learned periodical have busied themselves in claiming for it a Danish-Saxon descent, as pige-washail, our Ladies’ Salutation. The Scotch also claim it as their own; pig being a pot or pot-sherd; whistle, small change; and “to go to pigs and whistles,” a free translation of “going to pot,” which Mr Jamieson states (quoting two examples) to have been at one time a colloquial phrase. Non nostrum est tantas componere lites; but the proverb says, “a hog though in armour is still but a hog;” and therefore we are inclined to think that a pig with a whistle is still but a pig, and not relating in any way to the Virgin; and we can see nothing in the Pig and Whistle but simply a freak of the mediæval artist.

As little hidden meaning is there in the Cat and Fiddle, still a great favourite in Hampshire, the only connexion between the animal and the instrument being that the strings are made from the cat’s entrails, and that a small fiddle is called a kit, and a small cat a kitten. Besides, they have been united from time immemorial in the nursery rhyme—

“Heigh diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle.”

Amongst other explanations offered is, the one that it may have originated with the sign of a certain Caton fidèle, a staunch Protestant in the reign of Queen Mary, and only have been changed into the cat and fiddle by corruption; but, if so, it must have lost its original appellation very soon, for as early as 1589 we find “Henry Carr, signe of the Catte and Fidle in the Old Chaunge.” Formerly, there was a Cat and Fiddle at Norwich, the cat being represented playing upon a fiddle, and a number of mice dancing round her. The bagpipes being the national instrument of the Irish, the sign is there frequently changed into the Cat and Bagpipes. This was also, some twenty or thirty years ago, a public- and chop-house, of considerable notoriety, at the corner of Downing Street, Westminster, where the clerks of the Foreign Office used to lunch; at the present day, it is the sign of a public-house near Moate, King’s Co., Ireland. The Ape and Bagpipes occurs on trades tokens as the sign of John Tayler, in St Ann’s Lane. This, too, was a joke not confined to our country, for in the marginal illustrations to the title-page of “P. Dioscoridæ Pharmacorum Simplicum,” &c., printed at Strasburg by John Schot in 1529, an ape is represented playing on the bagpipes, and a camel dancing to the tune, with these words, χαμηλον αλλαπτεν. The French were equally fond of this kind of caricature. The [Spinning Sow] (la Truie qui file) is common even at the present day, and has given its name to more than one street in Paris and other cities. It is said to have originated from a legend:—A certain Christian queen, Pedauca, whose honour was in danger, imitated the chaste heroines of mythology; but, instead of praying to be metamorphosed into a tree or a bird, she merely asked to have one of her feet changed into a goose’s foot, which was enough to frighten her ardent lover away.[627] Another young lady, under similar circumstances, preferred going the whole hog,—to use a colloquialism,—and was changed into a sow, merely praying to be permitted to keep her spindle, as a token of her former condition: hence the sign. It is also—(and hence, probably, the legend of the metamorphosis, to remove the prejudices of the godly)—represented in relief carving on the exterior of the cathedral of Chartres. In the Fishmarket of the same town there is a stone carved sign of a Donkey playing on a Hurdy-gurdy, ([L’Ane qui veille].) Both this sign and another, representing a Cat playing at Racket, (La Chatte qui pelote,) have transmitted their names to streets in Paris. The French seem to have delighted above all things in such comicalities. Besides those named above, they had the Fishing Cat, (La Chatte qui pêche,) the Dancing Goat, (La Chèvre qui dance,) both of which Walpole mentions. We have one modern sign in London of this class—namely, the [Whistling Oyster], the name of an oyster-shop in Drury Lane.

The Jackanapes on Horseback was, unfortunately for the monkeys, a painful truth. A jackanapes or monkey on horseback was generally the winding-up of a bear or bull baiting at Paris Garden. Hollinshed, in his Chronicles, anno 1562, relates how, at the reception of the Danish ambassadors at Greenwich—

“For the diversion of the populace, there was a horse with an ape on his back which highly pleased them, so that they expressed their inward conceived joy and delight with shrill shouts and variety of gestures.”

The “inward conceived joy,” we may safely conclude, was not expressed by either the monkey or the horse, particularly when we remember that in those days dogs were often let in the ring to frighten both the horse and its animal Mazeppa. The prevalence of this sport is to be inferred from an admonition to Parliament by Tho. Cartwright, published in 1572, in order to show the impropriety of an established form of prayer for the church services, in which he remarks that the clergyman

“Posteth it over as fast as he can galope, for eyther he has two places to serve, or else there are some games to be playde in the afternoon, as lying for the whetstone,[628] heathenish dauncing for the ring, a beare or a bull to be baited, or else a jackanapes to ride on horsebacke, or an interlude to be playde in the church. We speak not of [bell-] ringing after matins is done.”

Not much more than ten years ago, the good people of Paris were, every Thursday afternoon, in the summer, entertained in the Hippodrome, with “jackanapes on horseback,” dressed up like Arabs, and followed by miniature chasseurs d’Afrique, to the great gratification of our martial neighbours. This sign is named in an advertisement, of the year 1700, for a mare stolen by a “lusty black man with a brown coat,”[629] notice of the mare to be given “to Mr John Wright, at the Jackanapes on Horseback,” in Cheapside. The grinning, or, as it was written, “Grenning Iackanapes,” is a sign mentioned by Eliot in his “Fruits for the French,” or “Parlement of Pratlers,” 1593, “ouer against the Vnicorne in the Iewrie.” The [Hog in Armour], in Hanging Sword Court, Fleet Street, is mentioned in an advertisement,[630] in 1678, as the place where there was to be sold “seacole sutt for the great improvement of all sorts of lands, as well as gardens and hop grounds.” It is named amongst the absurd London signs in the Spectator 28, April 2, 1711, and is still occasionally seen, as in James’ Street, Dublin. Though the sign does not exist any longer in London, yet the name is not lost among the lower orders, it being a favourite epithet applied to rifle volunteers by costermongers, street fishmongers, and such like. A jocular name for this sign is the “pig in misery.” There is also a Goat in Armour on the Narrow Quay, Bristol, and a [Goat in Boots] on the Fulham Road, Little Chelsea. In 1663 this house was called the Goat, and enjoyed the right of commonage for two cows and one heifer upon Chelsea Heath.

“How the goat became equipped in boots, and the designation of the house changed, have been the subject of various conjectures, the most probable of which is, that it originated in a corruption of the latter part of the Dutch legend—

‘Mercurius is der Goden Boode,’
(Mercury is the messenger of the gods,)—

which being divided between each side of the sign, bearing the figure of a Mercury—a sign commonly used in the early part of the last century [?] to denote that post-horses were to be obtained—‘der Goden Boode’ became freely translated into English, ‘the Goat in Boots.’ To Le Blond[631] is attributed the execution of this sign and its motto; but whoever the original artist may have been, or the intermediate re-touchers or re-painters of the god, certain it is that the pencil of Morland, in accordance with the desire of the landlord, either transformed the Petasus of Mercury into the horned head of a goat, his talaria into spurs upon boots of huge dimension, and his caduceus into a cutlass, or thus decorated the original sign, thereby liquidating a score which he had run up here, without any other means of payment than what his pencil afforded. The sign, however, has been painted over, with additional embellishments from gold leaf, so that not the least trace of Morland’s work remains, except, perhaps, the outline.”[632]

With all deference to the opinion of Mr Croker, we cannot help thinking of this, as of many other signboard explanations, “Se non è vero è ben trovato.” 1^o. the house was called the Goat in 1663; 2^o. there is no proof that it ever was called the Mercury, (nor was that sign ever so common as Mr Croker asserts.) From the following quotation it will appear that as early as 1738 some Goats in Boots had already appeared, not the result of any mythological metamorphosis. The Craftsman for June 17, 1738, in ridiculing some lenient measures taken by Government, blames the signs for putting a martial spirit in the nation, and proposes that “no lion should be drawn rampant, but couchant; and none of his teeth ought to be seen without this inscription, ‘Though he shows his teeth he wont bite.’ All bucks, bulls, rams, stags, unicorns, and all other warlike animals ought to be drawn without horns. Let no general be drawn in armour, and instead of truncheons let them have muster-rolls in their hands. In like manner, I would have all admirals painted in a frock and jockey cap, like landed gentlemen. The common sign of the two Fighting Cocks might be better changed to a Cock and Hen, and that of the Valiant Trooper to a Hog in Armour, or a Goat in Jackboots, as some Hampshire and Welsh publicans have done already for the honour of their respective countries.” The sign, then, seems to be a sort of caricature of a Welshman, the Goat having always been considered the emblem of that nation, and the jackboots an indispensable article of Taffy’s costume. Thus, Captain Grose, in his “Essay on Caricatures,”[633] mentions a Welshman with his goat, leek, hay-boots, and long pedigree, as a standard joke. Not improbably the switch carried by the goat on this sign was originally a leek. Of the same origin is the well-known [Welsh Trooper], representing a man with a leek in his hat riding on a goat. This sign may still be seen in London. In the Roxburghe ballads the Welshman with his jackboots and leek occurs in an old woodcut; in other places he is drawn riding a goat, and similarly dressed.

Puss in Boots occurs at Windley, Duffield, near Derby. The Goat in Boots may have suggested the idea of making a sign of this nursery-tale hero. The Dutch shoemakers, in pursuance of the proverb, seem to have taken a particular delight in these booted animals. Various creatures in boots occur amongst the Dutch signboard inscriptions of the seventeenth century. One was the Ox in Boots, (in den gelaarsden os,) with this inscription:—

“’t Leer geeft den Schoenmaker de os daar hy schoenen van maakt om te verslyten;
Ik heb den os weer met leer tot dank gelaerst en gespoord doen conterfyten.”[634]

Another innkeeper put up the Cow in Boots, (de gelaersden koe,) and wrote beneath:—

“Ziet dees koe heeft laarzen aan
Was ’t noch een Bul dan kon het gaan.”[635]

A third, in Amsterdam, had the Cock in Boots, (de gelaarsde Haan,) with the following extraordinary rhymes:—

“Dit is de gelaarsde haan
Christus is naar ’t kruys gegaan,
Met een doornenkroon op ’t hoofd.
Hy slacht Thomas die ’t niet gelooft.”[636]

The Jackass in Boots (de gelaarsde ezel) was the sign of a publican, with this inscription:—

“In den gelaarsden ezel zeer kloek,
Verkoopt men toebak, brandewyn, en knapkoek.”[637]

The Dog also appears dressed, as the Dog in Doublet, a sign which may be seen at Pyebridge, Derby, at Northbank, Cambridge, and a few other out-of-the-way places. Dr Johnson did this sign the honour of applying it as a metaphor. Speaking of an old idea newly expressed, he said: “It is an old coat with a new facing.” Then (laughing heartily) “it is the old dog in a new doublet!”[638]

The Dog occurs in various other humorous combinations. Ned Ward mentions a famous inn, in Petty Cury, Cambridge—

“the sign of the Devil’s Lapdog, kept by an old grizly curmudgeon, corniferously wedded to a plump, young, gay, brisk, black, beautiful, good landlady, who I afterwards heard had so great a kindness for the University, that she had rather see two or three gowns’ men come into her house, than a c—— crew of aldermen in all their pontificalibusses.”[639]

The [Dog’s Head in the Pot] is mentioned on the Pardoner’s Roll in “Cocke Lorell’s Bote:”—

“Also Annys Angry with the croked buttocke
That dwelled at y^e sygne of ye Dogges hede in ye Pot,
By her crafte a brechemaker.”

It seems originally to have been a mock sign to indicate a dirty, slovenly housewife. A woodcut above the second part of the Roxburghe ballad of “The Coaches’ Overthrow” represents various dirty practices. From the upper windows of one of the houses a woman is emptying the unsavoury contents of a domestic vase almost on the heads of the people underneath, and the sign of that house is the Dog’s head in the Pot, representing a dog licking out a pot. A coarse woodcut sheet of the commencement of the last century—evidently copied from a much older original—to judge by the costumes, represents two ancient beldames with high-crowned hats, starched ruffs and collars, and high-heeled boots, in a very disorderly room or kitchen; one of the women wipes a plate with the bushy tail of a large dog, whose head is completely buried in a capacious pot, which he is licking clean; under it:—

“All sluts behold, take view of me,
Your own good housewifry to see.
[444] It is (methinks) a cleanly care,
My dishclout in this sort to spare,
Whilst Dog, you see, doth lick the pot,
His taile for dishclout I have got,” &c.

One of the Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., fol. 385, entitled, “Seldome Cleanely,” has the same idea:—

“If otherwise she had
But a dishcloute faile,
She would set them to the dog to licke,
And wipe them with hys tayle.”

In Holland there is a proverb still in use, to the effect that when a person is late for dinner he is said to “find the dog in the pot,” (hy vindt den hond in de pot,) meaning that he has arrived late,—that the empty pot has been given to the dog to lick out, previously to being washed, a custom still daily practised by the peasantry of that country. This sign is sometimes also called the Dog and Crock, as in the Blackfriars’ Road; at Michelmouth, Romsey, Hants, and elsewhere. In the western counties the word “crock” is indiscriminately applied to iron or earthen pots. From the latter application comes the term “crockery ware.”

The Dancing Dogs was a sign at Battlebridge in 1668, as appears from the trades tokens. This kind of canine entertainment was one of the attractions of Bartholomew Fair, where Ben Jonson mentions “dogs that dance the Morris.”

The Laughing Dog (le chien qui rit) was formerly a sign in Rouen, and gave its name to a street, now called Du Guay Troin, from the name of a celebrated admiral. This was one of those quaint signs of which we have some specimens in this country, as the Two Sneezing Cats, which is said to be somewhere in London; the Flying Monkey, Lambeth; the Monkey Island, at Bray, near Maidenhead; the Gaping Goose, at Leeds, Oldham, and various parts of Yorkshire; and the Loving Lamb, two in Dudley. In Paris there was the old sign of the Green Monkey, (le singe vert,) and some fifteen years ago Lille could boast of the Hunchbacked Cats (les chats bossus) in the Rue Sec-Arembault.

Equally absurd is the Cow and Snuffers, at Llandaff, Glamorgan. In a play of George Colman, entitled the “Review, or the Wags of Windsor,” the following lines occur:—

“Judy’s a darling; my kisses she suffers;
She’s an heiress, that’s clear,
[445] For her father sells beer,
He keeps the sign of the Cow and the Snuffers.”

The same song also occurs in the “Irishman in London, or the Happy African.” At Llandaff the sign is represented by a cow standing near a ditch full of reeds and grasses, with a pair of snuffers, placed as if they had fallen from the cow’s mouth. The oddity of the combination in all probability pleased a publican who had heard the song, and adopted it forthwith as his sign, leaving the arrangement of the objects to the taste of the sign-painter.

The Colt and Cradle might have been seen in St Martin’s Lane in 1667. It is still a common sign for houses of evil repute in Holland, as may be seen from two examples in the Zandstraat, Rotterdam, where the cradle is carved above the door, with the colt in it lying on his back: the inscription is, “Het paard in de Wieg,” (the horse in the cradle.) And since, according to Stow, in ancient times “English people disdayned to be bawdes, froes of Flaunders were women for that purpose,” it is more than probable that these “froes” introduced this sign from their own country. In the Dutch language paar means “a couple,” and is constantly used for a man and woman, either united by the bands of lawful marriage or otherwise. The original form of the sign, then, we suppose was “the couple in the cradle,” (het paar in de wieg.) But the Dutch have an inveterate habit of adding diminutives, so that with this appendix it became paartje—from paartje to paardje, a small horse, the transition was easy enough; and, covered with that transparent veil, the indelicate sign has come down to the present day. This seems so much the more probable to be the meaning, since the Cradle in London also was a “bad sign,” (see [p. 394].)

The [Goose and Gridiron] occurs at Woodhall, Lincolnshire, and in a few other localities: it is said to owe its origin to the following circumstances:—The Mitre (see [p. 319]) was a celebrated music-house in London House Yard, at the N.-W. end of St Paul’s. When it ceased to be a music-house, the succeeding landlord, to ridicule its former destiny, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the Swan and Harp, a common sign for the early music-houses. Such an origin does the Tatler give; but it may also be a vernacular reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musicians, suspended probably at the door of the Mitre when it was a music-house. These arms are, a swan with his wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter, flory, argent. This double tressure might have suggested a gridiron to unsophisticated passers-by. Paddy’s Goose is, at the present day, a nickname for a public-house in Shadwell called the White Swan; but why it was thus travestied non liquet. This tavern acquired some notoriety during the Crimean campaign. When the Government wanted sailors to man the fleet, the landlord of the house used to go among the shipping in the river and enlist numbers of men. His system of recruiting was to go in one of the small steamers, with flags and colours flying and a band playing, the heart-stirring or heart-rending notes of which used to awaken the martial ardour of the merchant sailors, and make them enlist in the Royal Navy. This sign also triumphantly proclaims the presence of British gin and Irish whisky in a low public-house near the harbour of La Valette at Malta.

Not a few signs represent proverbs or proverbial expressions. The Bird in Hand, for instance, with occasionally the Book in Hand,—the former denoting the landlord’s full appreciation of the truth of the proverb, “One bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” It is frequently accompanied by the following truthful rather than grammatical distich:—

“A bird in hand far better ’tis
Than two that in the bushes is.”

This sign occurs among the trades tokens, being literally rendered by a hand holding a bird. Innumerable are the jokes resorted to by landlords to intimate that hard truth that no credit is given.[640] Frequently the pill is gilt in the most agreeable manner: a deceptive hope of “better luck to-morrow” is frequently held out, as

“Drink here, and drown all sorrow;
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”

Or:—

“Pay to-day and trust to-morrow,
And so endeth all our sorrow.”

The same in Holland:—

“Vandaag voor geld, morgen voor niet.”[641]

In Italy a cock is sometimes painted, with the following inscription:—

“Quando questo gallo cantarà
Allora credenza si farà.”[642]

The inventive genius of the French, with its usual fondness for romance, has constructed a little dramatic incident to express the idea:—

“Crédit est mort; les mauvais payeurs l’ont tué.”[643]

Which phrase was seen by Coryatt, nearly two centuries ago, on one of the inns where he put up at in France: a similar idea is expressed at Smethwick in the following inscription:—

“Sacred to the memory of Poor Trust, who fought hard at the battle of Deception, but fell under General Bad Pay.”

A print hung up in a public-house in Nottingham, depicting a black tombstone (or signboard,—it is difficult to say which) spotted with briny white tears, gives the inscription with still greater force:—

“This monument is erected to the memory of Mr Trust, who was some time since most shamefully and cruelly murdered by a villain called Credit, who is prowling about, both in town and country, seeking whom he may devour.”

Others have the picture of a dead dog, and under him:—

“Died last night, Poor Trust! Who killed him? Bad Pay.”

A very general inscription is:—

“This is a good world to live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow, or to get a man’s own,
It is such a world as never was known.”

Or:—

“The rule of this house, and it can’t be unjust,
Is to pay on delivery, and not to give trust;
I’ve trusted many to my sorrow,
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”

Stuck up in many tap-rooms may be seen the following:—

“All you that bring tobacco here
Must pay for pipes as well as beer;
And you that stand before the fire,
I pray sit down by good desire,
That other folks as well as you
May see the fire, and feel it too.
[448] Since man to man is so unjust,
I cannot tell what man to trust.
My liquor’s good, ’tis no man’s sorrow,
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”

At an ale-house in Ranston, Norfolk, the usual information is conveyed in the following manner, (to be read upwards, beginning from the bottom of the last column):—

MORE	BEER	SCORE	CLERK
FOR	MY	MY	THEIR
DO	TRUST	PAY	SENT
I	I	MUST	HAVE
SHALL	IF	I	BREWERS
WHAT	AND	AND	MY

At other places it comes in a still more “questionable shape,” reminding us of the curious literary conceits of the old monkish rhymesters. In the following, the letters must be connected into words, thus—The brewer, &c.

Th. ebr: Ewe ! Rh. eH. Ass?
en . THI.S. cLEr
k a N d ! IM. ustp, A. YM. Ys
cO. r. ef, O
r IFIT r US. ? tandam, No tpA.
i D wha. ts; Ha:
LL i D , O? Fo Rm. Or .e.

The little wayside inn, between Pateley Bridge and Ripon, has the following plaintive appeal to a stiffnecked race:—

“The malster doth crave
His money to have,
The exciseman says have I must.
By that you can see
How the case stands with me;
So I pray you don’t ask me for trust.”

A small beer-house at Werrington, in Devonshire, yclept the Lengdon Inn, has:—

“Gentlemen, walk in, and sit at your ease,
Pay what you call for, and call what you please;
As trusting of late has been to my sorrow,
Pay me to-day, and I’ll trust ee to-morrow.”

The Maypole, near Hainault Forest, has:—

“My liquor’s good,
My measures just;
Excuse me, sirs!
I cannot trust.”

At Preston, in Lancashire:—

“Greadley Bob, he does live here,
And sells a pot of good strong beer;
His liquor’s good, his measure just,
But Bob’s so poor he cannot trust.”

PLATE XVII.
HAT AND BEAVER. (Banks’s Collection, 1750.)	SWAN WITH TWO NECKS. (Banks’s Collection, 1785.)
HARROW AND DOUBLET. (Banks’s Collection, 1700.)
MAN IN THE MOON. (Vine Street, Regent Street; modern.)	THE APE. (Stone carving, Philip Lane, Barbican, 1670.)

The Green Man, on Finchley Common, under a trophy composed of two pipes crossed and a pot of beer, presents us with the following:—

“Call . Softly,
Drink . Moderate
Pay . Honourably,
Be Good . Company
Part . FRIENDLY
Go . HOME . quietly.
Let those lines be no MANS Sorrow
Pay to DAY and i’ll TRUST to Morrow.”

At Middleton, Co. Cork, the verses usually accompanying the sign of the Bee-hive are slightly altered to meet the emergency of the case, surgit amari aliquid:—

“Within this hive we’re all alive
With whisky sweet as honey;
If you are dry, step in and try,
But don’t forget the money.”

So old is the necessity of informing the public that they must pay for what they obtain, that even in the ruined city of Pompeii a similar caution is found. Above the door of a house, once inhabited by a surgeon, occurs the following laconic intimation:—“Eme et habebis.” And so widely spread is the evil, that even in Chinese towns the shopkeepers have found it necessary to inform the public on their signs—

“Former customers have inspired us with caution; no credit given here.”

One publican, at Littletown, in Durham, seems to have taken a somewhat opposite view, putting up, for a sign, the Bird in the Bush, but it may be doubted if his experience has confirmed him in a preference of the bird in the bush to the bird in the hand.

Another proverb illustrated is the Cow and Hare, at Stafford, Bottisham, (near Newmarket,) and other places, evidently suggested by the adage, “A cow may catch a hare.” This sign is mentioned, about 1708, in a rather curious memorandum from the pen of Partridge, the almanac-maker, at the commencement of a book of “the Cælestial Motions and Aspects for the years of our Lord 1708 to 1720.”[644] The MS. note is as follows:—“At the Cowe and Hare by Whitechappel Church, a rare rogue lives there, a pickpocket.” Of the same class as the Cow and Hare is Who’d ha’ thought it? which sometimes is seen on an ale-house sign, as, for instance, at North End, Fulham. A wag suggested this as the motto to the coat-of-arms of a certain baronet-brewer:

“Who’d ha’ thought it?
Hops had bought it.”

The sign of the Jolly Brewer—Who’d ha’ thought it? occurs in the Jersey Road, Hounslow. Originally, it seems to have implied that, after a hard struggle in some other walk of life, the landlord had succeeded in opening the long-wished-for ale-house. So in Holland: many country retreats of retired tradespeople bear such names as “Nooit gedacht,” (never expected,) &c.

Why not, the name of a public-house at Essington, in Staffordshire, seems to imply quite the reverse, and to have been adopted as the motto of a more sanguine landlord; unless it may be considered as a ready answer to the often-repeated question, before “popping in round the corner,” “Shall we have a drop?”

The Lame Dog is very common; but is particularly appropriate at Brierley Hill, near Dudley, the establishment being kept by a collier, rendered lame in a pit accident. Under a pictorial representation of a lame dog trying to get over a stile, the following appeal is made to the thirsty and benevolent public:—

“Stop, my friends, and stay awhile
To help the Lame Dog over the stile.”

Sometimes, as at Bulmer, Essex, we see a somewhat similar idea expressed by a man struggling through a globe—head and arms protruding on one side, his legs on the other—with the inscription, “[Help me through this World].” The same allegory might have been seen on a beer-house in Holland in the seventeenth century, but the inscription was different—“Dus na ben ik door de wereld,” (“Thus far I have got through the world.”) This sign is also called the Struggler, or the Struggling Man, and at Hampton, where the house is kept by a widow, the Widow’s Struggle. In Salop Street, Dudley, the struggle is represented by a man, with a dog beside him, walking against a strong head wind. The Live and let Live has a somewhat similar meaning; it occurs at North End, Fulham, and in many other places. To this class, also, the following seems to refer:—“A witty, though unfortunate, fellow having tryed all trades, but thriving by none, took the pot for his last refuge, and set up an ale-house, with the sign of the Shirt, inscribed under it, ‘This is my last shift.’ Much company was brought him thereby, and much profit.”[645] Nathaniel Oldham, the friend of Sir Hans Sloane, Doctor Mead, and the leading virtuosi of that time, himself a collector, as well as a sporting man, at last got so reduced in circumstances that he had to dispose of his curiosities and superfluities. He opened his house, therefore, as a curiosity shop, and wrote over the door, Oldham’s last Shift. Unfortunately, it was his “last shift,” for scarcely had he opened his shop when one of his innumerable creditors had him arrested and sent to King’s Bench Prison, where he died. J. T. Smith, in his “Cries of London,” tells a similar device of a sailor, maimed at the battle of Trafalgar, who used to go about town with a wheelbarrow of ginger nuts, which he called “Jack’s last shift.”

The uncertainty of success in trade is expressed by the sign of the Two Chances; and Hit or Miss, the good and the bad chance which innkeepers, as well as all other mortals, have to run in this transitory world. This sign occurs at Hannington, Northampton, and at Clun, in Salop. At Openshaw, near Manchester, a similar idea is expressed by a sign representing two men running a race, which seems to promise a dead heat, with the inscription, Luck’s all.

Others have a sort of satirical humour in them, such as the well-known [Four Alls], representing a king who says, “I rule all;” a priest who says, “I pray for all;” a soldier who says, “I fight for all;” and John Bull, or a farmer, who says, “I pay for all.” Sometimes a fifth is added in the shape of a lawyer, who says, “I plead for all.” It is an old and still common sign, and may even be seen swinging under the blue sky in the sunny streets of La Valette, Malta. In Holland, in the seventeenth century, it was used, but the king was left out, and a lawyer added; each person said exactly the same as on our signboards, but the farmer answered:—

“Of gy vecht, of gy bidt, of gy pleyt,
Ik ben de boer die de eyeren leyt.”[646]

The author of “Tavern Anecdotes” observes that he used to notice in Rosemary Street, the sign of the Four Alls, but passing that way some time after, he found it altered into the Four Awls; the sign painter who renewed the picture had probably found himself not equal to a representation of the four human figures. In Ireland, a similar corruption may be observed, the four shoemaker’s awls taking the place of the four representatives of society. Although having no connexion with the Four Alls, it may be mentioned that three and four awls constitute the charges in the shoemakers’ arms of some of the continental trade societies or guilds.

This enumeration of the various performances coupled with the word all has been used in numerous different epigrams: an address to James I. in the Ashmolean MSS., No. 1730, has:—

“The Lords craved all, The Queene graunted all, The Ladies of honour ruled all, The Lord-Keeper seal’d all, The Intelligencer marred all, The Parliament pass’d all, He that is gone oppos’d himself to all, The Bishops soothed all, The Judges pardon’d all, The Lords buy, Rome spoil’d all, Now, Good King, mend all, Or else the Devil will have all.”

This again seems to have been imitated from a similar description of the State of Spain in Greene’s “Spanish Masquerade,” 1589:—

“The Cardinalls solicit all, The King grauntes all, The Nobles confirm all, The Pope determines all, The Cleargie disposeth all, The Duke of Medina hopes for all, Alonso receives all, The Indians minister all, The Soldiers eat all, The People paie all, The Monks and friars consume all, And the Devil at length will carry away all.”

The Naked Boy was a satirical sign reflecting upon the constant changes of the fashions of our ancestors. William Herbert has this observation in his manuscript memoranda, “I remember very well when I was a lad seeing on Windmill Hill, Moorfields, a taylor’s sign, a naked boy with this couplet:—

“So fickle is our English nation,
I wou’d be clothed if I knew the fashion.”[647]

The same idea is expressed in the “Introduction to Knowledge,” by Andrew Borde, (the original “Merry Andrew,”) Doctor of Physick, 1542, where a naked man is introduced undecided as to the style of dress he should adopt on account of the continual change in the fashions:—

“Now am I a frysker, all men doth on me looke,
What should I do but set cocke on the hoope,
What do I care yf all the worlde me fayle,
I will get a garment shall reche to my tayle.”

Coryatt also reflects upon this ever-varying change in his “Crudities:”—“For whereas they [the gentlemen of Venice] have but one colour, we use many more than are in the rainbow; all the most light garish and unseemly colours that are in the world. Also for fashion we are much inferior to them: for we weare more phantastical fashions than any nation vnder the Sunne doth, the French onely excepted; which hath given occasion to the Venetians and other Italians to brand the Englishmen with a notable mark of levity by painting him stark naked with a pair of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vain conception of his brain sick head, not to comeliness and decorum.”

So ancient is this complaint as to the versatility of our fashions that we verily believe even our tattooed forefathers must have been constantly altering the hue of their blue stencilling, and bedaubing themselves with new patterns. John Harding, in his “Chronicles,” of the reign of Richard II., describing the various materials and cuts of the “unpayed doublettes and gownes,” even long before his time, says, ch. 193:—

“Broudur and furres and goldsmith werke ay newe,
In many a wyse eche day they did renewe.”

Douglas, the monk of Glastonbury, wrote not less angrily in the days of Edward III:

“Englyshmen hawnted so moche unto the folye of strawngers that fro that tyme every yere thei chaungedde them in diverse schappes and disgisingges of clothengge now long, now large, now wide, now streite, and every day clothingges newe destitute and deserte from alle honeste of holde array and gode usage.”[648]

Indeed so angry does the good monk become about these extravagant fashions, that he says,—“If I sethe shalle say, they weren more like to turmentours and Diviles in their clothing and also in schoyng and other aray that they semed no menne.”

Not only did we invent, but we borrowed absurd foreign fashions. Samuel Rowland, in “The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head Vaine,” 1611, says:—

“Behold a most accomplish’d cavaleere,
That the world’s ape of fashions doth appeare;
Walking the streete his humours to disclose,
In the French dowblet and the German hose,
The muffes, cloake, Spanish hat, Tolledo blade,
Italian ruffe, a shoe right Flemish made,
Like the Lord of Misrule, where he comes he’ll revel.”

And Heywood, in the “Rape of Lucrece,” 1638, epigr. xxvi., has:—

“The Spaniard loves his ancient slop,
The Lombard his Venetian;
And some like breechless women go,
The Russ, Turk, Jew, and Grecian;
The thrifty Frenchman wears small waist,
The Dutchman his belly boasteth,
The Englishman is for them all,
And for each fashion coasteth.”

Shakespeare seems to allude to the sign of the Naked Boy in his “Comedy of Errors,” act iv., scene 3, where Dromio says, “What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparell’d.” At Skipton-in-Craven, there is still a stone bas-relief of the Naked Boy, fixed in the front of a house, with the date 1633.

The Good Woman, or the Silent Women, and at Pershore, in Worcestershire, the Quiet Woman, represent a headless woman carrying her head in her hand. Brady, in his “Clavis Calendaria,” vol. ii., p. 203, says, “The martyrs who had been decapitated were, therefore, usually represented with headless trunks, and the head on some adjoining table, or more commonly in their hands; and it was easy for ignorance and credulity not only to mistake that type, but to be led into belief that those holy persons had actually carried their heads about for the benefit of believers.” The sign, yet preserved, particularly by the oilshops, of the Good Woman, although originally meant as expressive of some female saint, holy or good woman, who had met death by the privation of her head, has been converted into a joke against the females whose alleged loquacity is considered to be satirised by this representation, which, to conform to such meaning, they now more commonly call the Silent Woman. The fact, however, of it being particularly an oilman’s sign, makes it possible that it may have some reference to the heedless [head anciently was pronounced heed] or foolish virgins of the parable, who had no oil in their lamps when the bridegroom came. Where is your head? is still a question addressed to forgetful people.

There is a very curious example of this sign at Widford, near Chelmsford, representing on one side a half-length portrait of Henry VIII., on the reverse, a woman without a head, dressed in the costume of the latter half of the last century, with the inscription Forte Bonne. The addition of the portrait of Henry VIII. has led to the popular belief that the headless woman is meant for Anna Boleyn, though probably it is simply a combination of the King’s Head and Good Woman.

This sign is equally common on the Continent; the book of Dutch signboard inscriptions of the seventeenth century, from which we have constantly quoted, gives several verses which figured under various signs of the Good Woman. Amongst them the following are worth noticing:—

“Hier is de goede vrouw te vinden,
Na ’t leven zeer net afgebeeld,
Daar niet als ’t hoofd maar aan en scheeld,
Dewyl dat draait met duizend winden;
Indien er ’t hoofd was aangebleven
Sy was nooit goed haar gansche leven.”[649]

Another had:—

“De vrouw die is een mannen-plaag,
Al zyn snot-leepels daarna graag;
Dies als dat vuur is uitgedoofd
Dan wenschen zy, haar zonder hoofd.”[650]

In Italy, also, it is known, and serves as a sign to many an inn. Readers who may have visited Turin will remember the kind reception of “la buona Moglie” in that town. In Paris it gives its name to a street, Rue de la Femme sans Tête. The picture in France is generally accompanied by the legend, “Tout en est bon,” the absence of the head probably implying “fors la tête,” except the head; ergo, everything is good in woman except her head—her ever-changing whims and fancies. At the present day there is, in the Rue St Marguerite, a pork butcher who has made the following use of this sign: Under the usual representation of the Good Woman he has written in golden letters, “Tout en est bon, depuis les” (a representation of four pigs’ feet) “jusqu’à la,” (a representation of an enormous boar’s head.) This ungallant association of ideas of a woman and a pig is, we are sorry to say, not without an example in our nation, though fortunately our rudeness was two hundred years ago, and we have grown more refined since:—

“One Ambrose Westrop, vicar of the Parish church Much to Sham (?) in the county of Essex, taught in a Sermon That a Woman is worse than a sow in two respects; First: because a sowskin is good to make a cart saddle and her bristles good for a sowter. Secondly: because a sow will run away if a man cry but hoy, but a woman will not turn her head, though beaten down with a leaver, and that all the difference between a woman and a sow is in the nape of the neck, where a woman can bend upwards, but a sow cannot, etc. The said Westrop is a great malignant and very envious and full of venome against the Parliament. But his benefit is sequestered, as well he deserves, from his filthiness and unfitnesse to the place.”—Remarkable Passages and Occurrences of Parliament, &c. December 8 to 15, 1644.

Lawyers, priests, and women have, at all times and in all countries, received a liberal share of abuse and slander; no wonder, then, that the Lawyer kept the Good Woman in countenance. In a sign derived from the Good Woman the man of law is “damned to fame” as the Honest Lawyer, the sign representing him with his head in his hand, as the only condition in which by any possibility he could be honest. Another sign abusive of the softer sex is the [Man loaded with Mischief], the sign of an ale-house in Oxford Street. The original, said to be painted by Hogarth, is fastened to the front of the house, and has the honour of being specified in the lease of the premises as one of the fixtures. An engraving of it is exhibited in the window. It represents a man carrying a woman, a magpie, and a monkey, the woman with a glass of gin in her hand. In the background, on the left-hand side, is a public-house with a pair of horns as a “finial” on the gable end; this house is called “Cuckhold’s Fortune;” a woman is passing in at the door, and a sow is asleep in a pot-house, with a label above, “She is as drunk as a sow,” whilst two cats are making love on the roof. On the right-hand side is the shop of S. Gripe, Pawnbroker, which a carpenter enters to pledge his tools. The engraving is signed: “Drawn by Experience; engraved by Sorrow.” Under it is the following rhyme:—

“A monkey, a magpie, and a wife,
Is the true emblem of strife.”

This sign has been imitated in other places, sometimes called the Mischief, as at Blewbury, Wallingford, or the Load of Mischief, as at Norwich. About twenty years ago there was one to be seen in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, with this expressive addition, that the man was tied to the woman by a chain and padlock. A similarly malicious reflection on the “softer sex” is seen in many parts of France, as in Paris, Troyes, and various other towns. It is called “Le trio de Malice,” (the three bad ones,) the trio being composed of a cat, a woman, and a monkey.

[Nobody] was the singular sign of John Trundell, a ballad-printer in Barbican in the seventeenth century. In one of Ben Jonson’s plays Nobody is introduced, “attyred in a payre of Breeches, which were made to come up to his neck, with his armes out at his pockets and cap drowning his face.” This comedy was “printed for John Trundle and are to be sold at his shop in Barbican at the sygne of No-Body.” A unique ballad, preserved in the Miller Collection at Britwell House, entitled “The Well-spoken No-Body,” is accompanied by a woodcut representing a ragged barefooted fool on pattens, with a torn money-bag under his arm, walking through a chaos of broken pots, pans, bellows, candlesticks, tongs, tools, windows, &c. Above him is a scroll in black-letter:—

“Nobody . is . my . Name . that . Beyreth . Every . Bodyes . Blame.”

The ballad commences as follows:—

“Many speke of Robin Hoode that never shott in his bowe,
So many have layed faultes to me, which I did never knowe;
But nowe, beholde, here I am,
Whom all the worlde doeth diffame;
Long have they also scorned me,
And locked my mouthe for speking free.
As many a Godly man they have so served
Which unto them God’s truth hath shewed;
Of such they have burned and hanged some,
That unto their ydolatrye wold not come:
The Ladye Truthe they have locked in cage,
Saying of her Nobodye had knowledge.
For as much nowe as they name Nobodye
I thinke verilye they speke of me:
Whereffore to answere I nowe beginne—
[458] The locke of my mouthe is opened with ginne,
Wrought by no man, but by God’s grace,
Unto whom be prayse in every place,” &c.

In J. O. Halliwell’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i., p. 450, from whence we borrow the above, the subject is still further illustrated by the following quotation:—

“Nobody keeps such a rule in every bodies house that from the mistresse to the basest maide, there is not a shrewde turne done without him: for if the husband finde his study opened and enquire who did it? he shall finde Nobody: if the goodwife see her utensils disordered and demand who displast them, the issue of every servant’s reply will bee, Nobody: if the servants discover the beds towsed and the chambers durtied it will bee, Nobody; when every child is examined; nay, if the children fall and break their noses, or scratch one another’s faces, and either mother or nursse seeme angry and aske, who hurt them, they will quickly answer Nobody toucht them; and their desire of excuse hath brought lying to a custom.”—Rich Cabinet furnished with Variety of Excellent Description, 1616.

At present there is an inn in Plymouth called No Place inn; and formerly there was at Norwich a public-house called Nowhere—a name which would, to the truant husband returning home in the small hours of night, suggest a ready answer to the warm reception of his partner for better and for worse, who, for the last few hours, has been

“Gath’ring her brows, like gath’ring storm—
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.”

Another ancient sign, to which constant allusions are made in the old writers, is the Three Loggerheads, which, old as it is, and stale as the joke may be, has not yet lost its charms for the inhabitants of many of our villages and quiet inland towns. It represents two silly-looking faces, with the inscription—

“We three
Loggerheads be,”

—the unsuspecting spectator being, of course, the third. Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” suggests that the original picture should have represented three fools. Thus, in Shirley’s “Bird in Cage,” Morello, who counterfeits a fool, says, “We be three of old, without exception to your lordship, only with this difference, I am the wisest fool.” In Day’s “Comedy of Law Tricks,” 1608, Julia says, “Appoint the place prest,” to which the answer is, “At the three fools.” Sometimes, as Mr Henley has stated, it was two asses. Thus, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Queen of Corinth.” ac. iii., sc. 1:—

“Nean. He is another ass, he says; I believe him.
Uncle. We be three, heroical prince.
Nean. Nay, then we must have the picture and the word Nos sumus.”

In this form it is still seen on valentines and humorous cartes de visite. Shakespeare, too, alludes to this sign in “Twelfth Night,” ac. ii., sc. 2:—“How now, my hearts? did you never see the picture of We Three?” Decker, ridiculing the manners and customs of his day, speaks of the fast men sitting on the stage at theatrical representations—“but assure yourself, by continual residence, you are the first and principal man in election, to begin the number of We three.”[651] In a pamphlet, entitled, “Heads of all Fashions; being a plain Disection or Definition of Divers and Sundry Sorts of Heads,” London, 1642, the Loggerheads are thus mentioned:—

“A Logerhead alone cannot well be,
At scriveners’ windows many time hang three.
A country lobcocke, as I once did heare,
Upon a penman put a grievous jeare.
If I had been in place, as this man was,
I should have called this country coxcomb asse.”

This alludes to one of the jokes in “Mother Bunch’s Merriments,” 1604, where a country fellow asks a poor scrivener, sitting in his shop, “I pray you, master, what might you sell in your shop, that you have so many ding-dongs hang at your dore?” “Why, my friend,” quoth the obligation-maker, “I sell nothing but loggerheads.” “By my fay, master,” quoth the countryman, “you have a fair market with them, for you have left but one in your shop, that I see;” and so, laughing, went his way, leaving much good sport to them that heard him. This old anecdote may have given rise to scriveners using the Loggerheads as their sign, which otherwise seems a not very pleasant reflection on their customers. We can scarcely think that any symbolism was intended, and that the Loggerheads were emblematical of the secretary’s silence and discretion. In the seventeenth century the sign might have been seen in London. There was one in Tooley Street in 1665, having on its trades token the inscription, “We are 3;” another variety had “We three Logerheads” underneath the usual heads. In the ballad of the “Arraigning and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knt., printed for Timothy Tosspot,” the trial takes place at the Three Loggerheads, by the Justices Oliver and Old Nick. The witnesses are cited at the sign of the Three Merry Companions in Bedlam—viz., Poor Robin, Merry Tom, and Jack Lackwit.

The Labour in Vain occurs among the trades tokens, and such a sign gave its name to Old Fish Street, which Hatton, in his “New View of London,” 1708, p. 405, calls “Old Fish Street, or Labour in Vain Hill.” The sign represented two women scrubbing a negro; hence it was called by the lower classes, the Devil in a Tub. “To wash an Æthiop,” is a proverbial expression, often met with in ancient dramatists, for labour in vain.[652] The Case is Altered, generally alludes to some alteration in the affairs of the landlord, either “for better or for worse.” A public-house near Banbury was so called on account of being built on the site of a mere hovel. Another house of the same name was, in 1805, erected on the road between Woodbridge and Ipswich, to meet the demand of the thirsty sons of Mars then quartered in those two towns. Its sign in those days was the Duke of York, or some such name. But when, after the downfall of the “Corsican Tyrant,” and the subsequent declaration of peace, the barracks were pulled down, the soldiers disbanded, and the benches of the ale-house remained empty, the old sign was removed, and in its place put up the sad truth—“The Case is Altered.” In another instance, the sign was adopted at Oxford as a quiet hint by a sharp business man, who succeeded as landlord to an easy-going Boniface, under whose sway the customers had been allowed to run up debts; but the case was altered under the new regulations. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (Nov. 21, 1857) gives the following example:—“I saw this sign once pictorially represented in the West of England thus:—A person, with a large wig and gown, and seated at a table; another, dressed like a farmer, stood talking to him. In the distance, seen through the open door, was a bull. The story, of course, is that related of Plowden, the celebrated lawyer,[653] and which is now in most books of fables. The farmer told Plowden that his (the farmer’s) bull had gored and killed the latter’s cow. ‘Well,’ said the lawyer, ‘the case is clear, you must pay me her value.’ ‘Oh! but,’ said the farmer, ‘I have made a mistake. It is your bull which has killed my cow.’ ‘Ah! the case is altered,’ quoth Plowden. The expression had passed into a proverb in Old Fuller’s time.” This sign also occurs in some London localities, as at Upper Kensal Green, and elsewhere.

The [Grinding Young] is a very curious sign at Harold’s Cross, Dublin. The subject is taken from the old ballad of the “Miller’s Maid Grinding Old Men Young,” commencing—

“Come, old, decrepit, lame, or blind,
Into my mill to take a grind.”

It is also a favourite subject on old chap-prints, which represent a kind of hand-mill, into the funnel-shaped top of which various decrepit-looking old men creep by a ladder, most of them glass in hand, greatly elated at the prospect of a renewal of youth. Meanwhile, a young maid is turning the handle of the mill, from the bottom of which the patients come out, quite young and new—if not better—men. Pretty girls stand at the side, ready to receive the rejuvenated creatures and walk off with them, their arms affectionately twined round their necks, and evidently preparing to play the old game over again, for “the cordial drop of life is love alone”—the whole affair a very decided improvement upon the usual way of entering the stage of this world.

A somewhat similar sign, though not quite so anacreontic, is of frequent occurrence in France, namely The Fountain of Juvenca,—la Fontaine de Jouvence. A stone bas-relief of this subject, a carving of the sixteenth century, still remains in the Rue du Four, in Paris. The story was borrowed by the French romancers from the Eastern tales.

The sign of the last house in a row on the outskirts of a town, used frequently to be the World’s End. This was represented in various punning ways; sometimes by a globe in clouds, as on the trades token of Margaret Tuttlesham, of Golden Lane, Barbican, in 1666. Others rendered it by a fractured globe in a dark background, with fire and smoke bursting through the rents, and thus it was represented at the World’s End in the King’s Road, Chelsea, in 1825. At Ecton, Northampton, it is typified, with a truly classical notion of physical geography, by a horseman whose steed is rearing over an abyss on the edge of a world terminated perpendicularly. A fourth, and more homely, way of representing it was a man and a woman walking together on the margin of a landscape, with this distich:

“I’ll go with my friend
To the world’s end.”

The out-of-the-way sites of such houses was the cause of their not enjoying the very best of reputations. Those, at least, of the World’s End at Chelsea and at Knightsbridge were rather exceptionable. Both these houses were much patronised by the gallants of the reign of Charles II. when breaking the seventh commandment; hence the altercation between two sisters in Congreve’s play of “Love for Love:”

“Mrs Foresight. I suppose you would not go alone to the World’s End?

“Mrs Frail. The World’s End! What, do you mean to banter me?

“Mrs Foresight. Poor innocent; you don’t know that there is a place called the World’s End. I’ll swear you can keep your countenance—surely you’ll make an admirable player.

“Mrs Frail. I’ll swear you have a great deal of impudence, and in my mind too much for the stage.

“Mrs Foresight. Very well, that will appear who has most. You never were at the World’s End? eh.”

Pepys also honoured a World’s End, the “drinking-house by the Park,” with an occasional visit. On Sunday, the 9th of May 1669, for instance, he went to church at St Margaret’s, Westminster, and that duty performed, walked “towards the park, but too soon to go in, so went on to Knightsbridge, and there eat and drank at the World’s End, where we had good things, and then back to the park, and there till night, being fine weather and much company, and so home.” The “good things” evidently proved a strong attraction, for three weeks after he went again, “and there was merry, and so home late.” In 1708 Tom Brown thus alluded to its equivocal reputation. “The lady must take a tour as far as Knightsbridge or Kensington, stop, maybe, at the World’s End or the Swan; offer my spark a small treat,” &c.[654] Under the name of le Bout du Monde, the same sign was common in France, where in ancient Paris it gave a name to the street now called Rue du Cadran. With that inveterate weakness for punning inherent to sign-painters—those of the French nation in particular—it was sometimes represented by a he-goat (bouc) and a world.

The World turned Upside down is still common, being generally represented by a man walking at the south pole; in that guise it was to be seen some twenty-five years ago on the Greenwich Road. But the meaning of the sign is a state of things the opposite of what is natural and usual,—a conceit in which the artists of former ages took great delight, and which they represented by animals chasing men, horses riding in carriages, and similar pleasantries. This also was a Dutch sign under the name of De Verkeerde Wereld, (the world reversed.) It was used by a publican in the seventeenth century in Holland, with this inscription:

“De wereld staat niet regt,
Voor de deur hangt hy verkeerd
’K Heb wyn en bier, en ’t geen gy meer begeert.”[655]

Of the Moonrakers we only know one instance, that in Great Suffolk Street, Borough, where it has been for at least half a century. The original of this may have been one of the stories of the Wise Men of Gotham. A party of them going out one bright night, saw the reflection of the moon in the water; and, after due deliberation, decided that it was a green cheese, and so raked for it. Another version is, that some Gothamites, passing in the night over a bridge, saw from the parapet the moon’s reflection in the river below, and took it for a green cheese. They held a consultation as to the best means of securing it, when it was resolved that one should hold fast to the parapet whilst the others hung from him, hand-in-hand, so as to form a chain to the water below, the last man to seize the prize. When they were all in this position, the uppermost, feeling the load heavy, and his hold giving way, called out, “Halloo! you below, hold tight while I take off my hand to spit on it!” The wise men below replied, “All right!” upon which he let go his hold, and they all dropped down into the water, and were drowned.

A Moonraker is also the nickname for a native of Wiltshire, and a very silly story is told there as its origin. Some Wiltshire smugglers, on one of their nightly expeditions, being surprised by excisemen, were compelled to hide a barrel of brandy in a pond, which one of the gang at the first opportunity privately fished out for his own personal benefit. A few nights after, when the Argus eyes of the Excise were soundly closed, the rest of the band availed themselves of a clear moonlight to return to the spot in order to “call the spirits from the vasty deep,” and began raking the water to their hearts’ content, for, taking the reflection of the moon to be the top of the barrel, they could not be convinced that the “spirit was departed,” till morning came and showed them that their barrel was all “moonshine.” Another version substitutes thieves and a cheese for the smugglers and the brandy barrel.

The Cradle and the Coffin, or First and Last, was formerly a sign in Norwich, and one can still be seen on the South Quay, Yarmouth. This combination may have its moral; not so the equally serious Mortal Man, in the little village of Troutbeck, near Ambleside, for there the denomination is simply borrowed from the beginning of the inscription which has nothing of the memento mori about it:—

“Thou mortal man that liv’st by bread,
What is it makes thy nose so red?”

“Thou silly elf with nose so pale,
It is with drinking Burkett’s ale.”

This imaginary dialogue is supposed to be held by the two figures on the signboard, the one a poor miserable-looking object, the other, who indulged in Burkett’s ale, the chubby picture of health, with a nose like that of Bardolph, “clothed in purple.” This sign was the work of Ibbetson; the picture is now gone, but the verses remain.[656]

At Hedenham, on the road between Norwich and Bungay, there is a sign called Tumble-down Dick, representing on one side Diogenes, on the other, a drunken man, with the following distich:

“Now Diogenes is dead and laid in his tomb,
Tumble-down Dick is come in his room.”

At Alton, in Hants, a drunken man is represented upsetting a table covered with cups and glasses. The verses underneath this picture are the same as at Hedenham, except that it is “Barnaby” who is said to be defunct, and not Diogenes. At Woodton in Norfolk, another sign with this name represents a jolly old farmer in a red coat, with bottle and glass in his hand, falling off his chair in a state of Bacchi plenus. The earliest mention we find of the sign is in the Original Weekly Journal for April 26—May 3, 1718, where a murder is reported to have been committed at the Tumbling-down Dick in Brentford. “Tumble-down Dick, in the borough of Southwark,” says the Adventurer, No. 9, 1752, “is a fine moral on the instability of greatness, and the consequences of ambition.” As such it was set up in derision of Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, or “tumble down,” being very common in the satires published after the Restoration, and amongst others, Hudibras; thus, part iii., canto ii., 231:—

“Next him his son and heir apparent
Succeeded, though a lame viceregent,
Who first laid by the Parliament,
The only crutch on which he leant;
And then sunk underneath the state
That rode him above horseman’s weight.”

The same idea, and almost the identical words, occur again in his “Remains,” in the tale of the Cobbler and the Vicar of Bray:—

“What’s worse, old Noll is marching off,
And Dick, his heir apparent,
Succeeds him in the Government,
A very lame Vice-regent;
He’ll reign but little time, poor tool,
But sinks beneath the state,
That will not fail to ride the fool
‘Bove common horseman’s weight.”

We meet it also in the ballad, “Old England is now a brave Barbary,” i.e. horse, from a “Collection of Loyal Songs,” reprinted in 1731, vol. ii., p. 231,—

“But Nol, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle,
And made her show tricks, and curvate, and rebound;
She quickly perceiv’d he rode widdle-waddle,
And like his coach-horses[657] threw his highness to ground.

“Then Dick, being lame, rode holding the pummel,
Not having the wit to get hold of the rein;
But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,
That poor Dick and his kindred turn’d footmen again.”

Dick’s bacchic propensities are also sung in many an old song. Two of the Luttrell Ballads, vol. ii., pp. 11 and 36, allude to his weakness in this respect:—

“Then thirdly Oliver he took place,
And set up young Dick the fool of his race;
Dick loved a cup of nectar.”

In another:—

“Drunken Dick was a lame Protector.”

Perhaps to the same origin may be referred the sign of Soldier Dick, which occurs near Disley, Stockport; and Happy Dick, at Abingdon. Tumbling-down Dick was also the name of a dance in the last century, which gives additional strength to the supposition that Dick Cromwell was intended, since otherwise an ordinary signboard would scarcely have come to such honour.

The Jolly Toper is a common public-house sign, probably put up as a good example to the customers; in London, there is a Tippling Philosopher, “the right man in the right place,” for he “hangs out” in Liquor Pond Street, opposite Reid’s great brewery. Here we have l’embarras du choix; which philosopher was intended by the sign, for they all, more or less, “pleaded guilty to the soft impeachment.” Theophrastus, in his “Treaty on Drunkenness,” tells us that the seven sages of Greece often met together to indulge in a cheerful glass. Plato not only excuses a drop too much occasionally, but even orders it. Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, never laughed but when he was “half seas over.” Xenocrates gained a golden crown, awarded by Dionysius the tyrant to the deepest drinker. Seneca states that Solon and Arcesilaus are believed to have “indulged in wine,” and Cornelius Gallus says that Socrates “carried off the palm from his contemporaries by his drinking capacities.” Cato, we know from various sources, liked his glass; Horace tells us—

“Narratur et prisci Catonis
Sæpe mero caluisse virtus;”[658]

and Seneca says of him: “Cato vinum laxabat animum curis publicis fatigatum;”[659] elsewhere he remarks: “Catoni ebrietas objecta est, at facilius efficiet quisquis qui objecerit honestum quam turpe Catoni.”[660] Seneca was certainly a biassed judge, for he says: “Habebitur aliquando ebrietas honor et plurimum meri cepisse virtus erit.”[661] Other tippling philosophers are enumerated in the following quaint Latin verses, the author of which is not known:—

“Tunc vix Democritus poterat compescere risum,
Riderent cum sibi vina labris.
Tergeret ut fletus contrarius alter amaros,
Sugebat lacrymas saepe, lagena, tuas.
Divinum ut Bacchi semper spiraret odorem,
Diogenes medii vixit in orbe cadi.
Dicitur ardentem cum sese misit in Æthnam,
Empedocles modico non caluisse mero.
[467] Teque ferunt veteres guttas, Epicure, Lyæi
Vel minimas atomis antetulisse tuis.
Talia ne dubiter potare exempla secutus,
Qui sapit ille bibit, qui bibit ergo sapit.”[662]

In Holland they have a curious practice, which the Spectator thus describes:—

“The Dutch who are more famous for their industry than for their wit and humour, hang up in several of their streets what they call the sign of the Gaper; that is, the head of an idiot dressed in a cap and bells and gaping in a most immoderate manner; this is a standing jest in Amsterdam.”

But the statement is slightly—probably wilfully—incorrect. Carved wooden busts of Gapers are still used at the present day in Holland, but are, and have always been, chemists’, or rather, druggists’ signs, to intimate that narcotics are sold within, as gaping or yawning is a precursor of sleep. The costume of these busts is generally somewhat Oriental, as Eastern nations were supposed to be not only expert in herbs and medicines, but also, because opium came from Eastern climes.

A very curious and rare sign is to be seen in the little village of Nidd, near Knaresborough; this is the Ass in the Band-Box. We find it mentioned in 1712 in Partridge’s MS. book of “Celestial Motions.”[663] In the month of October of that year he entered the following memorandum:—“At the end of this month the villains made the Band-box plot, to blow up Robin and his family with a couple of inkhorns, and that rogue Swift was at the opening of the band-box and the discovery of the plot. The truth of it all was: ‘—— in a Band-box.’”[664] It figured also as one of the signs in Bonnel Thornton’s signboard exhibition of 1762.[665] It seems to have originated from an extremely indelicate joke called “selling bargains,” with which the maids of honour amused themselves in Swift’s time, (see his “Polite Conversation;”) unless it be a vernacular reading of some crest, such as an antelope or a unicorn issuing out of a mural crown.

In the borough of Southwark is a sign on which is inscribed “The Old Pick-my-toe,” which, in the absence of any better origin, we may suppose to be a vulgar representation of the Roman slave who, being sent on some message of importance, would not stop to pick a thorn out of his foot, until he had completed his mission. Probably this was the same sign as that represented on the trades token of Samuel Bovery in George Lane, a naked figure picking one of its feet; but the name of the house is not given on the token. Jack of Both Sides, at Reading, is so named because the house stands at a point where two roads meet in the form of a Y, and the house being wedge-shaped, has an entry at each side. Such a house in London is often called by the vulgar a “Flat-iron.”

The Old Smugs is a sign on the trades token of Joseph Hall, at Newington Butts, 1667, representing a smith and an anvil; but whether John Hall himself was “old Smvgs,” or whether he kept a tavern frequented by blacksmiths, history does not inform us. This last is also the name of one of the characters in the “Merry Devil at Edmonton.” The Battered Naggin (sic for Noggin) is an Irish sign, it being in that country a figurative expression for a man who has got more than is good for him,—“he has got a lick of a battered naggin.” The Noggin, without the adjective, occurs at a few places in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Tumbling Sailors, representing three seamen “half-seas-over,” and reeling arm-in-arm down a street, may be seen near Broseley, at Dudley, and in other places. The Cripple’s Inn at Stockingford, Warwick, is doubtless nothing more than a very “lame” attempt at comicality. The Hat in Hand, in Portsea, promises a polite host; but what can be expected of Old Careless, the ominous name of a public-house at Stapleford, Notts, of Spite Hall at Brandon, Durham, or of Old No, which occurs in Silver Street, Sheffield? Slow and Easy is the unpromising name of an ale-house at Lostock, Chester; let us hope that it may be meant for a version of the Italian proverb, “chi va piano va sano,” meaning that the landlord will be content with small and fair profits, and acquire fortune by slow and easy steps.

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[627] The “goose’s foot” she obtained was most probably that at the corner of her eye—i.e., she became an old woman—for the French call patte d’oie—goose’s foot—that first attack of time upon beauty which we term the crow’s foot.

[628] A whetstone was anciently the name given in derision to a liar. The reason of it is explained in the following rhymes under an old engraving in the Bridgewater collection, representing a man with a whetstone in his hand:—

“The whettstone is a man that all men know,
Yet many on him doe much cost bestowe:
Hee’s us’d almost in every shoppe, but why?
An edge must needs be set on every lye.”

How old is this connexion between lies and whetstones may be seen from Stow:—“Of the like counterfeit physition have I noted (in the Summarie of my Chronicles, anno 1382,) to be set on horsebacke, his face to the horsetaile, the same taile in his hand as a bridle, a collar of jordans about his necke, a whetstone on his breast, and so led through the citie of London with ringing of basons, and banished.”—Stow’s Chronicle, Howe’s edition, 1614, p. 604. It is a curious coincidence that in France and Germany a knife—the Rodomont knife—was handed over to outrageous liars. A vestige of this custom was still preserved at the university of Bonn at the end of the last century, where, when one of the company at the students’ mess drew the long bow a little too strongly, it was customary for all who sat at the table, without making any remarks, to lay their dinner knives on the top of their glasses, all pointing towards the offender.

[629] London Gazette, Dec. 23-26, 1700.

[630] Ibid., Jan. 10-14, 1678.

[631] James Christopher le Blond, a Fleming by birth, obiit 1740, made preparations to copy the Hampton Court tapestry cartoons. For this purpose he built a house in Mulberry Gardens, Chelsea, but the project failed.

[632] A Walk from London to Fulham. By the late T. C. Croker. 1860.

[633] Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i.

[634] “The ox gives the shoemaker leather of which he makes boots to be worn. As a grateful return I have ordered the ox to be portrayed here in boots and spurs.”

[635]

“Look here, this cow wears boots;
Were it a bull it would be less odd.”

[636] “This is the Cock in Boots. Christ has been crucified, with a crown of thorns on His head. He that does not believe it is as bad as Thomas.”

[637]

“At the brave Jackass in Boots,
There is tobacco, brandy, and gingerbread for sale.”

[638] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. iii., p. 261. 1819.

[639] A Trip to Stirbitch Fair, 1703.

[640] Sometimes it is conveyed in an ingenious manner by a watch face without pointers accompanied by the significant words, No Tick.

[641] “To-day for money, to-morrow for nought.”

[642]

“When this cock shall crow,
Credit will be given.”

[643] “Credit is dead: he has been killed by bad payers.”

[644] Harl. MSS., No. 6200.

[645] Cambridge Jests; or, Witty Alarums for Melancholy Spirits. Printed at the Looking-Glass, on London Bridge, for Thomas Morris.

[646]

“You may fight, you may pray, you may plead,
But I am the farmer who lays the eggs,”—i.e., finds the money.

[647] Annotations to Ames’s Typographical Antiquities.

[648] MS. Harleian. 4690, 19 Edw. III.

[649]

“Here you may find a good woman,
Faithfully portrayed from the life.
Nothing is wanting but her head,
Because that turns about with every wind.
If the head had been left her,
She would never have been good in all her life.”

[650]

“Women are a plague to man,
And though young ‘spoons’ are fond of them.
As soon as their fire is quenched,
They wish her head was off.”

[651] Gull’s Hornbook.

[652] Massinger’s Parliament of Love, ac. ii., sc. 2; Roman Actor, ac. iii., sc. 2, &c.

[653] Edmund Plowden, obiit 1584, was buried and has a monument in the Temple Church.

[654] Walk round London and Suburbs, 1708, p. 46.

[655]

“The world does not go right,
Before my door it hangs upside down.
I sell wine and beer, and all that you may desire.”

[656] A somewhat different version of these rhymes is given on [page 40].

[657] In allusion to Cromwell’s accident in Hyde Park, October 1654, when his coach-horses ran away, and his highness, who was driving, fell from the box between the traces, and was dragged along for a considerable distance.

[658] “It is said that the virtue of Cato the elder was frequently warmed by wine.”

[659] “Cato refreshed his mind with wine when it was wearied with the cares of the commonwealth.”

[660] “Cato has been blamed for drunkenness, but it is easier to find reason to praise, than to blame Cato.”

[661] “Drunkenness will be sometimes considered as honourable, and to drink a great quantity of pure wine as a virtue.”

[662] “When the wine sparkled on the lips of Democritus, it was then that he could not restrain himself from laughter. Another [Heraclius] on the contrary, often drank thy tears, O bottle, in order to dry his own tears. Diogenes lived in a barrel so that he might always smell the odour of divine wine. It is said that Empedocles, when he jumped down burning Etna, had first warmed himself with no small quantity of wine. They also say that thou, O Epicurus, didst prefer even the smallest drops of old wine to thine atoms. In imitation of these examples, I do not hesitate in drinking, for he who tastes drinks, consequently he that drinks is wise.” It is almost impossible to translate this last line, on account of the pun contained in the verb sapere, which at the same time means “to taste” and “to be wise.” The second line is evidently imperfect.

[663] Harl. MSS., 6200, p. 68.

[664] This alludes to the well-known plot of a bandbox sent to the Lord Treasurer, containing a very poor infernal machine, made of inkhorns. The affair, however, has never been satisfactorily cleared up. Swift is called a rogue by the indignant Partridge, because he had made a droll ballad and epitaph upon the “Supposed death of Partridge, the Almanac-maker,” which Swift had predicted and Partridge publicly denied.

[665] See [Appendix].

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CHAPTER XV.
PUNS AND REBUSES.

Punning on names, or a figurative rendering of names, was probably at first adopted not so much with any intent at joking, as means to assist the memory, giving the name a visible token, which would take the place of writing at a time when but few persons could either read or write. At the revival of learning, and the spread of what we may term the refinement of society, punning was one of the few accomplishments at which the fine ladies and gentlemen aimed. From the twelfth to the sixteenth century, it was at its greatest height. The conversation of the witty gallants and ladies, and even of the clowns and other inferior characters, in the comedies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, which we may be sure was painted from the life, is full of puns and plays upon words. The unavoidable result of such an excess was a surfeit, and the consequent dégout, which lasted for more than a century.[666] Like other diseases, it broke out again subsequently with redoubled virulence, and made great havoc in the reign of Queen Anne. “Several worthy gentlemen and critics,” says the Tatler for June 23, 1709, “have applied to me to give my censure of an enormity, which has been revived after being long suppressed, and is called Punning. I have several arguments ready to prove that he cannot be a man of honour who is guilty of this abuse of human society.”

Bagford makes the following remark on this subject:—

“As for rebuses or name devices, thei ware brought into use heare in England after King Edward ye 3 had conquered France, and this was taken up by most people heare in this nation, espesially by them which had none armes; and if their names ended in ton, as Haton; Boulton; Luton; Grafton; Middellton; Seton; Norton; they must presently have for their signes or devises a hat and a tun; a boult and a tun; a lute and a tun, and so on, which signifies nothing to ye name, for all names ending in Ton signifieth a toune from whence they tooke their name. It would make one very merry to loke ouer ye learned Camden in his ‘Remaines,’ and to consider ye titles of our ould books printed by Haryson, Kingston, Islip, Woodcooke, Payer, Bushell,” &c.—Harl. MSS., 5910, p. ii.

Camden, in his “Remains,” mentions these punning signs, and gives a like statement with Bagford, that they were introduced from France, where they are still much in fashion. “These,” says Camden, “were so well liked by our English there and, sent hither ouer the streight of Calice with full sayle, were so entertained here although they were most ridiculous, by all degrees of the learned and unlearned, that he was nobody that could not hammer out of his name an invention by this witcraft, and picture it accordingly: whereupon who did not busy his brain to hammer his device out of this forge.” After many examples too long to quote, he concludes with the following:—

“Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of great wisedome, and borne to the universall good of this realme, was content to use mor upon a ton, and sometimes a mulberry-tree, called Morus in Latine, out of a ton. So Luton, Thornton, Ashton, did note their names with a Lute, a Thorn, and an Ash upon a Ton. So an hare on a bottle for Harebottle, a Maggot-pie upon a Goat for Pigot. Med written on a Calf for Medcalfe; Chester, a chest with a starre over it; Allet, a Lot; Lionel Ducket, a Lion with L on his head, where it should have beene in his tayle; if the lion had been eating a ducke it had been a rare device,—worth a Duckat or a duck-egge. And if you require more, I refer you to the wittie inventions of some Londoners; but that for Garret Dewes is most memorable: two in a garret casting dews at dice.[667] This for rebus may suffice, and yet if there were more, I think some lips would like such kind of Lettice.”[668]

How punning signboards were concocted we may gather from a scene in Ben Jonson’s “Alchymist,” act ii., scene 1, where a rebus sign is to be found for Abel Drugger, who for that purpose goes to a kind of fortune-teller, styling himself an alchymist, and who provides our shopkeeper in the following manner:—

“He shall have a bell, that’s Abel,
And by it standing one whose name is Dee
In a rug gown, there’s D and rug, that’s drug,
And right anenst him a dog snarling er,
There’s Drugger, Abel Drugger. That’s his sign,
And here’s no mystery and hieroglyphic.”

This wonderful sign the Alchymist terms a “mystic character,” the “radii” of which are to produce no end of good results to Abel’s trade.

The Cockneys (“gentle dulness dearly loves a joke”) have at all times been celebrated for this kind of pleasantry. The mention of a few of their signs will be sufficient to show the extent of their wit and originality in this direction. The well-known bird-bolt through a tun, or [Bolt in Tun], for Bolton, the device of one of the priors of St Bartholomew, is still in existence in Fleet Street.

“It may seem doubtful,” says Camden, “whether Bolton, prior of St Bartholomew, in Smithfield, was wiser when he invented for his name a bird-bolt through his Tun, or when he built him a house upon Harrow Hill, for fear of an inundation after a great conjunction of planets in the watery triplicity.”

From an entry in the Patent Roll of 21 Henry VI., (1443,) this house in Fleet Street appears to have been an inn at that period. In a licence of alienation to the Friars Carmelites of London, of certain premises in the parish of St Dunstan, Fleet Street, “Hospitium vocatum le Boltenton” is mentioned as a boundary. On some of the seventeenth century trades tokens, we meet with a tun pierced by three arrows; this variation of the Bolt in Tun was called the Tun and Arrows, (or harrows, as the Cockney tokens have it.) There was one in Bishopsgate Street Within, and another in Bishopsgate Street Without, in the reign of Charles II.

A Hand and Cock was the punning sign of John Hancock, in Whitefriars. George Cox, in the Minories, tallow-chandler by trade, had Two Cocks for his sign. Thomas Cockayne, a distiller in Southwark, had the same sign, as a feeble pun on part of his name; whilst Christopher Bostock, not seeing any possibility “to hammer” a rebus out of his own patronym, fortunately for him lived at Cock’s Key, and so could make up for this misfortune by punning on the name of that place, whence his sign triumphantly exhibited the Cock and Key. John Drinkwater, a publisher, intimated his name by a Fountain; and William Woodcock, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in the seventeenth century, happily rendered his by a cock standing on a bundle of wood. William Hill, another bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1598, lived at the sign of the Hill. John Buckland, who followed the same profession in Paternoster Row, in 1750, was modestly content with half a pun, and adopted the sign of the Buck, while, in the same manner, another of his colleagues, Samuel Manship, who in 1720 lived “against the Royal Exchange, Cornhill,” was satisfied with the Ship. The Sun and Red Cross, in Jewin Street, was the sign of John Cross, who, taking a house with the sign of the Sun, added to it a Cross. In the same manner Pelham More, in Moorsgate, had the Sun and Moor’s Head. John Cherry, of Maidenhead, adopted a Cherry-tree as his sign, showing in this as much wit as the ancestor of the Crequi family in France, who chose a Crequier (old French for cherry-tree) as his coat of arms. Hugh Conny, of Caxton and Elsworth, Cambridge, had in 1666 Three Conies, or rabbits, for a sign. Richard Lion, in the Strand, had the Lion. Bartholomew Fish, at Queenhithe, in 1667, Three Fishes. William Horne, in Oak Lane, 1671, the Horns. Thomas Fox, in Newgate Market, a Fox. William Geese, King Street, Westminster, Three Geese. Ellinor Gandor, Upper Shadwell, 1667, a Gander; whilst H. Goes, a native of Antwerp, printer at York in 1506, next at Beverley, and finally, in London, had for his sign a Goose with an H above it. Joseph Parsons, “at the sign of Parson’s Green,” Market Place, St James, seems to have had a view of Parson’s Green, Fulham, for his sign; though why he did not simply take a parson is, we fear, a secret he has carried with him to the grave. John Hive, St Mary’s Hill, 1667, had the sign of the Beehive. Grace Pestell, in Fig-tree Yard, Ratcliffe, the Pestle and Mortar. John Atwood, in Rose Lane, the Man in the Wood. Andrew Hind, over against the Mews, Charing Cross, a Hind. Taylor, the Water poet, mentions a similar sign at Preston:—

“There at the Hinde, kinde Master Hinde, mine host,
Kept a good table, bak’d, and boyld, and rost.”[669]

Jane Keye, Bloomsbury Market, 1653, a Key. The Lion and Key was, in 1651, a sign in Thames Street, punning perhaps on the neighbouring Lion’s Quay; it is still the sign of a public-house in Hull, whilst the Red Lion and Key still occurs in Mill Lane, Tooley Street. A grocer, named Laurence Green, proved that to the “fortem ac tenacem propositi virum” nothing is impossible, and found means to pun upon his untractable name by painting his doorposts green, and called his shop the Green Posts. We meet with him in a newspaper advertisement, which, as it gives the price of various articles at that date, is not uninteresting. Green sold—

“Chocolate, made of the best nuts, at 3s. a pound; the best, with sugar, at 2s. a pound; a good sort of all nut, at 2s. 6d.; with sugar, 1s. 8d. To the buyers of three pounds, a quarter gratis. The best coffee, at 5s. 4d. a pound; to the buyer of three pounds, 1s. allowed. Bohee tea, at 16, 20, 24s., the very finest, at 28s. a pound. Fine green tea, at 14s., good, at 10s. a pound. Fine Spanish snuff, at 4s. a pound.” &c.[670]

The Harp was the sign of Richard Harper, West Smithfield; it occurs on a trades token. The house seems afterwards to have assumed the sign of the Bible and Harp. What occupation Richard Harper followed does not appear from his token, but in 1641 a Richard Harper at the sign of the Bible and Harp, published a tract called

“Bartholomew Fayre,
or
Varieties of Fancies where you may find,
A fayre of Wares and all to please your mind.”

In 1670 the house was occupied by a certain J. Clarke, and at a subsequent period by J. Bisset; both these men published numerous ballads.

The Hat and Tun is a pun on the name of Hatton, and is still preserved on a public-house sign in Hatton Wall. A man named Nobis, at the beginning of the present century opened an inn on the road to Pappenburgh, which he called Nobis Inn, and made free with grammar in order to find a punning motto, viz.: “Si Deus pro nobis quis contra Nobis.” Bells have been used by innumerable persons of the name of Bell. The Salmon was the sign of Mrs Salmon, the Madame Tussaud of the eighteenth century; her gallery was first in St Martin’s-le-Grand, near Aldersgate, whence she removed to Fleet Street, opposite what is now Anderton’s Hotel, then called the Horns Tavern. The Brace Tavern, in Queen’s Bench prison, was so called on account of its being kept by two brothers of the name of Partridge. The Golden Heart was the sign of Thomas Hart, a tailor in Monmouth Street, St Giles. (Harl. MSS., Bagford Bills, 5931.) Bat Pidgeon, the hairdresser immortalised in the Spectator, lived at the [Three Pigeons], “the corner house of St Clement’s churchyard, next to the Strand,” says Pennant, where he “cut my boyish locks in the year 1740.”

The Black Swan in Bartholomew Lane, nicknamed Cobweb Hall, was kept by Owen Swan, parish clerk (hence the Black Swan?) of St Michael’s, Cornhill. It was a tavern of great resort for the musical wits in the seventeenth century. Failing in this business, Owen set up as a tobacconist in St Michael’s Alley; on the papers in which he wrapped tobacco for his customers, were the following rhymes:—

“The dying Swan in sad and mourning strains
Of his near end and hapless fate complains,
[474] In pity then your kind assistance give,
Smoke of Swan’s best that the poor bird may live.”

To which a friend of his wrote the following reply:—

“The aged Swan opprest with time and cares,
With Indian sweets his funeral prepares.
Light up the pile! thus he’ll ascend the skies
And Phœnix-like from his own ashes rise.”

There is a well-known anecdote of a man named Farr, who opened a tobacco shop on Fish Street Hill, and soon obtained a good custom from the pun over his door, “The best tobacco by Farr,” rather than from the quality of his tobacco. Opposite him there was another tobacconist who lost his customers through his pun, but he regained them in the same way as he lost them, for he fought Farr with his own weapons, and wrote up “Far better tobacco than the best tobacco by Farr.” This joke was thought so good that all his customers returned. Tobacco-papers of the original “finest tobacco by Farr” are preserved among the Banks hand-bills in the British Museum, as a proof of the truth of this history.

A Ling, or codfish, strange to say, entwined with honeysuckles, was the sign of Nicholas Ling, at the north-west door of St Paul’s, where, in 1595, he published “Pierce Pennylesse his Supplicacion to the Divell.” An Oak was the sign of Nicholas Okes, a bookseller dwelling at Gray’s Inn, publisher of some of Taylor the Water Poet’s works. His colophon represents Jupiter seated on an eagle between two oak trees. A French publisher, Nicholas Cheneau, in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in 1580, had also an oak for his sign, (chêne, an oak.)

John Day, another publisher of the time of Queen Elizabeth, had a sort of pun, or charade, on his name in the sign of the Resurrection, his device representing a man waking a sleeper, with the words, “Arise, for it is day.” The Castle and Falcon was another of his signs. Richard Grafton, the first printer of the Common Prayer, who also printed the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey as Queen of England, for which he fell under the displeasure of Queen Mary, had a tun with a grafted fruit-tree growing through it. Stow made a pun upon this sign, saying that one of Grafton’s works was “a noise of empty tonnes and unfruitful grafftes,” to which Grafton retaliated by calling Stow’s Chronicle “a collection of lyes foolishly stowed together.” Hugh Singleton had a Golden Tun; Harrison, 1560, a hare sheltering under a corn-sheaf tied with a ribbon, and with the letters ri and a sun shining above; but the most absurd rebus of all was that of one Newberry, who, according to Camden, had a Yew Tree with several berries upon it, and in the midst a great golden N upon one of the branches, which by the help of a little false spelling made N-yew-berry.

A few punning signs still remain. At Oswaldstwistle, near Accrington, a man named Bellthorn has the Bell in the Thorn; at Warbleton, in Sussex, an old public-house has the sign of a war-bill in a tun, which sign of the Axe and Tun is further intended as an intimation to “axe for beer”! Another innkeeper named Abraham Lowe, who lives half way up Richmond Hill, near Douglas in the Isle of Man, has the following innocent attempt at punning on his name:—

“I’m Abraham Lowe, and half way up the Hill,
If I were higher up, what’s funnier still,
I should be lowe. Come in and take your fill,
Of porter, ale, wine, spirits, what you will,
Step in, my friend, I pray, no farther go;
My prices, like myself, are always low.”

Besides rebuses, and puns on names, the French have another class of punning signs, for which we have only very few equivalents, namely, rebus signboards. One of the most common is the Bœuf à la Mode, which some twenty or thirty years ago was thus Englished in golden letters on a low boarding-house at Brussels:—

“The Board House of the Fashionable Beef.”

It is the usual sign for eating-houses, being the standard dish of the French bourgeoisie. The picture represents an ox dressed up in the height of female elegance, with bonnet, shawl, &c. A good repartee is told, originating in this method of representing the sign: a citizen’s wife, of aldermanic proportions, was coming out of a magasin de nouveautés in Paris, just as two “social evils” were going in; “Dis-donc, Pelagie,” said one of the girls to her companion, “look at that Bœuf-à-la-Mode who is going out.” “Yes,” replied the indignant matron, who had overheard the remark, “and now game is coming in!”

Other French punning signs, such as St Jean Baptiste, Au Juste Prix, Le Bout du Monde, Le Signe de la Croix, and many more, have been noticed in former chapters, and need not, therefore, be again mentioned here.

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[666] In the old sermons and religious treatises of the seventeenth century, however, we occasionally find punning resorted to by the preachers of the time.

[667] He was a printer who kept his shop at the sign of the Swan in St Paul’s Churchyard in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This Garatt D’Ewes was grandfather of the celebrated antiquary, Sir Symond D’Ewes; he amassed a handsome fortune, which enabled him to purchase the manor of Gains near Upminster, Essex, and thus laid the foundation of the future greatness of his family. D’Ewes was of Dutch origin, being a native of the province of Gelderland. Some of the letters of this early printer are preserved in the Harl. MS., No. 381.

[668] Camden’s Remains, p. 140, et seq. 1629.

[669] Taylor’s Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630.

[670] Postman, January 25-27, 1711.

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CHAPTER XVI.
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS.

Signs which could not well be classed under any of the former divisions will find their place in this chapter, and hence a motley gathering may be expected. As in all inquiries it is proper to begin with the a. b. c., we shall do so here. The A. B. C. was the sign of Richard Fawkes, a bookseller, as the imprint of his works says:—

“In the suburbss of the famous Cytye of Lōdon, withoute Templebarre dwellynge in Durresme rentes [part of Durham House, where now the Adelphi stands] or else in Powles churche-yerde at the sygne of the A. B. C. The year of our Lorde MCCCCCXXX.”

This, we must admit, was a very reasonable sign for a “man of letters.” Continental booksellers also employed it; amongst others, Jacob Pietersz Paetsy, of Amsterdam, in 1597; in the Hague such a sign gave its name to a street. About 1825 there was a public-house in Clare Market called the A. B. C., where the alphabet from A to Z was painted over the door. Even at the present day many public-houses are called the Letters; thus there are two in Shrewsbury, two in Carlisle, one in Oldham, and others in various places. Grand A is a public-house near East Dereham, Norfolk. Little A was the sign of a tobacconist in Leadenhall Street, circa 1780; his tobacco-papers, preserved among the Banks bills, were adorned with a portrait of “Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, or Old Wigs,” one of the mayors of Garrat, styled “Old Wigs” from his practice of buying those articles, by which he made an honourable living before ambition flamed his soul and he entered upon a political career. Grand B may be seen at Long Framlington, Morpeth; Q Inn at Staleybridge; and Q in the Corner in Sheffield. Rhyming alphabets and nursery rhymes present us with the first and last, but the second we confess is somewhat mysterious: the Crowned Q, (au Q Courronne,) which was an old sign in the Rue de la Ferronière, Paris, is easy enough to understand, and one of those broad Rabelaisian strokes of humour which the public delighted in a century or two ago; indeed the sign continued in its old quarters until 1828. The Y was formerly a mercer’s sign in France, and may have originated from the custom of tying ribbons up in festoons, when they would assume somewhat the shape of that letter. It was also the sign of Nicholas Duchemin, a bookseller in Paris, 1541-1576. He, however, took a Pythagorean view of this letter, and considered it, as the freemasons do, an emblem of the double path of life, the broad way leading to destruction, the narrow way unto life; hence the top of the left hand branch terminated in flames, the right hand in a crown. The idea was evidently borrowed from Matt. vii. 13, unless it be from Persius, who says—

“Et tibi quæ Samios deduxit litera ramos,
Surgentem dextro monstravit limite callem.”

Z was formerly a grocer’s sign in this country, and was said to stand for Zinzibar, (ginger,) but this Z after all was perhaps only a corruption of the figure 4 which, we are informed, is or was a constant grocer’s sign in some parts of Scotland, as for instance in Stirling, implying that their provisions came from the four quarters of the world. Number IV is still the sign of an ale-house at 74 Hope Street, Salford, Manchester. Number Three is to be seen at Great Layton, near Blackpool. In 1633 it was the sign of a bookseller, Jean Brunet, in the Rue Neuve S. Louis, Paris. He says on the imprints of his books, au Trois de chiffres, in contradistinction to the Roman numerals, which at that time were not named chiffres but nombres; chiffres applied only to the Arab numerals. The latter were introduced by Pope Silvester II. (999-1003) who, having studied at Seville, acquired them from the Moors.

The Bell is one of the commonest signs in England, and was used as early as the fourteenth century, for Chaucer says that the “gentil hostelrie that heighte the Tabard,” was “faste by the Belle.” Most probably bells were set up as signs on account of our national fondness for bell-ringing, which procured for our island the name of the “ringing island,” and made Handel say, that the bell was our national musical instrument; and long may it be so! We confess to have derived infinitely more pleasurable feelings from hearing the melodious bells on a summer afternoon ringing through the clear air and sending their sweet sounds over corn-field and meadow, over brook and stream, than from any cavatina or cantata, sung by the dearest paid Italians in crowded operas, and at over-heated concerts. Paul Hentzner, a German traveller, who visited this country in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, says, “the English are vastly fond of noises that fill the air, such as firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells; so that it is common for a number of them to go up into some belfry, and ring bells for hours together for the sake of exercise.” Aubrey makes a similar remark; and, for further reference, we may go to Sir Symonds D’Ewes, who writes in his “Memoirs,” that, in 1618, he was ringing the large bell of St John’s College, Cambridge, for exercise, when the great comet was in the heavens; the consequence was, that he got entangled in the ropes, and nearly fractured his skull, whereupon he wisely resolved not to ring so long as the mischievous comet was to be seen. Generally, for a merry peal, the different toned octave bells are rung in succession; then changes are introduced, which, by continually altering, the succession of the bells produces a most pleasing effect. A peal of bells usually consists of eight, hence the frequency of the Eight Bells; besides these, there are the Four Bells, the Five Bells, the Six Bells, the Ten Bells; the Eight Ringers, (Norwich and elsewhere,) the Old Ring o’ Bells, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, &c. Three Swans and Peal, Walsall, Staffordshire; the Nelson and Peal, also in Warwickshire, and many others mentioned in a previous chapter. In some old belfries, the rules and fines of the ringers are painted in rhymes on the walls; as for instance, in St John’s Church, Chester, (dated 1687,) in All Saints’ Church, Hastings, (dated 1756,) &c. One of the oldest Bell taverns in Middlesex stood in King Street, Westminster; it is named in the expenses of Sir John Howard, (Jockey of Norfolk,) in 1466. Pepys dined at this house, July 1, 1660, invited by purser Washington; but came away greatly disgusted, for, says he, “the rogue had no more manners than to invite me, and let me pay my club.” In November of the same year, he was there again, “to see the 7 flanders mares that my Lord has bought lately.” In Queen Anne’s reign, the October club, consisting of about one hundred and fifty county members of Parliament, all unmitigated Tories, used to meet at this tavern. The Bell, in Warwick Lane, Newgate Street, is another example of the old London coaching inns, still in its original condition, the galleries being propped up to prevent their falling down: everything about the place has a seventeenth century look,—the country carts, the chickens here in the very heart of the city, the inn kitchen with its old black clock, its settles and white benches, the very smell of the cookery going on seems more homely and old English than the hot greasy vapours emanating from the areas of modern taverns. Coming into this yard from the adjacent crowded streets, is like entering a latter-day Pompeii. It was at this inn that Archbishop Leighton, the honest, steady advocate of peace and forbearance, died in 1684.

“He often used to say that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an Inn; it looks like a pilgrim’s going home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it. He added, that the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired.”[671]

At the Bell, in the Poultry, lived, in the reign of King William and Queen Anne, Nathaniel Crouch, the famous bookseller, who was the first to condense great and learned works into a small and popular form. He generally wrote under the name of “John Burton.” His “Historical Rarities in London and Westminster,” was one of the books Dr Johnson, in his old age, desired to read again in remembrance of the pleasure derived from their teaching in the days of his youth.

At Finedon, three miles from Wellingborough, there is an old inn, called the Bell, having for a sign the portrait of a female with the following lines beneath:—

“Queen Edith, lady once of Finedon,
Where at the Bell good fare is dined on.”

The Bell Inn, kept by John Good, at Oxford, has:—

“My name, likewise my ale, is good,
Walk in and taste my own home brew’d;
For all that know John Good can tell,
That, like my sign, it bears the Bell.”

There was a Golden Bell, in St Bride’s Lane, Fleet Street, in the reign of Queen Anne, next door to which lived Lydia Burcraft, a female hairdresser, who, as appears from her bill,[672] sold an infallible pomatum to make the hair grow long and curly. The Black Bell is mentioned by Stowe, p. 81:—

“Above this lane’s [Crooked Lane] end upon Fish Hill Street, is one great house, for the most part built of stone, which pertained some time to Edward the Black Prince, son to Edward III., who was in his lifetime lodged there. It is now altered to a common hostelry, having the Black Bell for a sign.”

The Monument now stands on the site of this house.

The Bell occurs in innumerable combinations, most of which seem to have no particular meaning, but simply to arise from the old custom of quartering signs. Among them, we may mention the Bell and Anchor, Hammersmith, which was much visited by the fashion in the beginning of the reign of George III. Representations of the place and its visitors may be seen in several of the caricatures of that period, published by Bowles and Carver, of St Paul’s Churchyard. It is still in existence, but its days of glory are past, for, instead of youth and beauty, and “names known to chivalry,” its customers now mostly consist of the Irish labourers who live in the lanes and back slums of North End. Further, we meet with the Bell and Lion, Crew, Cheshire; the Bell and Bullock, Netherem, Penrith, probably united on account of the alliteration; the Bell and Cuckoo, Erdington, near Birmingham; and the Bell and Candlestick, also in Birmingham.

The Bell and Crown is very common, and withal is a reasonable combination, for the bell has, from time immemorial, been rung to express the loyalty of the nation on royal entries, whether into the world or into a town, on occasion of royal marriages or deaths, at times of great victories and declarations of peace, and other loyal celebrations. Hence many bells are inscribed with the words, “Fear God, honour the King,” which, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, seems also to have been a common inscription on the sign of the Bell.[673] This sentiment was thus versified by a sign-painter, who evidently had more loyalty than poetical genius:—

“Let the King
Live Long,
Dong Ding,
Ding Dong.”

PLATE XVIII.
THREE ANGELS. (Banks’s Bills, 1770.)
NAKED MAN. (From a print, 1542.)	FIRE BALLOON. (Banks’s Collection, 1780.)
THREE MORRIS DANCERS. (Formerly in Old Change, Cheapside, circa 1668.)

Few signs have so often been wrongly explained as the Bell Savage, on Ludgate Hill. Stow, generally so accurate, says it received its name from one Isabella Savage, who had given the house to the company of cutlers. Where he gathered that information we do not know, but he was “burning,” as the children say, and was certainly much nearer the truth than the Spectator, who states that it was called after a French play of “la Belle Sauvage.” The “Antiquarian Repertory,” following Stow, asserts that the inn was once the property of the Lady Arabella Savage, familiarly called “Bell Savage,” which name was represented in a rebus by a wild man and a bell, and so it was always drawn on the panels of the coaches that used to run to and from it, until the railways changed our style of travelling. The true origin of the name is manifest from a document in the Clause Roll, 31 Henry VI.[674]

“D. Script, irrot. Frenssh.

Omnib; Xpi fidelib; ad quos p’sens Scriptum p’ven. Joh’nes Frenssh, filius primogenitus Joh’is Frenssh, Gentilman, quondam civis et aurifabri London’ salutem in Domino. Sciatis me dedisse, concessisse, et hoc p’senti scripto meo confirmasse, Johanne Frenssh, vidue, matri mee, totum teñ sive hospicium, cum suis p’ten’, vocat’ Savagesynne, alias vocat’ le Belle on the Hope, in parochia S’ce Brigide in Fletestreet, London’, h’end et tenend, totum p.’dc̃m ten’ sive hospicium, cum suis p’t’ in p’fat’ Johanne ad t’minū vite sue, absq’ impeticõe vasti. In cugis rei testimoniū, &c.”[675]

In the sixteenth century, the Belle Savage appears to have been a place of amusement. “Those who go to Paris garden, the Bel Savage, or theatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or fence play, must not account of any pleasant spectacle unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and a third for quiet standing.”[676] One of the attractions about that period was Banks’s wonderful horse, Marocco, which here performed his tricks before a half-admiring, half-awe-stricken audience, many of whom doubtless considered the animal a witch, if not a devil. “To mine host of the Bel Sauage and all his honest guests,” was dedicated the satirical tract of “Marocco Extaticus,” in which this horse is introduced.[677] During the civil wars we find this inn mentioned as apparently a Royalist house: “Upon search at Bell Savage (by order of Parliament) great quantities of plate were found, intended for York, but stayed by order.”[678] A very odd accident happened in this inn during the terrific storm of November 26, 1703. A Mr Hempson, we are told, was blown in his sleep out of an upper room window, and knew nothing of the storm nor of his aerial voyage, till awaking, he found himself lying in his bed on Ludgate hill. No doubt the good wine of mine host must have had something to do with this miraculous flight.[679] Having been for centuries a coaching inn, its name spread to the provinces, and some inn-keepers copied its sign, whence we meet with La Belle Sauvage, Macclesfield, and in one or two other places.

Balls were extremely common in former times, frequently in combination with other objects; this arose from the custom of the silk mercers in hanging out a Golden Ball. Constantine the Great adopted a golden globe (termed Hesa) as the emblem of his imperial dignity, on which, after he embraced Christianity, he placed a cross, and with this addition it continues as one of the insignia of royalty at the present day. The early silk-mercers adopted this golden globe, or ball, as their sign, because in the middle ages, all silk was brought from the East, and more particularly from Byzantium and the imperial manufactories there, whence it was called serica Constantinopolitana, pannus imperialis, Basilica, de Basilicio, ρηγικον, &c. The Golden Ball continued as a silk-mercer’s sign until the end of the last century, when it gradually fell to the Berlin wool shops, and with them it continues at the present day.

Balls of various colours were invariably the signs of quacks and fortune-tellers in the eighteenth century; the Bagford Bills are full of Red, Blue, Black, White, and Green Balls, all signs of those gentry who profess to cure all the evils flesh is heir to. How they came to choose this sign is hard to say, for we can scarcely imagine that they were intended to represent magnified pills. Moorfields[680] was the head-quarters of this trade:—

“If in Moorfields a Lady stroles
Among the Globes and Golden Balls,
[483] Where ere they hang she may be certain
Of knowing what shall be her fortune.
Her husband too, I dare to say,
But that she better knows than they.”

Compleat Vintner, London, 1720, p. 38.

The Golden Ball was the sign of J. Osborne, bookseller in Paternoster Row, circa 1740, who printed one of the earliest “London Directories;” also of Doctor Forman in Lambeth Marsh, who was deeply implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613. The Two Golden Balls at the upper end of Bow Street, Covent Garden, was a place famous for concerts, balls, and other amusements, in the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Prince Eugene once attended a concert at this house. The Two White Balls, in Marylebone Street, was the sign of a school in 1712, where Latin, French, mathematics, &c., were taught; in the same house there also lived a clergyman who taught “to write well in three days.”[681]

The balls of the silk mercers and the quacks, suspended from an iron above the door, were generally added (in name at least) to the painted sign, when the house possessed one; as, for instance, the Ball and Cap, Hatton Garden, 1668; the Ball And Raven, Spitalfields, in the seventeenth century, (both on trades tokens;) the Red Ball and Acorn, Queen Street, Cheapside, “a [quack] gentlewoman, daughter of an eminent physician in 1722;”[682] the Plough and Ball, at Nuneaton; the Salmon and Ball, several in London; the Bible and Ball, a bookseller’s in Ave Maria Lane, 1761; the Heart and Ball, a silk-mercer’s in Little Britain, 1710; the Green Man and Ball, on a trades token of Charter House Lane, where the man is represented throwing a ball; and thus innumerable other combinations with the Ball might be mentioned.

The Three Blue Balls, generally a pawnbroker’s sign, was also in old times used for taverns and other houses, while pawnbrokers used at pleasure such signs as the Blackamoor’s Head, the Black Dog and Still, &c.[683] On 26th March 1668, Pepys tells us that, coming from the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he and his party went to the Blue Balls tavern in the same locality, where they met some of their friends, including Mrs Knipp;

“And after much difficulty in getting of musick, we to dancing and then to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and then to dance and sing, and mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelve at night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as I love to do, enjoy myself. My wife extraordinary fine to-day, in her flower tabby suit, bought a year and more ago, before my mother’s death put her into mourning, and so not worn till this day, and everybody in love with it, and, indeed, she is very fine and handsome in it. I having paid the reckoning, which came to almost £4, we parted.”

What a delightful flow of animal spirits that old Secretary of the Admiralty enjoyed! Alas, for the awful dignity of his modern successors!

There is still a public-house sign of the Blue Balls, at Newport, I.W.

The Ring and Ball, Fenchurch Street, 1700, seems suggested by the game of pall mall, recently revived under the name of croquet, in which a ball was struck by a mallet through an iron ring. This sign is mentioned in an advertisement of some valuable trinkets which had been lost:—

“A gold watch in a plain case, made by Thompson, with the hours of the day only; a gold chain, pear fashion, two lengths, with a gold watch-hook of Filegrin Indian work, and hung on it a diamond locket, large diamonds with hair in the middle and death at length on a tombstone; another diamond locket, less diamonds, with a cypher in hair; a red cornelian set in gold engraved with a head; a plain locket with A. K. in golden letters; a civet-box with a white stone, and engraved on it outwards a small head and a camel [cameo?] Whosoever stops them if offered to be pawned or valued, and gives notice to Mr Hankey at the Ring and Ball in Fenchurch Street, shall have 5 guineas for the whole, or proportionable for any part.”[684] A small inducement to honesty!

The Bat and Ball is a common sign for public-houses frequented by cricketers; also the Cricketers’ Arms, the Five Cricketers, and many others. The Wrestlers obtain their name from a sport formerly in great favour in this country, and still cultivated in some parts. At Yarmouth an inn of that name is more celebrated for the jeu d’esprit of the immortal Nelson than anything else. When the fleet was riding in the Yarmouth roads, the landlord, desirous of the patronage of the blue-jackets, requested permission to call his house the Nelson Arms. His lordship gave him full power to do so, but at the same time reminded him that his arms were only in the singular number.

“Odium quod certaminibus ortum ultra metum durat,”

says Velleius Paterculus, and the truth of the assertion is exemplified in the old national antipathy betwixt this country and our neighbours across the channel, whence the Antigallican (the name assumed by a London association in the middle of the last century) could not fail to be a favourite sign. At present this feeling exists to only a very small extent in the minds of our lower orders; but formerly a Frenchman could not pass through the streets of London with impunity. Stephen Perlin, a French ecclesiastic, who wrote in 1558 a description of England, Scotland, and Ireland, says:—

“The people of this country have a mortal hatred for the French as their ancient enemies, and in common call us France chenesve [French knave], France dogue, which is to say, French rascals and French dogs. They also call us or son.”

Grosley[685] devotes a whole chapter to this subject, and tells us that the French were ridiculed on the stage, and insulted and ill-treated in the streets. Even at the present day, when the penny romances are in want of a melodramatic villain, a Frenchman is sure to have the honour of personating him.

At the beginning of this century there was a tavern of this name in Shire Lane, Temple Bar, kept by Harry Lee, of sporting notoriety, and father of Alexander Lee, the first and “original tiger,” in which capacity he was produced by the notorious Lord Barrymore. This tavern was much frequented by his lordship and other gentlemen fond of low life, pugilism, and so-called sport. The nicknames of the brothers Barrymore will give a tolerably good idea of their amiable qualities; the eldest was called Hellgate; the second Cripplegate, (he was lame,) and the third Newgate, so styled, because, though an honourable and a reverend, he had been in almost every gaol in England except Newgate. This interesting family circle was completed by a sister, called Billingsgate, on account of the forcible and flowery language she made use of. The Antigallican is still in vogue, as there are three public-houses with that sign in London, besides some in the country, and an Antigallican Arms at New Charlton, Kent.

On the 29th of September 1783, the first balloon—or air-balloon as it was then called—was let off at Versailles, in the presence of Louis XVI. and the Royal Family. A sheep was the first aeronaut, and with this freight, in a cage, the balloon rose to a height of about 200 yards, floated over a part of Paris, and came down in the Carrefour Maréchal. The novelty was at once taken hold of by caricaturists, ballad-mongers, writers of comic articles, and also by the sign-painters. One of the first balloon-signs in London was that of the Balloon Fruit-shop, in Oxford Street, near Soho Square.[686] As those primitive balloons were, in the opinion of the vulgar, filled with smoke, the tobacconists considered them as within their province, and thus it became a favourite device with this class of shops. Several of their tobacco papers are preserved in the Banks collection. One has the following legend:—“The best Virginia under the Balloon.” Another, “Smoke the best balloon.” A third, “The best air-balloon tobacco,” &c. Some of these balloon-cuts will be found in our illustrations. One of them represents a balloon ascending, and two smokers standing beneath; one says, “I wish them a good voyage;” the other, “Smoak the balloon.” As a sign, the Balloon, or Air-balloon, is still not uncommon, and may be seen at Kingston, Hants, Birdlip, Gloucester, &c.

The Black Doll, hung at the doors of rag and marine store-dealers, probably originated in these shops buying old clothes and finery, which was sold to the buccaneers and coasting-traders, who exchanged them with the natives of Africa and America, for gold, ivory, furs, &c.; just as we see at the present day, Mr Abraham, or Mr Isaacs, constantly advertising in the Times for our “Left-off clothes for Australia and the Colonies.” The popular legend, however, has spread a halo of romance around the black doll. Once upon a time, an ancient dame came to a rag-shop in Norton Folgate, with a bundle of old clothes, which she desired to sell, but having no time to spare, she left them with the man to examine, promising to call for the money next day. The rag-merchant opened the bundle and found amongst the clothes a pair of diamond ear-rings, and a black doll. Anxious to restore the diamonds, (as may be imagined,) he expected the old woman to call day after day, but in vain; at last, thinking that she might have forgotten the house, he hung up the black doll at the door, but the old woman never came, and the doll hung until it rotted away, when it was replaced by a new one. The novelty of the object attracted many customers to the house, other ragmen imitated it, and so it finally became a sign, one which is now fast dying away, and being supplanted by coarse coloured prints, with absurd rhymes.

At the castles of the nobility the weary traveller formerly found food, shelter, and good “herborow;” the lower hall was always open to the adventurer, the tramp, the minstrel, and the pilgrim; the upper hall to the nobleman, the squire, the wealthy abbot, and the fair ladies. It was natural, then, that the Castle should at an early period have been adopted as a sign of “good entertainment for man and beast.” Such a sign became historical in the Wars of the Roses; for the Duke of Somerset, who had been warned to “shun castles,” was killed by Richard Plantagenet, at an ale-house, the sign of the Castle.

“For underneath an ale-house’ paltry sign,
The Castle in Saint-Albans, Somerset
Hath made the Wizard famous in his death.”

2 Henry VI., ac. v., sc. 2.

According to Hatton,[687] in 1708, the Castle Tavern in Fleet Street had the largest sign in London; next to it came the White Hart Inn, on the east side of the Borough, in Southwark.

In the reign of George I., the Castle, near Covent Garden, was a famous eating-house, kept by John Pierce, the Soyer of his day. Here the gallant feat was performed of a young blood taking one of the shoes from the foot of a noted toast, filling it with wine, and drinking her health, after which it was consigned to the cook, who prepared from it an excellent ragout, which was eaten with great relish by the lady’s admirers.

The Castle and Falcon (probably a combination of two signs, as there is a Falcon Court close by,) is the sign of an inn in Aldersgate, which house, or one on its site, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was occupied by John Day, the most considerable printer and publisher of his time. In after years the house became a famous coaching inn, and its reputation spread to all parts of England, whence we meet, at present, with Castles and Falcons in various towns, as at Birmingham, Chester, &c. Although we incline to the opinion that the sign arose from a combination, still it is worthy of remark, that the crest of Queen Catherine Parr was a crowned falcon, perched on a castle, and of course represented as large as the castle.

The Three Old Castles occurs at Mandeville, near Somerton; the Castle and Banner at Hunny Hill, Carisbrooke, originating in the banner floating from the castle turret, when the Lord of the Manor was residing there. Castles in the Air is to be seen at Lower Quay, Fareham; the origin seems to be an allusion to the ordinary sign swinging in mid-air—a piece of humour on the part of the landlord. The Castle and Wheelbarrow, at Rouse Lench, was, doubtless, another innkeeper’s notion of suggestive humour—but he was a dull wit.

Perhaps the most patriarchal of all signs is the Chequers, which may be seen even on houses in exhumed Pompeii. On that of Hercules, for instance, at the corner of the Strada Fullonica, they are painted lozenge-wise, red, white, and yellow, and on various other houses in that ancient city, similar decorations may still be observed. Originally it is said to have indicated that draughts and backgammon were played within. Brand, in his “Popular Antiquities,” ignorant of any existence of the sign in so remote a period as that mentioned, says that it represented the coat of arms of the Earls of Warenne and Surrey, who bore checqui or and azure, and in the reign of Edward IV., possessed the privilege of licensing ale-houses. A more plausible explanation, and one which is not set aside by the existence of the sign in Pompeii, is that given by Dr Lardner:—

“During the middle ages, it was usual for merchants, accountants, and judges, who arranged matters of revenue, to appear on a covered banc, so called from an old Saxon word, meaning a seat, (hence our Bank.) Before them was placed a flat surface, divided by parallel white lines, into perpendicular columns; these again divided transversely by lines crossing the former, so as to separate each column into squares. This table was called an Exchequer, from its resemblance to a chess-board, and the calculations were made by counters placed on its several divisions, (something after the manner of the Roman abacus.) A money-changer’s office was generally indicated by a sign of the chequered board suspended. This sign afterwards came to indicate an inn or house of entertainment, probably from the circumstance of the innkeeper also following the trade of money-changer—a coincidence still very common in seaport towns.”[688]

Chaucer’s Merry Pilgrims put up in Canterbury, at the sign of the “Checker of the Hope,” (i.e. the Chequers on the Hoop.)

“They took their in and loggit them at mydmorowe, I trowe,
Atte cheker of the Hope that many a man doth knowe.”

Ludgate’s Continuation of the Canterbury Tales.

This inn (says Mr Wright, in his edition of the above work) is still pointed out in Canterbury, at the corner of High Street and Mercery Lane, and is often mentioned in the Corporation Reports, under the title of the Chequer. It is situated in the immediate vicinity of the Cathedral, and was therefore appropriate for the reception of the pilgrims.

When the inn had another sign besides the Chequers, these last were invariably painted on the door-post; an example of this may still be seen at the Swiss Cottage, Chelsea. In or near Calcots Alley, Lambeth, was formerly situated an inn or house of entertainment called the Chequers. In the year 1454 a licence was granted to its landlord, John Calcot, to have an oratory in the house and a chaplain for the use of his family and guests, as long as his house should continue orderly and respectable, and adapted to the celebration of divine service.[689] The Black Chequers in Cowgate, Norwich, is so called on account of the chequers being black and white, whilst others are red and white, blue and white, or in such other contrast as may be fancied by the publican.

The [Crooked Billet] is a sign, for which we have not been able to discover any likely origin; it may have been originally a ragged staff, or a pastoral staff, or a baton cornu—the ancient name for a battle-axe.[690] It is also the name for a part of the tankard. Frequently the sign is represented by an untrimmed stick suspended above the door, as at Wold Newton, near Bridlington, where it is accompanied by the following poetical effusion on one side of the signboard:—

“When this comical stick grew in the wood,
Our ale was fresh and very good;
Step in and taste, O do make haste,
For if you don’t ’twill surely waste.”

On the other side:—

“When you have viewed the other side,
Come read this too before you ride,
And now to end we’ll let it pass;
Step in, kind friends, and take a glass.”

Though a very rustic sign, it was also used in towns; thus it occurs among the trades tokens of Montague Close, and was the sign of Andrew Sowle, a bookseller in Holloway Lane, Shoreditch, in 1683.

The Golden Head appears to have been a favourite with artists, probably a classic or modern bust gilded. It was the sign of Hogarth’s master and of himself.

“Hogarth made one essay in sculpture. He wanted a sign to distinguish his house in Leicester Fields; and thinking none more proper than the Golden Head, he out of a mass of cork made up several thicknesses compacted together, carved a bust of Van Dyke, which he gilt and placed over his door. It is long since decayed, and was succeeded by a head in plaister, which has also perished, and is succeeded by a head of Sir Isaac Newton.”—Nichols’s Anecdotes of Hogarth.

At this sign in 1735 Hogarth published the “Harlot’s Progress,” and several other engravings. Sir Robert Strange the engraver (1721-92) lived at the Golden Head, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; and in 1762 the portrait of Cunneshote, one of the Cherokee chiefs, then on a visit to this country, was for sale at the Golden Head in Queen Square, Ormond Street; it was engraved after a painting by Francis Parsons. In 1700 it was the sign of a Monsieur Desert, “almost over against the King’s Bagnio in Long Acre, who sold guitars from 30 gs. to 30 sh. a piece.”[691] Thomas Carte the historian (1686 to 1754) lived at Mr Ker’s at the Golden Head, Newport Street, Long Acre. This sign also occurs in a most amusing advertisement:—

“An Exceeding Small Lap Spaniel.

ANY ONE THAT has (to dispose of) such a one, either dog or bitch, and of any colour or colours, that is very, very small, with a very short round snub nose, and good ears, if they will bring it to Mrs Smith, at a coachmaker’s over against the Golden Head in Great Queen Street, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they shall (if approved of) have a very good purchaser. And to prevent any further trouble, if it is not exceeding small, and has anything of a longish peaked nose, it will not at all do. And nevertheless after this advertisement is published no more, if any person should have a little creature that answers the character of the advertisement, if they will please but to remember the direction and bring it to Mrs Smith; the person is not so provided but that such a one will still at any time be hereafter purchased.”—Daily Advertiser, Nov. 1744.

The Two Heads was the sign of a dentist in Coventry Street in 1760. One head probably represented the mouth as possessing a fine set of teeth; the other doubtless showed how unfortunate is their absence. The advertisements of this man are gems in their way:—

“Ye Beauties, Beaux, ye Pleaders at the Bar,
Wives, Husbands, lovers, every one beside,
Wh’d have their heads deficient rectify’d,
The Dentist famed who by just application
[491] Excels each other operator in the Nation,
In Coventry’s known street, near Leicester Fields,
At the Two Heads full satisfaction yields.
Teeth artificial he fixes so secure,
That as our own they usefully endure;
Not merely outside show and ornament
But ev’ry property of Teeth intent;
To eat, as well as speak, and form support
The falling cheeks and stumps from further hurt.
Nor is he daunted when the whole is gone,
But by an art-peculiar to him known,
He’ll so supply you’ll think you’ve got your own.
He scales, he cleans, he draws; in Pain gives Ease,
Nor in each operation doth fail to please.
Doth the foul scurvy fierce your Gums assault?
In this he also rectifies the Fault
By a fam’d Tincture. And his Powder nam’d
A Dentifrice is also justly fam’d.
Us’d as directed ’tis excellent to serve
Both teeth and gums, cleanse, strengthen, and preserve;
Foul mouth and stinking breath can ne’er be loved.
But by his aid those evils are removed.”

London Evening Post, July 1760.

Taylor the Water poet (1632) mentions two taverns with the sign of the Mouth, the one without Bishopsgate, the other within Aldersgate. Trades tokens of the first house are extant, representing a human head with a huge mouth wide open. An inventory is still extant of the stock in trade of this house in the year 1612,[692] which is not uninteresting. From it we gather that the wines drunk at that period in taverns were white wine, Vin de Grave, (a small white Burgundy wine,) Orleans wine, Malaga, sherry, sack, Malmsey, (Malvasia, a wine from the coast of Morea, sweet and white,) Alicante, (also sweet,) claret, &c. Beer seems to have been but little asked for by those that frequented this house; for whilst some of the wines were kept in such large quantities as seven hogsheads, there were only two dozen and eight bottles of ale. The names of the rooms in the house were “the Pomegranate,” “the Portcullis,” “Three Tuns,” “Cross Keys,” “Vine,” “King’s Head,” “Crown,” “Dolphin,” and “Bell,” all of them favourite tavern signs, and (as remarked on page 280) the usual names for tavern rooms. Among the utensils may be remarked fifteen silver bowls.

The Merry Mouth is still a sign at Fifield, Chipping Norton.

The Hand was the sign of a victualler near the Marshalsea in Southwark, in 1680. Hands occur in many combinations, owing to the custom of draughtsmen and sign-painters representing a hand issuing from the clouds to perform some action or hold some object; thus a hand holding a coffee-pot was a very general coffee-house sign. The “Hand” seems to have been a bad or evil sign:—

“I’ll go back to the country of the coffee-houses, [Fleet Street,] where being arrived I’m in a wood, there are so many of them I know not which to enter; stay, let me see, where the sign is painted with a woman’s hand in it, ’tis a bawdy house, where a man’s it has another qualification; but where it has a star in the sign ’tis calculated for every lewd purpose.”[693]

Though this is a sweeping denunciation, yet we find the [Hand and Star] occurring as the sign of a very respectable bookseller, Richard Tothill in Fleet Street, within Temple Bar, who in 1553 printed the “Dialogue of Comfort,” by Sir Thomas More. Not unlikely Tothill had adopted this sign from the watermarks in paper, for one of the most ancient of them is a hand, either in the position of giving benediction, or in that position called the upright hand, with a star above it. Messrs Butterworth, the law-publishers, who now occupy Tothill’s premises, possess all the leases and documents from the time of that old printer down to the present day.

Quacks, also, were very fond of a hand in their sign, pointing to an eye or an ear, to intimate that the great doctor cured the blind or the deaf. Thus, in the Harleian collection (5931) there is a handbill of S. Ketelby, sworn physician, who lived at the Hand and Ear, in Exeter Street near the Strand, and who professed to cure deafness, lameness, &c.

“He is capable now, not only of curing those incurable by others, but even those he could not cure himself six months ago! Note: He resolves all persons deaf from external causes, whether curable or not, in two minutes, in the dark as well as at noonday, which no other pretender can do,” &c.

The Hand and Face was the sign of another quack, who lived in Water Lane, Blackfriars, near Apothecaries’ Hall, in 1735.[694]

A few combinations of the hand refer to games, as the Hand and Ball, Barking, (trades token,) 1650, which seems to be derived from some of the innumerable games at ball in which our ancestors delighted, such as handball, tennis, balloon or windball, stoolball, hurling, football, stowball, pallmall, clubball, trapball, northen-spell, cricket, bowling, &c. The Hand and Tennis, Whitcombe Street, Haymarket, is so called from the adjoining Tennis Court, erected in 1678. The Old Hand and Tankard is a public-house sign at Wheatly, near Halifax. The Hand and Tench seems to point to a connexion with the followers of Isaac Walton; it was a mug-house in Seven Dials in 1717. The mugs in those days used to be suspended above the door, or on the sign-iron, not only in this, but in all the mug-houses, for the mug might be considered as much a badge of King George’s friends, as the white cockade was the badge of the Jacobites.

The Hand and Heart was, in 1711, the very appropriate sign of a marriage insurance office in East Harding Street, Shoe Lane.[695] Two right hands holding a heart was a very old symbol of concord. Aubrey gives quotations from Tacitus, by which he derives it from the Romans, and adds:—

“I have seen some rings made for sweethearts with a heart enamelled held between two hands. See an Epigrame of G. Buchanan, on two rings that were made by Q. Elisabeth’s appointment, which, being laid one upon the other, shewed the like figure. The heart was two diamonds, w^ch joyned, made the Heart. Q. Elisabeth kept one moietie, and sent y^e other as a token of her constant friendship to Mary Q. of Scotts; but she cutt off her head for all that.”[696]

The Heart in Hand is still a common ale-house sign. A similar meaning is conveyed by the equally common Hand in Hand or Cross Hands; at Turnditch, Derby, this sign is called the Cross o’ the Hands, and a corruption of this again is the Cross in Hand, at Waldron, Sussex. The Hand in Hand was also one of the usual signs of the marriage-mongers in Fleet Street. Pennant says:—

“In walking along the streets in my youth, on the side next this prison, (the Fleet,) I have often been tempted by the question, ’Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married.’ Along this most lawless space was most frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand conjoined, with ‘Marriages performed within’ written beneath. A dirty fellow invited you in; the parson was seen walking before his shop, a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or a roll of tobacco.”

The two hands conjoined is also common in France—where it is called à la bonne Foi. In 1624 it was the sign of Pierre Billaine, bookseller and printer in the Rue St Jacques, Paris.

The Leg used formerly to be at the door of every hosier. It was also the sign of a tavern in King Street, Westminster, frequented by Pepys. Trades tokens are extant of the Leg and Star, kept by Richard Finch, in Aldersgate, in the seventeenth century. It may have represented a leg with the garter round it, and the star of that order; but more probably it was a combination of two signs.

The Old Man, Market Place, Westminster, was probably intended for Old Parr, who was celebrated in ballads as “The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Manne.” The token represents a bearded bust in profile, with a bare head. In the reign of James I. it was the name of a tavern in the Strand, otherwise called the Hercules Tavern, and in the eighteenth century there were two coffee-houses, the one called the Old Man’s, the other the Young Man’s Coffee-house.

The Fountain was a favourite sign with the Londoners before the Reformation, perhaps on account of its connexion with the martyrdom of St Paul, whose head, says the legend, on being struck off, rebounded three times, when a fountain gushed up at each spot where the sacred head had touched the ground. Hence there is a church near Rome, in the midst of the desolate Campagna, called San Paolo delle Tre Fontane, where altars are raised over each of those three fountains. There is also a fountain connected with the martyrdom of St Alban, the English protomartyr, and Saints’ Wells may be met with all over the kingdom.

During the Plague of 1665, the following advertisement used to figure constantly in the papers:—

“MONSIEUR Augier’s famous Remedies for stopping and preventing the plague having not only been recommended by several certificates from Lyons, Paris, Thoulouse, &c., but likewise experimented here by the special directions of the Lords of his Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council, and proved by Witnesses upon oath, and several Tryals, to be of singular virtue and effect, are to be had at Mr Drinkwater’s, at the Fountain, in Fleet Street, &c.”[697]

Mr Drinkwater had evidently intended a pun by selecting a fountain as his sign.

The Fountain Tavern in the Strand was famous as the meeting-place of the ultra-loyal party in 1685, who here talked over public affairs before the meeting of Parliament. Roger Lestrange, who had been recently knighted by the king, took a leading part in these consultations. But “the fate of things lies always in the dark;” in the reign of George II. this same house became a great resort for the Whigs, who sometimes used to meet here as many as two hundred at a time, making speeches and passing resolutions.

For this reason it was proposed that Master Jephson the landlord should write under his sign:—

“Hoc Fonte derivata libertas
In Patriam, Populumq: fluxit.”

“From this fam’d Fountain Freedom flow’d,
For Britain’s and the People’s good.”

In this tavern, Law, subsequently famous as the Mississippi schemer, quarrelled with the magnificent and mysterious Beau Wilson; they left the house, adjourned to Bloomsbury Square, and fought a duel, in which the Beau was killed. The Kit Cat Club, in winter, used to meet at this house. This club was first established in an obscure house in Shire Lane; it consisted of thirty-nine distinguished noblemen or gentlemen, zealously attached to the Protestant succession of the house of Hanover. Among the members were the Dukes of Richmond, Devonshire, Marlborough, Somerset, Grafton, Newcastle, and Dorset, the Earls of Sunderland and Manchester, some lords, and Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Manwaring, Stepney, Walpole, and Pulteney; Lord Mohun (implicated in the murder of Mountford the actor, and killed in a duel by the Duke of Hamilton) was also a member.

“The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berwick were entered of it, Jacob [Tonson, the secretary] said he saw they were just going to be ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said a man who would do that would cut a man’s throat.”[698]

Tonson, for fulfilling the duties of this honorary office, was presented with the portraits of all the members. After Jacob’s death, his brother Richard removed the pictures to his residence at Water Oakley, near Windsor. A list of them is to be found in Bray’s “History of Surrey,” vol. iii., p. 318. Forty-three of them have been engraved by Faber in mezzotint. The name of the club is said to have been derived from the first landlord, who was called Christopher Cat; he excelled in the making of mutton-pies, which were named after him Kit Cat, and were the standard dish of the club.

“Here did th’ assembly’s title first arise,
And Kit Cat’s wits sprung first from Kit Cat’s pies.”

Next door to the Fountain Tavern lived Charles Lillie, the celebrated snuff-seller of the Spectators and Tatlers, but “he was burnt out when he began to have a reputation in his way.”—(Tatler, xcii.)

The Fountain and Bear is a sign named in the following quaint imprint:—

“A Present for Teeming Women, or Scripture Directions for Women with childe; how to prepare for the hour of Travel. Written first for the private use of a Gentlewoman of quality in the West, and now published for the common good by John Oliver, less than the least of saints. Sold by Mary Rothwell, at the Fountain and Bear, in Cheapside, 1663.”

The Sun and the Moon have been considered as signs of Pagan origin, typifying Apollo and Diana. Whether or no this conjecture be true, would be difficult to prove, but certain it is that they rank among the oldest and most common signs, not only in England but on the Continent. Early in the sixteenth century the French poet Desiré Arthus wrote in his “Loyaulté Consciencieuse des Taverniers:”—

“Sur les chemins des grands villes et champs,
Ne trouverez de douze maisons l’une,
Qui n’ait enseigne d’un soleil, d’une lune.
Tous vendant vin, chascun à son quartier.”[699]

Like the Star, (see [p. 501],) the Sun did not enjoy a good reputation. Henry Peacham thus cautions young men from the country:—

“Let a monyed man or gentleman especially beware in the city, ab istis calidis et callidis solis filiabus as Lipsius: these overhot and crafty daughters of the Sunne, your silken and gold laced harlots, everywhere (especially in the suburbs) to be found.”[700]

The reason of this sign having been especially adopted by that description of houses, we are unable to state, unless it be the one Tom D’Urfey gives in “Collin’s Walk through London,” where, speaking of a frail and fair one, he says:—

“And like the Sun, was understood
To all mankind a common good.”

But as the sun shines alike over good and evil, so respectable as well as disreputable persons have used him for a sign; thus Wynkyn de Worde, in Fleet Street, and Anthony Kytson, another early printer, and the publisher of some works of Master John Skelton, poet laureate, carried on business under this device. Taylor the Water poet mentions three Sun taverns: being compelled one day on his “pennylesse pilgrimage,” to dine à la belle étoile, he says:—“I made virtue of necessity, and went to breakefast in the Sunne: I have fared better at three Sunnes many a time before now: in Aldersgate Street, Criplegate, and New Fish Street; but here is the oddss: at those Sunnes they will come vpon a man with a tauerne bill as sharp cutting as a taylor’s bill of items: a watchman’s bill or a watch hooke falls not halfe so heauy vpon a man.”[701] The Sun on Fish Street Hill is also named by Pepys:—

“Dec. 22, 1660.—Went to the Sun Tavern on Fish Street Hill, to a dinner of Captain Teddimans, where was my Lord Inchequin, (who seems to be a very fine person,) Sir W. Penn, Captain Cuttance, and Mr Laurence, (a fine gentleman now going to Algiers,) and other good company, where we had a very good dinner, good music, and a great deal of wine. I very merry—went to bed, my head aching all night.”

But the finest of all the Sun Taverns did not exist in Taylor’s time; it was built after the fire of 1666, behind the Exchange.

“Behind? I’ll ne’er believe it; you may as soon
Persuade me that the sun stands behind noon.”

These are the opening lines of a ballad of 1672, entitled “The Glory of the Sun Tavern, behind the Exchange.”[702] From this ballad it is evident that the tavern was splendidly furnished, and offered comforts not generally to be met with at that time.

“There every chamber has an aquaeduct,
As if the sun had fire for water truckt,
Water as’t were exhal’d up to heavens sprouds,
To cool your cups and glasses in the clouds.”

Pepys was a frequent visitor at this house, and, in fact, all the pleasure-seekers of that mad reign patronised it; the profligate Duke of Buckingham, in particular, was a constant customer. Simon Wadloe, the landlord, had made his fortune at the Devil in St Dunstan’s, whereupon he went to live in the country, and spent his money in a couple of years. He then “choused” Nick Colbourn out of the Sun, and Nick, who had amassed a handsome competence in the house, was easily persuaded to retire, and left it “to live like a prince in the country,” says Pepys. During the reign of Charles II., the house appears to have had an excellent custom, and was from morning till night full of the best company. The Sun Tavern, in Clare Street, was one of the haunts of the witty Joe Miller, and is often given as the locality of his jokes:—

“Joe Miller, sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, Clare Street, a fish woman and her maid passing by, the woman cried: ‘Buy my soals, buy my maids!’ ‘Ah! you wicked old creature,’ cry’d honest Joe, ‘what, are you not content to sell your own soul, but you must sell your maid’s too?’”

A stereotype joke of the publican connected with the Sun is the motto, “the best liquor [generally beer] under the Sun,” which, of course, must be believed, for Solem quis dicere falsum audeat? Sometimes the sign is called the Sun in Splendour, as at Nottinghill, the “splendour” having reference simply to the golden beams or rays usually drawn by the painter. There is still a carved stone sign of the Sun, now gilt, dating from the seventeenth century, walled in the front of a house in the Poultry.

The Golden Sun was the sign of Ulrich Gering, in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, printer of the first Bible in France, in 1475. At the end of the volume the Bible thus addresses the reader:—

“Jam tribus undecimus lustris Francos Ludovicus
Rexerat; Ulricus, Martinus, itemque Michael
Orti Teutonia, hanc mihi composuere figuram
Parisii arte sua; me correctam vigilanter
Venalem in vico Jacobi Sol Aureus offert.”[703]

Their successor, Berthold Rumbold, on removing the business to another house in the same street, opposite the Rue Fromentel, kept the same sign, and there it continued as late as 1689, having constantly been in the hands of booksellers. Not improbably the first printers, both in England and abroad, adopted the sign of the Sun, as an emblem of the new era opened to the world by the invention of printing, which, when they reflected on their discovery, they saw would, at no distant period, spread an intellectual light over the world, as brilliant and as vivifying as that of the radiant sun.[704]

The sign of the Sun occurs in endless combinations, often capricious, without any other reason than a whim, and an alliteration, as the Sun and Sawyers; the Sun and Sword; the Sun and Sportsman; or quartered with other signs, as the Sun and Anchor; Dial; Falcon; Last; Horseshoe, &c. All these, and innumerable others of the same sort, occur among the London public-house signs of the present day. The Sun and Hare is a stone carved sign, walled up in the façade of a house in the High Street, Southwark. Were it not for the initials H. N. A., it might be taken for a rebus on the name Harrison; as it is, it may be a jocular corruption of the Sun and Hart, the badge of Richard II. (See [p. 109].)

The Rising Sun is nearly as common as the sun in his meridian; perhaps on account of the favourable omen it presents for a man commencing business. In 1726 it was the sign of a noted tavern in Islington, where some merry doings went on occasionally:—

“ON Tuesday next, being Shrove Tuesday, will be a fine hog barbygu’d whole at the house of Peter Brett, at the Rising Sun, in Islington Road, with other diversions. It is the house where the ox was roasted whole at Christmas last.”—Mist’s Journal, February 9, 1726.

To barbecue a hog, was a West Indian term for roasting a whole pig, stuffed with spice, and basted with Madeira wine.

The Rising Sun and Seven Stars was the very appropriate sign, at which was printed a work on “Astrological Optics;” but better still, it was printed for R. Moon, whose shop was “in Paul’s Churchyarde, in the New Building, between the two North Doors. 1655.” An old jest-book says that an Irishman, seeing the sign of the Rising Sun was kept by A(nthony) Moon, accused the said Moon of having made a bull, for saying that the Sun was kept by the Moon.

One of the learned questions propounded by Hudibras to that cunning man, Sidrophel, the Rosicrucian, was:—

“Tell me but what’s the natural cause
Why on a sign no painter draws
The full moon ever, but the half.”—Hudibras, part iii., c. 3.

This might be true in Butler’s time, but is no longer so; at Leicester, for instance, there are two signs of the Full Moon, and it occurs in many other places. The Crescent, or Half-Moon, was the emblem of the temporal power, as the Sun was the distinction of the spiritual.

Ben Jonson once desiring a glass of sack, went to the Half-Moon Tavern, in Aldersgate Street, but found it closed, so he adjourned to the Sun Tavern, in Long Lane, and wrote this epigram:—

“Since the Half Moon is so unkind,
To make me go about,
The Sun my money now shall have,
And the Moon shall go without.”

The Half-Moon, Upper Holloway, was famous in the last century for excellent cheesecakes, which were hawked about the streets of London, by a man on horseback, and formed one of the London cries. This circumstance is noticed in a poem in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1743, entitled “A Journey to Nottingham.” In April 1747, the following advertisement appeared in the same magazine:—

“HALF-MOON Tavern, Cheapside, April 13. His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland having restored peace to Britain, by the ever memorable Battle of Culloden, fought on the 16th of April 1745, the choice spirits have agreed to celebrate that day annually by A Grand Jubilee in the Moon, of which the Stars are hereby acquainted and summoned to shine with their brightest Lustre by 6 o’clock on Thursday next in the Evening.”

The Crescent and Anchor is a sign at Norton-in-Hales, near Market Drayton; the Half-Moon and Seven Stars at Aston Clinton, near Tring; and the Sun, Moon, and Seven Stars at Blisworth, in Northampton. These Seven Stars have always been great favourites; they seem to be the same pleiad which is used as a Masonic emblem—a circle of six stars, with one in the centre; but to tell to ears profane, what this emblem means, would be disclosing the sacred arcana. The Seven Stars was the sign of Richard Moone, before he was so ambitious as to place the whole firmament on his sign: in 1653 he printed—

“The first addresses to his Excellence the Lord General, &c., by John Spittlehouse, a late Member of the Army, and a servant to the Saints of the Most High God, &c. London, printed by J. C., for himself and Richard Moon, at the Seven Stars, in Paul’s Churchyard, near the great North Door. 1653.”

As a change upon the Seven Stars, a publican at Counterslip, Bristol, has put up the Fourteen Stars.

We have seen ([p. 492]) that the sign of the Star was “calculated for every lewd purpose;” a great change certainly from mediæval times, when a star was the emblem of the Holy Virgin, who was thus styled Maris Stella (star of the sea)—the signification of the name Miriam in Hebrew—or Stella Jacobi, (star of Jacob,) Stella Matutina, (morning star,) Stella non erratica, (fixed star, unerring star,) &c.; a star being always painted either on her right shoulder, or on her veil, as may be readily observed in the works of the early Italian masters in our National Gallery. A star of sixteen rays is the crest of the Innholders’ Company. Oliver Cromwell used to meet some of his party at the Star in Coleman Street, as was deposed by one of the witnesses in the trial of Hugh Peters:—

“Gunter. My Lord, I was servant at the Star in Coleman Street, with one Hildesley. That house was a house where Oliver Cromwell and several of that party did use to meet in consultation.”

John Bunyan died in 1682 at the Star, on Snowhill, in the house of his friend, Mr Strudwick, a grocer.

The Pole Star is now a not uncommon sign. To make this device more intelligible, tavern-keepers ought to attach to it the motto it bore in the middle ages, when it was a symbol of the Church: “qui me non aspicit errat.” (He who does not look at me goes astray.) The Star and Crown was the sign of a haberdasher in Princes Street, Coventry Street, 1785, who, among other things, sold “dress and undress hoops.”

The signs of the zodiac appear occasionally to have been adopted by conjurors and astrologers. Ned Ward describes them as figuring, in his time, on the door of “a star-peeper,” in Prescot Street.[705]

The Two Twins, or Naked Boys, was the sign of a quack in Moorfields, “near the steps going out of the Lower Field into the Middle Field. There is a door above the steps, and another below the steps, with the Twins, and the name Langham on both doors;—keep the bill to prevent mistaking the house or being sent to a wrong place.”[706] To such lengthy explanations our ancestors were compelled to resort in the absence of numbers on their houses. Either this quack had adopted the Two Twins on account of his obstetrical pretensions, or he was an astrologer as well as a quack, for Moorfields was the head-quarters of

“Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers,
Diviners, and interpreters of dreams.”

In the last case he might have chosen it as being the ascendant of the city of London, which “stands in a benign and temperate climate, in the latitude of 52° and longitude of 19° 15´,—having (as artists reckon) the celestial twins, the house of Mercury, patron of merchandise and ingenious arts, for her ascendant.”[707]

The Rainbow, in Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane, is the oldest coffee-house in London:—

“I find it recorded that one James Farr, a barber, who kept the coffee-house, which is now the Rainbow, by the Inner Temple gate, (one of the first in England,) was, in the year 1657, presented by the inquest of St Dunstan’s in the West, for making and selling a sort of liquor called Coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighboorhood, &c., and who would have thought London would ever have had near three thousand such nuisances, and that coffee would have been (as now) so much drank by the best of quality and physicians.”[708]

The presentation here alluded to is still preserved among the records of St Sepulchre’s Church. It says:—

“We present James Farr, Barber, for making and selling a drink called coffee, whereby, in making the same, he annoyeth his neighboors by evill smells, and for keeping of fire the most part night and day, whereby his chimney and chamber has been set on fire, to the great danger and affreightment of his neighboors.”

This danger of fire was so much the greater, as a bookseller, Samuel Speedal, had his shop in the same house. In 1682, the Phœnix Fire Office, one of the first in this country, was established at this place.

The Thunder Storm is the sign of a public-house at Framwellgate Moor, Durham; and the Hailstone, at Knowle, Staffordshire; both these houses may have taken their names from a severe storm, which visited the neighbourhood at or about the time of their opening, just as the Haylift, at Wansforth, Northampton, is said to owe its origin to the fact of a man floating a long way down the river on a haycock, during an inundation, and landing near that place.

As for the Wild Sea, the sign of John Horton, over against Parson’s Brewhouse, Croydon,[709] in 1718, no more plausible explanation occurs to us than that John Horton might have been a sailor in his younger days.

The [Hole-in-the-Wall] is believed to have originated from the hole made in the wall of the debtors’ or other prison, through which the poor prisoners received the money, broken meat, or other donations of the charitably inclined. The old sign of the Hole-in-the-Wall (see our [illustrations]) shows such an opening in a square piece of brickwork. Generally, it is believed to refer to some snug corner, perhaps near the town walls; but at the old public-house in Chancery Lane the legend is as we have given it. Hard by, in Cursitor Street, prisoners for debt found a temporary lodging up to a very recent date. Trades tokens are extant of this house, which, about 1820, was kept by Jack Randall, alias Nonpareil, a famous member of the P.R.; on one occasion some verses were made containing the following lines:—

“Then blame me not, swells, kids, or lads of the fancy,
For opening a lush crib in Chancery Lane,
An appropriate spot ’tis, you doubtless all can see,
Since heads I’ve oft placed there, and let out again.”

The poet, Thomas Moore, in the fast days when George IV. was king, and when pugilism and gin drinking were fashionable accomplishments, used to visit Mr Randall’s parlour. It was here that he picked up his materials for those rhyming satires on the politics and general topics of his time:—“Tom Crib’s Memorials to Congress, by one of the Fancy;” “Randall’s Diary of Proceedings at the House of Call for Genius;” “A Few Selections from Jack Randall’s Scrap Book, with Poems on the late Fight for the Championship.”

At the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos Street, Claude Duval the highwayman was taken prisoner; whilst the Hole-in-the-Wall in Baldwin’s Gardens was the citadel in which Tom Brown used to intrench himself from duns and bailiffs, with Henry Purcell the musician, as his companion in revelry and merriment. Tom Brown’s introductory verses, prefixed to Playford’s “Musical Companion,” 1698, are dated “from Mr Stewart’s at the Hole-in-the-Wall, in Baldwin’s Gardens.” Another Hole-in-the-Wall still exists in Kirby Street, Hatton Garden. It is a curious fact that the refreshment-room, or liquor-bar, attached to the House of Representatives at Washington, is known to most thirsty American politicians as The Hole-in-the-Wall.

Anciently, instead of being a painted board, the object of the sign was carved and hung within a hoop, hence (as we had occasion to remark on a [former page]) nearly all the ancient signs are called the “—— ON THE HOOP.” In the Clause Roll, 43 Edward III., we find the George on the Hoop; 26 Henry VI., the Hart on the Hoop; 30 Henry VI., the Swan, the Cock, and the Hen on the Hoop. Besides these we find mentioned the Crown on the Hoop, the Bunch of Grapes on the Hoop, the Mitre on the Hoop, the Angel on the Hoop, the Falcon on the Hoop, &c. In 1795, two of these signs were still extant, for a periodical of the time says:—“A sign of this nature is still preserved in Newport Street, and is a carved representation of a Bunch of Grapes within a Hoop. The Cock on the Hoop may be seen also in Holborn, painted on a board, to which, perhaps, it was transferred on the removal of the sign-posts.”[710] These hoops seem to have originated in the highly ornamented bush or crown, which latterly was made of hoops, covered with evergreens. In France, the Hoop (le Cerceau) was used as a sign. Jacques Androuet, a celebrated architect, and author of a work entitled “Les plus excellents Batiments de France,” lived at the sign of the Hoop, whence he adopted the surnames of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. In 1570 he published a book on metal-work, containing several designs for ornamental iron frames and posts to suspend signboards from. That names in this country also were occasionally derived from signboards, has been stated in our introduction. Of this practice, Sir Peter Lely, the portrait painter, was an illustrious example. He belonged to a Dutch family named Van der Vaas. His grandfather was a perfumer, and lived at the sign of the Lily, (perhaps a vase of lilies, with a pun on his name.) When his son entered the English army he discarded his Dutch name, and from the paternal sign, adopted the more euphonious one of Lilly or Lely; and this name he and his children afterwards retained. The famous Rothschild family is another case in point. From the Red Shield (the roth schild) above the door of an honest old Hebrew, in the Juden-gasse, (or Jews’ Alley,) at Frankfort, has been derived the name of the richest family in the world.

The Hoop and Bunch of Grapes was the sign of a public-house, in St Albans Street, (now part of Waterloo Place,) kept at the beginning of the present century, by the famous Matthew Skeggs, who obtained his renown from playing, in the character of Signor Bumbasto, a concerto on a broomstick, at the Haymarket Theatre, adjoining. His portrait was painted by King, a friend of Hogarth, engraved by Houston, and published by Skeggs himself. The Hoop and Griffin was a coffee-house in Leadenhall Street, circa 1700;[711] and the Hoop and Toy is a public-house in Thurloe Place, Brompton. Here the original meaning of the hoop seems entirely lost, as its combination with the toy seems to allude to the hoop trundled by children.

The Toy at Hampton used to be a favourite resort with the Londoners till 1857, when it was pulled down to make room for private houses. Trades tokens of this house of the seventeenth century are extant. “In the survey of 1653 (in the Augmentation office) mention is made of a piece of pasture ground near the river, called the Toying place, the site, probably, of a well-known inn near the bridge now called the Toy.”[712]

Cardmakers usually took a card for their sign, as the Queen of Hearts and King’s Arms, which was the sign of a cardmaker in Jermyn Street in 1803.[713] One of the Bagford Bills has: “At the Old Knave of Clubs at the Bridgefoot, in Southwark, liveth Edward Butling, who maketh and selleth all sorts of hangings for rooms,” &c.[714] Possibly he sold also playing-cards. These knaves, however, seem at one time to have been a badge, for at the creation of seventeen knights of the Bath by Richard III., the Duke of Buckingham was “richely appareled, and his horse trapped in blue velvet embroudered with the knaves of cartes burnyng of golde, which trapper was borne by foteman from the grounde.”[715] The Queen of Trumps is a public-house sign at West Walton, near Wisbeach.

The Heart and Trumpet is a somewhat curious sign at Pentre-wern near Oswestry, perhaps a corruption of Hearts and Trumps. Other games have produced the sign of the Golden Quoit, in Whitehaven, and the Corner Pin, which is so common that it figures in a Seven Dials ballad, a parody on the Low-back Car:—

“When first I saw Miss Bailey,
‘Twas on a Saturday,
At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin,
And smoking a yard of clay,” &c.

All bowlers know that the corner pins are the most difficult to strike, and that from their fall with the rest depends whether the throw counts double or not.

Formerly the merriest day of the year in “Merry England” was certainly the first of May, but of its many festivities scarcely a trace is left except the dance of the sweeps and the sign of the Maypole. Stubbe, with puritanical horror, thus describes the Maypole:—

“They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen, every one having a sweet nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie pole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is couered all ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from the toppe to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours with two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flagges streaming on the toppe they strawe the ground aboute, binde green boughes aboute it, sett up sommer houses, Bowers, and Arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their Idolles, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself.”[716]

The same author also reports that it was customary for lads and lasses to go the night before May-day to the hills and woodlands to gather branches and flowers to deck the houses with on that day, and that they used to “spende all the night in pastymes” to the great detriment of female virtue; Featherstone, another sulky puritan, scandalised the fair sex by the assertion that “of tenne maydens which went to fetch May, nine of them came home with childe.”[717] The consequence of all this grumbling was that the Maypole was abolished in the godly times of the Commonwealth, and as a matter of course, revived at the Restoration—but its prestige was gone. At present it is only commemorated by hundreds of signboards. There is one on the outskirts of Hainault Forest, immortalised in “Barnaby Rudge,” which has all the regulations of the house laid down in rhyme; part of these have been quoted on [p. 449]. There is on the stable door:—

“Whosoever smokes tobacco here
Shall forfeit sixpence to spend in beer.
Your pipes lay by, when you come here,
Or fire to me may prove severe.”

An old, and not uncommon sign, is the Wheel of Fortune, which may be seen at Alpington, Norwich, and in other places. This wheel is sometimes represented with four kings, one on each quadrant. In the middle ages it was a very common symbol, as well in England as on the continent, being frequently painted in churches; there is one still to be seen among the half obliterated frescoes of Catfield church in Norfolk. Other instances occur in the church of St Etienne, at Beauvais; in St Martin, at Basle; in San Zeno, at Verona; and in the beautiful pavement of the Duomo, at Sienna. Not only in those countries, but all over Europe, this device occurs as a sign. Peacham thus accounts for the wheel being chosen as the emblem of Fortune:—

“For like ourselves, the spoke that was on high
Is to the bottom in a moment cast,
As fast the lowest riseth by and by,
All human things thus find a change at last.”

Peacham’s Minerva Brittana, p. 76.

The Monster, at one period an inn of some resort in Willow Walk, Chelsea, now a starting-point for the Pimlico omnibuses, is perhaps a corruption of the Monastery. Robert de Heyle in 1368 leased the whole of the manor of Chelsea to the abbot and convent of Westminster for the term of his own life, for which they were to allow him a certain house within the convent for his residence, to pay him the sum of £20 per annum, to provide him every day two white loaves, two flagons of convent ale, and once a year a robe of esquire’s silk. At this period, or shortly after, the sign of the Monastery may have been set up, to be handed down from generation to generation, until the meaning and proper pronunciation were forgotten, and it became “the Monster.” In still older times, viz., during the Norman rule, Chelsea appears to have been one of the manors of Westminster, so that the connexion between the village of Chelsea and the monastery of Westminster had been of very old standing. This tavern, we believe, is the only one with such a sign. Ned Ward mentions a Green Monster tavern in Prescott Street, but that may have been one of Ned’s jokes on the very common Green Dragon. The tavern in question was a very unlucky house, and not less than three or four landlords had failed in it, which was not to be wondered at, for the street appears at that time to have been one of the soberest in London. According to Ned, one “would walk by forty or fifty houses and not an alehouse.”[718]

The Million Gardens, Strutton Ground, Westminster, was the singular name of the house where tickets might be obtained for a lottery of plate in 1718.[719] The name in reality refers to the “Melon Gardens,” which fruit was pronounced after the signboard orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Pepys, on the 3d of August 1660, informs us that he dined at an ordinary called the Quaker, a somewhat unusual godfather for a sinful tavern. This house was situated in the Great Sanctuary, Westminster, and was only pulled down in the beginning of the present century to make way for a market-place, which in its turn has made room for a new sessions-house. Tull, the last landlord, opened a new public-house in Thieving Lane, and adorned the doorway of this house with twisted pillars decorated with vine-leaves, brought from the old Quaker tavern. J. T. Smith presents us with a view of this house in the additional plates to his “Antiquities of Westminster.”

The Pilgrim has been mentioned incidentally (on [p. 434]) as a sign at Coventry. There is another public-house of this name in Kew Lane. In 1833 a figure of a pilgrim was placed upon the roof of this house, which by concealed machinery moved to and fro like the Wandering Jew, doomed to wander up and down until the end of the world; it was, however, of contemptible workmanship, and very soon got out of order.

The Gipsy’s Tent occurs at Hagley, Stourbridge; the Gipsy Queen at Highbury and other places; and the Queen of the Gipsies was the sign of the so-called gipsy house near Norwood. The queen alluded to was Margaret Finch, who died at the great age of 109 years; Norwood was her residence during the last years of her life, and there she told fortunes to the credulous. She was buried October 24, 1760, in a deep square box, as from her constant habit of sitting with her chin resting on her knees, her muscles had become so contracted that she could not at last alter her position. This woman, when a girl of seventeen, may have been one of the dusky gang pretty Mrs Pepys and her companions went to consult, August 11, 1668, which her lord duly chronicled in the evening: “This afternoon my wife and Mercer and Deb went with Pelling to see the gypsies at Lambeth, and have their fortunes told, but what they did I did not enquire.” A granddaughter of Margaret Finch, also a so-styled queen, was living in an adjoining cottage in the year 1800.

The True Lover’s Knot is a sign at Uxbridge, the only example of it we have met with. In the North of England and in Scotland it is still the custom with betrothed lovers of the lower class to present each other with a curious kind of knot called “a true lover’s knot.” Brand says the word is not derived from true love, but from trulofa, Danish for fidem do. It was formerly a common present between lovers of all stations of life in England.

The Folly is not unusual; it is generally applied to a very ambitious, extravagantly furnished, or highly ornamented house; in such a sense it was already used in Queen Elizabeth’s reign:—

“Kirby Castle and Fisher’s Folly
Spinola’s Pleasure and Megse’s Glory.”

One of the most notorious “Follies” was an edifice of timber divided into sundry rooms, with a platform and balustrade on the top, which in the reign of Charles II. floated in the Thames above London Bridge. At first it was very well frequented, and the beauty and fashion of the period (Pepys amongst them, April 13, 1668,) used to go there on summer evenings, partake of refreshments on the platform, and enjoy the breeze on the river (then guiltless of the modern sewers and filth.). On one occasion Queen Mary honoured it with a visit, accompanied by some of her courtiers. Gradually, however, it took to evil courses; loose and disorderly females were admitted, and unrestrained drinking and dancing soon gave it an unenviable notoriety. In this condition it was visited by Tom Brown, who describes it with his usual coarse vigour: “This whimsical piece of Architecture was designed as a musical Summer-house for the entertainment of quality where they might meet and ogle one another; but the Ladies of the Town finding it as convenient a rendez-vous, overstock’d the place with such an inundation of harlotry, that dashed the female quality out of countenance, and made them seek some more retired conveniency.” He next describes the company in very glowing colours, but found it such a confused scene of folly, madness, and debauchery, that he—no very bashful person—was compelled to return to his boat “without drinking!”[720] At length the place became so scandalous that it had to be closed; it went to decay, and at last was sold for firewood.

The sign of the Blue-Coat Boy, usually chosen by toy-shops, printsellers, and colourmen, was either in compliment to the scholars of King Edward VI.’s foundation, Christ’s Hospital,—commonly called “the Blue Coat School,” from the blue tunic of the lads, or was named after the Bridewell Boys, i.e., foundlings and deserted children, who wore a blue coat and trousers, with a white hat. Until the end of the last century they used to attend at all the fires with the Bridewell engine, but on the whole they were an unruly mischievous set. There was a Blue Coat coffee-house in Sweeting’s Alley, near the Exchange, in 1711.[721] At present it is generally called the Blue Boy, as at Old Swinford, Stourbridge; Minchinhampton, Gloucester, and in a few other places. In Islington there is still such a sign, and in Aldersgate Street, if we remember rightly, there is an ironmonger with such a decoration.

A very strange sign occurs amongst the Banks Bills. On a shop-bill dated 1698, is the following inscription: “At the signe of the Tare lives one Mr Grenier who makes all sorts of good rasors, lancets, sisers, very well, and all other sorts of instruments for chirugeons.” The engraving represents two angels holding a tear by a string, surrounded by a quantity of surgical instruments, after the true meat-axe type, and vicious-looking enough to “draw tears of molten brass from the eyes of Pluto himself.”

The Weary Traveller occurs at Sutton Road, Kidderminster; the Traveller’s Rest in a great many places, sometimes accompanied by the phrase Rest and be Thankful, which last advice serves as a sign to two public-houses at Whitehaven. Finally the Finish was the sign of a notorious night-house in Covent Garden, kept at the beginning of the present century by a Mrs Butler. Here, according to “Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress,” the gentlemen of the road used to divide their spoil in the gray dawn of the morning, when it was time for the night-birds to fly to their roost. Crib (in reality Thomas Moore the poet, see [p. 503]) says that the congress is:—

“Some place that’s like the Finish, lads,
Where all your high pedestrian pads
That have been up and out all night,
Running their rigs amongst the rattlers,[722]
At morning meet, and, honour bright,
Agree to share the blunt and tatlers.”

This house was originally named the Queen’s Head, but was nicknamed the Finish from its being the place where the fast men of the day generally “finished off.” Ned Shuter was at one time a drawer in this house, but, inspired by the neighbourhood of the theatres, he left the pots and bottles and took to the stage. Down to a recent date it was a gloomy disreputable coffee-house, kept by one Smith, and here, in interdicted hours, beer and spirits could be obtained when all the public-houses were closed. It was pulled down very recently. These last four signs have in a measure been the expression of the authors’ minds: who, weary of their long task, and fearful of having fatigued their readers, will now betake themselves to rest, and be thankful if they have given a few hours’ entertainment upon the subject of signboards. They now take their leave in the words of an old ballad:—

“Then faire fall all good tokens,
And well fare a good heart,
For by all signs and tokens
’Tis time for to depart.”

---

[671] Burnet’s Own Times, vol. ii., p. 426, ed. 1823.

[672] Harl. MSS., 5931. Bagford Bills.

[673] See Craftsman, Sept. 30, 1738.

[674] Archæologia, xviii., p. 198.

[675] “To all true Christian people to whom this present writing shall come: John Frenssh, eldest son of John Frenssh, gentleman, late citizen and goldsmith of London, sends greeting in our Lord. Know ye that I have given, granted, and by this my present writing confirmed to Joan Frenssh, widow, my mother, all that tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, called Savage’s Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in the parish of St Bride, in Fleet Street, London, to have and to hold the aforesaid tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, to the said Joan, for the term of her life, without impeachment of waste. In witness whereof,” &c. (here follow the names of six witnesses.) Dated at London the 5th day of February, in the thirty-first year of the reign of King Henry VI. after the conquest.

[676] Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent. 1576.

[677] See [Bosom’s or Blossoms Inn], under “Legendary and Biblical Signs,” [p. 297].

[678] Speciall Passages from Westminster, London, York, &c., June 26-July 5, 1642.

[679] Pamphlet in the Harleian Miscellany. Index, vol. x. This dreadful storm is said to have caused more damage than the fire of 1666. Bishop Kedder and his wife were killed in it by the fall of a house in which they were sleeping. Admiral Beaumont was shipwrecked and lost with nearly the whole of his ship’s company. The Eddystone lighthouse was blown down and swallowed by the sea, with its architect, Mr Henry Winstanley. A sermon is still yearly preached at Little Wild Street Baptist Chapel, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in memory of this fearful storm, a Mr John Taylor, bookseller of Paternoster Row, having left £40 to it as a thank-offering for his miraculous preservation at the time of the occurrence.

[680] After having been for a long time one of the most secure strongholds of the devil, a godly garrison was sent into Moorfields at the end of the last century. The Gazetteer, 10th September 1790, has the following paragraph:—“So numerous are become the Gospel shops in the vicinity of Moorfields, that like Monmouth Street, the proprietors employ “pluckers in” on Sundays to inveigle customers. The cant phrase at the door is, “Good sound doctrine here in perfection.””

[681] Postboy, Jan. 1, 1711-12.

[682] Advertisements in the Weekly Journal for that year.

[683] Both named in the Daily Courant for 1718.

[684] London Gazette, Nov. 18-21, 1700.

[685] Tour to London, vol i., p. 84. “A perfectly fair judge, and writing in the true spirit of a philosopher,” says his translator. Grosley remarks that the foreigners would be in the wrong to complain of the rude insults of the lower classes, since even “the better sort of Londoners” liberally show their hatred to the French whenever they can find an opportunity.

[686] Banks Bills, dated 1787.

[687] “New View of London.” 1708, p. 9.

[688] Dr Lardner’s Arithmetic, p. 44.

[689] Allen’s History of Lambeth.

[690] Siege of Carlaeverock, c. 11:—

“— on li respont
De grosses pierres et cornues.”

[691] London Gazette, April 29-May 2, 1700.

[692] Printed in Nichols’s Illustrations of Manners and Expenses in Ancient Times, 1797.

[693] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, p. 71.

[694] Country Journal or Craftsman, Feb. 1, 1734-5.

[695] Postman, 1711.

[696] Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme. Lansdowne MSS., No. 231.

[697] The Intelligencer, Sept. 4, 1665.

[698] Spence’s Anecdotes, ed. by Singer, p. 337.

[699] “On the roads near large towns and in the country, you will not find one house in twelve but it does exhibit the sign of the Sun or the Moon. They all sell wine, each of them to his own neighbourhood.”

[700] Henry Peacham’s Art of Living in London, 1642.

[701] Taylor’s Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630.

[702] Luttrell Ballads, ii., fol. 92.

[703] “Already had Louis XI. reigned fifteen years over the French when Ulrich and Martin [Crantz] and Michel [Friburger,] all natives of Germany, produced me in this shape at Paris by their art; carefully corrected, I am now offered for sale in the Rue St Jacques, at the Golden Sun.”

[704] This idea is in a measure set forth in some lines on the titlepage of “Gasparini Pergamensis Epistolarium opus per Joannem Lapidarium Sorbonensis Scholæ Priorem multis vigiliis ex corrupto integrum affectum ingeniosa arte impressoria in luce redactum,” 1470, beginning:—

“Ut sol lumen sic doctrinam fundis in Orbem.”

[705] London Spy, part xiii., p. 319, 1706.

[706] Handbill in Harleian Collection, p. 5964.

[707] A Compleat Description of London, Harl. MSS., 5953, vol. i.

[708] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 30.

[709] Weekly Journal, Sept. 27, 1718.

[710] Looker-On, Jan. 1795.

[711] London Gazette, Dec. 9-12, 1700.

[712] Lyson’s Historical Account of Parishes in Middlesex, p. 75.

[713] Banks Bills.

[714] Harleian MSS., 5962.

[715] Grafton’s prose continuation of John Harding’s Chronicle, p. 189.

[716] Stubbe’s Anatomy of Abuses, London, 1585, p. 94.

[717] Featherstone’s Dialogue against Light and Lascivious Dancing.

[718] London Spy, part xiii., p. 320, 1706.

[719] Weekly Journal, Jan. 18, 1718.

[720] Tom Brown’s Walk round London.

[721] Daily Courant, Jan. 27, 1711.

[722] Carriages.

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APPENDIX.
BONNELL THORNTON’S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION.

On the evening of Tuesday, 23d of March 1762, the ladies and gentlemen of London were informed at their tea-tables, by means of the St James’s Chronicle, of the following fact:—

“Proscript.”

INTELLIGENCE EXTRAORDINARY.

“Strand. The Society of Manufactures, Art, and Commerce, are preparing for the annual Exhibition of Polite Arts, hoping by Degrees to render this Nation as eminent in Taste as War; and that, by bestowing Præmiums, and encouraging a generous Emulation, among the Artists, the Productions of Painting, Sculpture, &c., may no longer be considered as Exotics, but naturally flourish in the Soil of Great Britain.”

Immediately under this notice was the following:—

“Grand Exhibition. The Society of Sign-painters are also preparing a most magnificent Collection of Portraits, Landscapes, Fancy Pieces, Flower Pieces, History Pieces, Night Pieces, Sea Pieces, Sculpture Pieces, &c., &c., designed by the ablest Masters, and executed by the best Hands in these kingdoms. The Virtuosi will have a new Opportunity of displaying their Taste on this Occasion, by discovering the different Stile of the several Masters employed, and pointing out by what Hand each Piece is drawn. A remarkable Cognoscente who has attended at the Society’s great Room, with his Glass, for several Mornings, has already piqued himself on discovering the famous Painter of the Rising Sun, a modern Claude Lorraine, in an elegant Night-piece of the Man-in-the-Moon. He is also convinced that no other than the famous Artists who drew the Red Lion at Brentford, can be equal to the bold figures in the London ‘Prentice, and that the exquisite Colouring in the Piece called Pyramus and Thisbe must be by the same hand as the Hole-in-the-Wall.”

Shortly after this advertisement, the Exhibition was opened. It was held in Bonnell Thornton’s chambers in Bow Street: the hours were from nine till four, admission one shilling. The tickets had a catalogue prefixed to them. The names of the signboard-painters given in this catalogue were those of the journeymen printers in Mr Baldwin’s office, where it was printed. Hagarty alone was a transparent variation on the name of Hogarth, who had largely contributed to the fun and humour of the Exhibition.

PLATE XIX.
THREE NUNS. (Banks’s Collection, 1814.)	ABEL DRUGGER. (Banks’s Collection, 1780.)
WELSH TROOPER. (From an old print, 1750.)
ELEPHANT AND CASTLE. (Belle Sauvage Yard, circa 1668.)	BLACK PRINCE. (Banks’s Collection, 1790.)

The opening of the saloons was the signal for a perfect storm among the newspapers. The artists and their friends were terribly ruffled, and persisted in seeing in it a persifflage of their exhibition just then opened in the Strand. To this animosity, however, we owe all the particulars of the signs exhibited. Catalogues, criticisms, and reviews of the Exhibition were daily brought before the public, giving full details. The most important of them we present to our readers:—

By Permission.

A CATALOGUE of the Original Paintings, Busts, Carved Figures, &c., &c., &c., Now exhibiting by the Society of Sign-Painters, at the Large Rooms, the Upper End of Bow Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite the Play-House Passage.

In the Large Passage Room.

[N.B.—That the Merit of the Modern Masters may be fairly examined into, it has been thought proper to place some admired Works of the most eminent Old Masters in this Room, and along the Passage thro’ the Yard.]

No.

1. [Over the Door.] A Coach and Four, Supposed to be by Stanhope.
2. Windsor, or any other Castle. By Mason. The Centinel and Great Gun by another Hand.
3. Hand and Lock of Hair. Hand unknown.
4. A Pandour, or Indian Prince, uncertain which. Stanhope’s undoubtedly.
5. A Ship and Castle. Thomas Knife written under. But it is not known whether this is the name of the Artist or the Publican.
6. A Hen and Chickens. By Lodge.
7. Three Nuns. The Drapery copied from a Bas-Relief at Rome. By Soames.
8. An original Whole-Length of Guy of Warwick. By the same.
9. A Major Wig. By Harrison. [N.B.—The Tails appear to have been added.]
10. A Barge, in Still-Life. By Van der Trout. [He cannot properly be called an English artist; not being sufficiently encouraged in his own Country, he left Holland with William the Third, and was the first artist who settled in Harp Alley.[723]]
11. The Hercules Pillars. The Architecture by Young Soames. The Figure (from the Farnesian Hercules) by the Father.
12. An Heroe’s Head, unknown. By Moses White. With the least alteration, may serve for an Heroe past, present, or to come.
13. An original Three Quarters Length of King Charles the Second: a striking Likeness. By Ditto.

In the Passage through the Yard.

1. A Flying Swan,—by some supposed to be a Dying one. By Goustry.
2. An Half-Moon. By Masmore.
3. An Original Half Length of Camden, the great Historian and Antiquary, in his Herald’s Coat. By Van der Trout. [As this Artist was originally Colour Grinder to Hans Holbein, it is conjectured there are some of the great Master’s Touches in this Piece.]
4. A Buttock of Beef stuft. By Lynne.
5. An Hair-cutter. By the same.
6. Adam and Eve. The first Attempt of that famous Artist, Barnaby Smith.
7. A Black Prince. By Hitchcock.
8. [Over the Entrance.] An Holy Lamb; highly finished. By the same.

Grand Room.

[The Society of Sign-Painters take this Opportunity of refuting a most malicious Suggestion, that their Exhibition is designed as a Ridicule on the Exhibitions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., and of the Artists. They intend theirs as only an Appendix, or (in the Stile of Painters) a Companion to the others. There is nothing in their Collection, which will be understood by any Candid Person as a Reflection on any Body, or any Body of Men. They are not in the least prompted by any mean Jealousy to depreciate the Merits of their Brother Artists. Animated by the same Public Spirit, their sole View is to convince Foreigners as well as their own blinded Countrymen, that however inferior this Nation may be unjustly deemed in other Branches of the Polite Arts, the Palm for Sign-Painting must be universally ceded to Us, the Dutch themselves not excepted.]

1. Portrait of a justly celebrated Painter, though an Englishman and a Modern.
2. A Crooked Billet, formed exactly in the Line of Beauty,[724] its Companion. These by Adams.
3. The Good Woman. A Whole Length, but no Portrait. By Sympson. [N.B.—It is done from Invention, not being able to find one to sit for it.]
4. A Star. By * *
5. The Light Heart. A Sign for a Vintner. By Hogarty. [N.B.—This is an elegant Invention of Ben Jonson, who in The New Inn or Light Heart, makes the Landlord say (speaking of his Sign:)—

   An Heart weighed with a Feather, and outweighed too:
   A Brain-child of my own and I am proud on’t.]
   

6. The Hog in Armour. By Thurmond.
7. A Buttock of Beef. By Simmes.
8. The Vicar of Bray. The Portrait of a Beneficed Clergyman, at Full Length. By Allison.
9. The Irish Arms. By Patrick O’Blaney. [N.B.—Captain Terence O’Cutter STOOD for them.]
10. The Gentleman of Wales. By David Rice.
11. Butter and Eggs. By Simmes.
12. The Scotch Fiddle. By M^cPharson, done from Himself.
13. The Barking Dogs. A Landscape at Moonlight. The Moon somewhat eclipsed by an Accident. Whitaker.
14. Three Apothecaries’ Gallipots. D’aeth’s first Attempt.
15. Three Coffins. Its Companion. Finished by Shrowd.
16. A Man. By Hagarty.
17. The Rising Sun. A Landscape. Painted for The Moon, alias Theophilus Moon. By Morris.
18. The Magpie. By Whitaker.
19. Nobody, alias Somebody. A Character.
20. Somebody, alias Nobody. A Caricature. Its Companion. Both these by Hagarty.[515]
21. The World’s End. By Sympson.
22. The Strugglers. A Conversation. By Ransbey.
23. A Freemason’s Lodge, or the Impenetrable Secret. By a Sworn Brother.
24. The Blackamoor. By Sympson. [N.B.—This is not intended as any Reflection on the Gentlemen who have been lately Whitewashed.]
25. A Man running away with the Monument. By Whitaker.
26. Devil hugging the Witch. A Conversation. By Ransbey.
27. The Spirit of Contradiction. Ditto. By Hagarty.
28. The Loggerheads. Ditto. By Ditto.
29. The Man in the Moon drinks Claret. By Blackman.
30. The Dancing Bears. A Sign for N. Dukes, or A. Hart, or any other Dancing-Master to Grown Gentlemen. By Hagarty.
31. My A—— in a Bandbox. By Sympson.
32. A Man struggling through the World. By the same.
33. St John’s Head in a Charger.
34. A Dog’s Head in the Porridge Pot. Its Companion. Both these by Blackman.
35. A Man in his Element. A Sign for an Eating House.
36. A Man out of his Element. A Sign for a Publick House at Wapping, Rotherhithe, or Deptford. Both these by Stainsley.
37. The Barley Mow. By Whitaker.
38. A Bird in the Hand. A Landscape. By Allison.
39. Absalom hanging. A Peruke-Maker’s Sign. By Sclater.
40. Welcome Cuckolds to Horn Fair. By Hagarty.
41. The Cat o’ Nine Tails. A Kit-Cat. By Masmore.
42. King Charles in the Oak. A Land-schape. By Allison. The Face in Miniature. By Sclater.
43. An Owl in an Ivy Bush. Its Companion. By Allison.
44. Foote in the Character of Mrs Cole. A Sign for a Boarding-School. By Stainsley.
45. Peeping-Tom. A Sign for a Shoemaker. By the same.
47. A Pair of Breeches.
48. A Green Canister. Its Companion. Both these by Blackman.
49. An Ha! Ha!
50. [On a parallel line with the foregoing on the other side of the chimney.] The Curiosity. Its Companion. [These two by an unknown Hand, the Exhibitors being favoured with them from an unknown Quarter.] ^*_*^* Ladies and Gentlemen are requested not to finger them, as Blue Curtains are hung on purpose to preserve them.
51. [Over the Chimney.] A Star of the first Magnitude.
52. The Renowned Seven Champions of Christendom, from an entire New Design. 1. St George for England. 2. St Andrew for Scotland. 3. St Denis for France. 4. St Anthony for Italy. 5. St James for Spain. 6. St David for Wales. 7. St Patrick for Ireland. This by Bransley.
53. An Original Portrait of the present Emperor of Russia.
54. Ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary. Its Antagonist. These by Sheerman.
55. The Silent Woman, or A Good Riddance. A Family Piece. By Barnsley.
56. [516]The Ghost of Cock Lane. By Miss Fanny ——.[725]
57. Three Portraits in One.
58. All the World and his Wife. By Blackman.
59. Cat and Bagpipes. By Forster.
60. A perspective view of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution.
61. The Robin Hood Society, a Conversation; or Lectures on Elocution.[726] Its Companion. These two by Barnsley.
62. An Author in the Pillory. By ——, Bookseller. First Attempt.[727]
63. Liberty crowning Britania. By command of his Majesty.
64. View of the Road to Paddington, with a Presentation (sic) of the Deadly Never-Green[728] that bears Fruit all the Year round. The Fruit at full length. By Hagarty.
65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners. By Blackman.
66. Good Company. A Conversation. Intended as a Sign for a Tobacconist. By Bransley.
67. Death and the Doctor; in Distemper. By Hagarty.
68. Hogs Norton.[729] A Sign for a Music Shop. By Bransley.
69. St Dunstan and the Devil.
70. St Squintum[730] and the Devil. Its Companion. By ——.
71. Shave for a Penny. Let Blood for Nothing.
72. Teeth drawn with a Touch. A Caricature. Its Companion. These two by Bransley.
73. A Man loaded with Mischief. By Sympson.
74. Entertainment for Man and Horse. A Landscape. By Bransley.
75. First and Last. By Blackman.
76. The Constitution; Alderman Pitt’s Entire. By Hagarty.

BUSTS, CARVED FIGURES, &c., &c., &c.

1. A Blue Boar. By Lester.
2. Two Indian Kings. By Taverner.
3. A Flaming Sword of Paradise.
4. St Peter’s Key. Both these by Carey.
5. A Bunch of Grapes from Portugal. By Pendred.
6. A Divided Crown. By Ward.
7. Birmingham Case of Knives and Forks. [See at the other end of this a Sheffield Case. Its Companion.] Both these by Asgill.
8. A Nag’s Head, after the Manner of the Antient Bronzes. By Millwich.
9. A Block, done from the Life. By Brown.
10. An exact Representation of the famous Running Horse. Black and All Black.
11. [517]Underneath, an Escutcheon, shewing his Pedigree, as warranted by the Herald’s office. These by Fishbourne.
12. Bust of a celebrated Beauty. By Edley.
13. Head of the Thoughtless Philosopher. By Masmore.
14. Take Time by the Forelock. By Clark.
15. A Dumb Bell. By the same.
16. The British Lion, and
17. Unicorn. [The Lion in excellent Condition.] By Jones.
18. A French Fleur-de-Lys [tarnished.] By Garthy.
19. Two Bronzes. By Millwich.
20. A Gold Fish, considerably larger than the Life. By Cook.
21. A Mitre, and
22. Crown. By Hughes.
23. A Dolphin, painted with the true Verd Antique. By Quarterman.
    ^*_*^* Several Tobacco Rolls, Sugar Loaves, Hats, Wigs, Stockings, Gloves, &c., &c., &c., hung round the Room. By the above-mentioned Artists.
24. [On the Left Hand of the Door, going out.] A Stand of Cheeses, with a Bladder of Lard on the Top.
25. A Westphalian Ham. These two by Bricken.

—St James’s Chronicle, Ap. 20-22. 1762.

1. [Over the Door.] A Coach and Four, Supposed to be by Stanhope.
2. Windsor, or any other Castle. By Mason. The Centinel and Great Gun by another Hand.
3. Hand and Lock of Hair. Hand unknown.
4. A Pandour, or Indian Prince, uncertain which. Stanhope’s undoubtedly.
5. A Ship and Castle. Thomas Knife written under. But it is not known whether this is the name of the Artist or the Publican.
6. A Hen and Chickens. By Lodge.
7. Three Nuns. The Drapery copied from a Bas-Relief at Rome. By Soames.
8. An original Whole-Length of Guy of Warwick. By the same.
9. A Major Wig. By Harrison. [N.B.—The Tails appear to have been added.]
10. A Barge, in Still-Life. By Van der Trout. [He cannot properly be called an English artist; not being sufficiently encouraged in his own Country, he left Holland with William the Third, and was the first artist who settled in Harp Alley.[723]]
11. The Hercules Pillars. The Architecture by Young Soames. The Figure (from the Farnesian Hercules) by the Father.
12. An Heroe’s Head, unknown. By Moses White. With the least alteration, may serve for an Heroe past, present, or to come.
13. An original Three Quarters Length of King Charles the Second: a striking Likeness. By Ditto.

1. A Flying Swan,—by some supposed to be a Dying one. By Goustry.
2. An Half-Moon. By Masmore.
3. An Original Half Length of Camden, the great Historian and Antiquary, in his Herald’s Coat. By Van der Trout. [As this Artist was originally Colour Grinder to Hans Holbein, it is conjectured there are some of the great Master’s Touches in this Piece.]
4. A Buttock of Beef stuft. By Lynne.
5. An Hair-cutter. By the same.
6. Adam and Eve. The first Attempt of that famous Artist, Barnaby Smith.
7. A Black Prince. By Hitchcock.
8. [Over the Entrance.] An Holy Lamb; highly finished. By the same.

1. Portrait of a justly celebrated Painter, though an Englishman and a Modern.
2. A Crooked Billet, formed exactly in the Line of Beauty,[724] its Companion. These by Adams.
3. The Good Woman. A Whole Length, but no Portrait. By Sympson. [N.B.—It is done from Invention, not being able to find one to sit for it.]
4. A Star. By * *
5. The Light Heart. A Sign for a Vintner. By Hogarty. [N.B.—This is an elegant Invention of Ben Jonson, who in The New Inn or Light Heart, makes the Landlord say (speaking of his Sign:)—
6. An Heart weighed with a Feather, and outweighed too:
   A Brain-child of my own and I am proud on’t.]
   
7. The Hog in Armour. By Thurmond.
8. A Buttock of Beef. By Simmes.
9. The Vicar of Bray. The Portrait of a Beneficed Clergyman, at Full Length. By Allison.
10. The Irish Arms. By Patrick O’Blaney. [N.B.—Captain Terence O’Cutter STOOD for them.]
11. The Gentleman of Wales. By David Rice.
12. Butter and Eggs. By Simmes.
13. The Scotch Fiddle. By M^cPharson, done from Himself.
14. The Barking Dogs. A Landscape at Moonlight. The Moon somewhat eclipsed by an Accident. Whitaker.
15. Three Apothecaries’ Gallipots. D’aeth’s first Attempt.
16. Three Coffins. Its Companion. Finished by Shrowd.
17. A Man. By Hagarty.
18. The Rising Sun. A Landscape. Painted for The Moon, alias Theophilus Moon. By Morris.
19. The Magpie. By Whitaker.
20. Nobody, alias Somebody. A Character.
21. Somebody, alias Nobody. A Caricature. Its Companion. Both these by Hagarty.[515]
22. The World’s End. By Sympson.
23. The Strugglers. A Conversation. By Ransbey.
24. A Freemason’s Lodge, or the Impenetrable Secret. By a Sworn Brother.
25. The Blackamoor. By Sympson. [N.B.—This is not intended as any Reflection on the Gentlemen who have been lately Whitewashed.]
26. A Man running away with the Monument. By Whitaker.
27. Devil hugging the Witch. A Conversation. By Ransbey.
28. The Spirit of Contradiction. Ditto. By Hagarty.
29. The Loggerheads. Ditto. By Ditto.
30. The Man in the Moon drinks Claret. By Blackman.
31. The Dancing Bears. A Sign for N. Dukes, or A. Hart, or any other Dancing-Master to Grown Gentlemen. By Hagarty.
32. My A—— in a Bandbox. By Sympson.
33. A Man struggling through the World. By the same.
34. St John’s Head in a Charger.
35. A Dog’s Head in the Porridge Pot. Its Companion. Both these by Blackman.
36. A Man in his Element. A Sign for an Eating House.
37. A Man out of his Element. A Sign for a Publick House at Wapping, Rotherhithe, or Deptford. Both these by Stainsley.
38. The Barley Mow. By Whitaker.
39. A Bird in the Hand. A Landscape. By Allison.
40. Absalom hanging. A Peruke-Maker’s Sign. By Sclater.
41. Welcome Cuckolds to Horn Fair. By Hagarty.
42. The Cat o’ Nine Tails. A Kit-Cat. By Masmore.
43. King Charles in the Oak. A Land-schape. By Allison. The Face in Miniature. By Sclater.
44. An Owl in an Ivy Bush. Its Companion. By Allison.
45. Foote in the Character of Mrs Cole. A Sign for a Boarding-School. By Stainsley.
46. Peeping-Tom. A Sign for a Shoemaker. By the same.
47. A Pair of Breeches.
48. A Green Canister. Its Companion. Both these by Blackman.
49. An Ha! Ha!
50. [On a parallel line with the foregoing on the other side of the chimney.] The Curiosity. Its Companion. [These two by an unknown Hand, the Exhibitors being favoured with them from an unknown Quarter.] ^*_*^* Ladies and Gentlemen are requested not to finger them, as Blue Curtains are hung on purpose to preserve them.
51. [Over the Chimney.] A Star of the first Magnitude.
52. The Renowned Seven Champions of Christendom, from an entire New Design. 1. St George for England. 2. St Andrew for Scotland. 3. St Denis for France. 4. St Anthony for Italy. 5. St James for Spain. 6. St David for Wales. 7. St Patrick for Ireland. This by Bransley.
53. An Original Portrait of the present Emperor of Russia.
54. Ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary. Its Antagonist. These by Sheerman.
55. The Silent Woman, or A Good Riddance. A Family Piece. By Barnsley.
56. [516]The Ghost of Cock Lane. By Miss Fanny ——.[725]
57. Three Portraits in One.
58. All the World and his Wife. By Blackman.
59. Cat and Bagpipes. By Forster.
60. A perspective view of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution.
61. The Robin Hood Society, a Conversation; or Lectures on Elocution.[726] Its Companion. These two by Barnsley.
62. An Author in the Pillory. By ——, Bookseller. First Attempt.[727]
63. Liberty crowning Britania. By command of his Majesty.
64. View of the Road to Paddington, with a Presentation (sic) of the Deadly Never-Green[728] that bears Fruit all the Year round. The Fruit at full length. By Hagarty.
65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners. By Blackman.
66. Good Company. A Conversation. Intended as a Sign for a Tobacconist. By Bransley.
67. Death and the Doctor; in Distemper. By Hagarty.
68. Hogs Norton.[729] A Sign for a Music Shop. By Bransley.
69. St Dunstan and the Devil.
70. St Squintum[730] and the Devil. Its Companion. By ——.
71. Shave for a Penny. Let Blood for Nothing.
72. Teeth drawn with a Touch. A Caricature. Its Companion. These two by Bransley.
73. A Man loaded with Mischief. By Sympson.
74. Entertainment for Man and Horse. A Landscape. By Bransley.
75. First and Last. By Blackman.
76. The Constitution; Alderman Pitt’s Entire. By Hagarty.

1. A Blue Boar. By Lester.
2. Two Indian Kings. By Taverner.
3. A Flaming Sword of Paradise.
4. St Peter’s Key. Both these by Carey.
5. A Bunch of Grapes from Portugal. By Pendred.
6. A Divided Crown. By Ward.
7. Birmingham Case of Knives and Forks. [See at the other end of this a Sheffield Case. Its Companion.] Both these by Asgill.
8. A Nag’s Head, after the Manner of the Antient Bronzes. By Millwich.
9. A Block, done from the Life. By Brown.
10. An exact Representation of the famous Running Horse. Black and All Black.
11. [517]Underneath, an Escutcheon, shewing his Pedigree, as warranted by the Herald’s office. These by Fishbourne.
12. Bust of a celebrated Beauty. By Edley.
13. Head of the Thoughtless Philosopher. By Masmore.
14. Take Time by the Forelock. By Clark.
15. A Dumb Bell. By the same.
16. The British Lion, and
17. Unicorn. [The Lion in excellent Condition.] By Jones.
18. A French Fleur-de-Lys [tarnished.] By Garthy.
19. Two Bronzes. By Millwich.
20. A Gold Fish, considerably larger than the Life. By Cook.
21. A Mitre, and
22. Crown. By Hughes.
23. A Dolphin, painted with the true Verd Antique. By Quarterman.
    ^*_*^* Several Tobacco Rolls, Sugar Loaves, Hats, Wigs, Stockings, Gloves, &c., &c., &c., hung round the Room. By the above-mentioned Artists.
24. [On the Left Hand of the Door, going out.] A Stand of Cheeses, with a Bladder of Lard on the Top.
25. A Westphalian Ham. These two by Bricken.

The next number of the St James’s Chronicle contained an article on the Exhibition from another journal, written with great animosity:—

“As your paper is always ready to expose any Abuses on the Publick, I beg you will give place to the following Observations:—

“I acknowledge myself to have been one of the Curious who went yesterday morning to see the Grand Exhibition, as it is called, of the Sign-Painters, from which I did not indeed expect any great Entertainment; however, I did not imagine any Set of Gentlemen would have been concerned in a senseless Attempt at Satire, and along with it the most impudent and pickpocket Abuse that I ever knew offered to the Publick.

“The Exhibition is really of Signs, and those, in general, worse executed than any that are to be seen in the meanest streets. The Busts, carved Figures, &c., are of corresponding Excellence, all of them being the very worst of Signpost Work, and such as seem collected for an Insult on the Human understanding.

“But that your Readers may All save their Time, Money, and Credit, by not falling into this Hum-trap, I shall give them an Account of some of the choicest Articles of this Collection as a sample that must damp their Curiosity for seeing the Whole.”

GRAND ROOM.

1. Mr Hogarth, or a wretched Figure done for him drawing his five orders of Periwigs.

2. A Crooked Billet, hung under it, on which is written, The Exact Line of Beauty.

3. The Good Woman. The old stale Device of a Woman without a Head, badly executed.

[518]

5. The Light Heart. A Feather weighing down a Heart in a pair of Scales.

9. The Irish Arms. A great clumsy pair of Legs.

10. The Gentleman of Wales. A Taffey with a great Leek in his Hat.

19. Nobody. A man all Legs.

20. Somebody. A man all Belly, with a Constable’s Staff.

23. A Freemason’s Lodge. A new Member blinded and befouling himself.

27. The Spirit of Contradiction. Two Brewers bearing a cask. The Men going different ways.

30. The Dancing Bears. Bears in Men’s cloaths, learning to dance, a great one amongst them, with a gold Chain round his Neck; the Dancing Master a Monkey, holding a Kitten on his Breast with one hand, and pincing its tail with the other.

31. Band-box. An Ass standing in a great Band-box.[731]

32. A Man Struggling through the World. The Sign of a Pasteboard Terrestrial Globe, with a Man creeping through it, his Head being out at one End, and his Heels at the other.

35. A Man in his Element. A man gluttonizing.[732]

36. A Man out of his Element. A Sailor fallen off his Horse.

44. Foote in the Character of Mrs Cole. The wit lies in the writing under it, which is, Young Ladies educated here.

45. Peeping Tom.[733] A Shoemaker trying on a Shoe on a Woman.

But the Cream of the whole Jest is (49 and 50) two Boards behind two Curtains, (one on each side of the Chimney,) which, when the Curtains are lifted up, show the written Laughs of HA HA HA and HE HE HE.

53 and 54 are two old Signs of a Saracen’s Head and a Queen Anne’s, with their Tongues lolling out at one another, designed to represent the Czar and the Queen of Hungary. Over them is a great wooden Bill, with this inscription, The present State of Europe.

64. A view of the Road to Paddington, with a Representation of the Deadly Never Green that bears Fruit all the year round. This is Tyburn, with three felons hanging on it.

65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners, which shows a Frenchman cringingly bowing, and an Englishman taking him by the Nose.

66. Good Company. Three Men drunk, and burning one another’s Faces with their Pipes.

69. St Dunstan and the Devil. The Saint taking the Devil by the Nose with a Pair of Tongs.

70. Its Companion. Doctor Squintum doing the same.

71. Shave for a Penny, Let Blood for Nothing. A man under the hands of a barber surgeon, who shaves and lets blood at the same time, by cutting at every stroke of his razor.

[519]73. A Man loaded with Mischief. A Fellow with a Woman, a Monkey, and a Magpie on his Back.

74. Entertainment for Man and Horse. A Woman and a Hay Mow.

75. First and Last. A Cradle and a Coffin.

76. The Constitution. Alderman Pitt’s Entire. A tall Grenadier and a short Sailor.

“Such is the Entertainment that these wits have been able to prepare for the curious, with all the assistance of the Virtuosi which they have been long advertising to procure. If there is any Satyre in this Design, it must be in humming their Customers. Wit or taste there is certainly none; but there is a Magnitude of Imposition that is surely deserving of Punishment.

It is well known that the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, are at a great Expense for making their elegant Exhibition, and give their Tickets all away. The Artists, indeed, sell Catalogues there to those who chuse to buy them, and dispose of the Money that is got by them to Charities.

The Body of Artists made their Catalogues Tickets to serve last year for the whole Time of Exhibition in Spring Gardens, and sold them but a shilling a-piece, the Profits of which were likewise distributed in Charities.

The Society, as they call themselves, of Signpainters, or rather of Bites who borrow that Name, have the Assurance to fix a Ticket to each Catalogue, which they sell for their own Profit at a shilling; and, by obliging the Ticket to be torn off at the Second Door, make the Purchase of a New Catalogue absolutely necessary for a Second Admission. It is true most Gentlemen do refuse to let their Catalogues be torn; and many of those who had submitted to the tearing of them, insisted upon their being exchanged for whole ones, resolving, like Men of Spirit, not to be bubbled every Way.

In fine, this Mock Exhibition is a most impudent and scandalous Abuse and Bubble. An Insult on Understanding, and a most pickpocket Imposture. The best entertainment it can afford is that of standing in the street, and observing with how much shame in their Faces People come out of the House. Pity it will be, if all who are employed in the carrying on this Cheat, are not seized and sent to serve the King. And those who are Sharers in the Booty deserve likewise to be severely chastised.

I am, Sir, yours, &c.,
A DESPISER OF ALL TRICKERY.”

“The Signpainters return their Thanks to the author of the above most excellent Letter, which is seemingly abusive of their Design, but is in Fact a most admirable Irony.

The Ledger of this Morning, after having pillaged the Catalogue of Signpainting, is candid enough to abuse it. But it is plain that the author has not seen the Exhibition, or could not find out the Humour of it.”

From the GAZETTEER.—(St James’ Chronicle, Ap. 24-27, 1762.)—“The Society of Signpainters, in their Catalogue, tell us they take the opportunity of refuting what they are pleased to call a malicious Suggestion—viz., ‘Their Exhibition being designed as a Ridicule on the Exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, etc., and the Artists,’ and[520] that they intend theirs only as an Appendix or (in the Style of Painters) ‘Companion’ to the others. What is that but ridiculing, or an attempt towards it? They say ‘there is nothing in their Collection which will be understood by any candid person as a Reflection on any Body or any Body of Men.’ They might have spared this Assertion, for no Person, endued with the least Share of common Sense, can imagine so impotent and futile an Attempt at Satire or Ridicule on any Thing except the few Spectators who go there; which would have been better understood had it opened on the First of April.

“They also say, ‘They are not in the least prompted by any mean jealousy to depreciate the Merits of their Brother Artists.’ Which is owing to their Inability, not want of Assurance; for an Attempt in them to depreciate the Merit of the Professors of Painting and Sculpture, whom they are impudently pleased to call their Brother Artists, would be (to borrow a Simile from one of their own Productions) like Dogs barking at the Moon.

“Their sole View, etc., etc.—‘Their sole View’ (without any Breach of Charity) we may infer is that of filling their own Pockets by duping the Publick; for no private Men would by an Advertisement invite People to their House, and place a Porter at the Door to take a Shilling of them, with a Pretence of being animated by a public Spirit, for any other Motive.

“Bow Street, Covent Garden, April 27.

“The Society of Sign-painters are obliged to the GAZETTEER for the above Remarks.”

Articles and letters abusive of the Exhibition appeared in most of the newspapers, and not a day passed but it was attacked in no very measured terms. The committee, however, generally reprinted the articles in their own organ, thanking the critics for so successfully advertising their efforts, after which no more was heard from them. The following review, having very similar annotations upon the signs to those in the letter signed “A Despiser of all Trickery,” may have come from one of their own pens. It appeared in a monthly sheet, entitled, “The London Register,” for April:[734]—

“Humour is confessedly one of the chief characteristics of the English nation. There is no Country that delights in it so much, exerts it on such various occasions, or shows it in so many Shapes. In conversation, in Books, on the Stage, we meet with it every Day; and it has sometimes been introduced, not without success, even into the Pulpit. To an Artist of our own Country, and of our own Times, we owe the Practice of enriching Pictures with Humour, Character, Pleasantry, and Satire. Such an Artist could not fail of Applause in such a Nation as ours, and his Fame is equal to his Merit.

The original Paintings, etc., the Catalogue of which now lies before us, are the Project of a well-known Gentleman, in whose house they are exhibited;[521] a Gentleman who has, in several instances, displayed a most uncommon Vein of Humour. His Burlesque Ode on St Cecilia’s Day,[735] his Labours in the Drury Lane Journal, and other papers, all possess that singular Turn of Imagination so peculiar to himself. This Gentleman is perhaps the only Person in England (if we except the Artist above mentioned) who could have projected, or have carried tolerably into Execution, this scheme of a Grand Exhibition. There is a whimsical drollery in all his Plans, and a Comical Originality in his Manner, that never fail to distinguish and to recommend all his Undertakings. To exercise his Wit and Humour in an innocent Laugh, and to raise that innocent Laugh in others, seems to have been his chief Aim in the present Spectacle. The Ridicule or Exhibition, if it must be accounted so, is pleasant without Malevolence; and the general Strokes on the common Topics of Satire are given with the most apparent Good-humour. . . . . .

On entering the Grand Room, . . . . you find yourself in a large and commodious Apartment, hung round with green Bays, on which this curious collection of Wooden Originals is fixt flat, (like the Signs at present in Paris,) and from whence hang Keys, Bells, Swords, Poles, Sugar-Loaves, Tobacco-Rolls, Candles, and other ornamental Furniture, carved in Wood, that commonly dangle from the Penthouses of the different Shops in our streets. On the Chimney-Board (to imitate the Stile of the Catalogue) is a large, blazing Fire, painted in Water-colours; and within a kind of Cupola, or rather Dome, which lets the Light into the Room, is written in Golden Capitals, upon a blue Ground, a Motto from Horace, disposed in the Form following:—

From this short Description of the Grand-Room, (when we consider the singular Nature of the Paintings themselves, and the Peculiarity of the other Decorations,) it may be easily imagined that no Connoisseur, who has made the Tour of Europe, ever entered a Picture-Gallery that struck his Eye more forcibly at first Sight, or provoked his Attention with more extraordinary Appearance.

We will now, if the Reader pleases, conduct him round the Room, and take a more accurate Survey of the curious Originals before us. To which End we shall proceed to transcribe the ingenious Society’s Catalogue, adding (as we proposed before) such Notes and Illustrations as may seem necessary for his Instruction or Entertainment.

[522]

8. The Vicar of Bray: The Portrait of a Beneficed Clergyman, at Full Length. [The vicar of Bray is an Ass in a Feather-topped Grizzle, Band, and Pudding Sleeves.—This is a much droller Conceit, and has more Effect when executed, than the old Design of The Ass loaded with Preferment.]

9. The Irish Arms. By Patrick O’Blaney. [N.B. Captain Terence O’Cutter stood for them.] [A Pair of extremely thick Legs in white Stockings and black Garters.]

12. The Scotch Fiddle. By M^cPharson, done from Himself. [The Figure of a Highlander sitting under a Tree, and enjoying that greatest of Pleasure of scratching where it itches.]

16. A Man. [Nine Taylors at Work; in Allusion to the old Saying of nine Taylors make a Man.]

19. Nobody, alias Somebody. A Character. [The Figure of an Officer, all Head, Arms, Legs and Thighs.—This Piece has a very odd Effect, being so drolly executed that you don’t miss the Body.]

20. Somebody, alias Nobody. A Caricature. Its Companion. Both these by Hagarty. [A rosy figure with a little Head and a huge Body, whose Belly swags over, almost quite down to his Shoe-Buckles. By the Staff in his Hand it appears to be intended to represent a Constable.—It might also have been mistaken for an eminent Justice of Peace.]

22. The Strugglers. A Conversation. By Bransley. [Represents a Man and Wife fighting for the Breeches.]

23. A Free-Mason’s Lodge, or the Impenetrable Secret. By a Sworn Brother. [The supposed Ceremony and probable Consequences of what is called making a Mason, representing the Master of the Lodge with a red hot Salamander in his Hand, and the new Brother blindfold, and in a comical Situation of Fear and Good-Luck.]

25. A Man running away with the Monument. By Whitaker. [This Picture of a London Night, like the Farmer Returned, represents

—— the Watchmen in Town,
Lame, feeble, half blind.——

Two of these Cripples are pursuing the Thief, one crying out, Stop Thief! and the other, I can’t catch him.]

27. The Spirit of Contradiction. Ditto. By Hagarty. [Two Brewers with a Barrel of Beer, pulling different Ways.]

28. The Logger Heads. Ditto. By Ditto. [Underwritten, the old Joke of We are Three. Shakespeare plainly alludes to this sign in his Twelfth Night, where the Fool comes between Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and, taking each by the Hand, says, “How now, my Hearts, did you never see the Picture of We Three?”]

30. The Dancing Bears. By Hagarty. [Most drolly conceived and comically executed.—Represents Four Bears on their hind Legs, drest in different Characters, one with a gold Chain round his Neck, giving Right Paw and Left, gravely practising Country-Dances, under the Tuition of a Monkey, drest like a Dancing-Master, and fiddling on a Kit-ten.—The Seriousness and Solemnity of each of these Figures is incomparable. Underneath is written, “Grown Gentlemen taught to Dance.”]

31. Band Box. By Sympson. [Hieroglyphically expressed . . . . an Ass standing in a Bandbox.]

33. St John’s Head in a Charger. [The dead Saint’s Eyes, like those in most Portraits, seem to be looking at you.]

[523]

35. A Man in his Element. A Sign for an Eating-House. [A Cook roasted upon a Spit at the Kitchen-Fire and basted by the Devil.]

36. A Man out of his Element. [A Sailor fallen off his Horse, with his Skull lighting against the ten mile Stone from Portsmouth.]

38. A Bird in the Hand, a Landscape. By Allison. [A common sign in various Parts of England, which has usually this Inscription,

A Bird in Hand is better far
Than two that in the Bushes are.

But these Lines are much improved in the Inscription that is under this Sign in the Exhibition:

A Bird in Hand far better ’tis
Than two that in the Bushes is.]

39. Absalon Hanging, a Peruke Maker’s Sign. By Sclater. [Underneath is written—

If Absalon had not worn his own Hair
Absalon had not been hanging there.]

40. Welcome Cuckholds to Horn-Fair. By Hagarty. [Whimsically imagined, and drolly executed—Being a Picture of Horn-Fair containing various Figures of Cuckholds in different Characters; some with large staring Bulls’, Goats’-Horns, &c., others with their Horns just budding. The center Figure is that of a fine Gentleman (copied from the fine Gentleman in Lethe) with Rams’-Horns. On a Bank, fast asleep, sits a Citizen-like Figure, with large branching antlers, and on the other side of the Picture, is a jemmy Figure in Boots, who has no Horns upon his Head, but carries them in his Pocket, out of which the tops appear tipt with Gold. This last Gentleman’s Horse (to make the Picture complete) is also represented as a Cuckhold, having a Horn in his Forehead like an Unicorn’s.]

49. An Ha! Ha!

50 [On a parallel Line with the foregoing on the other Side of the Chimney] The Curiosity, its Companion. [These two by an unknown Hand, the Exhibitors being favoured with them from an unknown Quarter.] ^*_*^* Ladies and Gentlemen are requested not to finger them, as blue Curtains are hung over in purpose to preserve them. [Behind the blue Curtains on one of these Boards is written Ha! Ha! Ha! and on the other He! He! He! At the first opening of the Exhibition the Ladies had infinite Curiosity to know what was behind the Curtain, but were afraid to gratify it. This covered Laugh is no bad satire on the indecent Pictures in some Collections, hung up in the same Manner with Curtains over them.]

52. [Over the Chimney] The Renowned Seven Champions of Christendom, from an entire New Design. [A Capital Piece. The Seven Champions are represented in the following Manner. 1. St George is an English Sailor mounted on a Lion, with a Spit (by Way of Lance) bearing a Sirloin of Beef in one Hand, and a full Pot of Porter marked only Three Pence a Quart in the other. By the Lion’s Foot are two Scrolls, like Ballads, the one inscribed O the Roast Beef of Old England: the other, Hearts of Oak are our Men. 2. St Andrew is a Highlander mounted on a Scotch Galloway, with a Broad Sword, bearing an Oat Cake at the End of it in one Hand, and a Flask of Whisky in the other. 3. St Dennis is a Frenchman, mounted on a Deer, a timorous swift-footed Animal with a small Sword in one Hand on which a Frog appears to be spitted, and a Dish of[524] Soupe Maigre in the other. 4. St Anthony is the Pope, mounted on a Bull, with a Crosier and a Vessel of Holy Water dangling from it, in one Hand, and a Cod-Fish inscribed Food for Lent in the other. From his Right Foot hangs a Scroll inscribed Kiss my Toe, and on the Ground several Rolls of Paper, on which are written, Pardons, Indulgencies, &c. &c. 5. St James is a Spaniard mounted on a Mule with an Ingot of Gold in one Hand and a Padlock in the other. 6. St David is Taffy mounted on a Goat brandishing a Leek in one Hand, and bearing a Cheese, by Way of Target, in the other. 7. St Patrick is an Irish Soldier, mounted on a large Stone-Horse, at whose Feet is a kind of Bill with this Inscription—To cover this Season Black and All Black. He has a Sword, bearing a Potatoe on the End of it in one Hand, and a three-square Bottle, inscribed Green Usquebaugh in the other.]

53. An original Portrait of the present Emperor of Russia.

54. Ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its Antagonist. [These are two old signs of the Saracen’s Head and Queen Anne. Under the first is written The Zarr, and under the other the Empres Quean. They are lolling their tongues out at each other, and over their heads runs a wooden label, inscribed, The present State of Europe.]

56. The Ghost of Cock Lane. By Miss Fanny ——. [The figure of two hands, one bearing a hammer, the other a curry-comb, in allusion to knocking and scratching.]

58. All the World and his Wife. By Blackman. [The figure of a foolish-looking fellow, with the globe round his body, (like Orbis in the Rehearsal,) and his wife cudgelling him.]

60. A Prospective View of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution.

61. The Robin Hood Society, a Conversation; or Lectures on Elocution. Its Companion. These two by Barnsley. [These two Strokes at a famous Lecturer on Elocution,[736] and The Reverend Projector of a Rhetorical Academy, are admirably conceived and executed: and (the latter more especially) almost worthy the Hand of Hogarth. They are full of a Variety of droll Figures, and seem indeed to be the Work of a great Master, struggling to suppress his Superiority of Genius, and endeavouring to paint down to the common Stile and Manner of the School of Sign-painting.]

64. View of the Road to Paddington, with a Presentation of the Deadly-Never-Green, that bears Fruit all the year round. The Fruit at full Length. By Hagarty. [Tyburn with three Felons on the Gallows. This Piece is remarkable for the Execution.]

65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners. By Blackman. [An English Jack Tar, kicking, and taking a tawdry Mounseer, cringing and bowing, by the Nose.]

66. Good Company. A Conversation. Intended as a Sign for a Tobacconist. By Bransley. [The Conceit and Execution are admirable. It represents a Common-Council-Man, and two Friends, drunk, over a Bottle and a Pipe. The Common-Council-Man is fallen back on his Chair as asleep. One of the Friends, an officer, is lighting a Pipe at his red Nose, while the other, a Doctor, is using his Thumb for a Tobacco Stopper.]

68. Hogs-Norton. A Sign for a Musick-Shop. By Bransley. [Represents (in allusion to the old saying concerning Hog’s Norton) an Hog drest in a Laced Suit, and an enormous Tye Wig, playing upon the Organ.]

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69. St Dunstan and the Devil. [The Saint Taking the Devil by the Nose.]

70. St Squintum and the Devil, its Companion. By ——. [Dr W——d doing the same. The Portrait is not unlike the Doctor.[737]]

71. Shave for a Penny, Let Blood for Nothing. [A Man under the Hands of a Barber-Surgeon, who shaves and lets Blood at the same Time, by cutting at every Stroke of his Razor.]

72. Teeth Drawn with a Touch. A Caricature. Its Companion. [A Man in much the same circumstances, mutatis mutandis, under the Hands of a Tooth-Drawer.]

“Such,” says the London Register, “are the Original Paintings in the Society’s Collection.” It may be remarked that there is some humour in placing many of the signs, which of themselves would not be very striking: for instance, The Three Apothecaries’ Gallipots, with The Three Coffins as its companion; King Charles in the Oak, and by its side The Owl in the Ivy Bush. Some of the signs are very indelicate, but this objection does not appear amongst the many charges brought against Mr Thornton and his friends. The opinion of society upon this point was very different in the last century from what it is now.

Besides the official catalogue there also appears to have been a comic or satirical guide, for the newspapers of the day advertise—

This Day was published, Price 6d.,

HA! HA! HA! Or the Laugher’s Companion to the GRAND EXHIBITION of the SIGN PAINTERS. Also He! He! He! Or the Artist’s Guide to the Society’s Exhibition.

Printed for W. Nicholl, at the Papermill, in St Paul’s Churchyard.

We shall close this subject with a paper in favour of the much abused exhibition, a weak, but well meant, effusion in doggerel rhyme:—

To the Printer of the ST JAMES’S CHRONICLE.

SIR,

As the Sign Painters in this Catalogue have directed any Essays on their Exhibition to be sent to you, I have troubled you with the enclosed Trifle, by inserting which in your Chronicle, you will oblige

Your humble Servant

And constant Reader

A Friend to the Sign Painters.

[526]

Addressed to the Gentlemen of the Society of Sign Painters. Though Malice darts around malignant Rays
And pow’rful Envy all its Spleen displays:
Go on, great Chiefs, pursue your noble Play,
And nobly end, what nobly you began.
Spite of Detraction shall your Mirth rise
With odorif’rous Flavour to the Skies,
And Masmore’s, Lester’s, Ward’s, and Fishbourne’s Name,
With thine, Van Dyke, shall live to endless Fame;
For your Collection Wit and Skill combine,
And Humour flows in ev’ry well chose Sign;
To you the Palm, th’ admiring World must give,
To you the Honour ev’ry Artist leave.
Regard not they the little-minded’s Rage,
Nor dread the snarling Critic’s angry Page;
For conscious Worth shall be your safest Guard,
And Immortality your sure Reward.
April 27-29, 1762.E. N.

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[723] In Farringdon Street; the head-quarters of the London Sign-Painters.

[724] In allusion to a well-known art-theory of Hogarth’s.

[725] Fanny Parsons was the girl who played such an active part in the Cock Lane ghost performances, Jan. and Feb. 1762.

[726] A famous discussion club held at the Robin Hood Tavern, Essex Street, Strand.

[727] Evidently an allusion to Edmund Curll, the notorious bookseller, who stood in the Pillory at Cheapside.

[728] The gallows at Tyburn.

[729] A corruption of Hook-Norton, the name of a small village in Oxfordshire, where the hogs formerly played upon the church organ. So, at least, the story runs.

[730] “St Squintum” was probably intended for John Whitfield, the famous preacher, whose personal appearance was the subject of numerous lampoons and caricatures at this time.

[731] This seemed to be a sort of slang phrase equivalent to the present—“It’s all my eye;” it occurs in “Tom Brown,” vol. ii., p. 13, 1708. See also [p. 467] of this work.

[732] 35. From another source we learn that this was very different:—“No. 35. A Man in his Element, a sign for an Eating-house,”—a cook roasted on a spit at a kitchen fire, and basted by the devil.

[733] In allusion to Peeping Tom, the shoemaker of Coventry.

[734] Under the title of—“Particular Account of the Grand Exhibition in Bow Street, with Remarks and Illustrations of it.”

[735] Bonnell Thornton composed an ode on St Cecilia’s Day, which was set to music by Dr Burney, and performed by the aid of those national instruments, the marrow bones and cleavers. The affair came off at Ranelagh, and gave general satisfaction. In a [former chapter] we have given full particulars of this event. Thornton was born in London 1724, educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. In connection with Geo. Colman the elder he started the Connoisseur, the St James’ Chronicle, and other periodicals. He died May 9, 1768, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

[736] Orator Henley is doubtless intended.

[737] The celebrated preacher, George Whitfield, who was chaplain to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon.

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