Old Country Inns of England

by Henry Parr Maskell; Edward W. Gregory

Royal Oaks are everywhere in memory of the Boscobel Oak, and the accession of Charles II. Oliver Cromwell, who had usurped the Rose and Crown in High Street, Knightsbridge, was dethroned once more to make room for the reinstatement of the old sign. Coming nearer to our own time the Brunswick inns hail the succession of the house of Brunswick to the English Crown. George III and George IV appear occasionally, but not so frequently as William IV, our Sailor King. Queen Victoria’s popularity is shown by the hundreds of Victoria, Island Queen, Empress and Jubilee inns. Since the coronation of our late gracious sovereign, King Edward VII, the duties of the justices have involved the closing of old houses rather than the licensing of new ones. So that it is unlikely that future generations will be able to realise the esteem and regard of his subjects by any large number of Edward VII inns. However, there will be a considerable array of Royal Alberts and Prince of Wales signboards to indicate this nation’s good feeling towards him when he was heir apparent to the throne; the same remark will apply with regard to the Princess Alexandra and Rose of Denmark.

We have by no means exhausted the list of royal emblems. Some Falcon inns may have taken their title from the badge of the Dukes of York; but this was not invariably the case, when in districts where hawking was a popular sport. The Falcon Hotel, near Clapham Junction, owes its name to the river Falcon, once a considerable stream, but now only permitted to flow through Battersea underground. The “Gun” was a Tudor sign, and the Gun Inn at Dorking, evidently dates from the reign of Edward VI. Edward III quartered the French arms with the English; the practice was continued by his successors and may have originated the Fleur de Lis or Flower de Luce inns, where none of the local families bear this charge on their shields. Mention of the Fleur de Lis at Faversham is the one piece of local colouring in the “Tragedy of Arden of Faversham,” formerly attributed to Shakespeare. The Three Frogs, near Wokingham, is, perhaps, a version of the arms of France; before the entente cordiale it used to be a theory widely current among patriotic Britons that the fleur de lis really was intended for a heraldic representation of a frog.

Occasionally members of noble families have attained to such distinction that their crests have been utilized for inn signs far beyond the limits of their estates. The Bear and Ragged Staff was the crest of the Earls of Warwick; but it attained to notoriety after its adoption by the rapacious Dudleys. Robert Dudley, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, discarded the Green Lion, his own emblem, for the Bear and Ragged Staff of his mother, the last heiress of the Warwick family. His fourth son, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, inherited the manor at Cumnor, an old possession of Abingdon Abbey. The Bear and Ragged Staff at Cumnor, and its landlord at that period, Giles Gosling, are described in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, “Kenilworth,” wherein is also related the tragic fate of Dudley’s unhappy countess, Amy Robsart. Old pictures show this inn down to the middle of the last century as retaining its thatched roof and rustic primitive appearance. On the signboard was the name of the licensee, with the addition, “late Giles Gosling.”

The Eagle and Child was the crest of the Earls of Derby, the Maiden Head, of the Dukes of Buckingham, and the White Bear, that of the Earls of Kent. A still more frequent sign in the home counties, the Grasshopper, shows the popularity of the great Sir Thomas Gresham, to whom we owe the Royal Exchange and many other great City institutions. Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Francis Walsingham, both Elizabethan statesmen of eminence, gave us respectively the Hind and the Tiger’s Head. For the Saracen’s Head there will be various claimants, according to locality, so many crusaders having adopted this charge; but a few innkeepers of Lollard sympathies possibly adopted the sign out of compliment to Sir John Oldcastle. Bagford informs us that the Pelican was the badge of Lord Cromwell, the despoiler of monasteries, who also stole this emblem from the Church. At Speen, near Newbury, there was a coaching inn on the Bath Road, which provoked an epigram:

“The famous house at Speenhamland,
That stands upon the hill,
May well be called the Pelican,
From its enormous bill.”

Coming to the ballad heroes, Guy of Warwick and the Dun Cow slain by him are found all through the Midlands; but they cannot compare for popularity with Robin Hood, who is usually accompanied by Little John on the signboard. This is not a result of the modern taste for romantic literature. The Robin Hood is mentioned as a common alehouse sign by Samuel Rowlands in “Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell,” published in 1610. All the world loved Robin Hood, and cherished his memory as a jolly good-natured outlaw, manly and fearless, generous to the poor and careful for the honour of womenkind. Robin Hood alone among the revolutionary spirits of the Middle Ages has a place on the signboards, although Wat Tyler is remembered in connection with the Crown Inn at Dartford, and Jack Straw’s Castle was until lately a great resort for holiday-makers on Hampstead Heath. King James and the Tinker inn at Enfield, which claims on doubtful authority to be over a thousand years old, is associated with another ballad story of which there are many versions, such as “King Henry and the Miller of Mansfield,” or “King John and the Miller of Charlton.” In one of these tales our old friend, the Vicar of Bray, was dining at the Bear at Maidenhead with some friends. The party had taxed all the resources of the hotel, and when a stranger tired and hungry asked for refreshments, the vicar only admitted him to table very grudgingly. At the end of the meal the stranger discovered that he had left his purse behind him, and was roundly abused by the dignitary. However, his curate pleaded that the merry quips and anecdotes of the guest deserved consideration; he had proved himself a good fellow and had earned his dinner. At this moment some members of the royal staff enter, and the guest turns out to be nothing less than his Majesty James I. So the churlish vicar undergoes much discomfiture, and the curate receives the reward of high preferment.

Outbursts of patriotism are a feature on the signboards. Great victories of the British forces by land and sea, and the great military and naval heroes have all been commemorated in their turn, beginning with the Crispin and Crispinian, which greeted the troops of Henry V, as they returned along the old Watling Street, after Agincourt (which was fought on the feast day of these twin saints).

“Crispin Crispian shall never go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered.”
“Henry V,” IV, 3.

The Bull and Mouth is said to be a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, captured by Henry VIII. Bull and Gate may possibly be a similar vulgarism for Boulogne Gate. We might draw up a complete sequence of great battles fought and fortresses taken during the last three centuries, but those most frequently met with are Gibraltar, Waterloo, Battle of the Nile, and Trafalgar. Admirals range from Blake to Napier, generals from Marlborough to Wolseley. Not one of them is forgotten, though Wellington, Nelson and Keppel can probably claim the largest number of adherents. The Marquis of Granby, almost forgotten by the ordinary reader of history, enjoyed a remarkable popularity in his own day, if we are to judge by the number of portraits of this high-spirited and courageous nobleman which hang outside public-houses. The original of Mr. Tony Weller’s Marquis of Granby is, we believe, the one at Epsom, “Quite a model of a roadside public-house of the better class—just large enough to be convenient, and small enough to be snug.” The sign portrayed “the head and shoulders of a gentleman with an apoplectic countenance, in a red coat with blue facings, and a touch of the same blue over his three-cornered hat, for a sky. Over that again were a pair of flags; beneath the last button of his coat were a couple of cannon; and the whole formed an expressive and undoubted likeness of the Marquis of Granby of glorious memory.”

But the heart of the nation was most deeply touched by the mingled triumph and pathos at Trafalgar. Lord Nelson, Victory, and Trafalgar, greet us on every high road that leads down to the sea, in the neighbourhood of every harbour or dock, and beside the quays on every navigable river. And it is surprising how many of these Nelson inns are buildings three or four centuries old, showing that the innkeeper was prepared to sacrifice the sign under which he had hitherto done business and trusted to make a new reputation under the ægis of the popular hero. We have discovered several Nelson inns of this type in Kent, though none which we recall with more pleasure than the quaint many-gabled wooden structure with a considerable list to starboard on the high path by the riverside at Maidstone. Its ways are homely but hearty; the same family have remained in possession for a period rapidly approaching the century; and almost every article of furniture is old-fashioned and curious.