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:—