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 Matie 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!”