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.”