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]