The Wheatsheaf is an extremely common inn, public-house, and baker’s sign; it is a charge in the arms of these three corporations, besides that of the brewers. In the middle of Farringdon Street, opposite the vegetable market, is Wheatsheaf Yard, once a famous waggon inn, which also did a roaring trade in wine, spirits, and Fleet Street marriages. Indeed, most of the large inns within the liberties of the Fleet served as “marriage shops” between 1734 and 1749; amongst the most famous were the Bull and Garter, the Hoop and Bunch of Grapes, the Bishop Blaize and Two Sawyers, the Fighting Cocks, and numerous others. The gateway entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carvings of wheat ears and lions’ heads intermixed, finished in a manner not unworthy of Grinling Gibbons himself.
The Oatsheaf is very rare; it was the sign of a shop in Cree Church Lane, Leadenhall Street, in the seventeenth century, as appears from a trades token; but this seems the only instance of the sign.
With these plants we may also class Tobacco, that best abused of all weeds. Sometimes we see a pictorial representation of the Tobacco plant, but most usually it occurs in the form of Tobacco rolls, representing coils of the so-called spun or twist tobacco, otherwise pigtail, for the sake of ornament, painted brown and gold alternately. Decker, in his “Gull’s Hornbook,” mentions Roll Trinidado, leaf, and pudding tobacco, which probably were the three sorts smokers at that day preferred. That it was used mixed may be conjectured from the introduction to “Cinthia’s Revels,” a play by Ben Jonson; one of the interlocutors says,—“I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket.”
[326] “The Country Carbonadoed,” by D. Lupton, 1632. Voce “Alehouse.”
“The tavern opened
With signboard and bush;
The landlady’s hair neatly dressed.
Tied up in a knot.”
[328] Be thou, rose, queen of flowers, the cure of my diseases.
Through thee, rose, sins are taken away,
Through thee, gladness is given to the sorrowing.