The Angel was the sign of one of the first coffee-houses in England, for Anthony Wood tells us that, “in 1650 Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house at the Angel, in the parish of St Peter, Oxon; and there it [coffee] was by some, who delight in noveltie, drank.” Finally, there was an Angel Tavern in Smithfield, where the famous Joe Miller, of joking fame—a comic actor by profession—used to play during Bartholomew Fair time. A playbill of 1722 informs the public in large letters that—
“Miller is not with Pinkethman, but by himself, at the Angel Tavern, next door to the King’s Bench, who acts a new Droll, called the Faithful Couple or the Royal Shepherdess, with a very pleasant entertainment between Old Hob and his Wife, and the comical humours of Mopsy and Collin, with a variety of singing and dancing.
“The only Comedian now that dare,
Vie with the world and challenge the Fair.”
In France, also, the sign of the Angel is and was at all times, very common. The Hotel de l’Ange, Rue de la Huchette, appears to have been the best hotel in Paris in the sixteenth century. It was frequently visited by foreign ambassadors: those sent by Emperor Maximilian to Louis XII. took up their abode here; so did the ambassadors from Angus, King of Achaia, who, in 1552, came to see France, much in the same way as various ambassadors from all sorts of high and low latitudes occasionally honour our Court with a visit. Chapelle, a French poet of the seventeenth century, thus celebrates a tavern with this sign in Paris, frequented by the wits of the period:—
“Je n’ay pas vu vostre theâtre
Qu’aussitot je ressors de là,
Pour un Ange que j’idolâtre,
A cause du bon vin qu’il a.”[389]
There being, then, such a profusion of Angels everywhere, it became necessary to make some distinctions, and the usual means were adopted; the Angel was gilded, and called the Golden Angel; this, for instance, was the sign of Ellis Gamble, a goldsmith in Cranbourn Alley, Hogarth’s master in the art of engraving on silver; shop-bills engraved for this house by Hogarth are still in existence. Another variety was the Guardian Angel, which is still the sign of an ale-house at Yarmouth. This, too, was used in France, as we find l’Ange Gardien, the sign of Pierre Witte, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in the seventeenth century.
Very common, also, were the Three Angels, which may have been intended for the three angels that appeared to Abraham, or simply the favourite combination of three,[390] so frequent on the signboard and in heraldry. That three angels were thought to possess mysterious power, is evident from the following Devonshire charm for a burn:—
“Three Angels came from the north, east, and west,
One brought fire, another ice,
And the third brought the Holy Ghost,
So out fire—and in frost—
In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
The [Three Angels] was a very general linen-draper’s sign, for which there seems no reason other than that the long flowing garments in which they are generally represented, suggest their having been good customers to the drapery business.
Angels appear in combination with various heterogenous objects, in many of which, however, the so-called Angel is simply a Cupid. The Angel and Bible was a sign in the Poultry in 1680.[391] The Angel and Crown was a not uncommon tavern decoration. The following stanza from a pamphlet, entitled, “The Quack Vintners,” London, 1712, p. 18, shows the way in which this sign was represented:—
“May Harry’s Angel be a sign he draws
Angelick nectar, that deserves applause,
Such that may make the city love the Throne,
And, like his Angel, still support the Crown.”