“They report in Paris that the Thorny Crown, wherewith Christ was crowned on the Crosse, is kept in the Palace, which vpon Corpus Christi Day, in the afternoone, was publickly shewed, as some told me; but it was not my chance to see it. Truely, I wonder to see the contrarieties amongst the Papists, and most ridiculous varieties concerning their reliques, but especially about this of Christ’s Thorny Crowne. For whereas I was after that at the Citie of Vicenza in Italy, it was told me that in the monastery of the Dominican Fryers of that Citie, this Crowne was kept, which Saint Lewes, King of France, bestowed upon his brother Bartholomew, Bishop of Vicenza, and before one of the Dominican family. Wherefore I went to the Dominican Monastery and made suit to see it, but I had the repulse; for they told me that it was kept vnder three or four lockes, and neuer shewed to any by any favour whatsoeuer, but only upon Corpus Christi Day. If this Crowne of Paris, whereof they so much bragge, be true, that of Vicenza is false. Ho! the truth and certainty of Papistical reliques.”[400]
Crosses of various colours were probably amongst the first signs put up by the newly-converted Christians, (as soon as they could effect this with impunity,) on account of the recommendation of the early fathers, and for their beneficial influence. Father Lactantius, who lived in the fourth century, writes—“As Christ, whilst He lived amongst men, put the devils to flight by His words, and restored those to their senses whom these evil spirits had possessed; so now His followers in the name of their Master, and by the sign of His passion, even exercise the same dominion over them.” St Ephrem says—“Let us paint and imprint on our doors the life-giving cross; thus defended no evil will hurt you.” St Chrysostom says the same—“Wherefore let us with earnestness impress this cross on our houses, and on our walls, and our windows.” St Cyril of Alexandria introduces the Emperor Julian the apostate saying, “You Christians adore the wood of the cross, you engrave it on the porches of your houses,” &c. Hence the still prevalent custom in Roman Catholic places of painting crosses on the walls of houses, to drive away witches, as it is said; and these crosses being painted in different colours, might easily serve as a sign by which to designate the house. At the Crusades the popularity of this emblem increased: a red cross was the badge of the Crusader, and would be put up as a sign by men who had been to the Holy Land, or wished to court the patronage of those on their way thither. Finally, the different orders of knighthood settled each upon a particular colour as their distinctive mark. Thus the knights of St John wore white crosses, the Templars red crosses, the knights of St Lazarus green crosses, the Teutonic knights black crosses, embroidered with gold, &c. But the most common in England was the red cross, which was the cross of St George, and also of the red cross knights, who acted as a sort of police on the roads between Europe and the Holy Land to protect pilgrims. This badge, therefore, could not fail to be very popular.
In France it used to be, and in all probability is still, a common rebus to see le signe de la croix represented by a swan with a cross on his back, (cygne de la croix.)
Only very few signs of the cross are now remaining. The Golden Cross in the Strand is one of these, and has been in that locality for centuries. It was one of the first upon which the Puritans brooked their ill-humour and hatred of popery; for in 1643 it was taken down by order of a committee from the House of Commons, as “superstitious and idolatrous.” This was the precursor of the fall of old Charing Cross itself. The sign, however, was put up again at the Restoration, and figures prominently in Canaletti’s well-known view of Charing Cross, in the Northumberland Collection. The tavern was probably pulled down at the formation of Trafalgar Square.
At a point on the road between Dunchurch and Daventry, where three roads meet, there was formerly an inn with the sign of the Three Crosses, in allusion to the three roads. Swift, in one of his pedestrian excursions, happened to stop at that inn. Not being very elegantly dressed, and rather importunate to be served, the landlady told him that she could not leave her customers for “such as he,” upon which the Dean, who was not the most modest, nor the most patient of men, wrote the following epigram on one of the windows:—
“TO THE LANDLORD.
There hang three crosses at thy door,
Hang up thy wife and she’ll make four.”
The Resurrection was the sign of John Day, a bookseller, who, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, dwelt in St Sepulchre’s parish, a little above Holbourne Conduit. It was a sort of conundrum or charade on his name, which was carried out by his colophon, representing a man asleep, who is wakened by another with the words, “Arise, for it is day.” This, although somewhat profane, according to our present notions of such things, was nothing strange in a time when the people, though Protestants by name, were still strongly imbued with Roman Catholic ideas. John Cawoode, also a printer and publisher of St Paul’s Churchyard in 1558, had a still more profane sign—viz., the Holy Ghost. And this even continued till the beginning of the seventeenth century, for in 1602 we find this identical sign used by another printer, William Leake, who was probably his successor, and published in that year Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” Worse still was the sign of another bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1520, which was the Trinity.[401] We must bear in mind, however, that in Roman Catholic countries conversation upon matters of religion is not nearly so strict and guarded as amongst believers in Protestant nations. An amusing instance of this once occurred to the writer in Jerusalem, the great head-quarters of Christianity. Usually the pilgrims or travellers staying at the Latin convent there, which serves as an hotel, dine all together in a kind of table-d’hôte fashion; but for some reason it so fell out that our party one day dined in private. The holy brother who attended us happened to be a Spaniard, and as we had visited that country, and were tolerably acquainted with Valladolid, his native town, worldly recollections began to overcome the sanctity of the good monk, and he became inexhaustible in reminiscences of his younger days. Whilst talking with him, and refreshing ourselves with a meal of salad, grown in the garden of Gethsemane, we had indulged in two tumblers of a pithy white wine, quite strong enough to justify our resisting the pressing invitations of the reverend butler to take a third glass; but the jovial monk was not to be beaten, and finally convinced us with the following argument: “Oh come, brother, you must take another glass, remember you are in Jerusalem, and so take one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost!”
Although the English ale and refreshment houses continue to select fresh signs from the notabilities of the hour, the Palmerston’s Head and the Gladstone Arms for instance, they rarely choose anything of a religious or devotional cast. One instance, however, occurs to us, and that in the neighbourhood of London, which deserves mention. In Kentish Town, under the Hampstead hills, the noisiest and most objectionable public-house in the district bears the significant sign of the Gospel Oak. It is the favourite resort of navvies and quarrelsome shoemakers, and took its name, not from any inclination to piety on the part of the landlord, but from an old oak tree in the neighbourhood, near the boundary line of Hampstead and St Pancras parishes, a relic of the once general custom of reading a portion of the gospel under certain trees in the parish perambulations, equivalent to “beating the bounds.” “The boundaries and township of the parish of Wolverhampton are,” says Shaw, in his “History of Staffordshire,” (vol. ii., p. 165,) “in many points marked out by what are called Gospel Trees;” and Herrick, in his “Hesperides,” (Ed. 1859, p. 26,) says:—
“Dearest, bury me
Under that holy oak, or gospel tree;
Where, though thou see’st not, thou may’st think upon
Me, when thou yeerly go’st procession.”