[431] “Misrule in a velvet cap, a sprig, a short cloak, a great yellow ruff, like a reveller, his torch bearer bearing a rope, a cheese, and a basket.” The names given were the real designations of the performers in private life. Kit, the cobbler of Philpot Lane; Cis, a cook’s wife from Scalding Alley; Nell, a milliner from Threadneedle Street; and Tom, our drawer from Blossom’s Inn.
“And he presenteth Misrule,
Which you may know by the very show,
Albeit you never ask it;
For there you may see, what his ensignes bee,
The rope, the cheese, and the basket.”
[432] St Catherine was beheaded after having been placed between wheels with spikes, from which she was saved by an angel descended from heaven.
[433] Several of the old carriers and coaching inns still remain in Bishopsgate Street, under their old names, as the Black Bull, the Green Dragon, the Four Swans, and (until a few months ago) the Flowerpot, &c.
[434] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842.
[435] It is said that this sign, put up in French somewhere as the cœur doré, was Englished into the “queer door.”
[436] Note in Gifford’s Ben Jonson, vol iv., p. 174.
[437] They were called the three kings of Cologne because they were buried in that city. The Empress Helena brought their bones to Constantinople, from whence they were removed to Milan, and thence in 1164 to Cologne, where they are still kept as sacred and miracle-working relics.
[438] Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193.