Innumerable signs were borrowed from the army and navy; thus, at the present day, every uniform in the service is represented near barracks or in other haunts of soldiers. The Recruiting Sergeant is generally the sign of the public-house, where that worthy spreads his nets. Cross Guns, Cross Lances, Cross Swords, and Cross Pistols, respectively, are meant to allure artillerymen, lancers, and various cavalry men. But above all the Standard, the Banner, or the Waving Flag—“the glorious rag that for a thousand years has stood the battle and the breeze,” is of common occurrence, not only in the neighbourhood of military quarters, but everywhere in towns and villages. At the Standard Tavern in the Strand, Edmund Curll the bookseller used to meet the mysterious Rev. Mr Smith, who sold him Pope’s correspondence.
“I am just going to the Lords to finish Pope,” writes Curll to this person. “I desire you to send me the sheets to perfect the first fifty books, and likewise the remaining three hundred books, and pray be at the Standard Tavern this evening and I will pay you £20 more.”
The Kettledrum is a sign at St George-in-the-East; the Drum and the Trumpet are both of frequent occurrence, and the last is of old standing. One of the characters in “The Ball,” a play by Shirley, 1633, thus commends the beer of the Trumpet:—
“Their strong beere is better than any I
Ever drunke at the Trumpet.”—The Ball, Act v.
Possibly this was the Trumpet in Shire Lane, immortalised in the Tatler, and one of the favourite haunts of merry good-natured Dick Steele. Bishop Hoadley was once present at one of the meetings in this tavern, when Steele rather exposed himself in his efforts to please, a double duty devolving upon him, as well to celebrate the “glorious memory” of King William III., it being the 4th of November—as to drink up to conversation pitch his friend Addison, the phlegmatic constitution of whom was hardly warmed for society by the time Steele was no longer fit for it. One of the company, a red hot Whig, knelt down to drink the health with all honours. This rather disconcerted the bishop, which, Steele seeing, whispered to him—“Do laugh, my lord, pray laugh; it is humanity to laugh.” Shortly after Steele was put into a chair and sent home. Next morning he was much ashamed, and sent the Bishop this distich:—
“Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons though he none commits.”
Some trades tokens are extant of houses with the sign of the Trumpet in King Street, Wapping, and in the Minories. At the same period there was a sign of the Trumpeter in Trump Alley, probably suggested by the name of the thoroughfare.
The Buckler is a very old sign, and occurs in “Cocke Lorell’s Bote:”—
“Here is Saunder Sadeler of Froge Street Corner, With Jelyan Joly at signe of the Bokeler.”