The Hand and Shears, in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, played an important part at the opening of Bartholomew Fair. It was customary to make the proclamation for opening the fair late in the afternoon of August 23d, but the showmen and traders opened their booths early in the morning:—
“Lawful objections being made to this, a riotous assembly met the night before the day of the Mayor’s Proclamation at the public-house within Cloth Fair, in which the Court of Piepoudre was held,[509] the Hand and Shears—now transformed into a tall brick gin-palace—and at midnight sallied forth, bearing along, in later years, the effigy of a woman to represent Lady Holland, (who must have been instigator, and it would seem, first leader of the mob,) and the mob—knocking at doors, ringing bells, clamouring and rioting, some five thousand strong, during three hours of the middle of the night—proclaimed for itself, in its own way, that Bartholomew Fair was open. The first irregular proclamation was for many years made by a company of tailors, who met the night before the legal proclamation at the Hand and Shears, elected a chairman, and as the clock struck twelve went out into Cloth Fair, each with a pair of shears in his hand. The chairman then proclaimed the Fair to the expectant mob, who all sped on their errand of riot, to arouse with the news of it the sleepers in the neighbourhood of Smithfield.”[510]
The Three Crowned Needles looks also like a tailor’s sign, and from the evidence of a trades token of 1669 we know that it was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate. Hatton thinks that a similar sign may have given its name to Threadneedle Street, (Three Needle Street.) Three Crowned Needles was a charge in the needle-makers’ company’s arms. It is a curious fact that all the needles used in England up to the time of Queen Elizabeth were of foreign make; those sold in Cheapside in the reign of Queen Mary were made by a Spanish negro, who carried the secret of their manufacture with him to the grave. In 1566 they were manufactured under the direction of a German, Elias Grause, and after that time only it seems that we had learned how to make them.
Among agricultural signs, the Plough leads the van, sometimes accompanied by the legend “Speed the Plough.” Of two inscriptions on the sign of the Plough that have come under our observation, both contain sound advice. That of the Plough at Filey might well be remembered by “afternoon” farmers: it says:—
“He who by the Plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive;”
whilst on the Plough Inn, Alnwick, the following is cut in stone:—
“That which your father old
Hath purchased and left you to possess,
Do you dearly hold
To shew your worthiness. 1717.”
In the inventory of church goods made at Holbeach, in Lincoln, at the time of the Reformation:—
Wm. Davy bought the sygne whereon the plowghe did stond for xvjd.
This probably refers to the signs or badges exhibited by the religious guilds in the middle ages over the altars and as decorations in their churches, which were in some measure of the nature of other signs, in pointing out certain fraternities or trades, besides possessing a secondary and religious meaning.