“It may seem doubtful,” says Camden, “whether Bolton, prior of St Bartholomew, in Smithfield, was wiser when he invented for his name a bird-bolt through his Tun, or when he built him a house upon Harrow Hill, for fear of an inundation after a great conjunction of planets in the watery triplicity.”
From an entry in the Patent Roll of 21 Henry VI., (1443,) this house in Fleet Street appears to have been an inn at that period. In a licence of alienation to the Friars Carmelites of London, of certain premises in the parish of St Dunstan, Fleet Street, “Hospitium vocatum le Boltenton” is mentioned as a boundary. On some of the seventeenth century trades tokens, we meet with a tun pierced by three arrows; this variation of the Bolt in Tun was called the Tun and Arrows, (or harrows, as the Cockney tokens have it.) There was one in Bishopsgate Street Within, and another in Bishopsgate Street Without, in the reign of Charles II.
A Hand and Cock was the punning sign of John Hancock, in Whitefriars. George Cox, in the Minories, tallow-chandler by trade, had Two Cocks for his sign. Thomas Cockayne, a distiller in Southwark, had the same sign, as a feeble pun on part of his name; whilst Christopher Bostock, not seeing any possibility “to hammer” a rebus out of his own patronym, fortunately for him lived at Cock’s Key, and so could make up for this misfortune by punning on the name of that place, whence his sign triumphantly exhibited the Cock and Key. John Drinkwater, a publisher, intimated his name by a Fountain; and William Woodcock, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in the seventeenth century, happily rendered his by a cock standing on a bundle of wood. William Hill, another bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1598, lived at the sign of the Hill. John Buckland, who followed the same profession in Paternoster Row, in 1750, was modestly content with half a pun, and adopted the sign of the Buck, while, in the same manner, another of his colleagues, Samuel Manship, who in 1720 lived “against the Royal Exchange, Cornhill,” was satisfied with the Ship. The Sun and Red Cross, in Jewin Street, was the sign of John Cross, who, taking a house with the sign of the Sun, added to it a Cross. In the same manner Pelham More, in Moorsgate, had the Sun and Moor’s Head. John Cherry, of Maidenhead, adopted a Cherry-tree as his sign, showing in this as much wit as the ancestor of the Crequi family in France, who chose a Crequier (old French for cherry-tree) as his coat of arms. Hugh Conny, of Caxton and Elsworth, Cambridge, had in 1666 Three Conies, or rabbits, for a sign. Richard Lion, in the Strand, had the Lion. Bartholomew Fish, at Queenhithe, in 1667, Three Fishes. William Horne, in Oak Lane, 1671, the Horns. Thomas Fox, in Newgate Market, a Fox. William Geese, King Street, Westminster, Three Geese. Ellinor Gandor, Upper Shadwell, 1667, a Gander; whilst H. Goes, a native of Antwerp, printer at York in 1506, next at Beverley, and finally, in London, had for his sign a Goose with an H above it. Joseph Parsons, “at the sign of Parson’s Green,” Market Place, St James, seems to have had a view of Parson’s Green, Fulham, for his sign; though why he did not simply take a parson is, we fear, a secret he has carried with him to the grave. John Hive, St Mary’s Hill, 1667, had the sign of the Beehive. Grace Pestell, in Fig-tree Yard, Ratcliffe, the Pestle and Mortar. John Atwood, in Rose Lane, the Man in the Wood. Andrew Hind, over against the Mews, Charing Cross, a Hind. Taylor, the Water poet, mentions a similar sign at Preston:—
“There at the Hinde, kinde Master Hinde, mine host,
Kept a good table, bak’d, and boyld, and rost.”[669]
Jane Keye, Bloomsbury Market, 1653, a Key. The Lion and Key was, in 1651, a sign in Thames Street, punning perhaps on the neighbouring Lion’s Quay; it is still the sign of a public-house in Hull, whilst the Red Lion and Key still occurs in Mill Lane, Tooley Street. A grocer, named Laurence Green, proved that to the “fortem ac tenacem propositi virum” nothing is impossible, and found means to pun upon his untractable name by painting his doorposts green, and called his shop the Green Posts. We meet with him in a newspaper advertisement, which, as it gives the price of various articles at that date, is not uninteresting. Green sold—
“Chocolate, made of the best nuts, at 3s. a pound; the best, with sugar, at 2s. a pound; a good sort of all nut, at 2s. 6d.; with sugar, 1s. 8d. To the buyers of three pounds, a quarter gratis. The best coffee, at 5s. 4d. a pound; to the buyer of three pounds, 1s. allowed. Bohee tea, at 16, 20, 24s., the very finest, at 28s. a pound. Fine green tea, at 14s., good, at 10s. a pound. Fine Spanish snuff, at 4s. a pound.” &c.[670]
The Harp was the sign of Richard Harper, West Smithfield; it occurs on a trades token. The house seems afterwards to have assumed the sign of the Bible and Harp. What occupation Richard Harper followed does not appear from his token, but in 1641 a Richard Harper at the sign of the Bible and Harp, published a tract called
“Bartholomew Fayre,
or
Varieties of Fancies where you may find,
A fayre of Wares and all to please your mind.”
In 1670 the house was occupied by a certain J. Clarke, and at a subsequent period by J. Bisset; both these men published numerous ballads.