Notwithstanding the popular censure, Cromwell is still honoured with signboards in places where his memory has lingered, as at Kate’s Hill, near Dudley.
In most cases, however, signboard popularity is rather short-lived; “dulcique animos novitate tenebo” seems to be essentially the motto of those that choose popular characters for their sign. Had this modern tribute of admiration been in use at the time of the Preacher, it might have afforded him one more illustration of the vanity of vanities to be found in all sublunary things. Horace Walpole noticed this fickleness of signboard fame in one of his letters:—
“I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs, as I passed through the villages, made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the Duke’s Head had succeeded almost universally to Admiral Vernon’s, as his had left but few traces of the Duke of Ormond’s. I pondered these things in my breast, and said to myself, ’Surely all glory is but as a sign!’”[55]
Some favourites of the signboard have, however, been more fortunate than others. Henry VIII., for instance, may still be seen in many places; indeed, for more than two centuries after his death, almost every King’s Head invariably gave a portrait of Bluff Harry.
Older kings occasionally occur, but their memories seem to have been revived rather than handed down by successive innkeepers. If we are to believe an old Chester legend, however, The King Edgar Inn, in Bridge Street of that city, has existed by the same name since the time of the Saxon king. The sign represents King Edgar rowed down the river Dee by the eight tributary kings. The present house has the appearance of being built anterior to the reign of Elizabeth, and the sign looks almost as old, but it would be unwise to give the place or the sign a much higher antiquity. King John is the sign under whose auspices Jem Mace, the pugilist, keeps a public-house in Holywell Lane, Shoreditch. The same king also figures in Albemarle Street and in Bermondsey; whilst the great event of his reign, Magna Charta, is a sign at New Holland, Hull. John of Gaunt may be seen in many places; and we may surmise that his upholders are stanch Protestants, who value his character as a reformer and supporter of Wicliffe. The [Black Prince] may not unlikely have come down to us in an uninterrupted line of signboards; so little was his identity sometimes understood, that there is a shop-bill in the “Banks Collection”[56] on which this hero is represented as a negro!
There is a Queen Eleanor in London Fields, Hackney, probably the beautiful and affectionate queen of Edward I., buried in Westminster Abbey, 1290, in honour of whom Charing Cross, Cheapcross, and seven other crosses, were erected on the places where her body rested on its way to the great Abbey. What prompted the choice of this sign it is hard to say.
At Hever, in Kent, a rude portrait of Henry VIII. may be seen. Near this village the Bolleyn or Bullen family formerly held large possessions; and old people in the district yet shew the spot where, as the story goes, King Henry often used to meet Sir Thomas Bolleyn’s daughter Anne. Be this as it may, years after the unhappy death of Anne, the village alehouse had for its sign, Bullen Butchered; but the place falling into new hands, the name of the house was altered to the Bull and Butcher, which sign existed to a recent date, and would probably have swung at this moment, but for a desire of the resident clergyman to see something different. He suggested the King’s Head; and the village painter was forthwith commissioned to make the alteration. The latter accepted the task, drew the bluff features of the monarch, and represented it as other King’s Heads, but in his hands placed a large axe, which signboard exists to this day.
As for [Queen Elizabeth], she was the constant type of the Queen’s Head, as her father was of the King’s Head; and, like him, she may still be seen in many places. It is somewhat more difficult to ascertain who is meant by the Queen Catherine in Brook Street, Ratcliffe Highway; whether it be Queen Catherine of Aragon, or Queen Catherine of Braganza. Queen Anne, in South Street, Walworth, has evidently come down to us as the token of that house since the day of its opening, just as the Queen of Bohemia, who, until about fifty years ago, continued as a sign in Drury Lane.[57] This was Elizabeth, daughter of James I., married to Frederic V., Elector-Palatine, who, after her husband’s death, lived at Craven House, Drury Lane, and died there, February 13, 1661, having been privately married, it is thought, to Lord Craven, who was foremost in fighting the battles of her husband.
Of King’s Heads, Henry VIII. is the oldest on authentic record. But this does not prove that he was the first; for, as there lived great men before Agamemnon, so most kings during their reign will, in all probability, have had their signs. Among Henry’s successors, we find the head of Edward VI. on a trades token; whilst Charles the First’s Head was the portrait hanging from the house of that scoundrel Jonathan Wild, in the Old Bailey. Even at the present day there is a sign of Charles the First at Goring Heath, Reading. The Martyr’s Head in Smithfield, 1710, seems also to have been a portrait of Charles I.; so, at least, the following allusion gives us to understand:—