“In walking along the streets in my youth, on the side next this prison, (the Fleet,) I have often been tempted by the question, ’Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married.’ Along this most lawless space was most frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand conjoined, with ‘Marriages performed within’ written beneath. A dirty fellow invited you in; the parson was seen walking before his shop, a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or a roll of tobacco.”
The two hands conjoined is also common in France—where it is called à la bonne Foi. In 1624 it was the sign of Pierre Billaine, bookseller and printer in the Rue St Jacques, Paris.
The Leg used formerly to be at the door of every hosier. It was also the sign of a tavern in King Street, Westminster, frequented by Pepys. Trades tokens are extant of the Leg and Star, kept by Richard Finch, in Aldersgate, in the seventeenth century. It may have represented a leg with the garter round it, and the star of that order; but more probably it was a combination of two signs.
The Old Man, Market Place, Westminster, was probably intended for Old Parr, who was celebrated in ballads as “The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Manne.” The token represents a bearded bust in profile, with a bare head. In the reign of James I. it was the name of a tavern in the Strand, otherwise called the Hercules Tavern, and in the eighteenth century there were two coffee-houses, the one called the Old Man’s, the other the Young Man’s Coffee-house.
The Fountain was a favourite sign with the Londoners before the Reformation, perhaps on account of its connexion with the martyrdom of St Paul, whose head, says the legend, on being struck off, rebounded three times, when a fountain gushed up at each spot where the sacred head had touched the ground. Hence there is a church near Rome, in the midst of the desolate Campagna, called San Paolo delle Tre Fontane, where altars are raised over each of those three fountains. There is also a fountain connected with the martyrdom of St Alban, the English protomartyr, and Saints’ Wells may be met with all over the kingdom.
During the Plague of 1665, the following advertisement used to figure constantly in the papers:—
“MONSIEUR Augier’s famous Remedies for stopping and preventing the plague having not only been recommended by several certificates from Lyons, Paris, Thoulouse, &c., but likewise experimented here by the special directions of the Lords of his Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council, and proved by Witnesses upon oath, and several Tryals, to be of singular virtue and effect, are to be had at Mr Drinkwater’s, at the Fountain, in Fleet Street, &c.”[697]
Mr Drinkwater had evidently intended a pun by selecting a fountain as his sign.
The Fountain Tavern in the Strand was famous as the meeting-place of the ultra-loyal party in 1685, who here talked over public affairs before the meeting of Parliament. Roger Lestrange, who had been recently knighted by the king, took a leading part in these consultations. But “the fate of things lies always in the dark;” in the reign of George II. this same house became a great resort for the Whigs, who sometimes used to meet here as many as two hundred at a time, making speeches and passing resolutions.
For this reason it was proposed that Master Jephson the landlord should write under his sign:—