“In the cyte of Exeter by West away
The time not passed hence many a day,
There dwelled a yoman discret and wise,
At the siggne of the Flower de lyse
Which had to name John Hawkyn.”
Tokens are extant of an inn at Dover, in the seventeenth century, with the sign of the French Arms, a tavern name sufficiently common also in London at that period to attract the travellers from across the Channel. Thus James Johnson was a goldsmith, “that kept running cash,”—i.e., a banker,—in Cheapside, in 1677, living at the sign of the Three Flower de Luces.[158] In the fifteenth century, Gascon merchants and other strangers in London were allowed to keep hostels for their countrymen, and, in order to get known, they most likely put up the arms of those countries as their signs. No doubt the Three Frogs, London Road, Wokingham, is a travesty of Johnny Crapaud’s Arms.
| PLATE VII. | |
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| HEDGEHOG. (Bynneman’s sign, 1560.) | BLUE BOAR. (Banks’s Collection, 1765.) |
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| THE VALIANT LONDON APPRENTICE. (From an old chapbook, 17th cent.) | |
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| THE SUN. (Sign of Wynkyn de Worde, 1497.) | THREE PHEASANTS AND SCEPTRE. (Banks’s Bills, 1795.) |
Boursault,[159] in his letter to Bizotin, has a burst of indignation at a “fournisseur” of something or other to the royal family, who had adopted as his sign the English Arms, with the arms of France in the first quarter, and endeavours to call down the ire of the Parisian police upon the head of the unfortunate shopkeeper who had committed this act of treason:—
“Laissons l’Angleterre se repaître de chimères,” saith he, “et s’imaginer que ses souverains sont Rois de France, mais que des Français soyent assez ignorants, ou assez mauvais sujets, pour mettre les armes de France écartelés dans celles d’Angleterre, c’est ce que des sujets aussi zélez que Monsieur d’Argenson et les autres officiers préposez pour la police ne doivent nullement souffrir.”[160]
He next, in a threatening manner, reminds the poor shopkeeper how, according to “Candem [sic] Historien Angloys,” Queen Mary Stuart was beheaded for having quartered the English arms with those of Scotland, though she was the heir-presumptive of the English throne; and if such was the fate of that queen, what then did the man deserve who quartered the arms of his sovereign with those of a foreign king? Indeed he deserved the same fate as the arms.
Another sign, apparently of French origin, is the Dolphin and Crown, the armorial bearing of the French Dauphin, and the sign of R. Willington, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard circa 1700. Some years after, this house seems to have been occupied by James Young, a famous maker of violins and other musical instruments, who lived at the west corner of London House Yard, St Paul’s Churchyard. On this man the following catch appeared in the Pleasant Musicall Companion, 1726:—
“You scrapers that want a good fiddle well strung,
You must go to the man that is old while he’s Young;
But if this same fiddle you fain would play bold,
You must go to his son, who’s Young when he’s old.
There’s old Young and young Young, both men of renown:
Old sells and young plays the best fiddle in town.
Young and old live together, and may they live long—
Young to play an old fiddle, old to sell a new song.”
This Young family afterwards removed to the Queen’s Head Tavern in Paternoster Row, where in a few years they grew rich by giving concerts, when they removed to the Castle in the same street. The Castle concerts continued a long time to be celebrated.