The Grasshoppers on the London signboards were all descendants of Sir Thomas Gresham’s sign and crest, which is still commemorated by the weather-vane on the Royal Exchange, of which he was the first founder. The original sign appears to have been preserved up to a very recent date.
“The shop of the great Sir Thomas Gresham,” says Pennant, “stood in this [Lombard] street: it is now occupied by Messrs Martin, bankers, who are still in possession of the original sign of that illustrious person—the Grasshopper. Were it mine, that honourable memorial of so great a predecessor should certainly be placed in the most ostentatious situation I could find.”[186]
The ancients used the grasshopper as a fascinum, (fascination, enchantment;) for this purpose Pisistratus erected one as a καταχηνη before the Acropolis at Athens; hence grasshoppers, in all sorts of human occupations, were worn about the person to bring good luck. The grasshopper sign certainly seems to have been a lucky one. Charles Duncombe and Richard Kent, goldsmiths, lived at the Grasshopper in Lombard Street, (no doubt Gresham’s old house,) in 1677,[187] and throve so well under its fascinum that Duncombe gathered a fortune large enough to buy the Helmsley estate in Yorkshire from George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The land is now occupied by the Earl of Feversham, (Duncombe’s descendant,) under the name of Duncombe Park.
It is impossible to determine whether the Maidenhead was set up as a compliment to the Duke of Buckingham, to Catherine Parr, or to the Mercers’ Company, for it is the crest of the three. But at all events the Mercers’ crest had the precedence as being the oldest. Amongst the badges of Henry VIII. it is sometimes seen issuing out of the Tudor Rose:—
“This combination,” Willement says, “does not appear to have been an entire new fancy, but to have been composed from the rose-badge of King Henry VIII., and from one previously used by this queen’s family. The house of Parr had before this time assumed as one of their devices a maiden’s head couped below the breast, vested in ermine and gold, the hair of the head and the temples encircled with a wreath of red and white roses; and this badge they had derived from the family of Ros of Kendal.”
It was a sign used by some of the early printers. On the last page of a little work entitled “Salus Corporis, Salus Animæ,” we find the following imprint:—
“Hos cme Richardus quos Fax impressit ad unguem calcographus
summa sedulitate libros.Impressum est presens opusculum londiniis in divi pauli semiterio sub virginei capitis signo. Anno millesimo quin getesimo nono. Mensis vero Decembris die xii.”[188]
Thomas Petit, another early printer, also lived “at the sygne of the Maydenshead in Paulis Churchyard,” 1541. He was probably a successor of Richard Fax.
An amusing anecdote is told of old Hobson, the Londoner, with regard to this sign:—
“Maister Hobson having one of his Prentices new come out of his time, and being made a free man of London, desired to set up for himself; so, taking a house not far from St Laurence Lane, furnished it with store[142] of ware, and set up the signe of the Maydenhead; hard by was a very rich man of the same trade, had the same signe, and reported in every place where he came, that the young man had set up the same signe that he had onely to get away his customers, and daily vexed the young man therewithall, who, being grieved in his mind, made it known to Maister Hobson, his late Maister, who, comming to the rich man, said, ‘I marvell, sir,’ (quoth Maister Hobson,) ‘why you wrong my man so much as to say he seketh to get away your customers.’ ‘Marry, so he doth,’ (quoth the other,) ‘for he has set up a signe called the Maidenhead, and mine is.’ ‘That is not so,’ (replied Maister Hobson,) ‘for his is the widdoe’s head, and no maydenhead, therefore you do him great wrong.’ The rich man hereupon, seeing himself requited with mocks, rested satisfied, and never after that envied Maister Hobson’s man, but let him live quietly.”[189]