Innkeepers, 1641.
Nearly opposite to the Devil stood the Cock Tavern, for centuries, and until a few months ago, when it was closed for alterations, frequented by the Templars. We hope that it was not for this reason that its internal arrangements were spoken of by the Laureate as—
The haunts of hungry sinners, Old boxes, larded with the steam Of thirty thousand dinners.
This Tavern, once known as the Cock and Bottle, and subsequently as the Cock Alehouse, was a noted house in the seventeenth century. The effigy of the Cock, which until recently used to stand over the door, was reputed to have been carved by the great Grinling Gibbons. At the time of the Plague of London the following advertisement appeared in the Intelligencer:—“This is to certify that the Master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock Alehouse, hath dismissed his servants, and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmass next, so that all persons who have any accounts {210} or farthings belonging to the said house are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July, and they shall receive satisfaction.” The Cock, however, seems to have soon resumed its hospitality, for we read that Pepys shortly afterwards went “by water to the Temple, and then to the Cock Alehouse, and drank, and ate a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs. Pierce home; and then Knipp and I to the Temple again, and took boat, it being darkish, and to Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire burning at Lambeth for the King’s coronation day.”
A waiter at this house is commemorated in the well-known lines of Will Waterproof’s Monologue:—
O plump head waiter at the Cock To which I most resort, How goes the time? ’tis five o’clock, Go fetch a pint of port.
The old Cock alehouse is now no more; but the sign which for two hundred years has looked down upon the bustling Fleet Street crowds, together with the “old boxes” and carved oak over-mantel, have found a resting-place at “The Temple Bar,” on the other side of the way.
The Mitre was the sign of several celebrated London Taverns, the most famous of all being that situated in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, where Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, Boswell, and other lesser lights used to meet. It was here that Boswell first made acquaintance with the great Doctor. “He agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I called on him, and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox, High Church sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson—the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and the pride from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ever experienced.” The great name of Shakspere is also connected by tradition with this house.
The old Globe Tavern in Fleet Street survived down to about the beginning of the present century. It was the favourite resort of Oliver Goldsmith, who took great delight in hearing a certain “tun of a man,” who frequented the house, sing the song entitled Nottingham Ale, in which Bacchus himself is said to have sprung from a barrel of that famous liquor:— {211}