“All hops abandon, ye who enter here;
The wicked Wilfrid haunts this Watery Cavern;
No wine, no whisky, nor even bitter beer,
Flow through the channels of this Coffee Tavern.
The steaming coffee and the fragrant tea
Are ready, where each eye can plainly see ’em;
Tea-total, then, let each incomer be,
And while ‘Te-total’ let him sing Te Deum.”

On the map of the road between London and Harwich, given in Ogilby’s Itinerarium Angliæ, published in 1675, a house—presumably an inn—called the Monk’s Head is shown on the east side of the road, exactly opposite New Hall Park. There can be no doubt that this sign represented, not the head of an ecclesiastic, but that of General Monk, the great promoter of the Restoration, although he had been created Duke of Albemarle some fifteen years before. After the Restoration, New Hall was purchased by, or for, General Monk, and he lived there, as Morant says, “in very great splendour, to the diminution of his estates.” He died in 1670, and was succeeded by his son. Forty years ago there was a Friar’s Inn in Fryer’s Street, Chelmsford, but it has now disappeared. At Rayleigh there is a Paul Pry (beer-house). At Widford a beer-house keeper has adopted as his sign that modern, though distinguished, Essex worthy, Sir Evelyn Wood. Another at Waltham Abbey has selected the Sultan. Others, at Saffron Walden and Waltham Abbey respectively, do honour to the Old English Gentleman. Probably these latter have in their minds the hero of the song, rather than any gentleman in particular. At Theydon Garnon there is a Merry Fiddlers, which displays no less than three sign-boards. At Becontree Heath there is a beer-shop with the same sign. The landlord of the former states that, although he has endeavoured to unearth the meaning of his sign, he has hitherto failed. He adds, however, that, previous to his own occupation, the house had been in one family for many generations, and that for long it displayed a pictorial sign-board representing Three Fiddlers, but these have of late given place to the present sign. What particular three fiddlers are meant, is difficult to explain. The house bore merely its present name of the Merry Fiddlers in 1789. Larwood and Hotten do not mention the sign. At Abbots Roothing there is a Coopers (beer-house), a sign which is doubtless the same as that of the Coopers’ Arms. At Willingale Doe there is a Ferry Man. Probably he has retired from business and settled there, as it is hard to discover any ferry at that place. About sixty-five years ago *Bishop Blays, the patron saint of wool-combers, appeared as a sign at Colchester. It was a most appropriate sign in that town in the seventeenth century, when it was an important seat of the woollen trade. *Neptune appears beside his “native element” at the Hythe, Colchester. Sixty years ago there was a *Jolly Sailor at Harwich, a *Sailor’s Return at Grays, and a *Mariner at Colchester. These signs were all appropriate enough, being situated in maritime places, but the same cannot be said of the *Three Mariners which appeared at Chelmsford at the same period. Sixty years ago, too, there was to be seen at Colchester the curious sign of the *Sailor and Ball, which Larwood and Hotten do not mention. Probably it was not an impaled sign, but took its name from some game of ball played by sailors.

Numerous other signs are connected with Royalty. Thus we have two examples of the Albert, one of the Royal Albert, one of the Albert House, one of the King of Prussia (formerly a very common sign), one of the Queen Adelaide (which is at least forty years old), one of the Queen Elizabeth, four of the Prince Alfred, one of the Duke of Cambridge, two of the Duke of Edinburgh (neither of which existed twenty years ago), one of the Clarence (of course commemorating the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV.), three of the Duke of York (probably commemorating the second son of George III., who died in 1827, though one or more of the earlier Dukes of York may also be intended), five of the Royal Inn, one of the Queen, one of the Queen Victoria, ten of the Victoria, one of the Royal Sovereign, one of the Royal Arms, one of the Royal Forest Hotel, one Royal Steamer, one Royal Essex Arms, five of the Royal Hotel, eighteen of the Royal Oak, one of the Old Royal Oak, one of the King’s Oak, four of the Royal Standard, three of the Queen’s Arms, nineteen of the Queen’s Head, seventeen of the King’s Arms, forty-nine of the King’s Head, one of the Old King’s Head, twelve of the Prince of Wales, one of the Princess of Wales, one of the Prince Albert Victor, one of the Princess Alice, two of the Princess Alexandra, one of William the Conqueror (at Widdington), two of William the Fourth, and two of King William the Fourth, one of which is placed at a “four-want-way” at Leaden Roothing, and forms a landmark well known to every one who rides to hounds or travels by road in “The Roothings.” The King William and the King William IV. are both common beer-house signs, probably because the act authorizing the opening of these houses was passed in his reign. The beer-retailers of the time, when casting about for a sign, naturally selected the sovereign of their day. In the first form the sign occurs at Bocking, Springfield, &c., and under the latter at Braintree, Chigwell, and elsewhere. The Prince of Wales, too, is a very common beer-house sign, as also the Victoria, the Queen Victoria, the Queen’s Head, and the Queen’s Arms. Prince Alfred is commemorated on a beer-house sign at Chigwell. At the same place is a British Queen (beer-house), by which probably is intended Queen Boadicea, who received her last overthrow in the neighbourhood. The Prince of Orange still figures as a beer-house sign at Chelmsford. The sign of Prince of Wales’ Head existed at Harwich in 1764, as it is mentioned in a number of the Chelmsford Chronicle for that year; and a Royal Mortar (whatever that might be) was to be seen at Colchester twenty years ago. Messrs. Larwood and Hotten mention the strange sign of the *Three Queens, which was, until lately, to be seen at Moulsham. They surmise that it was suggested by the common sign of the Three Kings, of which we have no example in Essex, unless the Three Travellers, which occurs near Romford, and is apparently unique, be another form of it. The three kings represent the three wise men or Magi from the East. A writer in Notes and Queries (1st Series, vol. viii. p. 627) says that the following rhyme was formerly appended to the sign of a Victoria beer-shop at Coopersale:—

“The Queen some day
May pass this way
And see our Tom and Jerry;[86]
Perhaps she’ll stop
And stand a drop
To make her subjects merry.”

On the other side of the sign-board were some different lines which the writer had forgotten.

The sign of the King’s Head is by no means of modern introduction. It occurs on the seventeenth century tokens of Robert Adson of Colchester in 1668, of Thomas Bribrist of Felstead (no date), and of Thomas Livermer of Wethersfield, and it is mentioned in advertisements in the Chelmsford Chronicle for March 10, 1787, as then occurring at Prittlewell and Stebbing. As the sign still exists at all these places, except Felstead and Wethersfield, it is at least probable that the same houses which were known by it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are known by it now. The famous King’s Head, opposite the church at Chigwell, so well described by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge under the name of the Maypole, has been already spoken of (p. 113). It is a long, large, plastered building, with many gables, and projecting upper storeys—evidently dating from the era of the Stuarts or earlier. Arthur Young, in 1771, declares that “of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King’s Head at Tilbury.” In 1678 a King’s Head at Rickling formed a house of call for Poor Robin on his Perambulation from Saffron Walden to London. After recounting how he fared at the Black Bull at Newport, he says—

“We having dined and joined a pint or two,
Then forwards on my journey I did go;
And first came unto a town called Rickling,
Where for to stay I made no stickling,
But presently at the King’s Head fell a tippling,
Where of Compounding Dick[87] I there heard tell.”

The King’s Head on the Balkern Hill, Colchester, is an ancient and memorable inn, though the present house is not very old. At the time of the surrender of the town to Fairfax, in 1648, it was a general rendezvous of the noblemen and gentry of the Royalist party. Foxe, too, in his Book of Martyrs mentions that “at the Kinge’s Head in Colchester, and at other innes in the sayd towne, the afflicted Christians had set places appointed for themselves to meet at.” Mr. H. W. King has kindly informed the author that the King’s Head, now existing at Leigh, is not the same house as one which existed there under the same name in the eighteenth century. The latter is traceable (writes Mr. King) as a private house from 1671 to about 1720, being described in 1702 as a “messuage and shop.” Between 1718 and 1723 it was rebuilt, as in the latter year it is spoken of as a new house, and is described as an inn with the sign of the Queen’s Head. In 1740 it is described as “the Angel, heretofore the Queen’s Head.” In 1766 it is described as “the King’s Head, heretofore the Queen’s Head, afterwards the Angel.” It then became a private house, as it has ever since remained. It was probably soon after this, about 1766, that the present King’s Head at Leigh assumed that name. These three changes, all within the short space of fifty years, or less, are very interesting. They seem to suggest that the house was first named the Queen’s Head in honour of Queen Anne; but that, when she died in 1714, the same sign (perhaps slightly altered) was made to do duty for some time as an Angel, and still later was changed to the King’s Head, probably on the accession of one of the Georges. At Harold Wood there is a King Harold, which is no doubt connected with the name of the place. At Nazing, which was one of the estates with which Harold endowed the neighbouring Abbey of Waltham, there has been for at least a century past a King Harold’s Head.

The George, which occurs seventeen times in Essex, is another royal sign. In some instances it doubtless represents St. George, our patron saint, disconnected from his dragon; but, more probably, it has usually been set up—at least, of late—in honour of our Hanoverian kings. There is, however, abundant evidence that even as early as the very beginning of the seventeenth century, St. George, the Patron Saint of England, had already appeared on the sign-board without his usual antagonist the Dragon. Thus, “Blague, the merry host of the George at Waltham,” figures prominently in The Merry Divel of Edmonton, published in 1617—a curious play, which Kirkman attributed to Shakespeare. The scene is partly laid in Waltham Forest. Poor Robin, too, in his Perambulation also mentions a George at Bishops Stortford in 1678. Mr. H. W. King also finds evidence in ancient deeds that the George at Leigh was an inn as early as 1680, but the house itself is probably somewhat earlier. In 1777 it is described as “now and for some time past known as the sign of the George.” It had ceased to be an inn by 1801, though then and long afterwards described as “a messuage called the George,” the words “known by the sign of” being omitted. It was also a brewery. Mr. King also finds evidence in other ancient deeds of the existence of a George at Rayleigh in 1623, but whether an inn, shop, or private house, does not appear. The *George at Epping (perhaps identical with the George and Dragon which now occurs there) is mentioned in the Chelmsford Chronicle in 1764; while the George at Halstead and the *George at Witham (perhaps both identical with the well-known houses now existing under the same name at each of those places) are frequently referred to in advertisements in the same paper for 1786, the latter as being then to let. A small stone slab, let into the front of the George and Dragon Inn at Wanstead, bears the following inscription:—

“Restorat. 1858. R. C.—In memory of ye Cherrey Pey as cost ½ a Guiney, ye 17th of July, 1752.