When this ceased to be an attraction in St. George’s Fields is not recorded, but towards the middle of last century the place came into the hands of a Mrs. Hedger, who had been a barmaid. While she was landlady, Sampson, an equestrian performer, who had previously ridden at the Three Hats, Islington, set up his temporary circus in a field opposite the Dog and Duck. Crowds followed him, and caused a great increase in Mrs. Hedger’s business, so she sent for her son, afterwards called ‘the King of the Fields,’ who was said to have been at the time a post-boy at Epsom, and he shrewdly made the most of his chance. The money as it came in was invested in building and other improvements; soon a mineral spring was discovered—or invented—and the place became for a time a popular health resort. A correspondent of the St. James’s Chronicle in 1761 asks, as a matter not admitting denial, ‘Does Tunbridge or Cheltenham or Buxton Wells come up to (inter alia) the Dog and Duck in St. George’s Fields?’ No less a man than Dr. Johnson recommended the waters to his friend Mrs. Thrale. An advertisement tells us of a bath there 200 feet long, and nearly 100 in breadth, and old newspapers record dinners, concerts, assemblies and all kinds of gaiety at St. George’s, or the Dog and Duck Spa. It must already have begun to go downhill when Garrick described it thus in his Prologue to ‘The Maid of the Oaks,’ 1774:
‘St. George’s Fields, with taste and fashion struck,
Display Arcadia at the Dog and Duck;
And Drury misses, here in tawdry pride,
Are there Pastoras by the fountain side,
To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps,
With fauns half drunk, and dryads breaking lamps.’
Finally it was closed by the magistrates, and after being occupied for a time by the School for the Indigent Blind, was pulled down in 1811, when, the Committee of the Bridge House Estate having, in the previous year, agreed to exchange 11 acres 3 roods here for the ground then covered by Bedlam in Moorfields, which amounted to about 2½ acres, the erection of the present Bethlehem Hospital was begun on the site.[34] It was then or soon afterwards that our stone sign was built into the new garden wall. Several illustrations of the Dog and Duck Inn have been preserved. A water-colour in the Crace collection by T. H. Shepherd, purporting to be from a drawing of 1646, represents it as a gable-ended public-house, with a gallery on one side, standing in the fields. A view of the outside in Hedger’s time shows a brick building of considerable dimensions. Then there is a rather indecent design called ‘Beauty in distress,’ with the Dog and Duck in the distance. Lastly, a rare stippled engraving of the interior, dated 1789, shows us ladies frail and fair, with their attendant beaux, walking about and seated at tables in a long room, which has an organ at the end; the sign appears below.
Much might be written about the curious device which appears in the left-hand division of the stone sign imbedded in the wall of Bethlehem Hospital. This is the mark of the Bridge House Estate, and though in no sense heraldic, has been described as an annulet ensigned with a cross pattée, interlaced with a saltire conjoined in base. It is sometimes, but wrongly, called the Southwark Arms, for arms cannot in truth be borne by any public body, which has not received a charter of incorporation, with a right to use a common seal; and Southwark was never more than a ward of the City. The device resembles a merchant’s mark, but its origin has not hitherto been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps a letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine for October, 1758, from Joseph Ames, secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, may throw some light on the subject. It seems that in pulling down a part of old London Bridge, three inscriptions were found engraved on stone tablets. The oldest dated from 1497. The second, which most concerns us, had perhaps been inserted in the building on the completion of repairs, rendered necessary by a great fire at the northern end of the bridge which occurred in 1504, and has now found a home in the Guildhall Museum. It measures 10 inches by 13-3/4, and is inscribed in Gothic characters ‘Anno Domini 1509.’ At the end of the date appears a cross[35] charged with a small saltire, which seems to suggest the present mark, and was not unlikely the old device for the estate of London Bridge. The third stone, dated 1514, had on it the City sword and the initials of Sir Roger Achiley, draper and alderman of Bridge ward; they are represented below.
Here, perhaps, by way of illustration, a few words may be introduced on the subject of merchants’ marks. These, as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century, were adopted instead of armorial bearings by traders, to whom arms were not permitted.[36] They were used for stamping goods, were engraved on rings, and often placed on monuments as if they conveyed a certain honourable distinction. Mr. J. G. Waller, F.S.A.,[37] has pointed out that these merchants’ marks have commonly one essential feature in common—a cross. A simple form of mark was a cross surmounting a mast or staff, with streamers or other devices, apparently taken from parts of a ship; it had a forked base. When after a time initials of names were introduced, they at first formed part of the mark, the letter A being often made by crossing the forked base. The cross, being an emblem of Christianity, was considered to counteract the wiles of Satan; merchants, therefore, naturally placed a cross on their bales as a preservative against the tempests, which it was thought were caused by him. Mr. W. de Gray Birch, on the other hand, suggests that the cross and streamers so often incorporated in merchants’ marks, were derived from the banner of the Holy Lamb, which was the usual emblem of St. John Baptist, the patron saint of wool merchants—that is, merchants of the staple; but it seems that such devices were also used by the Merchant Adventurers, Salters, etc.; moreover, the cross with streamers is, in mediæval art, a symbol of the victory of Christ over death and the powers of darkness, which seems to confirm Mr. Waller’s view. The Lamb and Flag, as I shall have occasion to show, sometimes appeared on the seals of the Knights Templars.
As to the Bridge House Estate, it is held in trust by the corporation of the City of London, and is, strictly speaking, intended for the support, lighting and cleansing of the City bridges, and two bridges over the Lea at Stratford, where the City authorities hold some land. This property is said to have originated in small offerings by pious citizens to the Chapel of St. Thomas à Becket[38] on London Bridge. The earliest document relating to it which is still in existence appears to be a small volume on vellum, probably dating from the earlier part of the fourteenth century, with additions made in the reign of King Edward IV. A thorough examination of all the records would be a work of great labour, but would bring to light many interesting facts.
The property has by degrees increased in value, till out of it they have been able to rebuild London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, and are now creating the huge structure by the Tower. Much of St. George’s Fields belonged to the estate; it had been Crown land, once attached to Suffolk House, and was included in the grant to the City, in the fourth year of Edward VI.’s reign. The land on which stood the Dog and Duck Tavern formed part of this Bridge House Estate. The Bridge House itself stood on the Surrey side of the water, in Tooley Street, and was originally a storeplace for material belonging to the City which was used in the repair of London Bridge. In course of time it became a granary and a bakehouse, with public ovens. The grain was for the relief of poor citizens in time of distress, and the ovens were used for baking it. Stow tells us that they were ten in number, six of them very large, and that ‘Sir John Throstone, Knight, sometime an embroiderer, then a goldsmith, one of the sheriffs in 1516, gave by his testament towards the making of these ovens two hundred pounds, which thing was performed by his executors.’
The stone sign of a Fox sitting on its haunches, with the initials h w and date 1669, has been put up inside the house at No. 24, Lombard Street, and is in capital condition. It was found in digging up the foundations of a house in Clement’s Lane, destroyed to make room for No. 30, Lombard Street, which extends further south than its predecessor. In the seventeenth century there was a sign of a fox in Lombard Street, but some distance off; No. 73 occupies the site. A kindred sign, the Three Foxes, is said to have formerly existed, also in Clement’s Lane, but about this I am a little bit doubtful; there was a drawing of it in the Graphic of April 21, 1877, which could hardly have represented the actual tablet, for Larwood and Hotten say that it had been plastered over long before this, when the house was taken by a firm of three lawyers, who wished to avoid the rather awkward connection of ideas which might be suggested.
Of the carving of a Griffin’s Head which formerly existed in Old Jewry I know nothing, except that it was drawn by Archer in 1850. This was, perhaps, an heraldic charge of the person who built, or first possessed, the house on which it was placed. The badge of Fiennes, Lord Dacre, was a griffin’s head erased, gules, holding in its beak an annulet, or; that of Polle, a griffin’s head erased, azure, ducally gorged, or.