London Signs and Inscriptions

by Philip Norman

The Winged Horse is supposed by some to be a corruption of the ancient seal of two Knights Templars riding on one horse, indicative of their original poverty; for here they had their headquarters in England ‘till they decayed through pride.’ The two designs, however, resemble each other to a very slight extent, and in point of fact have no connection. It seems that in the fifth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign the Society of the Inner Temple adopted, as a heraldic charge, the Pegasus with the motto ‘Volat ad æthera virtus,’ at the suggestion of Gerard Leigh, one of its Benchers, a pedantic student of heraldry, the idea being that the knowledge which might be gained at this seat of learning would raise its possessor to the highest pinnacle of fame. Sir George Buc,[56] master of the revels, appears to be responsible for the lamb and flag. He tells us that in 1615, more than fifty years after the adoption of the Pegasus by the twin society, the authorities of the Middle Temple had neither arms nor seal, and to supply the want he suggested either ‘two armed knights riding upon one horse, or a field argent charged with a cross gules, and on the nombril thereof a Holy Lamb;’ the first having been, as I have said, the ancient seal of the Knights Templars, and the second what they appear to have assumed later, when they became prosperous. This at least is Sir George Buc’s statement, on the authority of an illuminated manuscript containing the statutes of their order, which belonged to Lord William Howard of Naworth. Mr. Barrington thought that the Holy Lamb, as a representation of Christ, should be encircled by a nimbus. To confirm this view and to prove that the Templars did use the device, he gives a quotation from Blomefield’s MS. collections for Cambridgeshire, wherein the Holy Lamb, with its nimbus and banner, appears on the seal of a deed dated 1273, by which Guido de Foresta, ‘magister militiæ Templi in Anglia et fratres ejusdem militiæ,’ leased out certain lands in Pampesworth, Cambridgeshire, the rent to be paid, ‘domino Templi,’ at Dunworth of the same county. Round the seal is the following inscription, ‘✠ sigillvm templi.’ From the fact that Sir George Buc suggested to the Society of the Middle Temple the two devices which had been used by the Templars, it is evident that the Pegasus, already adopted by the Inner Temple, was not considered in his time to have any connection with the original seal of the Knights Templars.

The fourth of the great Inns of Court—Gray’s Inn—derived its name from the noble family of the Greys of Wilton, having been originally their dwelling, just as Lincoln’s Inn had been the dwelling of an Earl of Lincoln, and several of the Inns of Chancery were originally the homes of other well-known personages. The society seems first to have used the arms of the Grey family; afterwards they adopted the Griffin’s Head[57] as their device, and it still adorns the pillars of the gateway from Field Court into those delightful gardens which were first planted, it is thought, under the direction of no less a man than Francis Bacon. Once they were the resort of fine ladies, but fashion has long since deserted them. The trees, however, are still fine, the aspect of the place ‘reverend and law-abiding.’ Here there is, or was, a rookery, which has given pleasure to generations of Londoners. Early last summer (1892) the Benchers, anxious to utilize so eligible a site, erected a corrugated iron structure some 90 feet long, at the south-west corner of the gardens. They have tried to make it look beautiful by partly covering it with trellis-work, and by having the wooden roof painted tile colour. The rooks, however, showed their resentment by flying off in a body, and it remains a question whether they will again make the gardens their permanent home; for now I hear that this erection, which has the negative merit of being easily removable, is to be replaced by a chapel ‘in the Elizabethan or late Tudor style,’ the windows to be fitted—or misfitted—with glass from the present chapel, which will be turned to secular use. A little more than a century ago Gray’s Inn was quite on the outskirts of London,[58] ‘with an uninterrupted prospect of the neighbouring fields as far as Highgate and Hampstead.’

Centuries before the Great Fire, carved shields of arms were doubtless common in London on public buildings and the houses of great people, as decorations, and as guides to the unlettered class, which then formed a vast majority of the population. Sometimes—at any rate, in the earlier days—these arms were not carved in stone, but painted and hung out, as we learn from the evidence of the poet Chaucer[59] in the Scrope and Grosvenor dispute, which also gives us an interesting glimpse of the early history of one of our noble families. He says that, in walking up Friday Street, he once saw a sign hung out with ‘arms painted and put there by a knight of the County of Chester, called Sir Robert Grosvenor’; and that was the first time he ever heard of Sir Robert Grosvenor, or his ancestors, or anyone bearing the name of Grosvenor.

The first armorial shield to which I shall refer under this heading is from a public building, and though comparatively modern it should be specially interesting to all citizens of London. I allude to the Royal Arms[60]—a well-executed piece of sculpture—which is used as the sign of a public-house rebuilt quite recently, on the south side of Newcomen Street, late King Street, Southwark. This was taken from the gatehouse at the Southwark end of old London Bridge, which was pulled down in 1760, in consequence of an Act of Parliament passed four years previously, for the destruction of the buildings on London Bridge and the widening of the roadway.

King Street was then being made from High Street to Snow Fields, through the former Axe and Bottle Yard, and these arms, having been bought by Mr. Williams, a stonemason who was employed in the construction of King Street, were placed by him more or less in their present position. In a view of the bridgegate engraved for Noorthouck’s ‘History of London’ (p. 543), the arms appear with the inscription, g ii r, afterwards changed to g iii, as we now see it.

There are still a few carved shields of arms in London, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which marked the property of private individuals. Until quite recently the district known as Cloth Fair and Bartholomew Close, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, was distinguished by its air of picturesque antiquity. Some quaint old houses still remain; on one of them—No. 22, Cloth Fair—is to be seen a relic which carries us back almost to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. This is the armorial shield of Richard Rich, who was made a peer in 1547; or more likely, perhaps, of one of his immediate descendants. It is surmounted by a coronet, and has been blazoned thus: gules, a chevron between three crosses botonnée or.[61] The founder of the Rich family was a mercer in the City, and Sheriff in the year 1442; it was his great-grandson Richard who, temp. Henry VIII., became Solicitor-General, Speaker of the House of Commons, and who took so scandalous a part in the trial and conviction of Sir Thomas More. In 1544 the site of St. Bartholomew’s Priory was granted by the King to his favourite, there described as Sir Richard Rich, knight, in consideration of the sum of £1,064 11s. 3d., as appears from the original deed; and here he is said to have lived in the Prior’s mansion as Lord Chancellor. The tolls of the fair[62] were also granted to him. It was provided that the church within the Great Close was to be a parish church for ever, and vacant ground adjoining it on the west side, 87 feet in length by 60 feet in breadth, where the destroyed nave had stood, was to be taken for a churchyard, the site of the fair being no longer used as a burial-ground.

Sir Richard Rich was made a baron in 1547. Queen Mary revoked the grant in his favour, and placed here a convent of Preaching Friars, who under Father Person began to rebuild the nave of the church, but they were turned out when Elizabeth came to the throne, and the following year there was a fresh grant to the purchaser, by the title of Richard Lord Rich, and his heirs, ‘in free socage.’ The monastery with its precincts had been enclosed by a wall which contained, besides the numerous monastic offices, a large garden and court, fifty-one tenements, a mulberry garden (one of the first planted in this country), and the famous churchyard wherein had been held, since the time of Henry I., the great annual gathering for clothiers and drapers. This began to fall off, as a cloth fair,[63] towards the end of the sixteenth century, but continued to be more or less of a London carnival, and in some sort lingered on as late as the year 1855. The first Lord Rich died in 1560; during his lifetime little building seems to have taken place, for in Ralph Aggas’s map, which is considered to be of about this date, the space north of the church has no houses upon it, and the priory wall abutting on Long Lane still exists. Very soon, however, the land was turned to more profitable account, and we find Stow[64] writing at the end of the century: ‘Now notwithstanding all proclamations of the prince, and also the Act of Parliament, in place of booths within this churchyard (only let out in the fair time, and closed up all the year after), be many large houses built, and the north wall towards Long Lane taken down, a number of tenements are there erected for such as will give great rents.’ The houses in the street now called Cloth Fair probably followed the old line of booths. The first Lord Rich’s grandson Robert, who made such an ill-assorted marriage with Lady Penelope Devereux, Sidney’s ‘Stella,’ was raised to the dignity of Earl of Warwick in 1618. His second son Henry was created Baron Kensington and Earl of Holland. The titles were merged in the next generation, and became extinct in the year 1759, when the tolls of the fair descended to the Edwardes family, cousins of the Riches, in whose favour the Kensington title was revived. Lord Kensington sold these tolls to the Corporation of London in 1839.

Before we quit this quaint neighbourhood let us peep into the venerable Church of St. Bartholomew the Great. What an idea it gives one of the splendour of the old priory church, of which it formed but a part, little more than the choir remaining! Much ‘restoration’ is in progress here, and it is difficult at a glance to distinguish between the genuine Norman work and the ingenious nineteenth-century Norman which has lately been added. Fortunately the fine perpendicular oriel on the south side of the triforium has so far escaped intact. It was probably inserted by Prior Bolton (who died in 1532), and has on it, carved in stone, expressive of his name, a tun pierced by a bird-bolt, or arrow. The rebus occurs again on the spandrel of a Tudor doorway which leads into the modern vestry. This Prior seems to have taken pleasure in building, and in seeing his name thus perpetuated.[65] He reconstructed the manor-house of Canonbury, Islington, north of the parish church, which had been given to the convent by Ralph de Berners, and as early as the year 1253 is enumerated among his possessions. Here is also to be found the Prior’s rebus, on a doorway inside No. 6, Canonbury Place, which, with No. 7, is now used for a girls’ school. It also formerly appeared cut in stone on two parts of the wall originally connected with the old brick tower, which is so picturesque and so full of interesting associations.