Before the fifteenth century it was usual for travellers to seek the hospitality of religious houses, the great people being lodged in rooms set apart for them, while the poorer sort found shelter in the guest-house. But as time went on this proved inadequate, and inns on a commercial basis came into existence, being frequented by those who could hardly demand special consideration from the religious houses, and were not fitting recipients of charity. Naturally enough, these inns, when once their usefulness became recognised, were soon to be found in the main thoroughfares leading out of the metropolis, and they were particularly plentiful in Southwark on each side of what we now call the Borough High Street, extending for a quarter of a mile or more from London Bridge along the main road to the south-eastern counties and the Continent. The first thus established, and one of the earliest in this country, had to some extent a religious origin—namely, the
"Gentle hostelrye
That hight the Tabard, fasté by the Belle,"
about which and about the Southwark inns generally I propose now to say a few words, for although well known, they are of such extreme interest that they demand a foremost place in an account of this kind. From the literary point of view the "Tabard" is immortalized, owing to the fact that Chaucer has selected it as the starting-point of his pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. Historically, it may be mentioned that as early as the year 1304 the Abbot and Convent of Hyde, near Winchester, purchased in Southwark two tenements, on the sites of which he built for himself a town dwelling, and at the same time, it is believed, a hostelry for the convenience of travellers. In 1307 he obtained license to build a chapel at or by the inn, and in a later deed we are told that "the abbott's lodginge was wyninge to the backside of the Tabarde and had a garden attached." From that time onwards frequent allusions can be found to this house, the sign of which (a sleeveless coat, such as that worn by heralds) got somehow corrupted into the Talbot, a species of dog, by which it was known for a couple of centuries or more, almost to the time of its final destruction. Although the contrary has been asserted, the inn was undoubtedly burnt in the Great Southwark Fire of 1676, but was rebuilt soon afterwards in the old fashion, and continued to be a picturesque example of architecture until 1875, when the whole was swept away, hop merchants' offices and a modern "old Tabard" now occupying the site.
Equal in interest to the last-named inn was the "White Hart." At the one Chaucer gave life and reality to a fancied scene; at the other occurred an historical event, the bald facts of which Shakespeare has lighted up with a halo of romance. The White Hart appears to have dated from the latter part of the fourteenth century, the sign being a badge of Richard II., derived from his mother, Joan of Kent. In the summer of 1450 it was Jack Cade's headquarters while he was striving to gain possession of London. Hall, in his Chronicle, records this, and adds that he prohibited "murder, rape and robbery by which colour he allured to him the hartes of the common people." It was here, nevertheless, that "one Hawaydyne of sent Martyns was beheaded," and here, during the outbreak, a servant of Sir John Fastolf, who had property in the neighbourhood, was with difficulty saved from assassination. His chattels were pillaged, his wife left with "no more gode but her kyrtyll and her smook," and he thrust into the forefront of a fight then raging on London Bridge, where he was "woundyd and hurt nere hand to death." Cade's success was of short duration; his followers wavered, he said, or might have said, in the words attributed to him by Shakespeare (2 Henry VI., act iv., scene 8), "Hath my sword therefore broken through London gate that you should leave me at the White Hart in Southwark?" The rebellion collapsed, and our inn is not heard of for some generations. Want of space prevents our recording the various vicissitudes through which it passed, and the historic names connected with it, until the time of the Southwark Fire of 1676, when, like the "Tabard," it was burnt down, but rebuilt on the old foundations. In 1720 Strype describes it as large and of considerable trade, and it so continued until the time when Dickens, who was intimately acquainted with the neighbourhood, gave his graphic description of Sam Weller at the White Hart in the tenth chapter of Pickwick. In 1865-66 the south side of the building was replaced by a modern tavern, but the old galleries on the north and east sides remained until 1889, being latterly let out in tenements.
There were several other galleried inns in Southwark, dating at least from the time of Queen Elizabeth, which survived until the nineteenth century, but we only have space briefly to allude to three. The "King's Head" and the "Queen's Head" was each famous in its way. The former had been originally the "Pope's Head," the sign being changed at the Reformation. In 1534 the Abbot of Waverley, whose town house was not far off, writes, apparently on business, that he will be at the "Pope's Head" in Southwark—eight years afterwards it appears as the "King's Head." In a deed belonging to Mr. G. Eliot Hodgkin, F.S.A., the two names are given. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the house belonged to various noteworthy people; among the rest, to Thomas Cure, a local benefactor, and to Humble, Lord Ward. It was burnt in the Great Southwark Fire, and the last fragment of the galleried building, erected immediately afterwards, was pulled down in January, 1885.
The "Queen's Head" was the only one of the Southwark houses we are describing that escaped the Fire of 1676, perhaps owing to the fact that, by way of precaution, a tenement was blown up at the gateway. It stood on the site of a house called the "Crowned or Cross Keys," which in 1529 was an armoury or store-place for the King's harness. In 1558 it had a brew-house attached to it, and had lately been rebuilt. In 1634 the house had become the "Queen's Head," and the owner was John Harvard, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who afterwards migrated to America, and gave his name to Harvard University, Massachusetts. About this time it was frequented by carriers, as we learn from John Taylor, "the water-poet." The main building, destroyed in 1895, was found to be of half-timbered construction, dating perhaps from the sixteenth century. A galleried portion, also of considerable age, survived until the year 1900.
Of another Southwark inn, the "George," we can fortunately speak in the present tense. It seems to have come into existence in the early part of the sixteenth century, and is mentioned with the sign of "St. George" in 1554:—
"St. George that swindg'd the Dragon, and e'er since
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door."
The owner in 1558 was Humfrey Colet, or Collet, who had been Member of Parliament for Southwark. Soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, in a book called Musarum Deliciæ, or the Muses' Recreation, compiled by Sir John Mennes (Admiral and Chief Comptroller of the Navy) and Dr. James Smith, appeared some lines, "upon a surfeit caught by drinking bad sack at 'the George' in Southwark." Perhaps the landlord mended his ways; in any case, the rent was shortly afterwards £150 a year—a large sum for those days. The "George" was a great coaching and carriers' inn. Only a fragment of it, but a picturesque one, now exists; it is still galleried, and dates from shortly after the Southwark Fire of 1676. The rest of the building was pulled down in 1889-90. All the inns to which allusion has been made were clustered together on the east side of the Borough High Street, the gateways of those most distant from each other being only about 140 yards apart.
Another leading thoroughfare from London to the east was the road through Aldgate to Whitechapel. Here, though the houses of entertainment were historically far less interesting than those of Southwark, they flourished for many years. Where a modern hotel with the same sign now stands, next to the Metropolitan railway station on the north side of Aldgate High Street, there was once a well-known inn, the "Three Nuns," so called, perhaps, from the contiguity of the nuns of St. Clare, or sorores minores, who gave a name to the Minories. The "Three Nuns" inn is mentioned by Defoe in his Journal of the Plague, which, though it describes events that happened when he was little more than an infant, has an air of authenticity suggesting personal experience. We are told by him that near this inn was the "dreadful gulf—for such it was rather than a pit"—in which, during the Plague of 1665, not less than 1,114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from the 6th to the 20th of September. Throughout the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries this house was much frequented by coaches and carriers. The late Mr. Edwin Edwards, who etched it in 1871, was told by the landlord that a four-horse coach was then running from there to Southend during the summer months. A painting of the holy nuns still appeared on the sign-board. The house was rebuilt soon after the formation of the Metropolitan Railway. A short distance west of the "Three Nuns," at 31, Aldgate High Street, the premises of Messrs. Adkin and Sons, wholesale tobacconists, occupy the site of the old "Blue Boar" coaching inn, which they replaced in 1861. The sculptured sign of the "Blue Boar," let into the wall in front, was put up at the time of the rebuilding. The former inn, described on a drawing in the Crace collection as the oldest in London, is held by some to be the same as that referred to in an order of the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor, dated from St. James's, September 5th, 1557, wherein he is told to "apprehende and to comitt to safe warde" certain actors who are about to perform in "a lewde Playe called a Sacke full of Newse" at the "Boar's Head" without Aldgate.