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—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

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LONDON SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS.

The Camden Library.

EDITED BY

G. LAURENCE GOMME, F.S.A.

AND

T. FAIRMAN ORDISH, F.S.A.

FISH SHOP IN CHEYNE WALK.

THE CAMDEN LIBRARY.

LONDON
SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS.

BY

PHILIP NORMAN, F.S.A.

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A.

AUTHOR OF ‘LONDON PAST AND PRESENT,’ ETC.

LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1893.

UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME.

In handsome post 8vo. size; tastefully printed in antique style.
On fine paper with rough edges, and bound in cloth, at 6s. per
volume; bound in roxburgh, with gilt top, price 7s. 6d.;
roxburgh binding, 10s. 6d. net. Large-paper copies,
21s. net.

THE FIRST VOLUME of The Camden Library, recently
published, is entitled

THE ANTIQUITIES AND CURIOSITIES
OF THE EXCHEQUER.

By HUBERT HALL, F.S.A., of H.M.’s Public Record Office.

With illustrations by RALPH NEVILL, F.S.A., and
an Introduction by Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., F.R.S., F.S.A.

‘This, the first volume of a valuable series, is perhaps one of the most interesting works of its kind. The facts and anecdotes which are woven into the pages are curious, and no doubt will be perfectly new to many readers.’—Public Opinion.

‘Will be immensely superior to the ordinary kind of serial handbooks,
if Mr. Hubert Hall’s scholarly and well-written book is a fair
sample.... His account of the origins of our national finance is
full of valuable information which cannot be easily found elsewhere.’—St.
James’s Gazette.

‘It does great credit to the persevering industry, discrimination,
and literary skill of its author.’—Daily Telegraph.

LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.

INTRODUCTION.

I HAVE been asked to write a short introduction to this volume of the Camden Library, and I do so with great pleasure.

The subject of sculptured signs is one of considerable interest, to which too little attention has hitherto been devoted, and the treatment of this important section of London antiquities could not have fallen into better hands than into those of Mr. Philip Norman, who has devoted many years of patient labour to the search for these signs, which are often found in very out-of-the-way localities. Mr. Norman possesses one most important qualification for the task he has undertaken, in that he is an accomplished artist. He is thus doubly well equipped both as an antiquary and as an artist.

It will, I think, surprise many readers to learn that so much is still left to us, and I hope that the attention drawn to some of the signs which have disappeared of late years may result in the discovery of their present hiding-places. Some years ago there was a curious sculptured sign over the entrance to Bull Head Court, Newgate Street. This represented William Evans, Charles I.’s gigantic porter, and Jeffrey Hudson, the Queen’s dwarf. When King Edward Street was widened this sign disappeared. If it be still in existence, we may hope that, in course of time, it may find a home in the Guildhall Museum, where so many interesting relics of old London are preserved.

Painted signs, which were once almost universal, were suddenly cleared away by the Act of Parliament of 1762, but these sculptured signs remained because they were a part of the houses to which they were attached, and they only pass away when the houses are rebuilt.

As the reader casually turns over the pages of this book, he cannot fail to be struck by the variety of objects which have been represented on the signs. Many of these may be considered as marks of ownership, and the crests and coats of arms of the City Companies are frequently found as signs.

In connection with the æsthetic revival there has been a considerable reappearance of signs in different parts of London, mostly of artistic ironwork; but although this helps to relieve the dull monotony of many streets it is not a custom that would be popular if it became universal. There can, however, be no objection to the more general adoption of artistic sculpture on the fronts of houses. When an old house is rebuilt, its story (if it have a story) may with advantage be graphically represented on the front of the new one. This has been done in some cases, and an extension of the custom would add to the beauty of the streets, and increase the interest of the passer-by in the almost forgotten history of his own town.

It is a satisfactory thing that the relics of former fashions of decoration should be registered for the information of those who desire to keep themselves in touch with the history of the past. Even in this materialistic age there are many who love to live in imagination in a former age, and a sculptured sign or inscription on an old house will often help them to do this.

For centuries London was remarkable for its gardens, but this has been changed at the end of the nineteenth century. Considering the great value of land in ‘the City,’ I suppose it cannot be a matter of surprise that almost every bit of garden or green place has been swept out of existence, but I think every lover of London will sympathize with the protest against this tendency which concludes Mr. Norman’s book.

I do not, however, wish to keep the reader longer from learning what the author has to say, and I will only add that this volume will form a most useful and agreeable addition to the extensive literature which is gradually growing up in connection with the ever-increasing world of houses and men which is known as London.

HENRY B. WHEATLEY.

Oppidans Road, N.W.,

March, 1893.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

UNTIL the beginning of this century, I may almost say till the development of our railway system some fifty years ago, though London was continually spreading in all directions, its heart—the City—remained very much as Wren had left it. Here many a well-to-do trader was content to dwell in the substantial house in which his business was carried on, and to pray in the neighbouring parish church where his father had prayed before him. Now the church has, likely enough, disappeared, the monuments of his ancestors are bundled off no one knows where; perhaps the very street in which he lived is changed out of all power of recognition. In short, to meet our modern requirements, the City has become a mere mass of offices, warehouses, and gigantic railway-stations, whence issue each morning myriads of human beings who spend the day in struggling for wealth or a livelihood, and at night return to their homes, which are spread over an area some sixty miles in diameter, leaving the centre to be protected by a few porters and caretakers. The decrease in the resident population has now extended a considerable distance west.

To the observing eye, however, traces of a former state of things are still to be seen, not only in important buildings such as the City halls, the parish churches and the old merchants’ houses still existing; but in objects less conspicuous, for instance, the sculptured house and street signs which came into fashion after the Great Fire. These have no little artistic merit, and almost all are interesting from their associations. The greater part of my book is devoted to a careful description of such signs; not only the existing ones, but all of which I can find any mention. This description I have tried to make as complete as possible, and I have allowed myself some latitude, recording not only facts which appeared to me of interest concerning the particular house, court, or alley to which the sign belonged, but also its probable origin, and any story or legend that might be connected with it.

Sculptured signs are often heraldic, and from them the transition is natural to still existing crests and coats of arms carved on buildings in various parts of the town. A cognate subject is that of old dates and inscriptions, suggestive as they are of the former ownership of property, of changes in the names of streets, sometimes even giving us glimpses of family history; as in the inscription to Denzil Lord Holles.

My researches naturally led me into the Guildhall Museum, where the need of a suitable catalogue (soon, I hear, to be supplied), induced me to put together a few suggestive notes on the curiosities relating to London which there find a home. I have added a short account of some half dozen of the painted signs still existing in the Metropolis which seemed to have more than common interest.

I have already referred to the extraordinary decrease of City inhabitants. On the other hand, in outlying districts the converse process has taken place. The little towns and villages of three hundred years ago, then some distance from London, and numbering among their inhabitants people of high birth unconnected with trade, became by degrees half rural suburbs, where well-to-do citizens sought amusement and repose. Folks of this class have now gone further afield, and for many years the speculative builder has been at work, providing for a humbler and far more numerous population. The space is covered with miles upon miles of dull monotonous streets; pleasant gardens have disappeared, hills are levelled, valleys filled up, wells choked, the clear streams turned into sewers, nothing remaining to remind us of what has gone before except the names, and here and there an old house, a carving or inscription. The existence of a few of these mementoes has attracted me to Islington and Clerkenwell, and must be my excuse for describing in detail several of the spas and places of entertainment with which in the eighteenth century this region abounded. Thence I make my way back to the City, and while exploring the picturesque districts of Great St. Helen’s and Austin Friars, I give an account of two remarkable old City mansions lately destroyed, which may fairly claim a place; for one was distinguished by an elaborate coat of arms, and the other by an interesting date and initials. This latter was of no small architectural merit, while both were the homes of eminent citizens.

Perhaps I should add that the subject of sculptured signs has been briefly treated by me in the pages of the Antiquary, and that for the English Illustrated Magazine, of Christmas, 1891, I wrote and illustrated an article on old City mansions, including those which are here more completely described.

In the course of the text I have indicated sources of information, and have acknowledged help from several good friends. I wish here in an especial manner to thank Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. As I am indebted to him for an introduction to this volume, it would perhaps not be becoming to dwell over-much on the merits of his great work, ‘London Past and Present,’ based on Peter Cunningham’s Handbook; I find myself constantly referring to it, and always with advantage. Lord Tennyson has kindly allowed me to quote four lines dictated by his illustrious father, which have not before appeared in print.

The illustrations I venture to commend, for few of them are the work of my hand. They have at least one great merit, that of being scrupulously accurate.

Allusion is made in the text to Mr. Tarbolton’s valuable contribution. There is a fine drawing by Mr. F. E. Cox; while Mr. E. M. Cox contributes a whole series, the merits of which speak for themselves. The Three Kings, the Bell, and the Boar’s Head may be named as specimens. Mr. Fletcher did the charming little sketch of an inscription formerly over the entrance to Bagnigge Wells, with its grotesque head; and the editors of the Strand Magazine and the Builder have allowed me the use of blocks from their respective publications.

In conclusion, let me express a hope that the kind reader will not class this volume in the category of ‘books which are no books,’ as Charles Lamb puts it, or even as one ‘which no gentleman’s library should be without,’ but that he will find here some useful and curious information, put together in a form sufficiently agreeable to make him wish for more.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS OF HISTORIC LONDON.

CHAPTER I.

HUMAN SIGNS.

‘Be sure observe the signs, for signs remain
Like faithful landmarks to the walking train.’

Gay: Trivia.

UNTIL the early part of the eighteenth century, when the plan of numbering came into vogue, not only inns and taverns, but shops and other houses, were distinguished by signs. The wholesale traders, indeed, were as a rule sufficiently well known not to require this distinctive mark. In the ‘Little London Directory’ for the year 1677—the oldest printed list of the kind—hardly any of the merchants have signs. The reverse is the case with the bankers, who, as ‘goldsmiths that keep running cashes,’ had then hardly emerged from the shopkeeper class. Nevertheless, signs were exceedingly common; on the rebuilding of the city, immediately after the Great Fire, many of them, instead of being painted and hung out—though this continued to be the more usual method—were carved in stone and built into the plain brick fronts of the new houses, generally above or below a first-floor window. In some cases also, the name of a court or alley was thus indicated—a useful method when a large number of the population could neither read nor write. It is curious that signs of a very similar description were used by the Romans; for instance, the well-known terra-cotta bas-relief of two men carrying an amphora, and a figure of a goat, both found at Pompeii; the former almost identical in design with our conventional representation of the Two Brewers. These, however, were cast in a mould which was probably used again and again. They therefore, perhaps, indicated a trade rather than a particular house; like our modern pawnbrokers’, tobacconists’, and gold-beaters’ signs. I shall presently call attention to a London seventeenth-century sign repeated in the same way.

Our plan seems to have been adopted from the Continent, where many stone signs are still to be found. They are commonest in Holland and the Low Countries. Here, perhaps ever since the Roman occupation, certainly since the days of Charlemagne, brick has been the usual building material, for it must have been that which was most easily available. Fortunately many of the old Dutch houses still survive; they hang together with wonderful pertinacity in spite of bad foundations, and beautiful specimens of picturesque architecture they are, with their step gables and stone ornamentation. The Dutch signs are often spirited and elaborate in design; they are to be found of all ages from about the year 1550 till near the end of the eighteenth century, but as might be expected, the earlier ones, which are often historical, are the best. They were placed like those in London, and generally had an ornamental border. Sometimes in place of a sign there was a pious distich or inscription, sometimes merely a date. A capital book on Dutch signs by J. Van Lennep and J. Ter Gouw has lately been published. Many of these signs from buildings now destroyed are to be seen in an annexe of the fine modern picture-gallery in Amsterdam. I am glad to say that our City authorities have shown a like respect for similar relics of old London, and some interesting specimens have found a home in the Guildhall Museum. Others have disappeared, and a certain number are still more or less in their original positions.

In the following pages I shall try to describe all the London sculptured signs of which we have any record; for convenience I have classified them, and naturally begin with those in which human beings are represented. One of the most interesting and best known is the sign of the Boy and Panyer, which is still to be seen, its base resting on the ground, and let into the wall between two houses on the eastern side of Panyer Alley, a narrow passage leading from Paternoster Row to Newgate Street. It represents a naked boy seated on a pannier or basket, and holding what, in Strype’s time, appeared to be a bunch of grapes between his hand and foot, ‘in token perhaps of plenty,’ as he suggests. Within an ornamental border, apparently on a separate stone below, is the following inscription:

‘When ye have sought the Citty round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.

August the 27, 1688.’

Height fifty-two inches, breadth in the broadest part twenty-six inches. It is now much dilapidated, and seems to be in some danger of destruction, for one of the houses against which it stands is shortly to be pulled down.[1] However, I am assured that proper steps will be taken for its preservation. The property belongs by right to the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, having been left in 1620 by Sir John Leman and Cornelius Fishe for parochial uses, but it is now handed over to the Trustees of City Parochial Charities.

The sign no doubt dates from after the Great Fire; it seems, however, to represent a previous one. Stow, writing in 1598, says that Panyer Alley was ‘so called of such a sign,’ and confirming his statement, a Panyer, Paternoster Row, appears in a list of taverns of about the year 1430, which Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., lately discovered among the documents of the Brewers’ Company, the landlord, John Ives, having been a member of that company. From ‘Liber Albus,’ which relates to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one learns that in those days the sale of bread was not allowed to take place in the bakers’ houses, but only in the King’s markets. It was sold in bread-baskets or ‘panyers,’ and, the coarser kinds at any rate, occasionally in boxes or hutches.

Mr. H. T. Riley in his introduction to ‘Liber Albus’ (p. lxviii.) stated it as his opinion that the child is handing out a loaf, and that at a period somewhat later than the date of that volume (1419) Panyer Alley was noted as a standing place for bakers’ boys with their panniers. If, as seems not unlikely, this was the case, the sign would be similar to the Baker and Basket, still existing in Whitechapel and in Finsbury. Another idea—that the pannier is in point of fact a fruit-basket—seems to arise from Strype’s statement that the boy has in his hand a bunch of grapes. Fruit and vegetables were doubtless landed from the river in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. Porters carrying such produce may have passed through, and rested themselves in this short passage on their way to Newgate Market, which, originally for corn and meal, was after the Fire used for poultry, fruit, and vegetables,[2] before it became exclusively a meat market.

Mr. Kerslake, in a passage since referred to with approval by Professor Earle in his work on ‘Land Charters and Saxonic Documents’ (1888), tries to connect the sign with a far more remote antiquity. He argues that it may have been placed there to transmit the tradition of a wheatmaund-stone (maund being a basket or pannier), mentioned in a grant of King Alfred, a.d. 889, which indicated the site of the ancient corn market, and was, in point of fact, a place where a porter carrying a load of wheat could rest it, or the base of a market cross.[3] It seems that the question of a town house for the Bishop of the Mercians having come before Alfred, he gave to Bishop Werfrith a mansion or court, ‘æt hwæt mundes stane’—thus it is spelt in the document—and probably granted him a toll on the neighbouring market. I am not aware of any further evidence in support of this theory.

The church of St. Michael-le-Querne, ad Bladum, or at the Corne, which was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, stood close to Panyer Alley, at the extreme end of Paternoster Row, and Stow says it was so called ‘because in place thereof was sometime a corn market, stretching by west to the shambles.’ The Rev. W. J. Loftie tells us that at present the sign of the Boy and Panyer is not on the highest point in the City, being fifty-nine feet, while the site of the Standard in Cornhill is sixty feet above sea-level. Certainly it is not on the highest point of Panyer Alley. A writer in Notes and Queries has lately suggested that the highest point in the City was at or near Leadenhall Market, or the chancel of the primitive St. Peter’s Church on Cornhill.

A statuette, also representing a naked boy, not sculptured in stone, but carved in wood, is placed on a pedestal affixed to the wall of a public-house, at the corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane, called the Fortune of War. The spot was commonly known as Pie Corner: it is hardly necessary to add that here ended the Great Fire of London. The figure in question was put up after that event; an engraving of it in Pennant’s account of London shows the following inscription on the breast and arms:

‘This boy is in Memory Put up for the late Fire of London, occasioned by the Sin of Gluttony, 1666.’

Burn tells us that its propriety was on one occasion thus supported by a Nonconformist preacher on the anniversary of the Fire. He asserted that the calamity could not be occasioned by the sin of blasphemy, for in that case it would have begun in Billingsgate; nor lewdness, for then Drury Lane would have been first on fire; nor lying, for then the flames had reached them from Westminster Hall. ‘No, my beloved; it was occasioned by the sin of gluttony, for it began at Pudding Lane and ended at Pie Corner.’

The inscription has long been obliterated, and no trace is to be seen of the little wings with which, in Pennant’s illustration, the boy is furnished; in 1816, however, they were still conspicuous, and were painted bright yellow. In that curious work—the ‘Vade-Mecum for Malt-worms’—which was written about the year 1715, the Fortune of War is mentioned as a well-known tavern. Within the memory of man it had the unpleasing reputation of being a house of call for resurrectionists, who supplied the surgeons of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital with subjects for dissection. It was here that John Bishop, the body-snatcher, met his accomplice Williams, before the murder of the Italian boy Ferrari, for which and similar crimes they were hanged in 1831.

Our quaint old chronicler, John Stow, says that Pie Corner was ‘a place so called of such a sign, sometime a fair inn for receipt of travellers, but now divided into tenements.’ Strype in 1720 describes it as noted chiefly for ‘Cooks’ Shops and Pigs drest there during Bartholomew Fair.’ There are several allusions to it in Ben Jonson’s ‘Alchemist’ and other plays. The sign of the Pie probably implied the bird now usually called a magpie, but it might have been derived from the Pye,[4] or rules for finding out the service of the day in the Roman Breviary, or from the good cheer provided in this immediate neighbourhood. Larwood and Hotten mention a stone sign of a Naked Boy with the date 1633 at Skipton-in-Craven.

A stone bas-relief of that mythical person, Guy, Earl of Warwick, is still preserved on a house at the corner of Warwick Lane and Newgate Street. The figure is represented standing on a pedestal in chain armour, with a conical helmet, a sword in his right hand, and on his left arm a shield chequy, or and azure, with a bend sinister ermine. This seems to be wrongly copied from Guy’s shield in the Rows Roll, which has a chevron ermine, but one arm of the chevron is, from the position of the shield, so foreshortened that it can hardly be seen; hence the mistake. Above is the date 1668, on one side the letters G. C., standing, I suppose, for guido comes; on the other a coat of arms, three mascles on a bend, to whom belonging I cannot say, so many families have this charge. Below is the inscription: ‘Restored 1817. J. Deakes, Archt.’

The general design somewhat resembles that of a large figure in the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen at Guy’s Cliff, near Warwick, which, as we learn from a modern inscription in Latin, was hewn out of the living rock by order of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign of Henry VI., to mark the spot where Guy was thought to have ended his days. This Richard de Beauchamp obtained license to found here a chantry for two priests, and annexed land thereto to the value of twenty-four marks per annum. It had before been a hermitage. Stow tells us that ‘Eldernesse lane, which stretcheth north to the high street of Newgate market, is now called Warwicke lane, of an ancient house there, built by an Earl of Warwicke, and since called Warwicke Inn.’ Elsewhere he says: ‘In the 36th of Henry VI. the greater estates of the realm being called up to London, Richard Nevill Earl of Warwick came with six hundred men all in jackets embroidered with ragged staves before and behind, and was lodged in Warwicke Lane, in whose house there were oftentimes six oxen eaten at breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that house might have there so much of sodden and roast meat as he could prick and carry away upon a long dagger.’ At the beginning of this century the house to which the statuette belonged was occupied by a Mr. Parry; an inscription over the door stated that it had been a tobacconist’s shop since 1660, no doubt rebuilt.

A well-modelled bas-relief of a woman’s head, probably intended to represent Minerva, is on a house belonging to the Leathersellers’ Company, at the corner of Old Jewry and Gresham Street. She has a helmet or diadem, and on her breast the Gorgon’s head; an ægis also seems to be suggested. On each side are festoons of fruit and flowers; the material I believe to be terra-cotta, but it is so thickly coated with paint that one cannot be sure. Archer, who drew this sign, thought it was a fragment of sculpture from a building of the early part of the sixteenth century, and it seems to have something in common with Italian terra-cotta work of that period; for instance the medallions[5] executed by Joannes Maiano for Cardinal Wolsey, and still existing at Hampton Court. Before the house was modernized, on the brick wall, below the head of Minerva, there was a carving of the Leathersellers’ Arms; and so, being used as a tavern during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, until 1871 it was known by the sign of the Leathersellers’ Arms, or latterly the Three Bucks’ Heads. Of the sculptured head of Minerva no record exists. This property seems to have belonged to the Leathersellers’ Company ever since the year 1565, when Edward Taylor, who had been its master, left by will to the company two messuages in St. Olave’s, Jewry, to distribute among the poorest people in the Poultry Compter a kilderkin of beer and twelve pennyworth of bread, and the same to Wood Street Compter, Newgate, the Fleet, King’s Bench, and the Marshalsea. In 1878 all arrears of these payments to each prison at £1 1s. per quarter, viz. for a kilderkin of beer £1, and for bread 1s., having been paid to this date, and the full payment being £25 4s. a year, the company transferred to the official trustees of charities stock sufficient to produce that amount. The name of Cateaton Street was in 1845 changed to Gresham Street, no one knows why. Here, in the days of John Taylor the water-poet, there was an important inn called the Maidenhead, but this, I imagine, had for its sign the arms of the Mercers’ Company, whose headquarters were in its immediate neighbourhood. Later a seventeenth-century trade token was issued from the Roxalana’s Head in Cateaton Street, the sign no doubt commemorating Elizabeth Davenport the actress, whose favourite part was Roxalana in the ‘Siege of Rhodes.’ Her sham marriage with the last Earl of Oxford of the de Vere family, who deceived her by disguising a trumpeter of his troop as a priest, is told in ‘Gramont,’ and in the ‘Countess Dunois’ Memoirs.’ Pepys saw her in 166⅔, in the chief box at the Duke’s theatre, ‘in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, looking very handsome.’

The Woman’s Head, dated 1671, which was on a house in Paternoster Row, and has been lately added to the Guildhall Museum, was hardly a sign. Similar heads are still on the keys of a first and second floor window belonging to the old-fashioned house of Messrs. W. and R. Chambers, 47, Paternoster Row. Another bas-relief in the Guildhall Museum represents a gardener holding a spade in his right hand, with the date 1670; it is rudely designed. This is a street rather than a house sign; as late as the year 1856 it was in Gardiner’s Lane, Upper Thames Street, near Broken Wharf. Mr. J. T. Smith, who drew it, in 1791, for his ‘Antiquities of London,’ adds this description: ‘Against Mr. Holyland’s stables, Gardiner’s Lane, the corner of High Timber Street, is this sculpture, but why put up I cannot learn. Tradition says the site was once gardens.’ Perhaps it was a rebus on the name of Gardiner.

Two bas-reliefs of St. George and the Dragon were erected as signs in London soon after the Great Fire, and, on the principle Detur digniori, should be described in this chapter. It was only natural that the figure of St. George should become one of our most popular inn signs; for he was regarded as the patron saint and special protector of this our realm of England. Shakespeare speaks of

‘St. George that swindg’d the Dragon, and e’er since
Sits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door.’

‘King John,’ Act i., Scene I.

A capital specimen of such a sign, though unfortunately in bad condition, is at the Guildhall Museum—presented by Mr. W. Hayward, C.E. It came from a house—81, Snow Hill—which had formed part of a famous old galleried inn. Snow Hill was the thoroughfare between Holborn and the City, till in 1802 it was superseded by Skinner Street, named after Alderman Skinner, which has now in its turn ceased to exist. Snow Hill is called in Stow’s ‘Survey’ Snor or Snore Hill, and by Howell Sore Hill, perhaps from the steepness and difficulty of the ascent. Strype, in 1720, speaks of the George Inn as ‘very large and of a considerable trade, the passage to the yard being through Cow Lane.’ In Sampson’s ‘History of Advertising,’ an advertisement is given from the British Chronicle of January 18 to 20, 1762, which informs us that

The Reading Machine

Is removed from the Three Kings, Piccadilly, to the George
Inn, Snow Hill, London; sets out from the Broad Face,[6]
Reading, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at seven
o’clock in the morning, and from the George Inn,
Snow Hill, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,
at seven o’clock in the morning; carries passengers to
And from Reading, at 6s. each; children in lap
and outside passengers at 3s.

N.B.—Takes no charge of Writings, Money, Watches, or Jewels, unless entered and paid for as such.

A second representation of the subject of the George and Dragon was formerly to be seen on Bennet Hill, opposite the Heralds’ College, and stood over the entrance to a small court, to which it gave a name. On it were the initials p r m, and date 1667. In ‘Remarks on London,’ by W. Stow, 1722, mention is made of ‘George Court, against the Heralds’ Office at Paul’s Chain.’ The ‘Constitutions of the Order of the Garter’ (c. iii.) ordain that ‘the Sovereign shall put upon his (the knight elect’s) neck a collar, or little chain or lace, having pendant therefrom a massive golden image of an armed knight (i.e., St. George) sitting on horseback.’

A relic of a most interesting old building is the figure of Gerard the Giant,[7] ‘carved from a twisted block of timber, distorted and ill at ease,’ which stood in the niche between the first-floor windows of Gerard’s Hall Hotel, on the south side of Basing Lane. It is about 6 feet high, and painted more or less to imitate life. Gerard’s Hall is described by Stow as ‘one great house, of old time built upon arched vaults, with gates of stone from Caen in Normandy. The same is now a common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called Gerrardes Hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of this house sometime stood a large fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde the giant used in the wars to run withal.—John Gisors, mayor of London in the year 1245, was owner thereof, and Sir John Gisors, mayor and constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of that name and family since that time, owned it.—So it appeareth that this Gisor’s Hall, of late time by corruption, hath been called Gerrard’s Hall.’ The upper part of the building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but the crypt remained,[8] and on this was built a brick house, with no remarkable feature except the above-named grotesque wooden figure, by way of sign. This house was destroyed in April, 1852, when the new Cannon Street was being formed. For some months the crypt—a fine specimen of thirteenth-century Gothic—continued in existence; but as the crown of the arched roof stood 2 feet or more above the roadway, it was also pulled down. Mr. Wheatley tells us that the stones were carefully numbered, and presented to the Crystal Palace Company, with a view to its re-erection. After a time, however, they were used in making the foundations for a new engine-house. Some of the stones are even said to have found their way to Kensington, to be broken up for mending the roads. There is a good view of the crypt of Gerard’s Hall in Burn’s ‘Catalogue to the Beaufoy Trade Tokens,’ and a descriptive article in the Builder for April 10, 1852, which also gives drawings of several devices of the nature of merchants’ marks, and an unfinished inscription, cut on the wall of the entrance.

A curious sculptured sign, representing King Charles I.’s gigantic porter and dwarf, used to stand over the entrance to Bull Head Court, Newgate Street, but disappeared some years ago on the widening of King Edward Street, formerly Butcher Hall Lane. This part of Newgate Street was in Strype’s time named Blowbladder Street, and before that Stinking Lane, on account of the smell which arose from slaughter-houses and poultry-shops there. Pennant has an illustration of the sign, but wrongly describes it as being over Bagnio Court, farther east, which was afterwards Bath Street, and has now been ridiculously called Roman Bath Street, though the ‘Royal Bagnio,’ whence the court derived its name, was not erected till 1679. The house to which the bas-relief belonged was No. 80, occupied in 1816 by Mr. Payne, a hatter; at that time the figures were painted, their coats being red, the King’s livery, and their waistcoats white. Not unlikely, the sign may still be in existence.

The two persons represented were William Evans and Jefferey Hudson. Evans, the porter, a Monmouth man, was 7 feet 6 inches high. On one occasion, at a Court masque, he drew the dwarf out of his pocket, ‘to the amazement and amusement of all present.’ There is an allusion to him in the contemporary ballad of ‘The Little Barleycorn.’ Jefferey Hudson, the dwarf, was born at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. His father, a butcher, kept and baited bulls for George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. At nine years of age he was scarcely 18 inches high, and, according to Fuller, ‘without any deformity, wholly proportionable.’ Having entered the service of the Duchess of Buckingham, at an entertainment given by her husband to Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, he was brought to table concealed in a large pie, from which he emerged before the company. The Queen took a fancy to him, so he became her page, and in 1630 was sent to France to fetch a midwife for his royal mistress, but fell into the hands of a Flemish pirate, and was taken to Dunkirk. By this misfortune he was said to have lost about £2,500. Sir William Davenant makes a supposed combat between the dwarf and a turkey-cock the subject of a burlesque poem called ‘Jeffreidos,’ published in 1638, the scene of which is laid at Dunkirk. How Hudson bore the insult is not recorded; but we shall see that he was quite capable of holding his own. During the Civil Wars the dwarf appears to have been a captain of horse, and he followed the Queen into exile. One of his adventures in France is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in ‘Peveril of the Peak.’ This was his duel with Crofts, a young gentleman of the Court, who had provoked him. The duel was fought on horseback with pistols. Crofts came on the ground armed with a syringe only; but a more serious weapon being substituted, he was killed at the first discharge. It seems to have been later that Hudson was again taken prisoner at sea, this time by Turkish pirates, and brought to Barbary, where he was sold as a slave. He asserted that his sufferings in captivity made him grow taller. After many vicissitudes he found his way back to England, probably before the year 1658. In 1679, being a Roman Catholic, he was confined in the Gatehouse at Westminster, for supposed complicity with the Popish Plot. Mr. Inchbold points out, in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ that he did not die there, as Scott and others have affirmed; for, ‘in June, 1680, and April, 1681, “Captain” Jefferey Hudson received respectively £50 and £20 from Charles II.’s secret service fund.’ He died in 1682. Three portraits of him were painted by Mytens, and he also figures in a portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke, at Petworth. His waistcoat, breeches and stockings are, it is said, preserved.

The sculptured stone sign of the Three Morris Dancers was formerly in front of a public-house numbered 36, Old Change, which is said to have been pulled down about the year 1801. An illustration of the sign exists: the central figure is a woman. A seventeenth-century trade-token issued from here reads thus:

O. iohn.lisle.at.the = Three Morris Dancers.

R. in.y^e old.change = I.A.L.

The word ‘morris’ is derived from the Spanish ‘morisco,’ and is equivalent to Moorish. The Morris or Moorish pike was a weapon much used in England in the reign of Henry VIII.; Shakespeare refers to it in the ‘Comedy of Errors,’ Act iv., Scene 3. Elsewhere he uses the word in its commoner sense; thus, in ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’ he speaks of a morris for May Day, and in ‘King Henry V.,’ Act ii., Scene 4, the Dauphin is made to say:

‘And let us do it with no sign of fear;

No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance.’

According to Brand, the Spanish morris was danced at puppet shows by a person habited like a Moor. Strutt, in his ‘Sports and Pastimes of the English People,’ connects it with the fandango. Some curious dancing figures carved in wood once formed part of the decorations in the mediæval town-hall of Munich; the series was known as the Maurscha tanntz. In England the dance derived from the Moors seems to have been grafted on to the rustic May games and sports, which perhaps were falling into disuse. The characters in the English morris-dance were usually Maid Marian (a boy dressed up in girl’s clothes), Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, the Fool, Tom the piper with pipe and tabor, and the hobby-horse. A rare pamphlet[9] of 1609 tells us about a morris-dance in Herefordshire, where the united ages of the twelve dancers were supposed to amount to twelve hundred years; but, unfortunately, it does not give details of the performance. Waldron, in his edition of the ‘Sad Shepherd,’ 1783, p. 255, mentions seeing a company of morris-dancers from Abington, at Richmond in Surrey, in the summer of 1783. They appeared to be making a kind of annual circuit. Even so late as the time of the Queen’s coronation, there was morris-dancing of a kind in Hyde Park, as recorded by a writer in Notes and Queries.

One still sees occasionally on May Day, in the less-frequented streets of London, a dance performed by two or three sweeps to the sound of fife and drum. They are dressed fantastically; one of them is, as a rule, half concealed in a frame covered with leaves and flowers, and is called a Jack-in-the-green. They are generally accompanied by a woman. These may be considered to a certain extent descendants of the morris-dancers, and their black faces happen to carry out the old idea.

Over the doorway of No. 13, Clare Street, at the corner of Vere Street, Clare Market, is a stone sign carved in low relief, which represents Two Negroes’ heads facing each other, with the date 1715 and initials _w^s_m. The house is occupied by a baker; its destruction is imminent, should Government adopt the plan of the London County Council for a new street from the Strand to Holborn. The neighbourhood is now squalid, and many of the buildings have lately been cleared away, but we know that in the seventeenth century it was well inhabited. I may remark, as a curious coincidence, that the continuation of Clare Street towards Drury Lane is called Blackmoor—in old maps Blackamore—Street. Seventeenth-century trade-tokens with signs of negro heads are in existence; one was issued from Drury Lane, and is thus described by Boyne:

O. thomas.hayton.in.drvry = A negro’s head.

R. lane.his.halfe.penny = An arched crown.

The following advertisement, which appeared in a London Gazette for 1695, has a distinctly local flavour:

‘A Black boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run away the 8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his neck, with this inscription: “The Lady Bromfield’s black, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”’

Black attendants were common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In more than one celebrated portrait a black boy serves to enhance the charm of a fair lady’s complexion. Sir John Hawkins, after his voyage of 1564, which was partly for slave-trading purposes, was authorized to have as his crest the half-length figure of a negro prisoner called heraldically a demi-Moor, bound and captive. The Black Boy was a frequent tobacconists’ sign, still sometimes seen.

CHAPTER II.

THREE KINGS—ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS.

‘Gaspar and Melchior and Balthazar
Came to Cologne on the broad-breasted Rhine,
And founded there a temple, which is yet
A fragment, but the wonder of the world.’

Lord Tennyson: MS.

AN interesting group of City signs is that connected with the Three Kings, showing as it does what a hold the sacred legend, handed down to us from a remote past, continued to have on popular imagination till comparatively recent years. In the Guildhall Museum there is a stone bas-relief of the Three Kings, brought from No. 7, Bucklersbury when the house was rebuilt some years ago. The figures are represented standing in similar attitudes; they have sceptres in their right hands, the left arm being in each case folded across the breast. The figure to the spectator’s left has flowing hair; that in the centre is of negro type; the one to the right is distinguished by a large moustache. A bas-relief from Lambeth Hill, also in the Guildhall Museum, is somewhat similar in design; the king on the left has a crown, the others diadems; it is dated 1667. Another sign from Lambeth Hill—the Three Crowns—was also put up in 1667, and may possibly have belonged to the same house.

The sign of the Three Kings was an appropriate one for inns, because on account of their journey they were considered the patron saints of travellers: it is also said to have been used in England by mercers, because they imported fine linen from Cologne. Bearing on this is a passage to be found among the Harleian manuscripts, No. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193, which, though already quoted by Larwood and Hotten in their ‘History of Sign-boards,’ is so much to the point that I venture to give it again:

‘Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Marchantes and traded in all sortes of Rich Goodes, besides those of scelckes [silks] as they do nou at this day; but they brought into England fine Leninn thered [linen thread] gurdeles [girdles] finenly worked from Collin [Cologne]. Collin, the city which then at that time of day florished much and afforded rayre commodetes, and these merchāts that vsually traded to that citye set vp their singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the three kinges of Collin, with the Armes of that Citye, which was the Three Crouens of the former kings in memorye of them, and by those singes the people knew in what wares they deld in.’

This was written by Bagford, the antiquary and ‘biblioclast,’ whose spelling was original, to say the least.

Innumerable traditions, myths, and allegories, have by degrees been grafted on to the brief Gospel narrative of the Three Magi; St. Matthew, the only Evangelist who mentions them,[10] gives no authority for fixing their number at three, nor for assigning to them a higher rank than that of Magi, or disciples of Zoroaster; but we may with reason hold that they are referred to in Ps. lxxii. 10, 11: ‘The Kings of Tharsis and of the Isles shall give presents, the Kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts.’ This passage is recited in the Roman Catholic offices of the Epiphany, and on it no doubt is founded their claim to kingly rank. It has been generally said that to Leo the Great, or to St. Maximus of Turin, may be ascribed the traditional number; Dr. Northcote,[11] however, considers that Origen, who was born at Alexandria, a.d. 185, had the same idea. St. Augustine taught that they were three in number, from the three kinds of gifts that they offered—gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Few subjects have been oftener treated in Christian art than that of these astronomer kings who, guided by a star from the East, came to worship the infant Saviour at Bethlehem. The early Christians painted the scene, but, following literally the words of St. Matthew, they varied their number, and showed no signs of royalty. De Rossi in his ‘Roma Sotteranea,’ speaks of upwards of twenty representations of the subject in the Catacombs. The Virgin Mother is, in these paintings, generally represented sitting at the side, with the Child in her lap and the three Magi before her, but sometimes she is in the middle; and here, in order, perhaps, to keep the balance of the composition, the number of Magi is either increased or diminished; there are four, as in the cemetery of St. Domitilla, or only two, as in that of SS. Peter and Marcellinus. In Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for January, 1888, an illustration is given of this latter painting.[12] The two Magi approach from either side; they are plainly dressed with short tunics, cloaks, and Phrygian caps, and bear their gifts on golden trays or dishes. De Rossi assigns it to the second half of the third century; that of St. Domitilla is supposed to be somewhat earlier.

Let us see how the subject was treated in early mosaics. A very famous one is that in the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome, dating, it seems, from about a.d. 432-440. Here the Child sits alone on a large chair or pedestal, His hand raised in benediction; a nimbus surmounted by a cross marks His divine origin. The mosaic is said to have been altered in the time of Pope Benedict XIV.[13]; the Magi would appear to have been originally three in number, and without the insignia of royalty. In the great mosaic of St. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, they approach with measured steps, and bending in attitudes of reverence: on their heads were crowns, since exchanged for baronial caps. The Virgin sits enthroned in state, the Child on her lap; two angels on either side attend them. According to the ‘Liber Pontificalis’ of Ravenna, this work was executed a.d. 553-556, under the direction of Bishop Agnellus.

The legend as it has come down to us gradually assumed concrete form. Our first detailed account of the appearance of the Three Kings is from the pen of a Western writer—the Venerable Bede—who founded it, probably, on reports from Italy or the East. In his treatise ‘De Collectaneis,’ he names and describes them thus:[14] ‘The first is said to have been called Melchior, an old man gray-headed, with flowing beard and locks; he presented gold to the Lord, the King. Gaspar, the second, was young, beardless, and ruddy; he with frankincense, as an oblation worthy of God, honoured God. The third, by name Baltassar, was dark-complexioned,[15] and had a full beard; he by means of myrrh signified that the Son of Man should die.’ He then describes their dresses.

It has been said[16] that this account may probably be traced to early quasi-dramatic representations. ‘In any such performance, names of some kind would become a matter of necessity, and were probably invented at random.’ Though the names given in the above passage are those with which we are familiar, many others have, perhaps with equal authority, been applied to them.

The nationality of the Three Kings has been as much discussed as the time taken on their journey. The natural inference would appear to be that they belonged to the priestly caste of Persia; Cornelius à Lapide considers that they were Eastern Arabians. He says: ‘The more common opinion of the Fathers and Doctors is that the Magi came on the thirteenth day from the first appearance of the star and the birth of Christ, whence the Church celebrates the mystery on the twelfth day after Christmas.’[17] In their old age they were said to have been baptized by St. Thomas, and to have associated with him in preaching the Gospel. Lastly, some have asserted that they were slain by idolaters; L. Dexter in his chronicle, under a.d. 70, adds: ‘In Arabia Felix, in the City of Sessania, took place the martyrdom of the three royal Magi; Gaspar, Balthazar, Melchior.’

We are told that early in the fourth century their bodies were discovered, and moved to Constantinople by the pious Empress Helena. Thence they found their way to Milan, being enshrined in the church of San Eustorgio. A few years later their fame was increased by the institution of the Feast of the Three Kings, which has been ascribed to Pope Julius, the first of that name. After the taking of Milan[18] by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, in the year 1162, the precious relics were granted to Reinaldus, Archbishop of Cologne, who brought them to that city, which proved to be their final resting-place. Cologne, proud of the honour, adopted as her arms, argent, on a chief gules, three royal crowns or; and so we have an interesting heraldic record of this event.

In course of time, however, each of these Three Kings[19] has had a shield of arms assigned to him. Perhaps the earliest examples yet known are on the roof of Norwich Cathedral. Here we find three bosses which date from the time of Bishop Lehart, who ruled that see from 1446 to 1472; on one is a blazing star, the next has seven stars, the third a star and crescent moon. The first and last of these appear on bosses at Winchester, placed there in the days of Richard Foxe, successively Bishop of Exeter, Durham and Winchester, and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He also gave relics of the three Epiphany Kings to Portchester Old Church.[20] Lord Ashburnham’s picture of the Adoration, exhibited at Burlington House in 1891, may be considered one of the most noteworthy examples illustrating this branch of the subject. It is attributed to Mabuse, and in Mr. Weale’s opinion was evidently painted about the year 1509, under strong Franciscan influence. In it are three processions in the background, of the Three Kings meeting at the Jordan. Each procession has an azure banner; on one is a blazing star, on another seven stars, and on the third a star and crescent moon. These same charges are embroidered on their robes in the foreground of the picture, and as on two of the Kings the names of Jasper[21] and Balthazar appear, we see that the star and crescent are assigned to Jasper, the blazing star to Balthazar, and the seven stars to Melchior. Different versions of the arms exist; for instance, those in a manuscript book of heraldry, which Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, Lyon King of Arms in Scotland, caused to be executed in the year 1522, and of which Mr. David Laing published a facsimile in 1878. Here Balthazar is called King of Saba, whose assigned shield of arms is, or, on a mount vert an Ethiopian proper, habited in a tunic per pale, azure and gules, holding in the dexter hand a spear with a pennon per pale, gules and azure, and wreathed round the temples, argent and azure. Jasper is called King of Tarshish; his shield is azure, with an estoile on the dexter, and a large crescent moon on the sinister, both proper. Melchior is called King of Araby, and on his azure shield are six estoiles proper. In the British Museum, on a superb jug of stoneware, made at Raaren near Achen, about 1590, are the three shields of arms of the Three Kings of Cologne. On this jug, Balthazar has the star and crescent moon; Casper, as he is here called, the seven stars; and the Ethiopian is assigned to Melchior. A work of art truly delightful, but conveying no heraldic lesson, is the long fresco of the journey of the Three Kings by Bennozzo Gozzoli, in the Riccardi Palace at Florence, wherein the rich cavalcade is shown, winding about by rock and river and wooded landscape, on which the painter has lavished all his poetry of invention and feeling for fresh nature.

In England the story of the Three Kings was often introduced into plays and pageants.[22] In the ninth report Hist. MSS. Com., Part I., is a full description, dated 1501, of a pageant given at the Guildhall, entitled ‘The 3 Kyngs of Coleyn.’ It seems that managers of sacred plays were fined if they failed to give satisfaction, for in the records of the town of Beverley, under the year 1519, occurs the following entry: ‘Also 2s. received of Richard Trollop, Alderman of the Painters, because his play of the Three Kings of Cologne was badly and disorderly performed.’ Mr. Thomas Wright, F.S.A., in his edition of the Chester Mysteries, shows that they took place on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Whitsun week. To each City company was assigned a play, twenty-four in all; to the Vintners the journey of the Three Kings, and to the Mercers their offerings and return.

The lives of the Three Kings were printed by Tresyrel in Paris in 1498, and by Wynkyn de Worde in 1516. The gifts of these Kings were recorded in the following Latin verses, which, if written with blood from the little finger of a person troubled with falling sickness, and hung about the neck, were according to an old book—‘The Myrrhour of a Glasse of Healthe’—an infallible cure; it will be observed that they do not quite agree with the description given by the Venerable Bede:

‘Jaspar fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazur aurum,
Hæc tria, qui secum portabit nomina regum,
Solvitur à morbo, Christi pietate, caduco.’

A mediæval ring was found some time ago at Dunwich, whereon the above lines were inscribed; it is figured in Fairholt’s ‘Rambles of an Archæologist,’ 1871. In 1794 Mr. Craven Ord, F.S.A., described a bas-relief of alabaster, in the church of Long Melford, Suffolk, representing the offerings of the Magi. It still exists in good condition; an illustration of it appeared as frontispiece to a monograph on the church printed in 1887. Another interesting memento was a leaden box found in the Thames, and drawn for Mr. Roach Smith’s ‘Collectanea Antiqua,’ i. 115; on which, in six compartments, are delineated the story of the Salutation of the Virgin and the offerings of the Three Kings.

In the Gentleman’s Magazine for February, 1749, vol. xix., p. 88, it is stated that the following prayer for protection was found in the linen purse of William Jackson a smuggler, who had been condemned to death for taking part in the murder of Galley and Chater, two Custom-house officers, but was so struck with horror on being measured for his irons that he died (a Roman Catholic) in Chichester Gaol a few hours after the sentence was pronounced upon him:

‘Sancti tres Reges,

Gaspar Melchior Balthazar,
Orate pro nobis nunc et in hora

Mortis nostræ.

Ces billets ont touché aux trois testes de SS. Roys à Cologne. Ils sont pour les voyageurs contre les malheurs de chemins, maux de teste, mal caduque, fievres, forçellerie, toute sorte de malefiee, mort subite.’

This paper had a rude illustration: Mr. Roach Smith gives a copy of it from a drawing by Fairholt. A similar prayer is still distributed at the shrine of the Three Kings.

Throughout Christendom the feast of the Epiphany, or Twelfth Day, holds an honoured place, as commemorating the appearance or manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, more especially to the Kings or Wise Men, who came from the East to do Him homage. In Spain it is called Fiesta de los Reyes, in France La Fête de Rois. In the year 1792 it was there pronounced an anti-civic feast which made every priest that kept it a Royalist, and the name was for a time changed to Fête de Sans-Culottes.

It is hard to say whether the sign of the Seven Stars had its origin from the shield of an Astronomer King, Gaspar or Melchior, or from the seven bright stars of the constellation usually called the Great Bear,[23] or whether it was suggested by the mystic pages of the Apocalypse; but from whatever source derived, it was common in London about the time of the Great Fire. A fine sculptured specimen with ornamental border was to be seen in Cheapside as late as the year 1851, when Archer drew it. A cognate sign was the Sun,[24] a stone carving of which was formerly imbedded in the front of a house in the Poultry. It had at the corners the date 1668. The neighbourhood was at one time rich in astronomical signs. In 1532 Richard Collier, citizen and mercer of London, left his messuage called the Sun, in the parish of St. Mary le Bow, to be sold, and the proceeds to be devoted to the founding of a free school at Horsham in Sussex, which still exists, and is in the hands of the Mercers’ Company. Other signs of this description in Cheapside, were the Star, the Man in the Moon, and the Half-Moon—the sign of a celebrated tavern on the north side, close to Gutter Lane, rebuilt after the Great Fire. Here in 1682 Elias Ashmole presided at a dinner, given at the charge of newly accepted Freemasons; and, from a rare print of the early part of the eighteenth century, it seems that here one of their lodges was held. The following appeared in the General Advertiser in 1748:

‘Half-Moon Tavern, Cheapside.—Saturday next, the 16 April, being the anniversary of the Glorious Battle of Culloden, the Stars will assemble in the Moon, at six in the evening. Therefore, the choice spirits are desired to make their appearance and to fill up the joy.’

The house belonged to the Saddlers’ Company, and was burnt down in 1821; No. 140 is said to occupy the site.

A sculptured bas-relief of a Half-Moon still appears to the left of a doorway, on the north side of the Half-Moon Inn Yard, Borough High Street. It is about four feet from the ground and has on it the initials i t e, with date 1690; the size is only 13 by 10-1/2 inches. This, as far as I know, is the only inn sign of the kind in London which still remains in its original position and retains its use. The Half-Moon, though not one of the most famous Southwark hostelries, has a record of its own worth alluding to. In a rough map of about the year 1542, now in the Record Office, an inn appears to be marked on this site, but the name cannot clearly be made out. The great Southwark fire of 1676 did not extend so far east. The first undoubted note I have of it, is contained in a broadsheet printed at Fleet Bridge, September, 1689, and now in the Guildhall Library, entitled ‘A Full and True Account of the Sad and Dreadful Fire that happened in Southwark, September 22, 1689;’ from which we learn that houses were blown up, and the Falcon and Half-Moon on opposite sides of the High Street were on fire at the same time. Our sign gives the date of rebuilding in the following year, and the initials of the owner or landlord. In 1720 Strype speaks of the Half-Moon as ‘a pretty large inn and of a good trade.’ It was then in the thick of Southwark Fair, and is alluded to in the following advertisement (September, 1729):

‘At Reynolds’ Great Theatrical Booth, in the Half-Moon Inn, near the Bowling Green, during the Fair, will be presented the Beggar’s Wedding, or the Sheep Shearing, an opera called Flora, and the Humours of Harlequin.’

Hogarth introduced a hanging sign of the Half-Moon into his celebrated picture of Southwark Fair, which represents the High Street looking towards old St. George’s Church, just before its demolition. The foundation-stone of the present church was laid April 23, 1734, this picture having been painted in the previous year. In a quaint little book of 1815, called the ‘Epicure’s Almanack,’ the Half-Moon is described as ‘a large establishment; its convenient accommodations for entertaining and lodging guests extend on either side the inn yard, and are connected by a well-contrived bridge from gallery to gallery,’ which still exists.

Sir Thomas Browne was of opinion that the human face on alehouse signs, on coats of arms, etc., for the sun and moon, are relics of paganism, and that their visages originally implied Apollo and Diana. Butler in ‘Hudibras’ asks a shrewd question, as yet not effectually answered:

‘Tell me but what’s the nat’ral cause
Why on a sign no painter draws
The full moon ever, but the half?’

The crescent moon, as we have seen, appears among the armorial bearings of the Three Kings of Cologne. It was also a badge of the Percy family; Drayton in his ‘Barons’ Wars’ alludes to one of them thus:

‘The noble Piercy, in this dreedful day,
With a bright crescent in his guidon came.’

Retainers of the Percies no doubt often adopted it as a sign on this account.

According to Burn, a mark shaped like a half-moon represented sixpence in the alewife’s uncancelled score. He points out that in ‘Master W. H., his Song to his Wife at Windsor,’ printed in Captain Llewellyn’s ‘Men-miracles, and other Poems,’ 1656, duod., p. 40, mention is made of ‘the fat harlot of the tap,’ who

‘Writes at night and at noon,
For tester, half a moon;
And great round O, for a shilling.’

The woodcut attached to the ballad of ‘My Wife will be my Master,’ printed in J. P. Collier’s ‘Booke of Roxburghe Ballads,’ 1847, p. 89, clearly indicates such an alewife’s score.

Before I leave this branch of my subject, it will be well to call attention to the Half-Moon sign which projects over a shop numbered 36, about half-way up Holywell Street on the south side. This is the last—still in situ—of another class of London house-signs, and will doubtless soon be swept away together with the picturesque old street to which it belongs. The material is wood, boldly carved and gilt, with the conventional face in the centre. One of the horns was damaged, but has lately been repaired. Diprose[25] says it was once the sign of a tradesman who was staymaker to George III. About forty years ago the shop was occupied by a mercer, and the bills made out for the customers were adorned with this sign: since then it has been a bookseller’s.

The corner-post of an alley beside it, leading into the Strand, used formerly to be decorated with a carved lion’s head and paws, painted red, and acting as a corbel to support the old timbered house to which it belonged. This may have been associated with the neighbouring Lyons Inn, once a hostelry with the sign of the Lion, demolished about twenty-five years ago, and the site of which is occupied by the Globe and Opera Comique Theatres. The alley remains, and is now called, after the sign, Half-Moon Passage, but might still be described by the unsavoury name given to it in the old maps, as Strype says, ‘in contempt.’ The old house disappeared not long since, and the lion has found a home in the Guildhall Museum.

CHAPTER III.

ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY.

‘Lions, talbots, bears,

The badges of your famous ancestries.’

Drayton: Barons’ Wars.

ONE or two of the signs to be dealt with under this heading are purely heraldic; others are allied to nature, and have, as far I am aware, no connection with heraldry. The stone carving of an ape seated on its haunches and eating an apple belonged to this class; it had on it the initials b m with date 1670, and some years ago was to be seen built into a wall on the west side of Philip Lane, exactly opposite the Ward School of Cripplegate Within. The space at the back was occupied by a court, the whole being now swallowed up in the premises of Messrs. Rylands and Sons. This marked the site of an ancient galleried inn of which it had been the sign. A similar piece of sculpture is or was lately in a street called the Sporrengasse at Basle. A little further east in Philip Lane a modern sculptured cock commemorates Cock Court, now destroyed, where another ancient inn had once stood. Drawings of both are preserved in the British Museum.

Not far from Philip Lane, at 17a, Addle Street, there is a fine bas-relief of a bear with collar and chain; it is above the first-floor window of a house rebuilt about twelve years ago, and has on it the initials n t e and date 1670—not 1610, as we are told by Archer. Munday and Dyson, in the fourth edition of Stow’s ‘Survey’ (1633), assert that Addle Street derived its name from Athlestane or Adlestane, whose house was supposed to have been hard by, in Wood Street, with a door into Addle Street.

An interesting sculptured sign of a Bear was dug up in 1882, when the house numbered 47, on the south side of Cheapside, was being rebuilt. It was found in a damaged state 7 or 8 feet below the surface, and is now let into the wall inside the shop of Messrs. Cow and Co., india-rubber manufacturers. An old arched cellar or undercroft of considerable height still exists in the basement, and extends to a distance of some 30 feet below the street. This sign, which represents a bear chained and muzzled,[26] and in heraldic language contourné, or facing to the right instead of the left, has neither date nor initials. A suggestion has been made that this is the White Bear, the sign of Robert Hicks, a mercer at Soper’s Lane end, and father of Sir Baptist Hicks, born there in 1551, who built Hicks Hall[27] and who, says Strype, was one of the first citizens that after knighthood kept their shops (eventually he became Lord Campden). This, however, is by no means probable; the sign resembles others put up after the Great Fire; moreover, Soper’s Lane, now Queen Street, is some distance east of St. Mary-le-Bow Church, while No. 47 is to the west, near Bread Street. On the opposite side of the way was a house with a similar sign, as appears from the following advertisement in the London Gazette of October 5, 1693:

‘Lost from the Brown Bear, next door to Mercers’ Chapel, in Cheapside, a large broken silver candlestick, having on the bottom James Morris engraven; also two double silver scroles of sconces, and a small scrole of a silver sconce, &c.’

Yet another sculptured sign of a chained bear exists in the City, more or less in its former position. It has on it the initials M E with date 1670, and is to be found let into a modern wall at the entrance to Messrs. Cox and Hammond’s quays, between Nos. 5 and 6, Lower Thames Street, having fortunately escaped a fire which in part destroyed the premises some years since. A far more terrible fire occurred in the neighbourhood in January, 1714-15, when above 120 houses were said to have been either burnt or blown up, and many persons perished. It was caused by an explosion in a little gunpowder shop near Bear Quay, and burned eastward as far as Mark Lane. The sign belonged perhaps originally to this Bear Quay, the site of which is now covered by the Custom House, and which in the eighteenth century was chiefly appropriated to the landing and shipment of wheat.

A Great Bear Quay and a Little Bear Quay are marked close together in Strype’s map of the Tower Ward. Beer Lane, further east, leading from Great Tower Street to Lower Thames Street, was in Stow’s time called Beare Lane. From a writ dated at Windsor, October 30, in the thirtieth year of Henry III., it appears that the Sheriffs of London were commanded to provide a muzzle, an iron chain, and a cord, for the King’s white bear in the Tower of London, and to use him to catch fish in the water of the Thames; and six years afterwards, namely in 1252, the Sheriffs were commanded to supply fourpence per diem for the maintenance of the King’s white bear and his keeper in the Tower. Burnet tells us that on May 29, 1542, the French Ambassadors, after they had supped with the Duke of Somerset, went to the Thames, and saw the bear hunted in the river. Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and consort of Richard III., adopted the white bear as a badge. In 1539 a ‘Manual of Prayers’ was printed by John Mayler, at the sign of the White Bear in Botolph Lane. A seventeenth-century trade token was issued by a grocer from the sign of the White Bear, Thames Street. Another trade token, ascribed by Boyne and others to Southwark, is far more likely to have been issued from here; it reads thus:

O. philip stower.at = a bear.
R. the.beare.at.bare.key = p.s.s.

A curious stone bas-relief of Bel and the Dragon is preserved by Messrs. Corbyn and Co., the eminent chemists, at No. 7, Poultry, being let into the wall of a back room; the idol is represented by an actual bell. Larwood and Hotten say that the sign was not uncommon, especially among apothecaries; it is alluded to in the Spectator, No. 28. At Messrs. Corbyn’s there is also a very handsome mortar of bell-metal, said to have been used by the firm in early days, with an inscription in Flemish or old German, and the date 1536. Messrs. Corbyn have had a copy of the above sign inserted in the wall of their new establishment, at the corner of Bond Street and Oxford Street; it came originally from their old house of business in Holborn.

The stone sign of the house which succeeded the Shakespearean Boar’s Head has happily been preserved, and is now in the Guildhall Museum. It is well designed and tastefully coloured, that fact having come to light when a thorough process of cleansing took place some time since. Above the snout are the initials i. t., and date 1668; size 18-1/2 by 16 inches. The Boar’s Head tavern will be famous for all time, as the scene of the revelries of Falstaff and Prince Hal; how far it was really connected with Shakespeare’s immortal creation has been discussed at length by the late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps. In the time of Henry V., Eastcheap was noted for its cooks’ shops, as appears from the ballad of London Lickpenny, by John Lydgate, monk at Bury St. Edmunds, in which, while giving a countryman’s description of London, he says:

‘Then I hyed me into Est-Chepe;
One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye;
Pewter pottes they clattered on a heape.
There was harpe, pype, and minstralsye.
Yea, by cock! nay, by cock! some began crye;
Some songe of Jenken and Julyan for there mede;
But for lack of mony I myght not spede.’

Stow, mentioning an affray in which King Henry IV.’s sons Thomas and John were concerned, adds in a note, ‘there was no taverne then in Eastcheape.’

Curiously enough, there is also no distinct authority in any of the early editions of Shakespeare’s plays for the name of the tavern in Eastcheap at which Falstaff and the Prince are supposed to meet. Theobald was the first, in 1733, to place the Boar’s Head in the stage directions. Shakespeare never mentions it at all, and his only apparent allusion is in the second part of ‘Henry the Fourth,’ where the Prince asks (speaking of Falstaff): ‘Doth the old boar feed in the old frank?’ and Bardolph answers: ‘At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.’ A suggestion of the house may also possibly be intended in ‘Richard the Second,’ where the Prince is mentioned as frequenting taverns ‘that stand in narrow lanes.’ In the play of the ‘Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth,’ 1594, on which Shakespeare’s drama was partly founded, the Castle tavern is mentioned as the place of meeting in Eastcheap. An allusion, however, to ‘Sir John of the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap,’ in Gayton’s ‘Festivous Notes’ (1654, p. 277), may be considered to prove that this was, in truth, the tavern to which Shakespeare referred. His contemporary, Dekker, in the play of ‘The Shoemakers’ Holyday, or, The Gentle Craft,’ has the following: Eyre. ‘Rip you chitterling, avaunt, boy; bid the tapster of the Bores-head fill me a doozen cans of beere for my journeymen.’

The earliest notice of the original house which has been handed down to us occurs in the testament of William Warden, who, in the reign of Richard II., gave all his tenement called the Boar’s Head, in Eastcheap, to a college of priests or chaplains, founded by Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor, in the adjoining Church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane. The endowments of this college were forfeited in the year 1549, when the house above alluded to is described as all the said William Warden’s tenement called the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, ‘worth by year £4.’

The Boar’s Head is first called a tavern in the year 1537, when it is expressly described in a lease, as ‘all that tavern called the Bore Hedde, cum sollariis et aliis suis pertinentiis in Estchepe, in parochia Sancti Michaelis, prædicti in tenura Johanne Broke vidue.’ An apparently genuine memento was discovered about the year 1834 in moving away soil from Whitechapel Mount.[28] It is a carved boxwood bas-relief of a boar’s head set in a circular frame formed by two boar’s tusks mounted in silver; diameter, 4½ inches. An inscription pricked on the back is as follows:

‘William Brooke Landlord of the Bores Hedde Estchepe 1566.’

This now belongs to Lady Burdett Coutts, and was shown two years ago at the Tudor Exhibition. In the year 1588, the inn was kept by Thomas Wright, a native of Shrewsbury: ‘Thear was chosen with me at that time out of the school, George Wrighte, son of Thomas Wrighte of London, vintener, that dwelt at the Bores Hed in Estcheap, who sithence, having good inheritance descended to him, is now clerk of the king’s stable, and a knight, a very discreet and honest gentleman;’ as we learn from the ‘Liber Famelicus’ of Sir John Whitelocke, edited by J. Bruce (p. 12). On March 31, 1602, the Lords of the Council wrote to the Lord Mayor, granting permission to the servants of the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of Worcester to play at the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap:[29] which seems to indicate that the house was an important one, probably with a yard. In the year 1623, ‘John Rhodoway, vintner at the Bore’s Head,’ was buried at St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane. This person may have kept the tavern in Shakespeare’s time. Two seventeenth-century trade tokens were issued from ‘the Bore’s Head, neere London Stone,’ as it is called in the rare tract called ‘Newes from Bartholomew Fayre.’ These tokens are undated, but it seems likely that they were struck before 1666. One of them gives the name of John Sapcott as the landlord.

The Boar’s Head tavern was burnt in the Great Fire, and rebuilt of brick four stories high, with its door in the centre. Many allusions to this second Boar’s Head have been preserved; one of the quaintest was an inscription on a tombstone in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, which I lately saw at the back of St. Magnus Church, whither it migrated when its first resting-place was covered by the approaches to new London Bridge. The epitaph runs thus:

‘Here lieth the bodye of Robert Preston, late drawer at the Boar’s Head Tavern Great Eastcheap who departed this life March 16 Anno Domini 1730, aged twenty-seven years.’

‘Bacchus to give the toping world surprise,
Produc’d one sober son, and here he lies.
Tho’ nurs’d among full hogsheads, he defyd
The charm of wine, and every vice beside.
O reader, if to justice thou’rt inclined,
Keep honest Preston daily in thy mind.
He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots,
Had sundry virtues that outweighed his fauts (sic).
You that on Bacchus have the like dependence,
Pray copy Bob in measure and attendance.’

In the second edition of Maitland’s ‘London,’ 1756, we are told that under the sign of the Boar’s Head, the following inscription was then to be seen: ‘This is the oldest tavern in London.’ Goldsmith was there in 1758, getting material for his charming ‘Reverie at the Boar’s Head,’ in which, however, he assumed that he was in the actual tavern immortalized by Shakespeare; and in 1818 another gifted author—Washington Irving—after a similar visit, wrote an essay as charming and as inaccurate. During their tour to the Hebrides in 1773, Boswell mentioned to Dr. Johnson a club held at the Boar’s Head, the members of which all assumed Shakespearean characters, one was Falstaff, another Prince Hal, another Bardolph, and so on. Johnson’s remark on the occasion was: ‘Don’t be of it, sir. Now that you have a name you must be careful to avoid many things, not bad in themselves, but which will lessen your character.’ Scruples of this kind do not seem to have troubled the great William Pitt, at any rate when he was young. In the ‘Life of William Wilberforce,’[30] by his son, the following anecdote is told by the philanthropist: ‘I was one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakespeare at the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap. Many professed wits were present, but Pitt was the most amusing of the party, and the most apt at the required allusions.’ This social gathering took place in the year 1780.

An interesting addition has lately been made to the Guildhall Museum, a bequest of the late Dr. Burgon, Dean of Chichester. It is a water-colour drawing of a figure from the house in Eastcheap, supposed to represent Falstaff, but so lean that it by no means embodies the idea contained in his words to the Lord Chief Justice: ‘I would that my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.’ The costume seems to be of the sixteenth century. This was copied no doubt from the figure carved in oak, 12 inches high, which was exhibited by Mr. Kempe to the Society of Antiquaries in December, 1833, and which once decorated the portal of the tavern. The figure had supported an ornamental bracket over one side of the door, a corresponding figure of Prince Henry sustaining that on the other. It was at that time the property of Mr. Thomas Shelton, brazier, Great Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop he occupied since the time of the Great Fire. He well remembered the last grand dinner-party, which had taken place at the Boar’s Head about fifty years before. The guests came from the west end of the town, and the long string of carriages which conveyed them filled the street at Eastcheap. Hutton, writing in 1785, gives a somewhat different account of the figures. He says,[31] ‘On each side of the entrance to the Boar’s Head there is a vine branch carved in wood rising more than three feet from the ground, loaded with leaves and clusters, and on the top of each a little Falstaff eight inches high, in the dress of his day.’

Peter Cunningham says that the Boar’s Head stood in Great Eastcheap, between Small Alley and St. Michael’s Lane, four taverns filling up the intervening space—the Chicken, near St. Michael’s Alley, the Boar’s Head, the Plough, and the Three Kings. The statue of King William IV. is considered to be a few feet east of the site. The house had ceased to be a tavern before Pennant wrote in 1790. It was divided into two tenements, and became Nos. 2 and 3, Great Eastcheap. Part was occupied by a gunsmith, when in June, 1831, the building, having been bought by the Corporation for £3,544, was immediately pulled down to make room for the approaches of new London Bridge. It is a curious fact that, on the opposite side of the river, at about an equal distance, stood another famous old Boar’s Head Inn, the site of which is also now covered by the approaches to London Bridge, and this had without doubt once belonged to that notable man, Sir John Fastolfe,[32] who must at least have furnished the name to Shakespeare’s matchless creation. The back part of the City inn looked upon the burial-ground of St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, as did the other on the Flemish burial-ground in Southwark. Of this latter and of the man who owned it, a rather full account is given in the ‘Inns of Old Southwark and their Associations,’ by Rendle and Norman.

From J. T. Smith and others I learn that in the early part of this century, not far from the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, and nearly facing Miles Lane, there was a bold and animated figure of a Mermaid carved in relief, with her dishevelled hair about her shoulders, and holding in her right hand something resembling ‘a bundle of flax or a distaff’; more likely a looking-glass. I mention the sign here for the sake of convenience, though I own its classification is a difficulty, one writer placing it with human signs, and another with ‘fishes and insects.’ There still exists a Mermaid carved in relief at No. 21, East Street, Gravesend. The material seems to be cut brick or terra-cotta; it has an ornamental border with cleft pediment. Seafaring people are always more or less attracted by the supernatural, and so the sign has been a favourite one here and in Holland, where also the merman, with helmet, sword, and buckler, was not uncommon. A merman and a mermaid are supporters of the arms of the Fishmongers’ Company, a fine carving of which is to be seen at the back of their present hall. The badge of the Byrons was a mermaid argent, crined and finned or, holding in the left hand a comb, in the right a mirror. It is recorded by Strype that ‘Boniface Tatam of London, vintner, buried in the parish of St. Peter’s Cornhill on the 3rd Feb., 1606, gave 40s. yearly to the parson for preaching 4 sermons every year so long as the Mermaid, a tavern in Cornhill so called, shall endure.’ But the most famous Mermaid, perhaps the most famous of all Elizabethan taverns, was that in Bread Street, Friday Street, and Cheapside, for they were all one and the same—the house standing back from Bread Street, with passage entrances from Cheapside and Friday Street.

‘Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?’

Another famous hostelry in old days was the Bull, Bishopsgate Street Within, which stood on the west side, opposite St. Helen’s Place. This was one of the inns used for theatrical purposes in the sixteenth century. In 1594, Anthony Bacon, brother of Francis, was lodging in Bishopsgate Street, to the regret of his mother, because he was near the Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were acted, which might corrupt his servants. It was the house frequented by old Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, on whom Milton wrote his famous lines. Here, as the Spectator tells us, there was a portrait of Hobson, with a hundred-pound bag under his arm, having on it the inscription:

‘The fruitful mother of a Hundred more.’

At the Bull Inn a mutiny broke out in a troop of Whalley’s regiment on April 26, 1649, for which one of the troopers was shot in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and others were condemned but pardoned. The inn was pulled down in 1866. A curious relic then rescued from the ruins consisted of a stone 9-1/2 inches wide at the top, 7 inches at the bottom, and 10 inches deep, shaped therefore like a keystone, and having a narrow margin, within which was a carving of a bull with a vine and its tendrils, and a bunch of grapes; it was dated 1642. This stone had doubtless served as a sign or commemorative decoration, and was the oldest of its kind in London: I have not been able to find out what became of it. The Herts Guardian for March 11, 1865, records that ‘under the yew-tree, against the steeple of All Saints’ Church, Hertford, is a small ordinary-looking gravestone having the following quaint inscription:

‘Here lyeth Black Tom of the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate, 1696.’

From the Bull in Bishopsgate it is not a far cry to the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate. There are two versions of this sign, and though comparatively modern they are worth describing, partly for their quaintness, partly from their interesting associations; they are both preserved in the Guildhall Museum. One was placed over the front entrance of the Queen’s Hotel, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, formerly known as the Bull and Mouth, which was built in 1830 on the site of the old coaching inn with that sign. A statuette of a bull appears within the space of a gigantic open mouth; below are bunches of grapes; above, a bust of Edward VI. and the arms of Christ’s Hospital, to which institution the ground belonged. Beneath is a tablet, perhaps from the old inn, inscribed with the following doggerel rhyme:

‘Milo the Cretonian an ox slew with his fist,
And ate it up at one meal, ye Gods what a glorious twist.’

Another version of the sign, which is said to have been put up about the beginning of the century, was over the entrance to the Great Northern Railway receiving-house in Angel Street, formerly the back entrance to the inn yard. This, together with the Queen’s Hotel and all the ground as far as Bull and Mouth Street north, has now been taken by the Post-Office authorities; the amount of compensation paid to the Great Northern Company having been £31,350.

The Bull and Mouth was one of the most famous coaching inns. Strype, writing in 1720, describes it as ‘large and well built, and of a good resort by those that bring Bone Lace, where the shopkeepers and others come to buy it.’ He also tells us that ‘in this part of St. Martin’s is a noted Meeting House of the Quakers, called the Bull and Mouth, where they met long before the Fire.’ The name is generally supposed to be a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, the entrance to Boulogne Harbour, that town having been taken by King Henry VIII. This elucidation is said to have originated with George Steevens, who has been called a mischievous wag in literary matters. Boyne thinks it might have been originally the Bowl and Mouth, both known London signs. A seventeenth-century trade token was issued from a house with the sign of the Mouth in Bishopsgate Street, and the Mouth appears in the rhyming list of taverns, which is to be found in Heywood’s ‘Rape of Lucrece.’ Stow mentions the custom of presenting a bowl of ale at St. Giles’s Hospital to prisoners on their way from the City to Tyburn, and according to Parton there was a Bowl public-house at St. Giles’s. Bowl Yard, a narrow court on the south side of High Street, St. Giles’s, disappeared about 1846. Mr. Wheatley, points out in ‘London Past and Present’ that our inn is probably identical with ‘the house called the Mouth, near Aldersgate in London—then the usual meeting place for Quakers,’ to which the body of John Lilburne was conveyed on his death, August 29, 1657. Five years afterwards, namely on October 26, 1662, it appears from Ellwood’s ‘Autobiography’ that he was arrested at a Quakers’ meeting held at the Bull and Mouth, Aldersgate, and confined till December in the old Bridewell, Fleet Street.

The Bull and Mouth was at its zenith as a coaching inn during the early part of this century, just before the development of railroads. Mr. Edward Sherman was then landlord, having succeeded Mr. Willans in the year 1823; he also had the Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane. It was he who rebuilt the old house, and made stabling underground for a large number of horses. When the business of coaching came to an end, the gateway from St. Martin’s-le-Grand was partially blocked up and became the main entrance to the hotel, which, under a new name, flourished till its final closing in the autumn of 1886. On September 28 of that year, the stock of wine, amounting to 750 dozen, was sold; during the winter the house was used as an adjunct of the General Post-Office. In July, 1887, the Jubilee fittings of Westminster Abbey were sold by auction in the large coffee-room. They consisted of Brussels carpets, hangings, cushions, etc., and produced upwards of £2,000. In the space cleared shortly afterwards for the new post-office, a large piece of the City wall has been discovered. The old Bull and Mouth Inn, destroyed in 1830, with its three tiers of galleries, was very picturesque: many illustrations of it exist.

A seventeenth century trade-token was issued from a Bull and Mouth in Bloomsbury, still represented by a modern public-house at No. 31, Hart Street.

A wooden carving of a Civet Cat was some years since the appropriate sign of an old-fashioned perfumer’s shop in Cockspur Street. An illustration of it appears in the Illustrated London News for December 13, 1856.

CHAPTER IV.

ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY—(Continued).

‘Figures strange—and sweet,
All made out of the carver’s brain.’

Coleridge: Christabel, pt. I.

THE sign of the Dog and Duck is to be found imbedded in the garden wall of Bethlehem Hospital, in the district formerly called St. George’s Fields. Size, 4 feet by 2 feet 6 inches.

It is in two divisions, and is dated 1716; the part to the right represents a spaniel sitting on its haunches with a duck in its mouth, and appears to me a capital specimen of grotesque art. This was the sign of the Dog and Duck public-house.

In 1642, when London was threatened by Charles I., the citizens hastily encircled it with a trench and a series of forts. Among these was one with four half bulwarks at the Dog and Duck, in St. George’s Fields. In 1651 a trade-token was issued from the Dog and Duck; it has the initials E M S, and on the obverse is a design almost identical with the one I have described. There were, however, other houses with this sign in Southwark: one in Deadman’s Place near St. Saviour’s Park, and another in Bermondsey Square. Till about the middle of the eighteenth century the Dog and Duck in St. George’s Fields seems to have been only a small public-house, doubtless with a pond attached to it, in which was carried on the cruel sport of duck-hunting, then dear to cockneys. The amusement consisted in the duck diving among the reeds with the dog in fierce pursuit; a good idea of it is given by Davenant in the ‘Long Vacation in London,’ p. 289, where reference is made to another district famous for ducking-ponds:

‘Ho ho to Islington; enough!
Fetch Job my son, and our dog Ruffe!
For there in Pond,[33] through mire and muck,
We’ll cry hay Duck, there Ruffe, hay Duck.’

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.

On the east side of Shoreditch High Street, between Nos. 79 and 80, and over the passage leading into Hare Alley, is the sculptured stone sign of a Hare running, with the initials b w m and date 1725. I have observed a similar sign in Flushing. Hare Alley is mentioned in Hatton’s ‘New View of London,’ 1708. Among seventeenth century trade-tokens is one with the following inscription:

O. nicholas warrin=A hare running.
R. in aldersgate street=N.I.W

So it is given in Boyne. A pun on the name is probably intended, but unless the issuer was a veritable cockney the animal represented was a rabbit.

The Hare in combination with the Sun, having the date 1676 and the initials h n a, is still to be seen above the first-floor windows of a house, No. 71, on the east side of the Borough High Street; close to the sites of the three most famous Southwark inns, the Tabard, the White Hart, and the George; of which the last-named still exists in part at least, though doomed, I fear, to speedy destruction. This house was gutted by fire a few years ago, but the sign luckily escaped unharmed. It is now painted in various colours, which was the old method, and, I think, improves the effect. The solicitors of the property have kindly let me examine the deeds, and I have gathered from them the following particulars:

In March, 1653, John Tarlton, citizen and brewer, left to his children two tenements in Southwark. In a mortgage of 1663 they are called ‘the Hare and the Three Pidgeons.’ In May, 1676, all, or nearly all, this part of Southwark was burnt down, the number of houses destroyed being, as stated in the London Gazette, about 600. A curious little pamphlet in my possession, licensed May 29, puts the number at nearly 500. On the title-page we are told that ‘St. Mary Overy’s Church and St. Thomas’s Hospital’ were ‘shattered and defaced,’ and everything ‘from Chain-Gate to the Counter on St. Margaret’s Hill on both sides the way burnt and demolished.’ I may note that on this occasion a fire-engine with leathern hose was first used, and seems to have been of great service in defending St. Thomas’s Hospital from the fire, as recorded in the London Gazette for August 14, 1676. In the same month Nicholas Hare, grocer, surrendered to be cancelled a lease dated 1669, ‘of the messuage or tenement called the Hare and Sunne,’ the said messuage having been burnt in the fire; and the Tarltons let him the ground on building lease for eighty-one years from June, 1677. The rent had before been £24 a year, with a fine for renewal of £70; it was now reduced to £16 a year. The sign in question is therefore a punning one, having been put up by Nicholas Hare, grocer, after the great Southwark fire, as many signs of the same description had been put up in London a few years previously, after the great London fire. How the sun had got into combination with the hare one does not know.[39] In subsequent documents, down to the year 1748, when the house came into the possession of John Paris, it is described simply as the Hare. In his will, dated 1753, he speaks of ‘my dwelling-house near the George Inn, known by the sign of the Hare and Stirrup;’ and finally, in 1757, in a schedule of the fixtures, are mentioned ‘in the dining-room two large sign irons, and a large copper sign of the Hare and Stirrup;’ so the unpretentious stone bas-relief, though not taken down, appears to have been supplemented by a sign more likely to catch the eye. It may be noted that on these sculptured signs, where letters occur, the initial of the owner, builder, or first occupant, is usually placed over the initials of the Christian names of himself and his wife the former naturally being on the left. Sometimes, however, they are all in a line, in which case the initial of the surname is most likely the middle one, as on the seventeenth-century trade tokens.

Centuries ago, when Islington was a little country town separated from London by roads which were often impassable in winter, there stood near the Green a picturesque house which, by its style, appeared to have been built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was an old and general tradition that this house, which in course of time became the Pied Bull Inn, had been the residence of Sir Walter Raleigh; but this seems to be nothing more than a tradition.[40] There is, however, strong evidence that Sir John Miller, knight, of Islington and Devon, lived here some years later, for a window of a room on the ground-floor was adorned with his arms in painted glass, impaling those of Grigg of Suffolk, and in the kitchen were the remains of the same arms, with the date 1624. Nelson gives an illustration of the chimney-piece in the ground-floor room; it contained the figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity in niches, with a border of cherubim, fruit and foliage. The central figure—Charity—was surmounted by two cupids supporting a crown, and beneath were a lion and unicorn couchant. Nelson thinks that the design was intended as a compliment to Queen Elizabeth. On the ceiling the five senses were represented in stucco, with their Latin names. It is not known at what time the house was converted into an inn; during the seventeenth century, no doubt, for Defoe mentions it in his fictitious narrative of the Plague.[41] The south front of the house was comparatively modern, and of different elevation to the older part, and here appeared a stone bas-relief of the Pied Bull, bearing the date 1730, the year perhaps in which this addition was made to the building. In 1740 the house and 14 acres of land were let at about £70 a year; it was pulled down in 1827. The modern public house called the Old Pied Bull, at the corner of Upper Street and Theberton Street, is about twenty or thirty yards north of the site.

In the Guildhall Museum there is a well-executed stone bas-relief in particularly good condition of a Lion statant, size 8 inches by 14-1/4 inches. No record of its origin has been preserved by the City authorities. Can this be the lion referred to by Leigh Hunt in ‘The Town’? His words are: ‘The only memorial remaining of the old palace (Somerset House) and its outhouses is in the wall of a house in the Strand, where the sign of a Lion still survives a number of other signs, noticed in a list at the time, and common at that period to houses of all descriptions.’ More likely, however, he refers to a carved lion supporting the City arms which is still to be seen on a jeweller’s shop, No. 342, Strand; but this is apparently of no great age. The occupant, who has been there thirty years, could give me no information about it. Mr. Harrison in his ‘Memorials of London Houses,’ says that Robert Haydon lodged here, when as a youth of eighteen he first came to London from Plymouth. In the seventeenth century there was a Golden Lion by York House, which, with other tenements pertaining to Denmark or Somerset House, was sold in 1650 for the benefit of the State.

Perhaps a more interesting sign than either of the above is that of the White Lion, a boldly-executed carving with the date 1724, which is still to be seen between the first-floor windows of a house, now a tobacconist’s, on the north side of Islington High Street, but in the parish of Clerkenwell. This was once the sign of an inn which existed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, if not earlier. In ‘Drunken Barnabee’s Journal,’ the date of which is 1638, there occur the following lines:

‘Thence to Islington, at Lion,
Where a juggling, I did spy one,
Nimble with his mates consorting,
Mixing cheating with his sporting.’

There is a curious allusion in Pepys’ ‘Diary,’ January 21, 1667-8: ‘It seems, on Thursday last, he (Joyce) went sober and quiet, and behind one of the inns, the White Lion, did throw himself into a pond.’[42] This Anthony Joyce was cousin to Pepys; he had lost money by the Great Fire, and afterwards kept the Three Stags, Holborn Conduit. He was got out of the pond before life was extinct, but died soon afterwards. Pepys was afraid that his estate would be taken from his widow and children, on the ground that he had committed suicide, the legal consequences of which might have been forfeiture of goods and chattels to the Crown; but the coroner’s jury returned a verdict that he had died of a fever. A trade-token gives the name of the landlord at the time:

O. christopher.bvsbee.at = A lion passant.
R. whit.lion.in.islington. = his.half.peny. 1668.

Busby’s Folly, a house of entertainment, marked in the old maps of Clerkenwell, and of which there is an engraving in a rare volume called ‘Views of divers Noted Places near London,’ 1731,[43] possibly, as Burn suggests, originated with the issuer of this token. T. Cromwell, in his ‘History of Clerkenwell,’ published in 1828, gives us the following information: ‘The White Lion, now a public-house and wine-vaults, at the south-east corner of the street of the same name, was originally an inn much frequented by cattle-drovers and others connected with the trade of Smithfield. It then comprised the two dwelling-houses adjoining, and extended also in the opposite or northward direction, until the latter portion was pulled down to make an opening to White Lion Row, as it was then called, being that part of the existing White Lion Street which was built between 1770 and 1780. Where Mr. Becket’s shop now is was the gateway of the inn-yard, over which a lion rampant, executed in relief and painted white, was inserted in the front of the building.’ Nelson tells us that the carriage-way was immediately under the lion, and so continued till, the trade of the inn declining, the building was converted into a private house. The White Lion, one would think, must first have been used as a sign by some retainer of the Howards, who, by marriage with Lady Margaret Mowbray, inherited, as a badge, the blanch lion of the Mowbray family.

From the lion to the unicorn seems a natural transition. A stone bas-relief of the latter animal supporting a shield was formerly to be seen in Cheapside, two doors east of the Chained Swan, and opposite to Wood Street; but disappeared some years ago, when the house to which it belonged was rebuilt. Peter Cunningham, usually so accurate, described it as a Nag’s Head. It seems that Roger Harris (not Sir Roger Harrison, as stated by Archer), who died in the year 1633, had owned the property, and by will endowed the church of St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, with a rent-charge on it of £2 12s. for the purchase of bread for the poor, which was to be distributed every Sunday in the form of one penny loaf for each one of twelve poor men or widows in the parish. This amount is still paid annually by the tenant of No. 39, Cheapside, which stands on the site of the Unicorn; under the present arrangement, it is administered by the trustees of the London Parochial Charities. The sign was of old standing. In Machyn’s ‘Diary’ the entry for 1 May, 1561, records the fact that ‘at afternoone dyd Mastyr Godderyke’s sune the goldsmyth go hup into hys father’s gylding house, toke a bowe-strynge and hanged ymselff at the syne of the Unycorne, in Chepsyd.’[44]

The unicorn first became a supporter of the royal arms in James I.’s time, when it displaced the red dragon of Wales, introduced by Henry VII. Unicorns had been supporters of the Scottish royal arms for about a century before the union of the two crowns. A representation of the unicorn often appeared in City shows. Cooke, in his ‘City Gallant,’ 1599, makes a City apprentice exclaim: ‘By this light I doe not thinke but to be Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have three pageants carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn.’ This fabulous creature should have the tail of a lion, the legs of a buck or goat, the head and body of a horse, and a single twisted horn in the middle of its forehead. It was used as a sign by chemists and goldsmiths: by the former, because the horn was considered an antidote to all poisons; by the latter, on account of the immense value put upon it. ‘Andrea Racci, a Florentine physician, relates that it had been sold by the apothecaries at £24 per ounce, when the current value of the same quantity of gold was only £2 3s. 6d.’ (Larwood and Hotten, p. 160.) The horn thus esteemed was probably narwhal’s horn. The arms of the Apothecaries’ Company are supported by unicorns.

CHAPTER V.

BIRDS AND OTHER SCULPTURED SIGNS.

‘Emblems of Christ and immortality.’

THE next group of sculptured signs I should like to consider is that in which birds are represented. Several of them clearly had an heraldic origin; but I am not aware that this was the case with the Crane—a pretty sign empanelled in a delicate moulding of small cut-brick, which stood over the entrance to Crane Court, Lambeth Hill.

It is said to have been destroyed in the year 1871. One is reminded of the Three Cranes in the Vintry, not far off, mentioned by Stow, Ben Jonson, and others, the site of which is still marked by Three Cranes Wharf, Upper Thames Street. The ‘Annals of John Stow,’ continued by Howes, were ‘imprynted at the Three Cranes, in the Vintrie.’

A sign of the same description was the Four Doves, which, forty years ago, was to be seen in front of a modern house in St. Martin’s le Grand. Archer, who drew it, suggests that it was a rebus on the joint owners of the property. The four doves had the initial letters w. g. i. j. Beneath was the inscription—

‘This 4 dove Ally 1670.’

Four Dove Alley is marked in Horwood’s map a short distance south of Angel Street, King’s Court intervening. It is now covered by the buildings of the General Post Office.

Yet another sculptured sign indicating the name of a court was the Heathcock—in a handsome shell canopy, which formerly graced the entrance to Heathcock Court, Strand. It was removed in July, 1844, in spite of the remonstrance of Mr. Peter Cunningham, who wrongly supposed it to be the last sign of its class in London. Two picturesque old houses fronting this court still remain. A heathcock with wings expanded forms the crest of the Coopers’ Company; but it does not appear that they ever owned property in this neighbourhood.

As late as 1866 a stone bas-relief of an Ostrich was to be seen in Bread Street, together with the arms of the Tallowchandlers’ Company. Soon afterwards the house was destroyed, and the sign disappeared for many years, till it came, by chance, into the hands of Mr. M. Pope, F.S.A., who has kindly presented it to the Guildhall Museum. The beak is a modern restoration. A rough drawing, which, however, quite serves to identify it, appeared in the Illustrated London News for December 13, 1856, when it was suggested that it might have served as the sign of a feather-dresser. Mrs. Palliser[45] tells us that Mattei Girolamo, captain of the guard to Clement VII., placed on his flag an ostrich swallowing an iron nail, with the motto, ‘Spiritus durissima coquit,’ ‘Courage digests the hardest things’; that is, the brave man is not easily daunted. Sir Thomas Browne wrote a paper on the ostrich, for the use of his son.

The Spread Eagle or ‘Eagle with two heads displayed’ was, like the Ostrich, bought by Mr. Pope some time since, and has also been presented to the Guildhall Museum; he wrote a description of these signs in the ‘London and Middlesex Notebook.’ Both signs were sold by the same person; they had been in the possession of his family for many years, and he believed that his father had obtained them from the same neighbourhood in the City. The Spread Eagle is in fair condition, though the sinister head has been badly restored with cement. It has on it the initials rm and the date 1669. I have no proof as to the original position of this sign, but in the absence of fuller information one can, I think, fairly hazard the conjecture, that after the Great Fire it may have been put up in Bread Street to perpetuate the memory of the house in which John Milton, the poet, was born. We know that his father, a scrivener, but a man of good family, had adopted his own coat of arms as a sign. Aubrey, a contemporary, says he had another house in Bread Street, called the Rose. In Masson’s Life of Milton there is a transcript of a volume in the British Museum containing miscellaneous notes, which relate to the affairs of John Sanderson, a Turkey merchant, in the early part of the seventeenth century. Among other things there is a copy of a bond dated March 4, 160-2/3, in which Thomas Heighsham, of Bethnal Green in Middlesex, and Richard Sparrow, citizen and goldsmith of London, engage to pay Sanderson a sum of money on May 5 following, the payment to be made at the new shop of John Milton, scrivener, at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street. The signature of John Milton, scrivener, is appended.

Some years since there existed in Bread Street a Black Spread Eagle Court, at the first turning on the left hand as one entered from Cheapside, with, as Strype tells us, a very good house at the upper end; in several directories of the eighteenth century it is called Spread Eagle Court. This is considered to have been on the site of Milton’s birthplace; the ground is now covered by modern warehouses—Nos. 58 to 63, occupied by one firm. The Church of All Hallows, Bread Street, in which Milton[46] had been baptized, was swept away in 1878. Its site is marked by a bust of the poet with an inscription, set up in the wall of a new building. The Spread Eagle was by no means an uncommon London sign; to the one in Gracechurch Street I shall presently refer. Collet,[47] in his ‘Common-place Book,’ gives it as his opinion that, ‘the eagle with two necks in the imperial arms, and in the arms of the King of Spain, depicted on signboards as the Spread Eagle, signified the east and west empire, the extension of their power from the east to the west.’ During a great tempest at sea in January, 1506, Philip, King of Castile and his Queen were weather driven, and landed at Falmouth. The same storm blew down the eagle of brass off the spire of St. Paul’s Church in London, and in falling the same eagle broke and shattered the black eagle that hung for a sign in St. Paul’s Churchyard, as related in Stow’s ‘Annals,’ p. 484.

An interesting sign of the Pelican is let into the string course above a corner first-floor window of No. 70, Aldermanbury. It was the crest of two merchants who formerly occupied the house. Their monument is in the neighbouring church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, the inscription being as follows:—

‘Here lyeth the body of Richard Chandler,
Citizen and Haberdasher of London, Esquire,
Who departed this life November 8th, 1691, aged 85.
Also the body of John Chandler, Esqre, his brother,
Citizen and Haberdasher of London,
Who died October 14th, 1686, aged 69 years.’

Above is the Pelican as a crest, corresponding with the sign. The busts of these two worthy citizens in flowing periwigs appear on each side of the inscription; their names are in the Little London Directory for 1677. The church was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, the parishioners subscribing liberally; Richard Chandler gave the font in 1675. The notorious Judge Jeffreys, who died in the Tower of London and was buried in the chapel there, was afterwards, on petition of his family, reinterred in the church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury. Here also Milton was married to his second wife, Catherine Woodcock. In 1890 the churchyard was opened to the public as a recreation ground.

The pelican[48] in her piety, or feeding her young with her blood, was often represented in the Mediæval Church, being considered a mystical emblem of Christ, and a type of the Holy Eucharist. Several representations of it are to be seen in St. Mary Abchurch, the living of which is in the gift of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It was the device of the famous Bishop Foxe, to whom I have alluded in my account of the Three Kings (ante); and as such appears on the woodwork of the banqueting hall of Durham Castle, with his usual motto, ‘Est Deo gracia;’ and on the string course of the choir of St. Saviour’s, Southwark. He died anno 1528. Heywood in his play of Edward IV. (4to. 1600), mentions a pelican sign in Lombard Street:—

‘Here’s Lombard Street, and here’s the Pelican;
And here’s the Phœnix in the Pelican’s nest.’

And by a curious coincidence, at the present day there are the signs of a Pelican and a Phœnix in Lombard Street, both belonging to famous insurance offices. The house[49] occupied by the latter was built for Sir Charles Asgill, Lord Mayor in 1757.

A bas-relief, similar in style to that last described, is the Swan with collar and chain, inserted below a second-floor window of No. 37, Cheapside, which stands at the north-east corner of Friday Street. This is on the site of the Nag’s Head tavern, whose projecting sign appears in a well-known print of the procession of Mary de Medici on a visit to her daughter, Queen Henrietta Maria—an interesting record of the appearance of Cheapside before the Great Fire. The sign was almost opposite Cheapside Cross. The Nag’s Head was the supposed scene of the consecration of Archbishop Parker, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559. This story is refuted in Strype’s Life of Parker; it probably arose from a fact mentioned by Fuller, that the commissioners who confirmed Parker’s election (at St. Mary le Bow Church ten days before the consecration), afterwards dined together at the Nag’s Head close by. The present building must have been erected soon after the Great Fire, for a staircase, to which there is access from Friday Street, evidently dates from that century. Indeed, in the Creed Collection at the British Museum (vol. xiii.) there is a newspaper cutting said to be from the Builder, but without a date, in which it is, no doubt erroneously, asserted that the house was there before the year 1666, and remained standing when all around was swept away, and that inside traces of the fire may be observed on the massive beams. The Chained Swan is undoubtedly of heraldic origin. Ritson says it was not customary to use the English language at court till King Edward III. on the occasion of a celebrated tournament, held at Canterbury in 1349, placed on his shield the device of a white swan, with the legend: