those famous bows were made that did such execution at Agincourt and
Poictiers, and wherever the English armies trod the field before the
invention of gunpowder. So great was the patronage our early kings
granted to the practice of the bow, that the patten-makers, by an Act of
Parliament of 4 Henry V., were forbidden, under a penalty of £5, to use
in their craft any kind of wood fit to make arrows of.

The COTTON TREE is a sign generally put up in the neighbourhood of
cotton factories, as at Manchester. The PALM TREE is one of the oldest
symbols known: it was used as such by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the
Romans, and by them transmitted to the early Christians. St Ambrosius,
in a very forcible image, compares the life of an early and faithful
Christian to the palm tree, rough and rugged below, like its stem, but
increasing in beauty upwards, where it bears heavenly fruit. It might
also illustrate a more homely truth, namely, that business cannot
flourish without patronage and custom; thus, Camerarius says:--

  “Inter alias multas singulares proprietates quas scriptores rerum
  naturalium Palmæ attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hæc arbor non
  facile crescat, nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nec non humore
  aliquo conveniente irrigetur.”[355]

The COCOA TREE was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses when that
beverage was newly imported and very fashionable. One of the most famous
was in St James’ Street; it was, in the reign of Queen Anne, strictly a
Tory house:--“A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa Tree, or Ozinda’s,
[another chocolate-house in the same neighbourhood,] than a Tory will be
seen at the coffee-house of St James’.”[356] Deep play was the order of
the day in that as in all other fashionable resorts at the end of the
last century. Walpole, in 1780, wrote to one of his friends:--

  “Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree,
  the difference of which amounted to an hundred and four score thousand
  pounds. Mr O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 off a young Mr
  Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by
  his elder brother’s death. O’Birne said, ‘You can never pay me?’ ‘I
  can,’ said the youth, ‘my estate will sell for the debt.’ ‘No,’ said
  O., ‘I will win ten thousand, you shall throw for the odd ninety.’
  They did, and Harvey won.”[357]

It afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. This gambling
seems to have been inseparable from the chocolate-houses. Roger North,
attorney-general to James II., says,--

  “The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention
  called Chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all
  the quality, where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of
  wh---- seldom fails: as if the devil had erected a new university, and
  those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his school of
  discipline.”[358]

Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan Franz. Rauch
wrote a treatise against that beverage and the monks. In England,
however, it seems to have been introduced much later, for in 1657 it was
advertised as a new drink:--

  “IN BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house,
  is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where
  you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable
  rates.”[359]

It is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate on its
first introduction. M^{me}. de Sévigné, in her letters, gives many
proofs of it; at one time she fervently recommends it to her daughter as
a perfect panacea, at other times she is as violently against it, and
puts it down as the root of all evil.

THE COFFEE HOUSE is the now inappropriate sign of a gin-palace in
Chalton Street, Somers Town. Early in the last century this
neighbourhood was a delightful rural suburb, with fields and flower
gardens. A short distance down the hill was the then famous Bagnigge
Wells, and close by were the remains of Totten-Hall, with the Adam and
Eve tea-gardens, and the so-called King John’s Palace. Many foreign
Protestant refugees had taken up their residence in this suburb, on
account of the retirement it afforded, and the low rates asked for the
small houses. “THE COFFEE HOUSE” was then the popular tea and
coffee-gardens of the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the
neighbourhood, as well as the pleasure-seeking Cockney from the distant
city. There were other public-houses and places of entertainment near at
hand, but the specialty of this establishment was its coffee. As the
traffic increased, it became a posting-house, uniting the business of an
inn to the profits of a pleasure garden. Gradually the demand for coffee
fell off, and that for malt and spirituous liquors increased. At present
the gardens are all built over, and the old gateway forms part of the
modern bar; but there are aged persons in the neighbourhood who remember
Sunday-school excursions to the place, and pic-nic parties from the
crowded city, making merry here in the grounds.

The HOLLY BUSH is a common public-house sign at the present day. Among
the London trades tokens there is one of the HAND AND HOLLY BUSH at
Templebar, evidently the same inn mentioned in 1708 by Hatton, “on the
north side, and about the middle of the backside of St Clements, near
the church.”[360] This combination with the hand does not seem to have
any very distinct meaning, and apparently arose simply from the manner
of representing objects in those days, as being held by a hand issuing
from a cloud. Adorning houses and churches at Christmas with evergreens
and holly is a very ancient custom, supposed, like some others of our
old customs, to be derived from the Druids. Formerly the streets also
appear to have been decked out, for Stow tells us that

  “Against the feast of Christmas every man’s house, as also the parish
  churches, were decked with holme, ivy, and bayes, and whatsoever the
  season of the year afforded to be given. The conduits and standards in
  the streets were likewise garnished.”

Thus flowers, fruit trees, and forest trees were represented on the
signboard, and with them even the homely but useful tenants of the
kitchen garden found a place. The ARTICHOKE, above all, used to be a
great favourite, and still gives a name to some public-houses. As a
seedsman’s sign it was common and rational; not so for a milliner, yet
both among the Bagford and Banks’s shopbills there are several instances
of its being the sign of that business; thus:--

  “Susannah Fordham, att the HARTICHOAKE, in ye Royal Exchange,” in the
  reign of Queen Anne, sold “all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and
  linnens, and all sorts of gloves and ribons, and all other sorts of
  millenary wares.”[361]

Probably the novelty of the plant had more than anything else to do with
this selection; for though it was introduced in this country in the
reign of King Henry VIII., yet Evelyn observes:--

  “‘Tis not very long since this noble thistle came first into Italy,
  improved to this magnitude by culture, and so rare in England that
  they were commonly sold for a crowne a piece.”[362]

The CABBAGE is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liverpool,
and CABBAGE HALL, opposite Chaney Lane, on the road to the Lunatic
Asylum, Oxford, was formerly the name of a public-house kept by a
tailor; but whether he himself had christened it thus, or his customers
had a sly suspicion that it owed its origin to _cabbaging_, history has
omitted to record. Another public-house, higher up the hill, was known
by the name of CATERPILLAR HALL, a name clearly selected in compliment
to Cabbage Hall, intimating that it meant to draw away the customers
from Cabbage Hall, in other words, that the caterpillar would eat the
cabbage. The OXNOBLE, a kind of potato, is the name of a public-house in
Manchester, and the homely mess of PEASE AND BEANS was a sign in Norwich
in 1750.[363] The THREE RADISHES was, in the seventeenth century, a
common nursery and market gardener’s sign in Holland. There was one near
Haarlem, to which was added a representation of Christ appearing to Mary
Magdalene in the garden, with this rhyme--

  “Christus vertoont men hier
  Na zyn dood in verryzen,
  Als een groot hovenier
  Die ieder een moet pryzen.
  Dit ’s in de drie Radyzen.”[364]

Another, near Gouda, had a still more absurd inscription:--

  “Adam en Eva leefden in den Paradyze
  Zelden aten zy stokvisch maar veel warmoes, kropsla en radyzen.
  Hier vindt gy allerley aardgewas om menschen mêe te spyzen.”[365]

The WHEATSHEAF is an extremely common inn, public-house, and baker’s
sign; it is a charge in the arms of these three corporations, besides
that of the brewers. In the middle of Farringdon Street, opposite the
vegetable market, is Wheatsheaf Yard, once a famous waggon inn, which
also did a roaring trade in wine, spirits, and Fleet Street marriages.
Indeed, most of the large inns within the liberties of the Fleet served
as “marriage shops” between 1734 and 1749; amongst the most famous were
the BULL AND GARTER, the HOOP AND BUNCH OF GRAPES, the BISHOP BLAIZE AND
TWO SAWYERS, the FIGHTING COCKS, and numerous others. The gateway
entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carvings of
wheat ears and lions’ heads intermixed, finished in a manner not
unworthy of Grinling Gibbons himself.

The OATSHEAF is very rare; it was the sign of a shop in Cree Church
Lane, Leadenhall Street, in the seventeenth century, as appears from a
trades token; but this seems the only instance of the sign.

With these plants we may also class Tobacco, that best abused of all
weeds. Sometimes we see a pictorial representation of the TOBACCO PLANT,
but most usually it occurs in the form of TOBACCO ROLLS, representing
coils of the so-called spun or twist tobacco, otherwise pigtail, for the
sake of ornament, painted brown and gold alternately. Decker, in his
“Gull’s Hornbook,” mentions _Roll Trinidado_, leaf, and pudding tobacco,
which probably were the three sorts smokers at that day preferred. That
it was used mixed may be conjectured from the introduction to “Cinthia’s
Revels,” a play by Ben Jonson; one of the interlocutors says,--“I have
my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket.”

[326] “The Country Carbonadoed,” by D. Lupton, 1632. _Voce_ “Alehouse.”

[327]

      “The tavern opened
  With signboard and bush;
  The landlady’s hair neatly dressed.
  Tied up in a knot.”

[328] Be thou, rose, queen of flowers, the cure of my diseases.

[329]

  Through thee, rose, sins are taken away,
  Through thee, gladness is given to the sorrowing.

[330] Blount’s “Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures,” p. 248.

[331] See Boynes’ Tokens issued in the seventeenth century in England,
Wales, and Ireland.

[332] Like the rose in spring, hidden in its bud, so must the mouth be
closed and restrained with strong reins, enforcing silence to the
loquacious lips.

[333]

  All that is done here, under the Rose,
  Leave it here and do not divulge it.

[334] Memoirs by Samuel Sainthill, 1659, _Gent. Mag._, lxxxiii. p. 520.

[335] _London Gazette_, Nov. 6, 1673.

[336] _Ibid._, Oct. 20, 1673.

[337] See the “Little London Directory, 1677,” recently reprinted.

[338] _Domestic Intelligencer_, Sept. 9, 1679.

[339] Banks’s Bills in the British Museum.

[340] _Hereford Journal_, January 7, 1775.

[341] Stow’s Survey, p. 340.

[342] _Daily Courant_, July 1, 1718.

[343] Banks’s Bills.

[344] Harl. MSS., 279, p. 47, a cookery book of that period.

[345] Lansdowne MS., No. 1, fol. 49. Three weeks’ diet of the Lords of
the Star Chamber. These lords appear to have lived very well, as we may
learn from some of the items of one day’s dinner:--ffirst for bread,
xijd.; ale, iijs. iiijd.; and wine, xvjd. Item to

      viijd.              vjd.              vd.         ijd.
  loyne of moton; maribones and beef; powdered beef; ij capons;

   xiiijd.     xd.       iiijd.     xviijd.       vd.
  ij geese; v conyes; j leg moton; vj places; vj pegions;

      xijd.            vjd.              xd.
  ij doz. larkes; salt and sause; butter and eggs, &c., &c., &c.

[346] Machyn’s Diary.

[347] Archæologia, vol. xii.

[348] Prefixed to Collectanea, 1770, p. lxxv.; there is also a paper on
Vines in England in Archæologia, i. p. 321; and Roach Smith’s
Collectanea Antiqua, vol. vi., p. 78, _et seq._ may be consulted with
advantage upon this subject.

[349] Curiously enough, until about 1820, a public-house, the sign of
the Vine, in Dobie Street, St Giles, occupied the very site assigned to
this vineyard in Domesday Book, A.D. 1070.

[350] Hollinshed’s Description of Britain, p. 3.

[351] Faulkner, Antiquities of Kensington.

[352] Grosley, vol. i., p. 83.

[353] He lived then in Exeter Street, at a stay-maker’s. Boswell’s
Johnson: London, 1819, p. 67.

[354] “In spring-time the fig-tree does not make any show of beautiful
flowers or precocious fruit to deceive mankind with idle hope; but in
autumn it generally produces exceedingly sweet fruit, with flowers as it
were contained within them.”--_Joachimus Camerarius_, “_Symbolorum
Centuriæ Quatuor_,” 1697, Centur. i., p. 18.

[355] “Among the many curious properties which the writers on natural
history attribute to the palm tree, it is not one of the least singular
that this tree cannot well thrive unless it be properly basked by the
beams of the sun, and watered by some neighbouring stream.”--_J.
Camerarius_, “_Centuria_,” i., 1697.

[356] Defoe’s Journey through England, p. 168.

[357] Horace Walpole’s Letters to Mr Mann, February 6, 1780.

[358] As quoted in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature, ii. p. 326.

[359] _Publick Advertiser_, Tuesday, June 16-22, 1657.

[360] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 36.

[361] Bagford Bills.

[362] Evelyn’s Miscellaneous Writings, p. 735.

[363] _Gent. Mag._, March 1842.

[364]

  “Christ is represented here
  After his death and resurrection,
  As a great gardener
  Whom every body must praise.
  This is at the Three Radishes.”

[365]

  “Adam and Eve lived in Paradise,
  They rarely ate stock fish, but a great deal of hotchpotch, lettuce,
  and radishes.
  All sorts of vegetables sold here for human food.”

A similarly dull joke occurs in an old English comedy, “Law Tricks,” by
John Day, 1608. “I have heard old Adam was an honest man and a good
gardener, loved lettuce well, salads and cabbage reasonably well, yet no
tobacco.”

CHAPTER VIII.

BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNS.

The earlier signs were frequently representations of the most important
article sold in the shops before which they hung. The stocking denoted
the hosier, the gridiron the ironmonger, and so on. The early
booksellers, whose trade lay chiefly in religious books, delighted in
signs of saints, but at the Reformation the BIBLE amongst those classes,
to whom till then it had been a sealed book, became in great request,
and was sold in large numbers. Then the booksellers set it up for their
sign; it became the popular symbol of the trade, and at the present
moment instances of its use still linger with us. There was one day in
the year, St Bartholomew’s, the 24th of August, when their shops
displayed nothing but Bibles and Prayer-books. It is not impossible that
this may have been originally intended for a manifestation against
Popery, since it was the anniversary of the dreadful Protestant massacre
in Paris in 1572. The following, however, is the only allusion we have
met with relating to this custom:--“Like a bookseller’s shop on
Bartholomew day at London, the stalls of which are so adorned with
Bibles and Prayer-books, that almost nothing is left within but heathen
knowledge.”[366]

One of the last BIBLE signs was about twenty years ago, at a
public-house in Shire Lane, Temple Bar. It was an old established house
of call for printers.

The Bible being such a common sign, booksellers had to “wear their rue
with a difference,” as Ophelia says, and adopt different colours,
amongst which the BLUE BIBLE was one of the most common. “Prynne’s
Histrio-Mastrix” was “printed for Michael Sparke, and sold at the Blue
Bible, in Green Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey, 1632.” This blue
colour, so common on the signboard, was not chosen without meaning, but
on account of its symbolic virtue. Blue, from its permanency, being an
emblem of truth, hence Lydgate, speaking of Delilah, Samson’s mistress,
in his translation from Boccacio, (MS. Harl. 2251,) says--

  “Insteade of _blew, which steadfaste is and clene_,
  She weraed colours of many a diverse grene.”

It also signified piety and sincerity. Randle Holme[367] says--

  “This colour, _blew_, doth represent the sky on a clear, sun-shining
  day, when all clouds are exiled. Job, speaking to the busy searchers
  of God’s mysteries, saith (Job xi. 17,) ‘That then shall the residue
  of their lives be as clear as the noonday.’ Which to the judgment of
  men (through the pureness of the air) is of _azure_ colour or light
  _blew_, and signifieth _piety and sincerity_.”

Other booksellers chose the THREE BIBLES, which was a very common sign
of the trade on London Bridge in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries: of one of them, Charles Tyne, trades tokens are
extant,--great curiosities to the numismatist, as booksellers were not
in the habit of issuing them. The sign of the Three Bibles seems to have
originated from the stationers’ arms, which are _arg._ on a chevron
between _three bibles_, _or_ a falcon volant between two roses, the Holy
Ghost in chief. One bookseller, on account of his selling stationery,
also added _three inkbottles_ to the favourite three Bibles, as we see
from an advertisement, giving the price of playing cards in 1711:--

  “Sold by Henry Parson, Stationer at the THREE BIBLES AND THREE
  INKBOTTLES, near St Magnus’ Church, on London Bridge, the best
  principal superfine Picket Cards, at 2s. 6d. a dozen; the best
  principal Ombro Cards, at 2s. 9d. a dozen; the best principal
  superfine Basset Cards, at 3s. 6d. a dozen; with all other Cards and
  Stationery Wares at Reasonable Rates.”[368]

Combinations of the Bible with other objects were very common, some of
them symbolic, as the BIBLE AND CROWN, which sign originated during the
political troubles in the reign of Charles I. It was at this time when
the clergy and the court party constantly tried to convince the people
of the divine prerogative of the Crown, that the “Bible and Crown”
became the standing toast of the Cavaliers and those opposed to the
Parliament leaders. As a sign it has been used for a century and a half
by the firm of Rivington the publishers. The old wood carving, painted
and gilt in the style of the early signs, was taken down from over the
shop in Paternoster Row in 1853, when this firm removed westward. It is
still in their possession. Cobbett, the political agitator and
publisher, in the beginning of this century chose the sign of the BIBLE,
CROWN, AND CONSTITUTION; but the general tenor of his life was such,
that his enemies said he put them up merely that he might afterwards be
able to say he had pulled them down. A BIBLE, SCEPTRE, AND CROWN,
carved in wood, may still be seen on the top of an ale-house of that
name in High Holborn. The crown and sceptre in this case are placed on
two closed Bibles.

The BIBLE AND LAMB, _i.e._, the Holy Lamb, we find mentioned in an
advertisement in the _Publick Advertiser_, March 1, 1759--

  “To be had at the BIBLE AND LAMB, near Temple Bar, on the Strand Side,
  the Skin for Pains in the Limbs, Price 2s.”

Books also were sold here, for in those days booksellers and toyshops
were the usual repositories for quack medicines.

The BIBLE AND DOVE, _i.e._, the Holy Ghost, was the sign of John Penn,
bookseller, over against St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, 1718; and the
BIBLE AND PEACOCK, the sign of Benjamin Crayle, bookseller, at the west
end of St Paul’s, in 1688. If not a combination of two signs, the bird
may have been added on account of its being the type of the
Resurrection, in which quality it is found represented in the Catacombs,
a symbolism arising from the supposed incorruptibility of its
flesh.[369] Various other combinations occur, as the BIBLE AND KEY.
Rowland Hall, a printer of the sixteenth century, had for his sign the
HALF EAGLE AND KEY, (see Heraldic Signs,) of which the Bible and Key may
be a free imitation. It was the sign of B. Dod, bookseller, in Ave Maria
Lane, 1761; whilst the GOLDEN KEY AND BIBLE was that of L. Stoke, a
bookseller at Charing Cross, 1711. The “Bible and Key” is also the name
of a certain Coscinomanteia, somewhat similar to the Sortes Virgilianæ.
This method of divination was performed in two ways, in the first,
(stated by Matthew of Paris to have been frequently practised at the
election of bishops,) the Bible was opened on the altar, and the
prediction taken from the chapter which first caught the eye on opening
the book; the other was by placing two written papers, one negative, the
other affirmative, of the matter in question, under the pall of the
altar, which, after solemn prayers, was believed would be decided by
divine judgment. Gregory of Tours mentions another method by the
Psalms.[370]

At the present day “Bible and Key” divinations are often attempted by
those who believe in fortune-telling and vaticinations. The method
adopted is as follows:--A key is placed, with the bow or handle sticking
out, between the leaves of a Bible, on Ruth i. 16:

  “And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
  following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where
  thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God
  my God.”

The Bible is then firmly tied up, most effectually with a garter, and
balanced by the bow of the key on the fore-fingers of the right hands of
two persons, the one who wishes to consult the oracle, the other any
person standing near. The book is then addressed with these
words--“Pray, Mr Bible, be good enough to tell me if ---- or not?” If
the question be answered in the affirmative the key will swing round,
turn off the finger, and the Bible fall down; if in the negative, it
will remain steady in its position. Not only upon matrimonial, but upon
all sorts of questions, this oracle may be consulted.

Further combinations are the BIBLE AND SUN. The SUN was the sign of
Wynkyn de Worde, and the printers that succeeded him in his house. It
may, however, in this combination have been an emblem of the Sun of
Truth, or the Light of the World. It was the sign of J. Newberry, in St
Paul’s Churchyard, the publisher of Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield;”
also of C. Bates, near Pie Corner; and of Richard Reynolds, in the
Poultry, both ballad printers in the times of Charles II. and William
III. Then there is the BIBLE AND BALL, a sign of a bookseller in Ave
Maria Lane in 1761, who probably hung up a Globe to indicate the sale of
globes and maps; and the BIBLE AND DIAL, over against St Dunstan’s
Church, Fleet Street, in 1720, was the sign of the notorious Edmund
Curll, who was pilloried at Charing Cross, and pilloried in Pope’s
verses. _The Dial_ was, in all likelihood, a sun-dial on the front wall
of his house.

Of the Apocryphal Books there is only one example among the signboards,
viz., BEL AND THE DRAGON, which was at one time not uncommon, more
particularly with apothecaries. It was represented by a Bell and a
Dragon, as appears from the _Spectator_, No. 28. “One Apocryphical
Heathen God is also represented by this figure [of a Bell], which, in
conjunction with the Dragon, makes a very handsome picture in several of
our streets.” Although at the first glance this sign seems taken from
the doubtful books of the Old Testament, still there is nothing in the
Apocryphal book which could in any way prompt the choice of it for a
signboard. After all, it may possibly be only a combination, or
corruption, of two other signs. There still remain a few public-houses
which employ it,--as in Worship Street; at Cookham, Maidenhead; at
Norton in the Moors, &c., whilst in Boss Street, Horsely Down, there is
a variation in the form of the BELL AND GRIFFIN. From a handbill of
Topham, the Strong Man,[371] we see that it was vulgarly called the KING
ASTYAGES ARMS, for no better reason than because King Astyages is the
first name in the story: the incident related in the Book of Bel and the
Dragon having taken place after his death.

[Illustration: PLATE XI.

HOLE IN THE WALL.

(“Guide for Malt-Worms.” Circa 1720.)

STAR, OR BUSH.

(MS., circa 1425.)

BARLEY MOW.

(Hogarth’s print of Beer St.)

DOG AND DUCK.

(In the brick wall of Bethlehem Hospital.)

FLYING HORSE.

(“Guide for Malt-Worms.” Circa 1720.)]

A very common sign of old, as well as at present, is the ADAM AND EVE.
Our first parents were constant _dramatis personæ_ in the mediæval
mysteries and pageants, on which occasions, with the _naïveté_ of those
times, Eve used to come on the stage exactly in the same costume as she
appeared to Adam before the Fall.[372] The sign was adopted by various
trades, including the publishers of books, as we may see from the
following quaint title:--

  “A Protestant Picture of Jesus Christ, drawn in Scripture colours,
  both for light to sinners and delight to saints. By Tho. Sympson,
  M.A., Preacher of the Word at London. Sold by Edw. Thomas at the _Adam
  and Eve_, in Little Britain. 1662.”

In Newgate Street there yet remains an old stone sign of the Adam and
Eve, with the date 1669. Eve is represented handing the apple to Adam,
the fatal tree is in the centre, round its stem the serpent winding. It
was the arms of the fruiterers’ company.

There is still an Adam and Eve public-house in the High Street,
Kensington, where Sheridan, on his way to and from Holland House, used
to refresh himself, and in this way managed to run up rather a long
bill, which Lord Holland had to pay for him. A still older place of
public entertainment was the Adam and Eve Tea-gardens, in Tottenham
Court Road, part of which was the last remaining vestige “of the once
respectable, if not magnificent, manor-house appertaining to the Lords
of Tottenhall.” Richardson, in 1819, said that the place had long been
celebrated as a tea-garden; there was an organ in the long room, and the
company was generally respectable, till the end of last century, when
highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and low women, beginning to take a
fancy to it, the magistrates interfered. The organ was banished, and the
gardens were dug up for the foundation of Eden Street. In these gardens
Lunardi came down after his unsuccessful balloon ascent from the
Artillery ground, May 16, 1783. Hogarth has represented the Adam and Eve
in the March of the Guards to Finchley. Upon the signboard of the house
is inscribed, “Tottenham Court Nursery,” in allusion to Broughton’s
Amphitheatre for Boxing, erected in this place. How amusing is this
advertisement of the great Professor’s “Nursery:”--

  “From the _Gymnasium_ at _Tottenham Court_
  on _Thursday next at Twelve o’clock will begin_:

A lecture on Manhood or Gymnastic Physiology, wherein the whole Theory
and Practice of the Art of Boxing will be fully explained by various
Operators on the animal Œconomy and the Principles of Championism,
illustrated by proper Experiments on the Solids and Fluids of the Body;
together with the True Method of investigating the Nature of all Blows,
Stops, Cross Buttocks, etc., incident to Combatants. The whole leading
to the most successful Method of beating a Man deaf, dumb, lame, and
blind.

  by THOMAS SMALLWOOD, A.M.,
  _Gymnasiast of St. Giles_,
  and
  THOMAS DIMMOCK, A.M.,
  _Athleta of Southwark_,
  (Both fellows of the _Athletic Society_.)

⁂ The Syllabus or Compendium for the use of students in Athleticks,
referring to Matters explained in this Lecture, may be had of Mr
Professor Broughton at the CROWN in Market Lane, where proper
instructions in the Art and Practice of Boxing are delivered without
Loss of Eye or Limb to the student.”

The tree with the forbidden fruit, always represented in the sign of
Adam and Eve, leads directly to the FLAMING SWORD, “which turned every
way to keep the way of the tree of life.” Being the first sword on
record, it was not inappropriately a cutler’s sign, and as such we find
it in the Banks Collection, on the shop-bill of a sword cutler in
Sweeting’s Alley, Royal Exchange, 1780. It is less appropriate at the
door of a public-house in Nottingham, for the landlord evidently cannot
desire to keep anybody out, whether saint or sinner. The vessel by which
the life of the first planter of the vine was preserved, certainly well
deserves to decorate the tavern: hence NOAH’S ARK is not an uncommon
public-house sign, though it looks very like a sarcastic reflection on
the mixed crowd that resort to the house,--not to escape the “heavy
wet,” as the animals at the Deluge, but in order to obtain some of it.
Toy-shops also constantly use it, since Noah’s Ark is generally the
favourite toy of children. Evelyn, in 1644, mentions a shop near the
Palais de Justice in Paris:

  “Here is a shop called Noah’s Ark, where are sold all curiosities,
  natural or artificial, Indian or European, for luxury or use, as
  cabinets, shells, ivory, porcelain, dried fishes, insects, birds,
  pictures, and a thousand exotic extravagances.”[373]

The Deluge was one of the standard subjects of mediæval dramatic plays.
In the third part of the Chester Whitsun plays, for instance, Noah and
the Flood make a considerable item; and at a much later period the same
subject was exhibited at Bartholomew Fair. A bill of the time of Queen
Anne[374] informs us that--

  “At Crawley’s Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield,
  during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera,
  called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived, with the
  addition of _Noah’s Flood_; also several fountains playing water
  during the time of the play. The last scene presents Noah and his
  family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts, two by two, and all
  the fowls of the air, seen in a prospect, sitting upon trees. Likewise
  over the Ark is seen the sun rising in a most glorious manner:
  moreover, a multitude of angels will be seen, in a double rank, which
  presents a double prospect--one for the sun, the other for a palace,
  where will be seen 6 angels ringing of bells, etc.”

The Deluge was the mystery performed at Whitsuntide by the company of
dyers in London, and from this their sign of the DOVE AND RAINBOW might
have originated, unless it were adopted by them on account of the
various colours of the rainbow. On the bill of John Edwards, a silk-dyer
in Aldersgate Street, the Dove, with an olive branch in her mouth, is
represented flying underneath the Rainbow, over a landscape, with
villages, fenced fields, and a gentleman in the costume of the reign of
Charles II. Besides this there are various other dyers’ bills with the
sign of the DOVE AND RAINBOW, both among the Bagford and Banks
Collections. A few public-houses at the present day still keep up the
memory of the sign; there is one at Nottingham, and another in
Leicester.

“ABRAHAM OFFERING HIS SON” was the sign of a shop in Norwich in 1750. A
stone bas-relief of the same subject (_Le Sacrifice d’Abraham_) is still
remaining in the front of a house in the Rue des Prêtres, Lille,
France. A Dutch wood-merchant, in the seventeenth century, also put up
this sign, and illustrated its application by the following rhyme:--

  “‘T Hout is gehakt, opdat men ’t zou branden,
  Daarom is dit in Abram’s Offerhande.”[375]

Thus, though the wood of the sacrifice played a very insignificant part
in the story, yet the simple mention of it was enough to make it a fit
subject for a Dutchman’s signboard. We have a similar instance in
JACOB’S WELL, which is common in London, as well as in the country. The
allusion here is to the well at which Christ met the woman of Samaria,
who said to him:

  “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and
  drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus
  answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall
  thirst again.” (S. John iv. 12.)

How cruelly these words apply to the gin-tap, at which generation after
generation drink, and after which they always thirst again. Not unlikely
the English use of this sign dates from the Puritan period.[376] Not
always, however, had the sign any direct relation to the trade of the
inmate of the house which it adorned; as, for example, MOSES AND AARON,
which occurs on a trades token of Whitechapel. In allusion to this, or a
similar sign, Tom Brown says, “Other amusements presented themselves as
thick as hops, as Moses pictured with horns, to keep Cheapside in
countenance.”[377] Even the Dutch shopkeeper, whose imagination was
generally so fertile in finding a religious subject appropriate as his
trade sign, was at a loss what to do with Moses; for a baker in
Amsterdam, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of Moses, with
this inscription:

      “Moses wierd gevist in het water,
  Die hier waar haalt krygt vry gist, een Paaschbrood,
      En op Korstyd een Deuvekater.”[378]

In London, however, the use of this sign may at first have been
suggested by the statues of Moses and Aaron that used to stand above the
balcony of the Old Guildhall. Connected with the history of Moses, we
find several other signs, one in particular, mentioned by Ned Ward as
the OLD PHARAOH in the town of Barley, in Cambridgeshire. It was so
named, says he, “from a stout, elevating malt liquor of the same name,
for which this house had been long famous.”[379] Why this beer was
called Pharaoh, Ned Ward does not seem to have known; but a story in the
county is current that it was so named because the beer, like the
Egyptian king of old, “would not let the people go!” It is now no longer
drunk in England, but a certain strong beer of the same name is still a
favourite beverage in Belgium. Next, in chronological order, connected
with the history of Moses, follows the BRAZEN SERPENT, the sign of
Reynold Wolfe, a bookseller and printer in St Paul’s Churchyard, 1544,
and also of both his apprentices, Henry Binneman and John Shepperde. It
had probably been imported by the foreign printers, for it was a
favourite amongst the early French and German booksellers. At the
present day it is a public-house sign in Richardson Street, Bermondsey.
What led to the adoption of this emblem was not the historical
association, but the mystical meaning which it had in the middle ages:--

  “A serpent torqued with a long cross; others blazon Christ, supporting
  the brazen serpent, because it was an anti-type of the passion and
  death of our Saviour; for as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
  wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (Num. xxi. 8, 9; John
  iii. 14,) that all that behold him, by a lively faith, may not perish,
  but have everlasting life. This is the cognizance or crest of every
  true believer.”[380]

The idea was no doubt borrowed from the Biblia Pauperum. The BALAAM’S
ASS, again, was one of the _dramatis personæ_ in the Whitsuntide mystery
of the company of cappers, (cap-makers,) and this is the only reason we
can imagine for his having found his way to the signboard. It occurs in
1722 in a newspaper paragraph, concerning a child born without a
stomach, the details of which are too nauseous to be introduced
here.[381]

The TWO SPIES is the last sign belonging to the history of Moses; it
represents two of the spies that went into Canaan, “and cut down from
thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two
upon a staff,” (Num. xiii. 23.) This bunch of grapes made it a favourite
with publicans; at many places it may still be seen, as in Catherine
Street, Strand, (a house of old standing;) in Long Acre, &c. In Great
Windmill Street, Leicester Square, it has been corrupted into the THREE
SPIES.

After Moses there is a blank until we come to SAMSON, to whom our
national admiration for athletic sports and muscular strength has given
a prominent place on the signboard. SAMSON AND THE LION occurs on the
sign of various houses in London in the seventeenth century, as appears
from the trades tokens. It is still of frequent occurrence in country
towns, as at Dudley, Coventry, &c. It was also used on the Continent. In
Paris there is, or was, not many years ago, a _della Robbia_ ware
medallion sign in the Rue des Dragons, with the legend “_le Fort
Samson_,” representing the strong man tearing open the lion. To a sign
of SAMSON at Dordrecht, in the seventeenth century, the following
satirical inscription had been added:--

  “Toen Samson door zyn kracht de leeuw belemmen kon,
  De Philistynen sloeg, de vossen overwon.
  Wiert hy nog door een Vrouw van zyn gezigt beroofd,
  Gelooft geen vrouw dan of zy moet zyn zonder hoofd.”[382]

This admiration of strong men, which procured the signboard honours to
Samson, also made GOLIAH, or GOLIAS, a great favourite. In the Horse
Market, Castle Barnard, he is actually treated just like a duke,
admiral, or any other public-house hero, for there the sign is entitled
the GOLIAH HEAD. Some doubts, however, may be entertained whether by
Golias or Goliah, (for the name is spelt both ways,) the Philistine
giant and champion was always intended. Towards the end of the twelfth
century there lived a man of wit, with the real or assumed name of
Golias, who wrote the “Apocalypsis Goliæ,” and other burlesque verses.
He was the leader of a jovial sect called Goliardois, of which Chaucer’s
Miller was one. “He was a jangler and a goliardeis.” Such a person
might, therefore, have been a very appropriate tutelary deity for an
alehouse.[383]

Goliah’s conqueror, KING DAVID, liberally shared the honours with his
victim, and he still figures on various signboards. There is a KING
DAVID’S inn in Bristol, and a DAVID AND HARP in Limehouse; whilst in
Paris, the Rue de la Harpe is said to owe its name to a sign of King
David playing on the harp. David’s unfortunate son, ABSALOM, was a
peruke-maker’s very expressive emblem, both in France and in England, to
show the utility of wigs. Thus a barber at a town in Northamptonshire
used this inscription:

  “ABSALOM, hadst thou worn a perriwig, thou hadst not been hanged.”

Which a brother peruke-maker versified, under a sign representing the
death of Absalom, with David weeping. He wrote up thus:

  “Oh Absalom! oh Absalom!
    Oh Absalom! my son,
  If thou hadst worn a perriwig,
    Thou hadst not been undone.”

Psalm xlii. seems to be very profanely hinted at in the sign of the
WHITE HART AND FOUNTAIN, Royal Mint Street, which, if not a combination
of two well-known signs, apparently alludes to the words, “As the hart
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”
THE PANTING HART (_het dorstige Hert_, or _het Heigent Hert_,) was
formerly a very common beer-house sign in Holland. In the seventeenth
century there was one with the following inscription at Amsterdam:--

  “Gelyk het hert by frisch water sig komt te verblyden,
  Komt also in myn huys om u van dorst te bevryden.”[384]

Another one at Leyden had the following rhyme:--

  “Gelyk een hart van jagen moe lust te drinken water rein,
  Also verkoopt men hier tot versterking van de maag, toebak, bier en
  Brandewyn.”[385]

The wise king Solomon does not appear to have ever been honoured with a
signboard portrait, but his enthusiastic admirer, the QUEEN OF SABA,
figured before the tavern kept by Dick Tarlton the jester, in
Gracechurch Street. This Queen of Saba, or Sheba, was a usual figure in
pageants. There is a letter of Secretary Barlow, in “Nugæ Antiquæ,”
telling how the Queen of Sheba fell down and upset her casket in the lap
of the King of Denmark--when on his drunken visit to James I.--who “got
not a little defiled with the presents of the queen; such as wine,
cream, jelly, beverages, cakes, spices, and other good matters.”

Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” has a very ingenious
explanation for the sign of the BELL SAVAGE, as derived from the QUEEN
OF SABA, which though _non è vero, ma ben trovato_. He bases his
argument on a poem of the fourteenth century, the “Romaunce of Kyng
Alisaundre,” wherein the Queen of Saba is thus mentioned:--

  “In heore lond is a cité,
  On of the noblest in Christianté,
  Hit hotith Sabba in langage,
  Thence cam _Sibely Savage_.
  Of all the world the fairest queene,
  To Jerusalem Salomon to seone.
  For hire fair head and for hire love,
  Salomon forsok his God above.”[386]

ELISHA’S RAVEN, represented with a chop in his mouth, is the sign of a
butcher in the Borough,--a curious conceit, and certainly his own
invention; at least we do not remember any other instance of the sign.
This tribute is certainly very disinterested in the butcher, for if
there were any such ravens now, it is probable that they would sadly
interfere with the trade.

Few signs have undergone so many changes as the well-known SALUTATION.
Originally it represented the angel saluting the Virgin Mary, in which
shape it was still occasionally seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, as appears from the tavern token of Daniel Grey of Holborn.
In the times of the Commonwealth, however, “sacrarum ut humanarum rerum,
heu! vicissitudo est,” the Puritans changed it into the SOLDIER AND
CITIZEN, and in such a garb it continued long after, with this
modification, that it was represented by two citizens politely bowing to
each other. The Salutation Tavern in Billingsgate shows it thus on its
trades token, and so it was represented by the Salutation Tavern in
Newgate Street, (an engraving of which sign may still be seen in the
parlour of that old established house.) At present it is mostly rendered
by two hands conjoined, as at the Salutation Hotel, Perth, where a label
is added with the words, “You’re welcome to the city.” That Salutation
Tavern in Billingsgate was a famous place in Ben Jonson’s time; it is
named in “Bartholomew Fayre” as one of the houses where there had been

              “Great sale and utterance of wine,
  Besides beere and ale, and ipocras fine.”

During the civil war there was a Salutation Tavern in Holborn, in which
the following ludicrous incident happened,--if we may believe the
Royalist papers:--

  “A hotte combat lately happened at the Salutation Taverne in Holburne,
  where some of the Commonwealth vermin, called soldiers, had seized on
  an Amazonian Virago, named Mrs Strosse, upon suspicion of being a
  loyalist, and selling the Man in the Moon; but shee, by applying
  beaten pepper to their eyes, disarmed them, and with their own swordes
  forced them to aske her forgiveness; and down on their mary bones, and
  pledge a health to the king, and confusion to their masters, and so
  honourablie dismissed them. Oh! for twenty thousand such gallant
  spirits; when you see that one woman can beat two or three.”[387]

At the end of the last century there was a Salutation Tavern in
Tavistock Row, called also “Mr Bunch’s,” which was one of the elegant
haunts, patronised by “the first gentleman of Europe,” otherwise the
Prince Regent. Lord Surrey and Sheridan were generally his associates in
these _escapades_. The trio went under the pseudonyms of Blackstock,
Greystock, and Thinstock, and disguised in bob wigs and smockfrocks. The
night’s entertainment generally concluded with thrashing the “Charlies,”
wrenching off knockers, breaking down signboards, and not unfrequently
with being taken to the roundhouse.

The Salutation in Newgate Street, some time called the SALUTATION AND
CAT, (a combination of two signs,) was haunted by many of the great
authors of the last century. There is a _poetical_ invitation extant to
a social feast held at this tavern, January 19, 1735/6, issued by the
two stewards, Edward Cave (of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_,) and William
Bowyer, the antiquary and printer:--

  “Saturday, January 17, 1735/6.

  “SIR,

  You’re desired on Monday next to meet,
  At _Salutation Tavern_, Newgate Street,
  Supper will be on table just at eight.
  (Stewards) one of St John, [Bowyer,] t’other of St John’s Gate,
  [Cave.]”

Richardson the novelist was one of the _invités_. He returned a poetical
answer, too long to quote at length: the following is part of it:--

  “For me, I’m much concern’d I cannot meet
  At _Salutation Tavern_, Newgate Street.
  Your notice, like your verse, (so sweet and short!)
  If longer I’d sincerely thank’d you for it.
  Howev’r, receive my wishes, sons of verse!
  May every man who meets your praise rehearse!
  May mirth as plenty crown your cheerful board!
  And every one part happy, ---- as a lord!
  That when at home by such sweet verses fir’d,
  Your families may think you all inspir’d.
  So wishes he, who, pre-engag’d can’t know
  The pleasures that would from your meeting flow.”

In this tavern Coleridge the poet, in one of his melancholy moods, lived
for some time in seclusion, until found out by Southey, and persuaded by
him to return to his usual mode of life. Sir T. N. Talfourd, in his Life
of Charles Lamb, informs us that here Coleridge was in the habit of
meeting Lamb when in town on a visit from the University. Christ’s
Hospital, their old school, was within a few paces of the place:--

  “When Coleridge quitted the University and came to town, full of
  mantling hopes and glorious schemes, Lamb became his admiring
  disciple. The scene of these happy meetings was a little public-house
  called the _Salutation and Cat_, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield,
  where they used to sup, and remain long after they had ‘heard the
  chimes of midnight.’ There they discoursed of Bowles, who was the god
  of Coleridge’s poetical idolatry, and of Burns and Cowper, who of
  recent poets--in that season of comparative barrenness--had made the
  deepest impression on Lamb; there Coleridge talked of ‘fate,
  free-will, foreknowledge absolute,’ to one who desired ‘to find no
  end’ of the golden maze; and there he recited his early poems with
  that deep sweetness of intonation which sunk into the heart of his
  hearers. To these meetings Lamb was accustomed, at all periods of his
  life, to revert, as the season when his finer intellects were
  quickened into action. Shortly after they had terminated, with
  Coleridge’s departure from London, he thus recalled them in a
  letter:--‘When I read in your little volume your nineteenth effusion,
  or what you call “The Sigh,” I think I hear _you_ again. I imagine to
  myself the little smoky room at the _Salutation and Cat_, where we
  have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of
  life with poesy.’ This was early in 1769, and in 1818, when dedicating
  his works--then first collected--to his earliest friend, he thus spoke
  of the same meetings:--’Some of the sonnets, which shall be carelessly
  turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you
  remembrances which I should be sorry should be ever totally
  extinct--the memory “of summer days and of delightful years,” even so
  far back as those old suppers at our old inn--when life was fresh and
  topics exhaustless--and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet
  the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.’”

The ANGEL was derived from the Salutation, for that it originally
represented the angel appearing to the Holy Virgin at the Salutation or
Annunciation, is evident from the fact that, even as late as the
seventeenth century on nearly all the trades tokens of houses with this
sign, the Angel is represented with a scroll in his hands; and this
scroll we know, from the evidence of paintings and prints, to contain
the words addressed by the angel to the Holy Virgin: “Ave Maria, gratia
plena, Dominus tecum.” Probably at the Reformation it was considered too
Catholic a sign, and so the Holy Virgin was left out, and the angel only
retained. Among the famous houses with this sign, the well-known
starting-place of the Islington omnibuses stands foremost. It is said to
have been an established inn upwards of two hundred years. The old house
was pulled down in 1819; till that time it had preserved all the
features of a large country inn, a long front, overhanging tiled roof,
with a square inn-yard having double galleries supported by columns and
carved pilasters, with caryatides and other ornaments. It is more than
probable that it had often been used as a place for dramatic
entertainments at the period when inn-yards were customarily employed
for such purposes. “Even so late as fifty years since it was customary
for travellers approaching London, to remain all night at the Angel Inn,
Islington, rather than venture after dark to prosecute their journey
along ways which were almost equally dangerous from their bad state, and
their being so greatly infested with thieves.”[388] On the other hand,
persons walking from the city to Islington in the evening, waited near
the end of John Street, in what is now termed Northampton Street, (but
was then a rural avenue planted with trees,) until a sufficient party
had collected, who were then escorted by an armed patrol appointed for
that purpose. Another old tavern with this sign is extant in London,
behind St Clement’s Church in the Strand. To this house Bishop Hooper
was taken by the Guards, on his way to Gloucester, where he went to be
burnt, in January 1555. The house, until lately, preserved much of its
ancient aspect: it had a pointed gable, galleries, and a lattice in the
passage. This inn is named in the following curious advertisement:--

  “To be sold, a Black Girl, the property of J. B----, eleven years of
  age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks
  French perfectly well; is of excellent temper and willing disposition.
  Inquire of W. Owen, at the _Angel Inn_, behind St Clement’s Church, in
  the Strand.”--_Publick Advertiser_, March 28, 1769.

Older than either of these is the Angel Inn, at Grantham. This building
was formerly in the possession of the Knights Templars, and still
retains many remains of its former beauty, particularly the gateway,
with the heads of Edward III. and his queen Philippa of Hainault on
either side of the arch; the soffits of the windows are elegantly
groined, and the parapet of the front is very beautiful. Kings have been
entertained in this house; but it seemed to bring ill luck to them, for
the reigns of those that are recorded as having been guests in it, stand
forth in history as disturbed by violent storms--King John held his
court in it on February 23, 1213; King Richard III. on October 19, 1483;
and King Charles I. visited it May 17, 1633.

Ben Jonson, it is said, used to visit a tavern with the sign of the
Angel, at Basingstoke, kept by a Mrs Hope, whose daughter’s name was
Prudence. On one of his journeys, finding that the house had changed
both sign and mistresses, Ben wrote the following smart but not very
elegant epigram:--

  “When _Hope_ and _Prudence_ kept this house, the _Angel_ kept the
  door,
  Now _Hope_ is dead, the _Angel_ fled, and _Prudence_ turned a w----.”

The Angel was the sign of one of the first coffee-houses in England, for
Anthony Wood tells us that, “in 1650 Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house
at the Angel, in the parish of St Peter, Oxon; and there it [coffee] was
by some, who delight in noveltie, drank.” Finally, there was an Angel
Tavern in Smithfield, where the famous Joe Miller, of joking fame--a
comic actor by profession--used to play during Bartholomew Fair time. A
playbill of 1722 informs the public in large letters that--

  “MILLER is not with PINKETHMAN, but by himself, AT THE ANGEL TAVERN,
  next door to the King’s Bench, who acts a new Droll, called the
  FAITHFUL COUPLE OR THE ROYAL SHEPHERDESS, with a very pleasant
  entertainment between OLD HOB and his WIFE, and the comical humours of
  MOPSY and COLLIN, with a variety of singing and dancing.

  “The only Comedian now that dare,
  Vie with the world and challenge the Fair.”

In France, also, the sign of the Angel is and was at all times, very
common. The Hotel de _l’Ange_, Rue de la Huchette, appears to have been
the best hotel in Paris in the sixteenth century. It was frequently
visited by foreign ambassadors: those sent by Emperor Maximilian to
Louis XII. took up their abode here; so did the ambassadors from Angus,
King of Achaia, who, in 1552, came to see France, much in the same way
as various ambassadors from all sorts of high and low latitudes
occasionally honour our Court with a visit. Chapelle, a French poet of
the seventeenth century, thus celebrates a tavern with this sign in
Paris, frequented by the wits of the period:--

  “Je n’ay pas vu vostre theâtre
    Qu’aussitot je ressors de là,
  Pour un Ange que j’idolâtre,
    A cause du bon vin qu’il a.”[389]

There being, then, such a profusion of Angels everywhere, it became
necessary to make some distinctions, and the usual means were adopted;
the Angel was gilded, and called the GOLDEN ANGEL; this, for instance,
was the sign of Ellis Gamble, a goldsmith in Cranbourn Alley, Hogarth’s
master in the art of engraving on silver; shop-bills engraved for this
house by Hogarth are still in existence. Another variety was the
GUARDIAN ANGEL, which is still the sign of an ale-house at Yarmouth.
This, too, was used in France, as we find _l’Ange Gardien_, the sign of
Pierre Witte, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in the
seventeenth century.

Very common, also, were the THREE ANGELS, which may have been intended
for the three angels that appeared to Abraham, or simply the favourite
combination of three,[390] so frequent on the signboard and in
heraldry. That three angels were thought to possess mysterious power, is
evident from the following Devonshire charm for a burn:--

  “Three Angels came from the north, east, and west,
  One brought fire, another ice,
  And the third brought the Holy Ghost,
  So out fire--and in frost--
  In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

The THREE ANGELS was a very general linen-draper’s sign, for which there
seems no reason other than that the long flowing garments in which they
are generally represented, suggest their having been good customers to
the drapery business.

Angels appear in combination with various heterogenous objects, in many
of which, however, the so-called Angel is simply a Cupid. The ANGEL AND
BIBLE was a sign in the Poultry in 1680.[391] The ANGEL AND CROWN was a
not uncommon tavern decoration. The following stanza from a pamphlet,
entitled, “The Quack Vintners,” London, 1712, p. 18, shows the way in
which this sign was represented:--

  “May Harry’s ANGEL be a sign he draws
  Angelick nectar, that deserves applause,
  Such that may make the city love the Throne,
  And, like his _Angel_, still _support the Crown_.”

From this we learn it was a Cupid or Amorino supporting a crown; the
sign of the house had doubtless originally been the Crown, and the
Cupid, so common in the Renaissance style, had been added by way of
ornament, but was mistaken by the public as a constituent of the sign.
The verses probably applied to the Angel and Crown, a famous tavern in
Broad Street, behind the Royal Exchange. There was another ANGEL AND
CROWN in Islington, where convivial dinners were held in the olden time.
It was a common practice in the last and preceding centuries for the
natives of a county or parish to meet once a year and dine together. The
ceremony often commenced by a sermon, preached by a native, after which
the day was spent in pleasant conviviality, after-dinner speeches, and
mutual congratulations. The custom now has almost died out; but this is
one of the invitation tickets:

  ST MARY, ISLINGTON.

  SIR,

  You are desidered to meet many other NATIVES of this place on Tuesday
  y^{e} 11th day of April 1738 at Mrs Eliz. Grimstead’s y^{e} ANGEL AND
  CROWN, in y^{e} Upper Street, about y^{e} hour of One; Then and there
  w^{th} FULL DISHES, GOOD WINE AND GOOD HUMOUR to improve and make
  lasting that HARMONY and FRIENDSHIP which have so long reigned among
  us.

  _Walter Sebbon._
  _John Booth._
  _Bourchier Durrell._
  _James Sebbon._

  STEWARDS.

  N.B. THE DINNER will be on the table peremptorily at Two.

  _Pray pay the Bearer Five Shillings._

That same year, another Angel and Crown Tavern in Shire Lane obtained an
unenviable notoriety, for it was there that a Mr Quarrington was
murdered and robbed by Thomas Carr, an attorney from the Temple, and
Elisabeth Adams. They were hanged at Tyburn, January 18, 1738.

The ANGEL AND GLOVES at first sight seems a whimsical combination, but
is easily explained when we advert to the woodcut above the shop-bill of
Isaac Dalvy, in Little Newport Street, Soho, who, in the reign of Queen
Anne, sold gloves, &c., under this sign, which simply represented two
Cupids, each carrying a glove,--in fact, exactly the same conceit as
that of the Herculanese shoemaker, noticed in a former chapter. It is
more difficult to find a rational explanation for the ANGEL AND
STILLIARDS. The Steelyard, or Stilliard, in Upper Thames Street, was the
place where the Hanse merchants exposed their goods for sale, and was so
called from the king’s _steelyard_, or _beam_, there erected for
weighing the tonnage of goods imported into London.[392] Whether this
sign represented a Cupid with such a weighing machine, or a view of the
hall of the Hanse merchants, with a Fame flying over it, is now
impossible to decide. It may be suggested that a variation of the
well-known figure of Justice, with steelyards in place of the usual
scales, was the origin. Be this as it may, the only mention we have
found of the sign is in the following advertisement:--

  “William Deval, at the ANGEL & STILLIARDS, in St Ann’s Lane, near
  Aldersgate, London, maketh Castle (Castille), Marble, and white Sope
  as good as any Marseilles Sope; Tryed and Proved and sold at very
  Reasonable Rates.”[393]--_Domestic Intelligencer_, January 2d, 1679.

A few years later we find the ANGEL AND STILL noticed, as in the
following advertisement:--

  “A well-set NEGRO, commonly called Sugar, aged about twenty years,
  teeth broke before, and several scars in both his cheeks and forehead,
  having absented from his Master, whosoever secures him and gives
  notice to Benjamin Maynard, at the ANGEL AND STILL, at Deptford, shall
  have a Guinea Reward and reasonable charges.”--_Weekly Journal_,
  October 18, 1718.

In this case the still was simply added to intimate the sale of
spirituous liquors.

The ANGEL AND SUN, apparently a combination of two signs, is named as a
shop or tavern near Strandbridge, in 1663,[394] and is still the name of
a public-house in the Strand. The ANGEL AND WOOLPACK, at Bolton, is the
same sign which, near London Bridge, is called the NAKED BOY AND
WOOLPACK. A woolpack, with a negro seated on it, was at one time very
common; for a change or distinction, this negro underwent the reputed
impossible process of being washed white, and thus became a naked boy,
which, in signboard phraseology, is equivalent to an angel.

The VIRGIN was unquestionably a very common sign before the Reformation,
and it may be met with even at the present day, as, for instance, at
Ebury Hill, Worcester, and in various other places. In France it was,
and is still, much more common than in England, as might be expected.
Tallemant des Réaux tells of a miraculous tavern sign of NOTRE DAME, on
the bridge of that name, in Paris, which was observed by the faithful to
cry and shed tears, probably on account of the bad company she had to
harbour. It was taken down by order of the archbishop. At the end of the
seventeenth century there was, in the Rue de la Seine, Paris, a quack
doctor, who pretended to cure a great variety of complaints. He put up a
holy Virgin for his sign, with the words, “REFUGIUM PECCATORUM,” which
is one of the usual epithets of the holy Virgin in the Roman Catholic
Church service, very wittily, although profanely, applied in this
instance. The sign of the Virgin was also called OUR LADY, as: “Newe
Inne was a guest Inne, the sign whereof was the picture of our Lady, and
thereupon it was also called _Our Lady’s_ Inne.”[395] OUR LADY OF PITY
was the sign of Johan Redman, a bookseller in Paternoster Row, in 1542.
Johan Byddell, also a bookseller, had introduced this sign in the
beginning of that century. This Byddell, or Bedel, (who lived in Fleet
Street, next to Fleet Bridge,) had evidently borrowed it from a nearly
similar figure in Corio’s History of Milan, 1505. He afterwards lived at
the SUN, in Fleet Street, the house formerly occupied by Wynkyn de
Worde.

The prevalence of the BAPTIST’S HEAD probably dated from the time when
pilgrimages across the sea were considered good works, and the head of
St John the Baptist at Amiens Cathedral came in for a large share of
visits from English worshippers. The old monkish writers say that in 448
after Christ, the head was found in Jerusalem; in 1206 it was
transferred to Amiens, where it was kept in a salver of gold, surrounded
with a rim of pearls and precious stones.[396] Various other reasons may
be adduced for the prevalence of this sign, as the conspicuous place
occupied by St John in the Roman Catholic hagiology, and hence in
mediæval plays and mysteries; the festivities of Midsummer, (a day of
great moment in London for setting the watch;) and, finally, his being
the patron saint of the Knights of Jerusalem. It was doubtless in
compliment to those knights that the Baptist’s Head in St John’s Lane,
Clerkenwell, was named. This house seems to be the remainder of some
noble mansion of Queen Elizabeth’s time; it contains many Elizabethan
ornaments, particularly a chimney-piece, with the coats of arms of the
Radcliff and Forster families. When the house was adapted to its present
purpose, it was distinguished by the head of St John the Baptist in a
charger, now gone. Doctor Johnson is said to have been an occasional
visitor here, when returning from Edward Cave’s, the editor of the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, whose office was close by at St John’s Gate.
Goldsmith is also reported to have made frequent calls here, when
business of a similar nature led him to the same spot. In later years it
became the _house of call_ of the prisoners on their way to the new
prison in the parish--a circumstance commemorated by Dodd in the “Old
Bailey Registers.” Another St John’s Head is mentioned by Stow in the
following accident:--

  “The 11th of July (1553) Gilbert Pot, drawer to Ninion Saunders,
  vintner, dwelling at St John’s Head within Ludgate, who was accused by
  the said Saunders, his maister, was set on the pillory in Cheape, with
  both his ears nailed and cleane cut off, for wordes speaking at the
  time of the proclamation of Lady Jane; at which execution was a
  trumpet bloune and a herault in his coat of armes redd his offence, in
  presence of William Garrard, one of the Sheriffes of London. About 5
  of the clocke the same day, in the afternoone, Ninion Saunders, master
  to the said Gilbert Pot, and John Owen, a gunmaker, both gunners of
  the Tower, comming from the Tower of London by water in a whirrie and
  shooting London Bridge, towards the Black Fryers, were drowned at S.
  Mary Loch[397] and the whirry-man saved by their oars.”

To this same saint also refers the JOHN OF JERUSALEM, a sign at the
present day in Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, put up, like the Baptist
Head, in remembrance of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who
formerly had their priory in this locality.

In France this sign was equally common. Jean Carcain, one of the early
Parisian publishers and printers, (1487,) adopted it for his shop. One
of his books has the following quaint impress:--

  “Parisii Sancti Pons est Michaelis in Urbe;
    Multae illic aedes; notior una tamen;
  Hanc cano, quae _Sacri Baptistae fronte_ notata est
    Hic respondebit Bibliopola tibi;
  Vis impressoris nomen quoque nosse? Joannis
    Carcain nomen ei est. Ne pete plura, Vale.”[398]

It was an old signboard jocularity in France to represent St John the
Baptist by a monkey with cambric (_batiste_) ruffles and wristbands,
(_singe en batiste_.) From the parables the sign of the GOOD SAMARITAN
was borrowed, which, even at the present day, may be seen in Turner
Street, Whitechapel; Grimshaw Park, Blackburn, &c. When barbers combined
with their trade the practice of letting blood--otherwise than by “easy
shaving,”--of drawing teeth, and setting bones, they frequently adopted
this sign. In the seventeenth century, a barber-surgeon at Leeuwarden,
in Holland, wrote under his device of the Good Samaritan the following
poetical effusion:--

  “Gelyk den Wyn, fyn,
  Dryft zorgen uit der herten
  Zoo geneest Medicyn, pyn,
  En ontlast van Smarten.”[399]

The SAMARITAN WOMAN (_la Samaritaine_) is the French version of our
JACOB’S WELL, and was a common sign in Paris; everybody knows the Bains
de la Samaritaine, in which the luxurious Parisian indulges in a _fresh_
water bath in his Seine, which at that place is about as clear as the
Thames at Blackwall. In the Rue Caquerel at Rouen there is a stone
bas-relief of the Samaritan woman at the well, with the date 1580.
Jacques Dupuy, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, also used the
Samaritan woman as his sign, evidently because it was a subject in which
he could introduce a well, and so have the satisfaction of punning on
his name. This kind of pun was none the less relished for being
far-fetched; thus there is a stone bas-relief in the Rue Froid, at Caen,
of the MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES, (_la Pêche Miraculeuse_,) which, in
the early part of the seventeenth century, was placed there by a
bookseller of the name of Poisson, (Fish,) who, being an “odd fish,”
adopted this sign as a pun on his own name. At the present day, the
house is still inhabited by a bookseller of the same name and family.

Christ’s Passion does not seem to have suggested any signs in England,
although the great symbol of His death, the CROSS, was comparatively
common. In Paris there was, in 1640, a bookseller, George Josse, in the
Rue St Jacques, who had the CROWN OF THORNS (_la Couronne d’Epine_) for
his sign, probably on account of the original Crown of Thorns being one
of the relics kept at Paris. Coryatt’s remarks on this relic are rather
amusing:--

  “They report in Paris that the Thorny Crown, wherewith Christ was
  crowned on the Crosse, is kept in the Palace, which vpon Corpus
  Christi Day, in the afternoone, was publickly shewed, as some told me;
  but it was not my chance to see it. Truely, I wonder to see the
  contrarieties amongst the Papists, and most ridiculous varieties
  concerning their reliques, but especially about this of Christ’s
  Thorny Crowne. For whereas I was after that at the Citie of Vicenza in
  Italy, it was told me that in the monastery of the Dominican Fryers of
  that Citie, this Crowne was kept, which Saint Lewes, King of France,
  bestowed upon his brother Bartholomew, Bishop of Vicenza, and before
  one of the Dominican family. Wherefore I went to the Dominican
  Monastery and made suit to see it, but I had the repulse; for they
  told me that it was kept vnder three or four lockes, and neuer shewed
  to any by any favour whatsoeuer, but only upon Corpus Christi Day. If
  this Crowne of Paris, whereof they so much bragge, be true, that of
  Vicenza is false. Ho! the truth and certainty of Papistical
  reliques.”[400]

CROSSES of various colours were probably amongst the first signs put up
by the newly-converted Christians, (as soon as they could effect this
with impunity,) on account of the recommendation of the early fathers,
and for their beneficial influence. Father Lactantius, who lived in the
fourth century, writes--“As Christ, whilst He lived amongst men, put the
devils to flight by His words, and restored those to their senses whom
these evil spirits had possessed; so now His followers in the name of
their Master, and by the sign of His passion, even exercise the same
dominion over them.” St Ephrem says--“_Let us paint and imprint on our
doors_ the life-giving cross; thus defended no evil will hurt you.” St
Chrysostom says the same--“_Wherefore let us with earnestness impress
this cross on our houses, and on our walls, and our windows._” St Cyril
of Alexandria introduces the Emperor Julian the apostate saying, “You
Christians adore the wood of the cross, _you engrave it on the porches
of your houses_,” &c. Hence the still prevalent custom in Roman Catholic
places of painting crosses on the walls of houses, to drive away
witches, as it is said; and these crosses being painted in different
colours, might easily serve as a sign by which to designate the house.
At the Crusades the popularity of this emblem increased: a red cross was
the badge of the Crusader, and would be put up as a sign by men who had
been to the Holy Land, or wished to court the patronage of those on
their way thither. Finally, the different orders of knighthood settled
each upon a particular colour as their distinctive mark. Thus the
knights of St John wore _white crosses_, the Templars _red crosses_, the
knights of St Lazarus _green crosses_, the Teutonic knights _black
crosses_, embroidered with gold, &c. But the most common in England was
the _red cross_, which was the cross of St George, and also of the red
cross knights, who acted as a sort of police on the roads between Europe
and the Holy Land to protect pilgrims. This badge, therefore, could not
fail to be very popular.

In France it used to be, and in all probability is still, a common rebus
to see _le signe de la croix_ represented by a swan with a cross on his
back, (_cygne de la croix_.)

Only very few signs of the cross are now remaining. The GOLDEN CROSS in
the Strand is one of these, and has been in that locality for centuries.
It was one of the first upon which the Puritans brooked their ill-humour
and hatred of popery; for in 1643 it was taken down by order of a
committee from the House of Commons, as “superstitious and idolatrous.”
This was the precursor of the fall of old Charing Cross itself. The
sign, however, was put up again at the Restoration, and figures
prominently in Canaletti’s well-known view of Charing Cross, in the
Northumberland Collection. The tavern was probably pulled down at the
formation of Trafalgar Square.

At a point on the road between Dunchurch and Daventry, where three roads
meet, there was formerly an inn with the sign of the THREE CROSSES, in
allusion to the three roads. Swift, in one of his pedestrian excursions,
happened to stop at that inn. Not being very elegantly dressed, and
rather importunate to be served, the landlady told him that she could
not leave her customers for “such as he,” upon which the Dean, who was
not the most modest, nor the most patient of men, wrote the following
epigram on one of the windows:--

            “TO THE LANDLORD.
  There hang three crosses at thy door,
  Hang up thy wife and she’ll make four.”

The RESURRECTION was the sign of John Day, a bookseller, who, in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, dwelt in St Sepulchre’s parish, a little above
Holbourne Conduit. It was a sort of conundrum or charade on his name,
which was carried out by his colophon, representing a man asleep, who is
wakened by another with the words, “Arise, for it is _day_.” This,
although somewhat profane, according to our present notions of such
things, was nothing strange in a time when the people, though
Protestants by name, were still strongly imbued with Roman Catholic
ideas. John Cawoode, also a printer and publisher of St Paul’s
Churchyard in 1558, had a still more profane sign--viz., the HOLY GHOST.
And this even continued till the beginning of the seventeenth century,
for in 1602 we find this identical sign used by another printer, William
Leake, who was probably his successor, and published in that year
Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” Worse still was the sign of another
bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1520, which was the
_Trinity_.[401] We must bear in mind, however, that in Roman Catholic
countries conversation upon matters of religion is not nearly so strict
and guarded as amongst believers in Protestant nations. An amusing
instance of this once occurred to the writer in Jerusalem, the great
head-quarters of Christianity. Usually the pilgrims or travellers
staying at the Latin convent there, which serves as an hotel, dine all
together in a kind of _table-d’hôte_ fashion; but for some reason it so
fell out that our party one day dined in private. The holy brother who
attended us happened to be a Spaniard, and as we had visited that
country, and were tolerably acquainted with Valladolid, his native town,
worldly recollections began to overcome the sanctity of the good monk,
and he became inexhaustible in reminiscences of his younger days. Whilst
talking with him, and refreshing ourselves with a meal of salad, grown
in the garden of Gethsemane, we had indulged in two tumblers of a pithy
white wine, quite strong enough to justify our resisting the pressing
invitations of the reverend butler to take a third glass; but the jovial
monk was not to be beaten, and finally convinced us with the following
argument: “Oh come, brother, you must take another glass, remember you
are in Jerusalem, and so take one for the Father, one for the Son, and
one for the Holy Ghost!”

Although the English ale and refreshment houses continue to select fresh
signs from the notabilities of the hour, the Palmerston’s Head and the
Gladstone Arms for instance, they rarely choose anything of a religious
or devotional cast. One instance, however, occurs to us, and that in the
neighbourhood of London, which deserves mention. In Kentish Town, under
the Hampstead hills, the noisiest and most objectionable public-house in
the district bears the significant sign of the GOSPEL OAK. It is the
favourite resort of navvies and quarrelsome shoemakers, and took its
name, not from any inclination to piety on the part of the landlord, but
from an old oak tree in the neighbourhood, near the boundary line of
Hampstead and St Pancras parishes, a relic of the once general custom of
reading a portion of the gospel under certain trees in the parish
perambulations, equivalent to “beating the bounds.” “The boundaries and
township of the parish of Wolverhampton are,” says Shaw, in his “History
of Staffordshire,” (vol. ii., p. 165,) “in many points marked out by
what are called _Gospel Trees_;” and Herrick, in his “Hesperides,” (Ed.
1859, p. 26,) says:--

                  “Dearest, bury me
  Under that _holy oak_, or _gospel tree_;
  Where, though thou see’st not, thou may’st think upon
  Me, when _thou yeerly go’st procession_.”

The old Kentish Town Gospel Oak was removed a short time since, but not
until it had given a name to the surrounding fields, to a village, (Oak
village,) and to a chapel, as well as to the public-house alluded to.

[366] New Essays and Characters, by John Stephens the younger, of
Lincoln’s Inn, Gent. London, 1631, p. 221.

[367] Randle Holme, “Academy of Armour and Blazon,” p. 52.

[368] _Postman_, Feb. 1-3, 1711.

[369] “Notandum quoq. eius (pavonis) carnem quod D. Augustinus quoq.,
lib. xxi. de civitate Dei, cap. iii., et Isidorus, lib. xii., affirmant
non putrescere.”--_Camerarius, Centur._, iii. 20, 1697. How to make this
agree with Skelton’s idea it is not very easy to explain--

  “Then sayd the Pecocke,
    All ye well wot,
  I sing not musycal,
    For my breast is decay’d.”--_Skelton’s Armory of Birds._

[370] See Fosbrooke’s Encyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 673.

[371] For particulars of Topham, the Strong Man, see under HISTORICAL
SIGNS.

[372] This statement is made on the authority of Hone, in his “Ancient
Mysteries.” Doubts, however, have been expressed as to the accuracy of
his data upon this particular subject.

[373] Diary of John Evelyn, Feb. 3, 1684.

[374] Bagford Collection, Bib. Harl., 5931.

[375]

  “The wood is cut in order to be burned,
  Therefore is this Abraham’s sacrifice.”

[376] JACOB’S INN is mentioned by Hatton, 1708, “on the east side of Red
Cross Street near the middle.”

[377] “Amusements for the Meridian of London,” 1706.

[378]

                      “Moses was found in the water.
     Whosoever purchases his bread here shall have yeast for nought,
  Besides a currant-loaf at Easter, and a spice-cake at Christmas time.”

[379] “A Step to Stirbitch Fair,” 1708.

[380] Randle Holme, B. ii., ch. xviii.

[381] _Weekly Journal_, August 4, 1722.

[382]

  “Though Samson by his strength could overcome the lion,
  Defeat the Philistines and master the foxes,
  Yet a woman deprived him of his sight;
  Never, therefore, believe a woman unless she has no head.”

This alludes to the GOOD WOMAN, described elsewhere in this work.

Samson’s history was not only painted on the signboard, but also sung in
ballads, “to the tune of the Spanish Pavin.” Amongst the Roxburgh
ballads (vol. i. fol. 366) there is one entitled “A most excellent and
famous ditty of Sampson, judge of Israel, how hee wedded a Philistyne’s
daughter, who at length forsooke him; also how hee slew a lyon and
propounded a riddle, and after how hee was falsely betrayed by Dalila,
and of his death.”

[383] See Bibliographia Britannica, voce Golias, and Wright’s History of
Caricature.

[384]

  “Like to the hart which comes to the water brook to refresh himself,
  So you enter my house to quench your thirst.”

[385] The first six words are literally the beginning of the psalm in
the Dutch version,--

  “Like a hart the hunt escaped, wishes for the limpid water brooks,
  So there is here tobacco, beer, and brandy for sale to strengthen the
  stomach.”

[386] For the true origin of this sign, see under MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS.

[387] A Royalist paper, entitled, “The Man in the Moon discovering a
world of wickedness under the Sun,” July 4, 1649.

[388] Cromwell’s History of Clerkenwell, p. 32.

[389] “As soon as I had seen your theatre I left it, to go to an Angel
whom I adore on account of his good wine.”

[390] Even in the most remote periods of history _three_ was considered
a mystic number, and regarded with reverence. The Assyrians had their
triads. In Ancient Egypt every town or district had its own triad, which
it worshipped, and which was a union of certain attributes, the third
member proceeding from the other two. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, in his
“Ancient Egyptians,” vol. iv., ch. xii., p. 230, mentions a stone with
the words “one Bail, one Athor, one Akori, hail father of the world,
hail triformous God.” Thoms, in his “Dissertation on Ancient Chinese
Vases,” says:--“The Chinese have a remarkable preference for the number
three; they say one produced two, two produced three, and three produced
all things. There is something remarkable in this last phrase; perhaps
it conveys an indistinct idea of the Trinity. The Buddhists, who are of
modern date in China, use the term ‘the three precious ones’--‘the Deity
that has ruled, the ruling Deity, and the Deity that shall rule.’ The
Taore sect have also their ‘three pure ones.’ The number three has many
associations, as the three bonds--a prince and minister, father and son,
husband and wife; the three superintendents--the treasurer, judge, and
collector of customs; the three powers--heaven, earth, and man,” &c. In
the Hindoo religion combinations of three are equally frequent: they
have several trimustis or trinities; three principal deities, Brahma,
Vishnu, and Mahadeva; another triad is Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, or
matter, spirit, and destruction; there are three plaited locks on the
head of Radha, representing a mystical union of three principal rivers,
Ganges, Yamuna, and Sarawati. Siva has three eyes; the sun is called
three-bodied; the triangle with the Hindoos is a favourite type for the
triune co-equality, hence the pentagram (a figure composed of two
equilateral triangles, placed with the apex of the one towards the base
of the other, and so forming six triangles by the intersections of their
sides) is in great favour with them; further, they use three mystic
letters to denote their deity; have 3 × 7 hells, (seven is also a mystic
number with them and other ancient races,) and many other combinations
of three. The same preference for this number is observable in the Greek
and Roman mythology, which mentions three theocraties, three graces,
three fates, three harpies, three syrens, three heads of Cerberus, three
eggs of Leda, &c. And, taking 3 as a unit, 3 × 3 muses, 3 × 4 principal
gods, (Dii Majores,) 3 × 4 labours of Hercules, &c.

[391] _London Gazette_, Nov 8 to 11, 1680.

[392] Cunningham’s Handbook to London, p. 470.

[393] Soap, wax, tallow, and similar articles were part of the
merchandise in which the Hanse merchants dealt.

[394] _Kingdom’s Intelligencer_, April 6-13, 1663.

[395] Stow’s Survey of London.

[396] See a woodcut of an Amiens pilgrim’s token in the Journal of Brit.
Arch. Assoc., vol. i., Oct. 1848; also a detailed account of this
venerable relic in Coryatt’s Crudities vol. i, p. 17.

[397] Name of one of the arches of old London Bridge.

[398]

  “In the town of Paris there is a bridge named St Michael,
  On which there are many houses; but one of them is more known than the
  others.
  That is the house I mean, which is known by the sign of the Baptist
  Head.
  There the bookseller will answer you.
  Would you also like to know the name of the printer? John
  Carcain is his name. Now, do not ask any more. Farewell.”

[399]

  “Like wine, fine,
  Driveth away care;
  So medicine cureth pain,
  And delivers us from suffering.”

[400] Coryatt’s Crudities, vol i., p. 41.

[401] From his colophon we see that the Trinity on his sign was
represented by a triangle with a circle at each angle, respectively
containing the words PATER, FILIUS, SPIRITUS, and, between the circles,
on each of the sides of the triangle, the words NON EST, a mystical way
of representing the Trinity, very common in the middle ages.

CHAPTER IX.

SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC.

At the end of the last chapter we spoke of the profane application of
some of the most sacred things to signboard purposes. In France this was
still worse than in England. That amusing gossip, Tallemant des Réaux,
in his “Contes et Historiettes,” tells us how an innkeeper of the Rue
Montmartre, in Paris, put up for his sign the GOD’S HEAD, (_la Tête
Dieu_,) and notwithstanding all the efforts of the curé of St Eustache
to make him take it down he would not comply until compelled by the
magistrates. Though two centuries have elapsed, the French of the
present day are not much better; for in Paris, in the Rue Mondétour,
there is actually a café known as the NOM DE JESUS.

Boursault, a clever writer of the time of Louis XIV., whose indignant
letter about the Royal Arms we have noticed in a former chapter,
addressed a letter to Bizoton, one of the police magistrates, in which
he vents his anger at some of the religious signs, and complains of the
profanity of a lodging-house with the sign of the ANNUNCIATION in the
Rue de la Huchette, in which there were as many rogues and reprobates as
there were honest lodgers. Amongst the signs that shocked him most he
names _le Saint Esprit_, (the Holy Ghost,) _la Trinité_, (the Trinity,)
_l’Image Notre Dame_, &c.; but particularly one, representing Christ
taken prisoner, with the profane motto, “_Au juste prix_.” This contains
a blasphemous pun,--_juste prix_ at once signifying a _fixed price_, and
“just caught.” The sign was set up at a little ordinary in a lane
between the Rue St Honoré and the Rue Richelieu. And, though Boursault
says in his letter that he had so fumed and thundered against the
landlord that he had taken it down, yet it made its appearance again
afterwards, and was handed down to our time, since not many years ago it
might have been observed in the Cour du Dragon, above the shop of an
ironmonger.

Saints are still in full feather on the signboards in Roman Catholic
countries. Amongst hundreds of others the following may be seen in Paris
on cafés and hotels in the present day:--St Barbe, St Christophe, St
Eustache, St Joseph, St Laurent, St Marie, St Louis, St Merri, St
Michel, St Paul, St Phar, St Pierre, St Quentin, St Roc, St Thomas
d’Aquin, St Vincent de Paul, &c., &c.

A curious French sign is mentioned by Coryatt, which he saw at Amiens.
“I lay at the signe of the AVE MARIA, where I read these two verses,
written in golden letters upon the linterne of the doore, at the entry
into the Inne. This in Greeke, Της φιλοξενιας μη ἐπιλανϐανεσθε, that is,
Forget not your good entertainment; and this in Latine, HOSPITIBUS HIC
TUTA FIDES.”[402]

Saints were formerly very common on signboards, and this abuse also was
wittily ridiculed by the pungent satire of Artus Desiré, a French poet
of the fifteenth century:--

  “En leur logis plein de vers et de teignes,
  Où est logé le grand diable d’enfer,
  Mettent de Dieu et de saints les enseignes,
  Leurs ditz logis où n’y a que desroys.
  Pendre font tous sur le pavé du roy
  De grands tableaux et enseignes dorées,
  Pour des montres qu’ils ont fort bien de quoy,
  Et qu’il y a de tres grasses porées.
  L’un pour enseigne aura _la Trinité_,
  L’autre _Saint Jehan_, et l’autre _Saint Savin_,
  L’autre _Saint Maure_, l’autre _l’Humanité_
  De _Jesus Christ_ notre Sauveur divin,
  De Dieu, des saintz, sont leurs crieurs de vin,[403]
  Tant aux citez que villes et villages,
  Des susditz sainctz les devotes images,
  En prophanant leur préciosité.”[404]

Many of these saints were patrons of particular trades, and were
constantly adopted as the signs of those that followed them. Thus ST
CRISPIN was generally a shoemaker’s sign. At the present day, the gentle
craft represented by this saint live up to the proverb, and keep to the
“last;” but many publicans still have the sign of CRISPIN, SAINT
CRISPIN, JOLLY CRISPIN, or CRISPIN AND CRISPIAN, and occasionally KING
CRISPIN, (as at Morpeth.) And well may they put their houses under the
protection of this saint, since the proverb says, “_Cobblers_ and
tinkers are the best ale drinkers.” Crispin and Crispian were two Roman
brothers, sons of a king; they travelled to France to preach
Christianity, and worked at the trade of shoemakers, making sandals for
the poor, which they gave away, the angels supplying them with leather.
Hence they are considered the patrons of shoemakers. They were beheaded
at Soissons in 308. What may have contributed to their popularity in
this country is the fact of the battle of Agincourt having been fought
on their day, October 25, 1415:--

  “And Crispin Crispian shall never go by
  From this day to the ending of the world,
  But we in it shall be remember’d,
  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,
  For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
  Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
  This day shall gentle his condition,
  And gentlemen in England now a-bed
  Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
  And hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks
  That fought with us upon St Crispin’s day.”

  _Henry the Fifth_, iv. 3.

From Shakespeare we turn to the homely rhymes of a Dutch shoemaker at
the Hague, who, in the seventeenth century, had this couplet over his
door:--

  “Dit is Sint Crispyn, maar ik hiet Stoffel,
  Ik maak een laars, schoen en pantoffel.”[405]

A more spirited one about the same time was in Bergen op Zoom, which is
not bad satire for a Dutchman:--

  “Hier in Krispyn kan men de mensch uit beestevellen
  Elk schoenen na zyn voet voor gelt terstond bestellen,
  Doch menig beest alheir steekt in een menschevel,
  Draagt zelf zyn broeder’s huid en ’t staat dat beest nog wel.”[406]

The ST HUGH’S BONES was another sign of the gentle craft; it seems to be
extinct now, but a trades token shows that, in 1657, it was the sign of
a house in Stanhope Street, Claremarket. From a little chapbook,
entitled,--

  “The Delightful, Princely, and Entertaining History of the Gentle
  Craft, &c. London printed for J. Rhodes, at the corner of Bride Lane,
  in Fleet Street, 1725,”

we gather that Saint Hugh was a prince’s son,[407] deeply in love with a
saintly coquette called Winifred. Having been jilted by this lady in a
very pious manner, he went travelling, resisted the temptations of
Venice,[408] like another St Anthony, passed through numberless
adventures, compared to which those of Baron Munchausen sink into
insignificance, and was finally, by a jumble of most amusing
anachronism, martyred in the reign of Diocletian, by being made to drink
a cup of the blood of his lady-love, mixed with “cold poison,” after
which, his body was hung on the gallows. But among other misfortunes in
his travels, he had been shipwrecked and lost all his wealth, so that he
had to choose a profession, which was that of shoemaker, and so well he
liked his fellow-workmen that, having nothing else to give, he
bequeathed his bones to them. After they had been “well picked by the
birds,” some shoemakers took them from the gallows, and made them into
tools, and hence their tools were named St Hugh’s Bones. They are
specified in the following rhyme, which appears to have been the
shoemakers’ shibboleth:--

  “My friends, I pray, you listen to me,
  And mark what Saint Hugh’s Bones shall be:
  First a Drawer and a Dresser,
  Two Wedges, a more and a lesser.
  A pretty Block, Three Inches high,
  In fashion squared like a die;
  Which shall be called by proper name
  A Heelblock, ah! the very same;
  A Handleather and a Thumbleather likewise,
  To put on Shooe-thread we must devise;
  The Needle and the Thimble shall not be left alone,
  The Pinchers, the Pricking Awl, and Rubbing Stone;
  The Awl, Steel and Jacks, the Sowing Hairs beside,
  The Stirrop holding fast, while we sow the Cow hide;
  The Whetstone, the Stopping Stick, and the Paring Knife,
  All this does belong to a Journeyman’s Life:
  Our Apron is the shrine to wrap these Bones in,
  Thus shroud we S. Hugh’s Bones in a gentle lamb’s skin.

  “Now you good Yeomen of the Gentle Craft,” the story goes on, “tell me
  (quoth he) how like you this? As well (replied they) as Saint George
  does of his horse: for as long as we can see him fight the Dragon, we
  will never part with this poesie. And it shall be concluded, That what
  journeyman soever he be hereafter that cannot handle his Sword and
  Buckler, his long Sword and Quarterstaff, sound the Trumpet, or play
  upon the Flute, or bear his part in a Three Man’s song, and readily
  reckon up his Tools in Rhime, (except he have borne colours in the
  Field, being a Lieutenant, a Sergeant or Corporal,) shall forfeit and
  pay a Bottle of Wine, or be counted a Colt; to which they answered all
  _viva voce_, Content, Content. And then, after many merry songs, they
  departed. And never after did they travel without these tools on their
  backs, which ever since have been called Saint Hugh’s Bones.”

BISHOP BLAZE, or Blaize, otherwise St Blasius, is another patron of a
trade to be met with on the signboard. This worthy, Bishop of Sebaste,
in Cappadocia, is considered the patron of woolcombers, whence the sign
is very common in the clothing districts. He is represented with the
instrument of his martyrdom in his hands, an iron comb, with which the
flesh was torn from his body in 289; from this implement has been
attributed to him the invention of woolcombing. His holiday is
celebrated every seventh year by a procession and feast of the masters
and workmen of the woollen manufactories in Yorkshire and Bedfordshire;
in sheep-shearing festivals, also, a representation of him used to be
introduced; a stripling in habiliments of wool was seated on a
milk-white steed, with a lamb in his lap, the horse, the youthful
bishop, and the lamb all covered with a profusion of ribbons and
flowers.

ST JULIAN, the patron of travellers, wandering minstrels, boatmen, &c.,
was a very common inn sign, because he was supposed to provide good
lodgings for such persons. Hence two Saint Julian’s crosses, in saltier,
are in chief of the innholders’ arms, and the old motto was:--“When I
was harbourless ye lodged me.” This benevolent attention to travellers
procured him the epithet of “the good herbergeor,” and in France “_bon
herbet_.” His legend in a MS., Bodleian, 1596, fol. 4, alludes to
this:--

  “Therfore yet to this day, thei that over lond wende,
  They biddeth Seint Julian, anon, that gode herborw he hem sende,
  And Seint Julianes Pater Noster ofte seggeth also
  For his faders soule and his moderes that he hem bring therto.”

And in “Le dit des Heureux,” an old French fabliau:--

  “Tu as dit la patenotre
  Saint Julian à cest matin,
  Soit en Roumans, soit en Latin,
  Or tu seras bien ostilé.”[409]

In mediæval French, _L’hotel Saint Julien_ was synonymous with good
cheer.

          “Sommes tuit vostre.
  Par Saint Pierre le bon Apostre,
  L’ostel aurez Saint Julien,”[410]

says Mabile to her feigned uncle, in the fabliau of “Boivin de Provins;”
and a similar idea appears in “Cocke Lorell’s bote,” where the crew,
after the entertainment with the “relygyous women” from the Stews’ Bank,
at Colman’s Hatch,

  “Blessyd theyr shyppe when they had done
  And dranke about a _Saint Julyan’s torne_.”

ST MARTIN’S character as a saint was not unlike St Julian’s; hence we
find him frequently on the signboard. The most favourite representation
being the saint on horseback cutting off with his sword a piece of his
cloak, in order to clothe a naked beggar. Not only inns, but booksellers
also used his sign, as for instance Dionis Rose, (1514,) printer in the
Rue St Jacques, Paris; and Bernard Aubrey, another printer in the same
street.

“Avoir l’hotel St Martin,” in old French, meant exactly the same as
“avoir l’hotel St Julian:” thus, in the romance of Florus and Blanche:--

  “_Flor._ Sovent dient par le bon vin
           Qu’ils ont l’ostel Saint Martin.”[411]

And in the story of “L’Anneau,” by Jean de Boves, (which is the same as
Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale,”) it is said of the two students at the
end:--“C’est ainsi qu’ils eûrent à ses depens l’ostel Saint
Martin.”[412] These two saints, it is believed, are no longer to be
found on the signboard, but another powerful patron of travellers, ST
CHRISTOPHER, may still occasionally be met with, as for instance in
Bath, where in the seventeenth century it was still very common. Taylor
the Water poet mentions it as the sign of an inn at Eton, and it occurs
on various trades tokens of London shops, inns, and taverns. This
saint’s intercession was thought efficacious against all danger from
fire, flood, and earthquake, whence it became a custom to paint his
image of a colossal size on walls of churches and houses, sometimes
occupying the whole height of the building, so that it might be seen
from a great distance. Generally he was represented wading through a
river, with the infant Christ on his shoulders, and leaning on a
flowering rod. Such representations are met with in every part of
Western Europe; they still remain in many places in England, as at St
James’ Church, South Elmham, Suffolk; Bibury Church, Gloucestershire;
Beddington, Surrey; Croydon; Hengrave; West Wickham, &c., &c., &c. They
were also very numerous on the Continent; in the porch of St Mark’s,
Venice, there is a mosaic bust of him, with these words:--

  “Christophori Sancti speciem quicumque tuetur
  Illo namque die nullo languore tenetur.”[413]

A somewhat similar inscription occurs under one of the very earliest
block prints, (now in the possession of Earl Spencer,) evidently made
for pasting against the walls in inns, and other places frequented by
travellers and pilgrims. Under it are the following words:--

  “Cristofori faciem die quacumque tueris
  Illo nempe die morte malâ non morieris.
                        millesimo ccccxx. tercio.”[414]

Travellers even carried his figure about with them, either on their hat
or on their breast, as we gather from Chaucer’s “Yeoman”--

  “A Cristofre on his brest of silver shene.”

In the “Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson the Londoner,” 1607, a jest is
related, made by that dry old joker at the expense of Saint Christopher,
which again illustrates the levity with which religious matters were
treated in those days:--

  “Maister Hobson and another of his neighboris on a time walking to
  Southwarke faire, by chance dranke in a house, which had the signe of
  Sa. Christopher, of the which signe the goodman of the house gave this
  commendation, Saint Christopher (quoth he) when hee lived upon the
  earth bore the greatest burden that ever was, which was this, he bore
  Christ over a river; nay, there was one (quoth Maister Hobson) that
  bore a greater burden. Who was that? (quoth the innkeeper) Marry,
  (quoth Maister Hobson) the asse that bore him and his mother. So was
  the innekeeper called asse by craft.”

The house in which this joke was perpetrated is enumerated by Stowe
amongst the principal inns of Southwark.

ST LUKE still figures as the sign of two or three public-houses in
London. Being the patron of painters, it certainly was the least the
sign-painters could do to honour his portrait with an occasional
appearance on the signboard. Yet it must be confessed St Luke was but a
sorry hand at painting. There is a portrait of the Holy Virgin painted
by him preserved in the Church of Silivria, on the shores of the Sea of
Marmora; but such a daub! the most modest village sign-painter would be
ashamed of the production. Yet, for all that, the thing works miracles,
and the only wonder is that its first effort in this line was not to
change itself into a good picture. We wonder at the Virgin, too, and
expected better from her taste; for in Valencia Cathedral there is
another portrait of her painted by Alonzo Cano, which is one of the most
lovely female heads we ever had the happiness to gaze upon. And so well
pleased was the Holy Virgin with this likeness, that she deigned to
descend from heaven to compliment the blessed artist upon his work. So
says the legend, and so the old beadle tells the travellers. But Luke
possessed other attributes. Aubrey tells us: “At Stoke Verdon, in the
Parish of Broad Chalke, was a chapell (in the chapell close by the
farm-house) dedicated to Saint Luke, _who is the Patron_ or Tutelar
_Saint of the Horne Beasts, and those that have to do with them_,”
&c.[415] This arose evidently from the Ox being his emblem, as the Lion
was of St Mark, the Eagle of St John, and the Angel of St Matthew. For
this reason St Luke was doubtless often chosen as the sign of inns
frequented by farmers and graziers.

SIMON THE TANNER OF JOPPA is an old-established house in Long-lane,
Bermondsey, and, as a sign, is supposed to be unique. It seems to have
been adopted with reference to the tanners, who frequented the house, or
it may have been the former occupation of the landlord, who gave the
sign to his house. Simon is named in Acts x. 32, “Send therefore to
Joppa, and call hither Simon, whose surname is Peter; he is lodged in
the house of one Simon a tanner, by the sea-side.”

But of all the signs coming under this class, SAINT GEORGE AND THE
DRAGON is undoubtedly the greatest favourite in England, and it is
equally well represented in other countries; for of this saint may be
said what Velleius Paterculus said about Pompey: “Quot partes terrarum
sunt, tot fecit monumenta victoriæ suæ.” In London alone there are at
present not less than sixty-six public-houses and taverns with this
name, not counting the beer-houses, coffee-houses, &c. Yet, after all,
it is very doubtful if St George ever existed, and he may be only a
popular corruption of St Michael conquering Satan, or Perseus’ romantic
delivery of Andromeda. Hence the little rhyme recorded by Aubrey, and
various other seventeenth century collectors of ana:

  “To save a mayd St George the Dragon slew--
  A pretty tale, if all is told be true.
  Most say there are no dragons, and ’tis sayd
  There was no George; pray God there was a mayd.”

St George is mentioned by Bede, who calls the 23d of April “Natale S.
Georgii Martyris.” He was, however, at that time a very recent
importation, for Adamnanus (690), who lived just before Bede, says,
speaking of Arnulphus after his return from the East: “Etiam nobis de
quodam martyre Georgio nomine narrationem contulit.” In the reign of
Canute, there was already a house of regular canons sacred to St George
at Thetford, in Norfolk. The church of St George, Southwark, is also
thought to have existed before the Conqueror. But after the Conquest,
chapels were frequently erected to him, and on the seals of this period
he is often represented without the Dragon. Edward III. had a particular
veneration for him. Many of his statutes begin: “Ad honorem omnipotentis
Dei, Sanctæ Mariæ Virginis gloriosæ, et Sancti Georgii Martyris.” It was
after the foundation of the Order of the Garter that it became such a
favourite sign. The fact that he was the patron of soldiers also
assisted his popularity on the signboard.

There still exists an old and much dilapidated stone sign of St George
and the Dragon in the front of a house on Snowhill. Frequently this sign
is abbreviated to the GEORGE. There was an inn of this name, mentioned
in 1554 as being situate on the north side of the TABARD. This inn was
very much damaged by the great fire of Southwark in 1670, and completely
burned down in 1676. But it was rebuilt, and has come down to our time.

Machyn, in his Diary, mentions several _Georges_; one of them in
connexion with an occurrence which gives a good view of these lawless
times:--

  “The viij day of December 1559 was the day of the Conception of owre
  Lade was a grett fyre in the Gorge in Bred stret; itt begane at vj of
  the cloke at nyght and dyd gret harm to dyvers houses. The 9th of
  December cam serten fellows unto the Gorge in Bred stret where the
  fyre was and gutt into the howse and brake up a chest of a clothear
  and toke owt xl. lb. and after cryd _fyre_, _fyre_, so that ther cam
  ijc pepull, and so they took one.”

The _George_ in Lombard Street was a very old house, once the town
mansion of the Earl Ferrers, in which one of that family was murdered as
early as 1175, (see Stow.) At this house died, in 1524, Richard Earl of
Kent, who had wasted his property in gaming and extravagance; it was
then an inn, where the nobility used to put up at. George Dowdall,
Archbishop of Armagh, (1558,) was buried from this house. Finally, we
may mention a _George Inn_ at Derby, in connexion with the following
advertisement from the _Daily Advertiser_, Oct. 1758:--

  “A YOUNG LADY STRAYED.--A young Lady, just come out of Derbyshire,
  strayed from her Guardian. She is remarkably genteel and handsome. She
  has been brought up by a farmer near Derby, and knows no other but
  that they are her parents; but it is not so, for she is a lady by
  birth, though of but little learning. She has no cloathes with her,
  but a riding habit she used to go to market in. She will have a fine
  estate, as she is an heiress, but knows not her birth, as her parents
  died when she was a child, and I had the care of her, so she knows not
  but that I am her mother. She has a brown silk gown that she borrowed
  of her maid--that is, dy’d silk, and her riding dress a light drab,
  lin’d with blue Tammy, and it has blue loops at the button-holes; she
  has outgrown it; and I am sure that she is in great distress both for
  money and cloaths; but whoever has relieved her I will be answerable
  if they will give me a letter, where she may be found; she knows not
  her own sirname. I understand she has been in Northampton for some
  time; she has a cut in her forehead. Whosoever will give an account
  where she is to be found shall receive twenty guineas reward. Direct
  for M. W. at the _George Inn_, Derby.”

Besides the Dragon, St George is found in various other combinations, as
the GEORGE AND BLUE BOAR, High Holborn, an old inn lately come to its
end. In the seventeenth century this house was called the BLUE BOAR, and
is said to have been the house in which Cromwell and Ireton, disguised
as common troopers, intercepted a letter of King Charles to his queen.
Cromwell, the story goes on to say, finding by this letter that his
party were not likely to obtain good terms from the king, “from that day
forward resolved his ruin.”[416] Unfortunately for lovers of the
romantic, there is no foundation for this dramatic incident.

[Illustration: PLATE XII.

GRINDING OLD INTO YOUNG.

(From an old woodcut, circa 1720.)

FIVE ALLS.

(From an old print by Kay. The figures represent Dr Hunter, a famous
Scotch clergyman; Erskine the lawyer; a farmer; His Sacred Majesty
George III.; and the gentleman whose name should never be mentioned to
ears polite.)]

The GEORGE AND THIRTEEN CANTONS, kept by the great Bob Travers, is
another odd combination, occurring in Church Street, Soho; it is,
however, easily explained when we learn that there is another
public-house called the THIRTEEN CANTONS, in King Street, also in Soho.
This sign was put up in reference to the thirteen Protestant cantons of
Switzerland--a compliment to the numerous Swiss who inhabit the
neighbourhood.

But the strangest combination of all is that of the GEORGE AND VULTURE.
At present there are three public-houses in London with this sign: one
in St George-in-the-East, one in Wapping, and one in Haberdasher Street,
Hoxton. As in the “Live Vulture,” (see p. 224,) the only obvious
explanation for this strange combination seems to be the possibility of
a vulture having been exhibited at this house. Vultures were still
considered great curiosities as late as the eighteenth century. In 1726,
one of the attractions at Peckham Fair was a menagerie, and amongst the
animals exhibited the vulture was described in the following terms:--

  “The noble Vulture Cock, brought from Archangall, having the finest
  talons of any bird that seeks her prey; the forepart of his head is
  covered with hair; the second part resembles the wool of a black;
  below that is a white ring, having a ruff that he cloaks his head with
  at night.”

It is a name of some standing. “Near Ball Alley was the _George Inn_,
since the Fire, rebuilt with very good houses, well Inhabited, and
warehouses, being a large open yard, and called George Yard, at the
farther end of which is the GEORGE AND VULTURE Tavern, which is a large
house and of a great trade, having a passage into St Michael’s Alley,”
[Cornhill].[417] There was another tavern of this name on the east side
of the high road, nearly opposite Bruce Green, Tottenham, in early times
much frequented by the citizens of London taking their recreations. It
is mentioned in the “Search after Claret” as early as 1691. Several
coins of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I. were discovered on
pulling down the old house. A coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth was fixed
over the front door, but at the demolition of the building it was put
up at the back of a house in Hale Lane. After the fashion of the time,
the house was duly puffed up in newspaper poems. The following is copied
from a newspaper-cutting circa 1761-62, and as it enumerates the
attractions of a suburban tea-garden of the period, may be quoted here
at full length:--

  “If lur’d to roam in Summer Hours,
  Your Thoughts incline tow’rd Tott’nham Bow’rs.[418]
  Here end your airing Tour and rest
  Where _Cole_ invites each friendly Guest:
  Intent on signs, the prying Eye,
  The GEORGE AND VULTURE will descry;
  Here the kind Landlord glad attends
  To wellcome all his chearfull Friends
  Who, leaving City smoke, delight
  To range where various scenes invite.
  The spacious garden, verdant Field,
  Pleasures beyond Expression yield,
  The Angler here to sport inclined
  In his Canal may Pastime find.
  Neat racy Wine and Home-brew’d Ale
  The nicest Palates may regale,
  Nectarious Punch--and (cleanly grac’d)
  A Larder stor’d for ev’ry Taste.
  The cautious Fair may sip with Glee
  The fresh’st Coffee, finest Tea.
  Let none the outward _Vulture_ fear,
  No _Vulture_ host inhabits here,
  If too well us’d you deem ye--then
  Take your Revenge and come again.”

St Paul, the patron saint of London, was formerly a common sign in the
metropolis. One of the trades tokens of a house or tavern in Petty
France, Westminster, represents the saint before his conversion, lying
on the ground, with his horse standing by him; this house was called
“the SAUL.” Perhaps this was a monkish pleasantry of the period, (as
Westminster was under the patronage of St Peter,) representing an
unpleasant event in the history of the great patron, and showing, by
simple analogy, the vast superiority of the converted St Peter. The
usual way, however, of commemorating the saint on the signboard was the
ST PAUL’S HEAD. This was the sign of a very old inn in Great Carter
Lane, (Doctors’ Commons,) opposite which Bagford lived in 1712. As an
inn, it is mentioned by Machyn, in his Diary, in 1562. “The 25 may was a
yonge man did hang ymseylff at the Polles Head, the inn in Carterlane.”
Trades tokens of this house are extant in the Beaufoy Collection. In the
eighteenth century, most of the celebrated libraries were sold at this
inn:[419] amongst others that of the bibliomaniac, Tom Rawlinson--the
Tom Folio of the _Tatler_, whose books were brought to the hammer
between 1721-33--the sale extending to seventeen or eighteen separate
auctions. The disposal of his MSS. alone occupied sixteen days. To this
tavern formerly the new sheriffs, after having been sworn in, used to
resort to receive the keys of the different jails; that ceremony
terminated, they were regaled with sack and walnuts by the keeper of
Newgate. The St Paul’s Coffee-house is built on the site of this old
inn. About 1820 there was another PAUL’S HEAD in Cateaton Street, where
a literary club used to be held “for the cultivation of forensic
eloquence.” It was under the patronage of several distinguished
characters, and had for a motto the modest words, “Sic itur ad astra.”
The vicinity of the cathedral evidently had suggested both these signs,
as well as that exhibited by Philip Waterhouse, a bookseller “at the St
Paul’s Head in Canning Street near Londonstone” in 1630. On another
sign, in the same locality, the two saints were united, viz., the SAINT
PETER AND SAINT PAUL, St Paul’s Churchyard. Of this house, also, trades
tokens are extant.

Although St Peter was, doubtless, as common on the signboard before the
Reformation as the other great saints of religious history, yet no
instances of this have come down to us. His keys, however--the famous
Cross Keys--are very common. At Dawdley, and on the road between
Warminster and Salisbury, there is a very curious sign called PETER’S
FINGER, which is believed to occur nowhere else. In all probability this
refers to the benediction of the Pope, the finger of his Holiness being
raised whilst bestowing a blessing. St Peter being the first of the
Papal line, was doubtless often represented with his finger raised in
old pictures and carvings. The following passage from Bishop Hall’s
“Satires” alludes to the finger:--

  “But walk on cheerly ’till thou have espied
  _St Peter’s finger_, at the churchyard side.”--Book v., sat. 2.

St Dunstan, the patron saint of the parish of that name in London, was
godfather to the DEVIL,--that is to say, to the sign of the famous
tavern of the DEVIL AND ST DUNSTAN, within Temple Bar. The legend runs,
that one day, when working at his trade of a goldsmith, he was sorely
tempted by the devil, and at length got so exasperated that he took the
red hot tongs out of the fire and caught his infernal majesty by the
nose. The identical pinchers with which this feat was performed are
still preserved at Mayfield Palace, in Sussex. They are of a very
respectable size, and formidable enough to frighten the arch one
himself. This episode in the saint’s life was represented on the
signboard of that glorious old tavern. By way of abbreviation, this
house was called THE DEVIL, though the landlord seems to have preferred
the _other_ saint’s name; for on his token we read: “_The D----_ (sic)
_and Dunstan_,” probably fearing, with a classic dread, the ill omen of
that awful name.

Allusions to this tavern are innumerable in the dramatists; one of the
earliest is in 1563, in the play of “Jack Jugeler.” William Rowley thus
mentions it in his comedy of a “Match by Midnight,” 1633:--

  “_Bloodhound._ As you come by Temple Bar make a step to the Devil.

  _Tim._ To the Devil, father?

  _Sim._ My master means the sign of the Devil, and he cannot hurt you,
  fool; there’s a saint holds him by the nose.

  _Tim._ Sniggers, what does the devil and a saint both on a sign?

  _Sim._ What a question is that? What does my master and his
  prayer-book o’ Sundays both in a pew?”

So fond was Ben Jonson of this tavern, that he lived “without Temple
Bar, at a combmaker’s shop,” according to Aubrey, in order to be near
his favourite haunt. It must have been, therefore, in a moment of
ill-humour, when he found fault with the wine, and made the statement
that his play of the “Devil is an Ass,” (which is certainly not amongst
his best,) was written “when I and my boys drank bad wine at the Devil.”
But surely he would not have established his favourite Apollo Club at a
place where they sold bad wine. He himself composed the famous “Leges
Conviviales” for this club, which are still preserved, with the respect
due to so sacred a relic, in the banking house of Messrs Child & Co.,
erected in 1788 on the place where the tavern formerly stood. They are
twenty-four in number, some of them rather characteristic:--

  “4. And the more to exact our delight whilst we stay,
      Let none be debarr’d from his choice female mate.

   5. Let no scent offensive the chamber infest.

  10. Let our wines without mixture or scum be all fine,
      Or call up the master and break his dull noddle.

  16. With mirth, wit, and dancing, and singing conclude,
      To regale every sense with delight in excess.

  21. For generous lovers let a corner be found,
      Where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve.”

The last clause was, “Focus perennis esto,” which proves that rare old
Ben understood comfort. Latin inscriptions were also in other parts of
the house. Over the clock in the kitchen might have been seen, as late
as 1731, “Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibis
iterum, et erit medicina.”[420] An elegant rendering of the well-known
phrase, “A hair of the dog that bit you.” Not only Ben Jonson, but
almost all the great poets of two centuries, honoured this house with
their presence. “I dined to-day,” says Swift, in one of his letters to
Stella, “with Dr Garth and Mr Addison, at the Devil Tavern, near Temple
Bar, and Garth treated.” Numerous similar quotations might be found,
showing the visits to this place of nearly all the great literary stars
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Simon Wadloe was one of the most famous landlords of this tavern. Pepys,
April 22, 1661,--“Wadlow, the Vintner at the Devil, in Fleet Street, did
lead a fine company of soldiers, all young comely men, in white
Doublets” (this was on Charles II. going from the Tower to Whitehall.)
Ben Jonson called him the king of skinkers.[421] Among the verses on the
door of the Apollo room occurred the lines--

  “Hang up all the poor hop drinkers,
  Cries old Sim, the king of skinkers.”

Camden, in his “Remains,” records the following epitaph on this
worthy:--

      “Apollo et cohors Musarum,
      Bacchus vini et uvarum,
      Ceres pro pane et cervisia,
      Adeste omnes cum tristitia.
  Diique, Deæque, lamentate cuncti,
  Simonis Vadloe funera defuncti,
  Sub _signo malo_ bene vixit, mirabile!
  Si ad cœlum recessit gratias _Diaboli_.”[422]

In opposition to this _Old Devil_ a YOUNG DEVIL Tavern was opened, also
in Fleet Street, in 1707, and here the first meetings of the Society of
Antiquaries were held, but the “Young Devil” was not a success, and the
house was soon closed.

Though the Devil is not a promising name for a public-house, owing to
his near connexion with evil _spirits_, yet there was a third tavern
named after--if not devoted to him--the LITTLE DEVIL, Goodman’s Fields,
Whitechapel. Ned Ward, in 1703, highly commends the punch of this house,
which he partook of in “a room neat enough to entertain Venus and the
graces.” It was a house entirely after jolly Ned’s fancy. “My landlord
was good company, my landlady good humoured, her daughter charmingly
pretty, and her maid tolerably handsome, who can laugh, cry, say her
prayers, sing a song, all in a breath, and can turn in a minute to all
sublunary points of a female compass.”[423]

THE DEVIL (_le Diable_) was also a celebrated tavern in Paris, near the
Palais de Justice. It is thus named in the “Ode à tous les Cabarets:”--

  “Lieux sacrés où l’on est soumis
  Aux saints oracles de Themis,
  Encor que vous ayez la gloire,
  De voir tout le monde à genoux,
  Sans le _Diable_ et la _Tête-Noire_;[424]
  Je n’approcherais pas de vous.”[425]

In the seventeenth century Paris also had its _Petit Diable_, (Little
Devil,) a tavern of some renown.

THE DEVIL’S HOUSE was the name of a favourite Sunday resort in the last
century, in the Hornsey Road, Islington. It is said to have been the
retreat of Claude Duval (_unde_ Duval’s house, Devil’s house,) the
elegant highwayman in the reign of Charles II., who infested the lanes
about Islington; but from a survey taken in 1611, it appears that the
house bore already at that time the name of “Devil’s House.” From its
general appearance it seemed to date from Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It
was surrounded by a moat filled with water, and passed by a wooden
bridge. Its attractions are held forth in the following laudatory
epistle, an example of the florid and poetical advertising in vogue when
Richardson wrote novels of six volumes all in letters--compositions too
painfully pathetic for our matter-of-fact age:--

  “_To the Printer of the Publick Advertiser_.

  “Sir,--Returning yesterday from a rural excursion to Hornsey, I
  casually stopped for a little refreshment at an house, commonly known
  by the name of _Devil’s House_, situated within two fields of
  Holloway-Turnpike. I own that I was vastly surprised at so charming
  and delightful a place, so near town, and at the great improvements
  lately made there. The garden is well laid out, encompassed with a
  beautiful moat, and a good canal in the orchard. On inquiry, I found
  the landlord (remarkable for his civil and obliging behaviour) had
  stocked the same with plenty of tench, carp, and other fish, with free
  liberty for his customers to angle therein. Tea and hot loaves are
  ready at a moment’s notice, and new milk from the cows grazing in the
  pleasant meadows adjoining, with a good larder, and the best wines,
  &c. In short, I know not a more agreeable place, where persons of both
  sexes of genteel taste may enjoy a more innocent and delightful
  amusement. But what surprised me most, was that the landlord, by a
  peculiar turn of invention, had changed the _Devil’s House_ to the
  _Summer House_,--a name I find it is for the future to be
  distinguished by. I wish, Mr Printer, your readers as much pleasure as
  myself, and am, sir, your constant reader,

  “H. G.

  “_May 25, 1767_.”

At Royston, Herts, there is a public-house known as the DEVIL’S HEAD.
There is no signboard, but a carved representation of his satanic
majesty’s head projects from the building, the name being underneath.

ST PATRICK is exclusively an Irish sign. He is generally represented in
the costume of a bishop, driving a flock of snakes, toads, and other
vermin before him, which he is said to have banished from Ireland. His
life is more replete with miracles than any of the other saints.

  “St Patrick was a gentleman,
  And came of dacent people,”

for his father was a noble Roman, who lived at Kirkpatrick, in Scotland.
The saint’s life was very active; he founded 365 churches, ordained 365
bishops, and 3000 priests, converted 12,000 persons in one district,
baptized seven kings at once, established a purgatory, and with his
staff expelled every reptile that stung or croaked. This last feat,
however, has been performed by a great many saints in different parts of
the world. Not so the feat he performed at his _death_, when, having
been beheaded, he coolly took his head under his arm, (or, according to
the best authorities, in his mouth,) and swam over the Shannon. In such
cases as the Bishop of Narbonne said about St Denis, (who walked from
Montmartre to St Denis with his head under his arm,) “_il n’y a que le
premier pas qui coute_.”[426]

In many instances, no doubt, before the Reformation, the shopkeeper
would choose his patron saint for his sign, to act as a sort of lares
and penates to his house. An example of this occurs on the following
imprint:--“Manual of Prayers, 1539. Imprynted in Bottol [St Botolph’s]
Lane, at the sygne of the WHYT BEARE, by me, Jhon Mayler, for John
Waylande, and be to sell in Powles Churchyarde, by Andrew Hester, at the
WHYT HORSE, and also by _Mychel_ Lobley, _at the sygne of the_ SAINT
MYCHEL;” this last bookseller, therefore, had chosen his own patron
saint for his sign. For the same reason another bookseller adopted, in
the early part of the sixteenth century, SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST--“The
Doctrynall of Good Servauntes. Imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at
the sygne of Saynt Johan Evangelyste, by me, _Johan_ Butler.” This
Butler was a judge of the Common Pleas, as well as a bookseller. About
the same period the Evangelist was also the sign of another man of the
same profession--“Robert Wyce, dwellinge at the sygne of Seynt Johan
Euāgelyst, in Seynt Martyns parysshe, in the filde besyde Charynge
Crosse, in the bysshop of Norwytche rentys.” He was the printer of the
well-known “Pronostycacion for ever of Erra Pater; a Jewe borne in
Jewry, a doctor in Astronomye and Physicke,” which was continued for
ages after him. Robert Wyce must have been about the first bookseller
and printer in this neighbourhood, as in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the
parish contained less than one hundred people liable to be rated.[427]
We find the same as one of the oldest printer’s signs in France, on an
edition of Merlin’s Prophecies, printed at Paris in 1438, by Abraham
Verard, dwelling near the church of Notre Dame, at the sign of St John
the Evangelist.

Other saints, again, have a local reputation, and are perpetuated on the
signboards in certain localities only, as for instance ST THOMAS of
Canterbury; ST EDMUND’S HEAD, at Bury St Edmunds; and ST CUTHBERT, at
Monk’s house, near Sunderland. This saint was the first bishop of
Northumberland.

  “But fain St Hilda’s nuns would learn,
  If on a rock by Lindisfarne,
  St Cuthbert sits and toils to frame
  The seaborn weeds which bear his name,”

says Sir Walter Scott, alluding to the stalks of the Encrinites, which
are called St Cuthbert’s Beads, the saint, as the story goes, amusing
himself by stringing them together.

Hugh Singleton, a bookseller in the sixteenth century, lived at the sign
of the ST AUGUSTINE; probably he had chosen this saint from the fact of
his being a distinguished writer as well as saint. George Carter, a
shopkeeper in the seventeenth century, adopted ST ALBAN, the
protomartyr, as his sign, evidently for no other reason but because he
lived in “St Alban’s Street, near St James’s Market;” and another,
William Ellis of Tooley Street, had the sign of ST CLEMENT, perhaps on
account of his being a native of the parish of St Clement’s. Trades
tokens of both these houses are to be seen in the Beaufoy Collection.

St Laurent was the sign of an inn in Lawrence Lane, Cheapside, but from
a border of blossoms or flowers round it, it was commonly called
BLOSSOMS, or by corruption, BOSOM’S INN--such at least is the
explanation of Stow:--

  “Antiquities in this lane--[St Laurence Lane, Cheapside]--I find none
  other than that, among many fair houses, there is one large inn for
  the receipt of travellers called _Blossom’s Inn_, but corruptly
  _Bosom’s Inn_, and hath to sign St Laurence the deacon in a border of
  blossoms or flowers.”

Flowers are said to have sprung up at the martyrdom of this saint, who
was roasted alive on a gridiron. But in the “History of Thomas of
Reading,” ch. ii., another version is given, which seems, however,
little else than a joke:--

  “Our jolly clothiers kept up their courage and went to Bosom’s Inn, so
  called from a greasy old fellow who built it, who always went nudging
  with his head in his _bosom_ winter and summer, so that they called
  him the picture of old Winter.”

In 1522 the Emperor Charles V. honoured Henry VIII. with a visit; at
first his intention was to come with a retinue of 2044 persons and 1127
horses, but subsequently he reduced them to 2000 persons and 1000
horses. To lodge these visitors, various “inns for horses” were “seen
and viewed,” amongst which “St Laurance, otherwise called Bosoms Yn,” is
noted down to have “xx beddes and a stable for lx horses.”[428] It is
curious, in this list of inns, to observe the proportion of beds as
compared with stabling room, showing how most of the followers of a
nobleman on a journey had to shift for themselves and sleep in the straw
or elsewhere. On the occasion of this imperial visit, the city
authorities were evidently afraid of being drunk dry by the many
Flemings in the train of the Emperor. To avoid this calamity, a return
was made of all the wine to be found at the eleven wine merchants, and
the twenty-eight principal taverns then in London, the sum total of
which was 809 pipes.[429]

In the sixteenth century the house seems already to have been famous as
a carrier’s inn, (which it continued for three centuries,) as appears
from the following allusion:--“Yet have I naturally cherisht and hugt it
in my bosome, even as a carrier at Bosome’s Inne doth a cheese under his
arms.”[430] A satirical tract about Banks and his horse “Marocius
Extaticus,” (reprinted by the Percy Society,) gives the names of its
authors as “John Dando the wiredrawer of Hadley, and Harrie Hunt, head
ostler of _Besomes Inne_.” Another domestic of this establishment is
handed down to posterity in Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Christmass,”
presented at Court in 1616, where the following lines occur:--

  “But now comes Tom of _Bosom’s Inn_,
  And he presenteth Misrule.”[431]

The CATHERINE WHEEL was formerly a very common sign, most likely adopted
from its being the badge of the order of the knights of Saint Catherine
of Mount Sinai, created anno 1063, for the protection of pilgrims on
their way to and from the Holy Sepulchre. Hence it was a suggestive, if
not eloquent sign for an inn, as it intimated that the host was of the
brotherhood, although in a humble way, and would protect the travellers
from robbery in his inn,--in the shape of high charges and
exactions,--just as the knights of St Catherine protected them on the
high road from robbery by brigands. These knights wore a white habit
embroidered with a Catherine wheel, (_i.e._ a wheel armed with spikes,)
and traversed with a sword stained with blood.[432] There were also
mysteries in which St Catherine played a favourite part, one of which
was acted by young ladies on the entry of Queen Catherine of Arragon
(queen to our Henry VIII.) in London in 1501; in honour of this queen
the sign may occasionally have been put up. The Catherine wheel was also