THE 
 
 HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. 
 JACOB LARWOOD, 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN. 
 
 WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS IN FACSIMILE 
 BY J. LARWOOD. 
 
 " He would name you all the signs as he went along." 
 
 BEN JONSON'S BARTHOLOMEW FAIE. 
 
 " Oppida dum peragras peratrranda poemata spectes." 
 
 DRUNKKJSr BARNABY'S TRAVELS. 
 
 Cock and Bottle. 
 
 NINTH EDITION. 
 
 SLonKon: 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 1S84. 
 
/ 
 
 To 
 
 Thomas Wright, Esq,, M,A,, FS.A.y 
 
 ike Accomplished Interpreter of English Popular Antiquities^ 
 
 this 
 
 ILittle Fcitume is ©eSi'cate^ 
 
 by 
 
 THE AUTHORS. 
 
 b 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The field of history is a wide one, and when the beaten tracks have been 
 well traversed, there will yet remain some of the lesser paths to explore. 
 The following attempt at a " History of Signboards " may be deemed the 
 result of an exploration in one of these by-ways. 
 
 Although from the days of Addison's Spectator down to the present 
 time many short articles have been written upon house-signs, nothing like 
 a general inquiry into the subject has, as yet, been published in this 
 country. The extraordinary number of examples and the numerous absurd 
 combinations afforded such a mass of entangled material as doubtless 
 deterred writers from proceeding beyond an occasional article in a maga- 
 zine, or a chapter in a book, — when ODly the more famous signs would be 
 cited as instances of popular humour or local renown. How best to classify 
 and treat the thousands of single and double signs was the chief difficulty 
 in compiling the present work. That it will in every respect satisfy the 
 reader is more than is expected — indeed much more than could be 
 hoped for under the best of circumstances. 
 
 In these modern days, the signboard is a very -unimportant object : it 
 was not always so. At a time when but few persons could read and write, 
 house-signs were indispensable in city life. As education spread they were 
 less needed ; and when in the last century, the system of numbering houses 
 was introduced, and every thoroughfare had its name painted at the begin- 
 ning and end, they were no longer a positive necessitj^ — their original value 
 was gone, and they lingered on, not by reason of their usefulness, but as 
 instances of the decorative humour ci our ancestors, or as advertisements 
 of established reputation and busine>i .success. For the names of many of 
 our streets we are indebted to the sign of the old inn or public-house, which 
 frequently was the first building in the street — commonly enough suggest- 
 ing its erection, or at least a few houses by way of commencement. The 
 huge " London Directory " contains the names of hundreds of streets in 
 the metropolis which derived their titles from taverns or public-houses in 
 the immediate neighbourhood. As material for the etymology of the 
 names of persons and places, the various old signs may be studied with 
 advantage. In many other ways the historic importance of house-signa 
 could be shown. 
 
 Something like a classification of our subject was found absolutely necea- 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 sary at the outset, although from the indefinite nature of many signs the 
 divisions " Historic," Heraldic," " Animal," &c. — under which the various 
 examples have been arranged — must be regarded as purely arbitrary, for in 
 many instances it v^^ould be impossible to say whether such and such a 
 sign should be included under the one head or under the other. The 
 explanations offered as to origin and meaning are based rather upon con- 
 jecture and speculation than upon fact — as only in very rare instances 
 reliable data could be produced to bear them out. Compound signs but 
 increase the difficulty of explanation : if the road was uncertain before, 
 almost all traces of a pathway are destroyed here. "When, therefore, a solu- 
 tion is offered, it must be considered only as a suggestion of the possible 
 meaning. As a rule, and unless the symbols be very obvious, the reader 
 would do well to consider the majority of compound signs as quarterings 
 or combinations of others, without any hidden signification. A double 
 signboard has its parallel in commerce, where for a common advantage, 
 two merchants will unite their interests under a double name ; but as in 
 the one case so in the other, no rule besides the immediate interests of 
 those concerned can be laid down for such combinations. 
 
 A great many signs, both single and compound, have been omitted. To 
 have included all, together with such particulars of their history as could 
 be obtained, would have required at least half-a-dozen folio volumes. 
 However, but few signs of any importance are known to have been omitted, 
 and care has been taken to give fair samples of the numerous varieties of 
 the compound sign. As the work progressed a large quantity of material 
 accumulated for which no space could be found, such as " A proposal to the 
 House of Commons for raising above half a million of money per annum, 
 with a great ease to the subject, by a tax upon signs, London, 1695," a very 
 curious tract ; a political jeu-d'esprit from the Harleian MSS., (5953,) en- 
 titled " The Civill Warres of the Citie,^' a lengthy document prepared for 
 a journal in the reign of William of Orange by one E. I.," and giving 
 the names and whereabouts of the principal London signs at that time. 
 Acts of Parliament for the removal or limitation of signs ; and various 
 religious pamphlets upon the subject, such as " Helps for Spiritual Medi- 
 tation, earnestly Kecommended to the Perusal of all those who desire to 
 have their Hearts much with God," a chap-book of the time of Wesley 
 and Whitfield, in which the existing " Signs of London are Spiritualized, 
 with an Intent, that when a person walks along the Street, instead of hav- 
 ing their Mind fill'd with Vanity, and their Thoughts amus'd with the 
 trifling Things that continually present themselves, they may be able to 
 Think of something Profitable." 
 
 Anecdotes and historical facts have been introduced with a double view ; 
 first, as authentic proofs of the existence and age of the sign ; secondly, in 
 the hope that they may afford variety and entertainment. They will call up 
 many a picture of the olden time ; many a trait of bygone manners and 
 customs — old shops and residents, old modes of transacting business, in short, 
 much that is now extinct and obsolete. There is a peculiar pleasure in 
 pondering over these old houses, and picturing them to ourselves as again 
 inhabited by the busy tenants of former years ; in meeting the great 
 names of history in the hours of relaxation, in calling up the scenes which 
 must have been often witnessed in the haunt of the pleasure-seeker, — the 
 tavern with its noisy company, the coffee-house with its politicians and 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 vii 
 
 firuart beaux ; and, on the other hand, the quiet, unpretending shop of the 
 ancient bookseller filled with the monuments of departed minds. Such 
 scraps of history may help to picture this old London as it appeared dur- 
 ing the last three centuries. For the contemplative mind there is some 
 charm even in getting at the names and occupations of the former inmates 
 of the houses now only remembered b}^ their signs ; in tracing, by means 
 of these house decorations, their modes of thought or their ideas of 
 humour, and in rescuing from oblivion a few little anecdotes and minor 
 facts of history connected with the house before which those signs swung 
 in the air. 
 
 It is a pity that such a task as the following was not undertaken many 
 years ago ; it would have been much better accomplished then than 
 now. London is so rapidly changing its aspect, that ten years hence many 
 of the particulars here gathered could no longer be collected. Already, dur- 
 ing the printing of this work, three old houses famous for their signs have 
 been doomed to destruction — the Mitre in Fleet Street, the Tabard in 
 Southwark, (where Chaucer's pilgrims lay,) and Don Saltero's house in 
 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The best existing specimens of old signboards may 
 be seen in our cathedral towns. Antiquaries cling to these places, and the 
 inhabitants themselves are generally animated by a strong conservative feel- 
 ing. In London an entire street might be removed with far less of public 
 discussion than would attend the taking down of an old decayed sign in one 
 of these provincial cities. Does the reader remember an article in Punch, 
 about two years ago, entitled Asses in Canterbury ?" It was in ridicule of 
 the Canterbury Commissioners of Pavement, who had held grave delibera- 
 tions on the well-known sign of Sir J ohn Falstaff, hanging from the front 
 of the hotel of that name, — a house which has been open for public enter- 
 tainment these three hundred years. The knight with sword and buckler 
 (from ^' Henry the Fourth,") was suspended from some ornamental iron- 
 work, far above the pavement, in the open thoroughfare leading to the 
 famous Westgate, and formed one of the most noticeable objects in this 
 part of Canterbury. In 1787, when the general order was issued for the 
 removal of all the signs in the city — many of them obstructed the thor- 
 oughfares— this was looked upon with so much veneration that it was 
 allowed to remain until 1863, when for no apparent reason it was sen- 
 te.nced to destruction. However, it was only with the greatest difficulty 
 that men could be found to pull it down, and then several cans of beer 
 had first to be distributed amongst them as an incentive to action — in so 
 great veneration was the old sign held even by the lower orders of the 
 place. Eight pounds were paid for this destruction, which, for fear of a 
 riot, was efi'ected at three in the morning, *'amid the groans and hisses of the 
 assembled multitude," says a local paper. Previous to the demolition the 
 greatest excitement had existed in the place ; the newspapers were filled 
 with articles; a petition with 400 signatures — including an M.P., the pre- 
 bends, minor canons, and clergy of the cathedral — prayed the local "com- 
 missioners " that the sign might be spared ; and the whole community was 
 in an uproar. No sooner was the old portrait of Sir John removed than 
 another was put up ; but this representing the knight as seated, and with 
 a can of ale by his side, however much it may suit the modern publican's 
 notion of military ardour, does not please the owner of the property, and a 
 facsimile of the time-honoured original is in course of preparation. 
 
viii 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 Concerning tlie internal arrangement of the following work, a few ex- 
 planations seem necessary. 
 
 Where a street is mentioned without the town being specified, it in all 
 cases refers to a London thoroughfare. 
 
 The trades tokens so frequently referred to, it will be scarcely neces 
 sary to state, were the brass farthings issued by shop or tavern keepers, 
 and generally adorned with a representation of the sign of the house. 
 Nearly all the tokens alluded to belong to the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century, mostly to the reign of Charles II. 
 
 As the work has been two years in the press, the passing events 
 mentioned in the earlier sheets refer to the year 1864. 
 
 In a few instances it was found impossible to ascertain whether certain 
 signs spoken of as existing really do exist, or whether those mentioned 
 as things of the past are in reality so. The wide distances at which they 
 are situated prevented personal examination in every case, and local his- 
 tories fail to give such small particulars. 
 
 The rude unattractive woodcuts inserted m the work are in most 
 instances fac-siiniles, which have been chosen a^ genuine examples of the 
 style in which the various old signs were represented. The blame of the 
 coarse and primitive execution, therefore, rests entirely with the ancient 
 artist, whether sign painter or engraver. 
 
 Translations of the various quotations from foreign languages have been 
 added for the following reasons : — It was necessary to translate the nume* 
 rous quotations from the Dutch signboards ; Latin was Englished for the 
 benefit of the ladies, and Italian and French extracts were Anglicised to 
 correspond with rest. 
 
 Errors, both of fact and opinion, may doubtless be discovered in the 
 book. If, however, the compilers have erred in a statement or an explana- 
 tion, they do not wish to remain in the dark, and any light thrown upon 
 a doubtful passage will be acknowledged by them with thanks. Numerous 
 local signs — famous in their own neighbourhood — will have been omitted, 
 (generally, however, for the reasons mentioned on a preceding page,) whilst 
 many curious anecdotes and particulars concerning their history may be 
 within the knowledge of provincial readers. For any information of this 
 kind the compilers will be much obliged ; and should their work ever pass 
 to a second edition, they hope to avail themselves of such friendly contri- 
 butions. 
 
 London, June 1863. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF SIGNBOARD HISTORY, 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE SIGNS, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC SIGNS, . 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SIGNS OF ANIMALS AND MONSTERS, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BIRDS AND FOWLS, .... 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 FISHES AND INSECTS, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC., 
 
 CHAPTER YIIL 
 
 BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNS, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC., . • • 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE, .... 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DRESS ; PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY, 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HUMOROUS AND COMIC, .... 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PUNS AND REBUSES, ..... 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS, .... 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 BONNELL Thornton's signboard exhibition, 
 INDEX of ALL the signs mentioned in the work, 
 
% 
 
PLATK I. 
 
 WINE MERCHANT. 
 (Pompeii, a,d. 70.) 
 
 TWO JOLLY BREWERS. 
 (Banks's BHIh, 1770.) 
 
CHAPTER L 
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF SIGNBOARD HISTORY. 
 
 In" tlie cities of the East all trades are confined to certain streets, 
 or to certain rows in the various bazars and wekalehs. Jewel- 
 lers, silk-embroiderers, pipe-dealers, traders in drugs, — each of 
 these classes has its own quarter, where, in little open shops, the 
 merchants sit enthroned upon a kind of low counter, enjoying 
 their pipes and their coffee with the otium cum dignitate char- 
 acteristic of the Mussulman. The purchaser knows the row to go 
 to ; sees at a glance what each shop contains ; and, if he be an 
 habitue, will know the face of each particular shopkeeper, so that, 
 under these circumstances, signboards would be of no use. 
 
 With the ancient Egyptians it was much the same. As a rule, 
 no picture or description affixed to the shop announced the trade 
 of the owner ; the goods exposed for sale were thought sufficient 
 to attract attention. Occasionally, however, there were inscrip- 
 tions denoting the trade, with the emblem which indicated it 
 whence we may assume that this ancient nation was the first to 
 appreciate the benefit that might be derived from signboards. 
 
 What we know of the Greek signs is very meagre and indefi- 
 nite. Aristophanes, Lucian, and other writers, make frequent 
 allusions, whj.ch seem to prove that signboards were in use with 
 the Greeks. Thus Aristotle says : ooaiti^ l^l rojv xoctt^Xic^jv yoa(p6- 
 asvoi, fMiz^oi /Msv shi, (pahowai ds s^oi/rsg 'KWarri xai (Sa^T^.f And 
 Athenaeus : sv 'Tr^ors^oTg dyjTiri dida^KaXirjv.'li, But what their signs 
 were, and whether carved, painted, or the natural object, is en- 
 tirely unknown. 
 
 With the Eomans only we begin to have distinct data. In the 
 Eternal City, some streets, as in our mediaeval towns, derived their 
 names from signs. Such, for instance, was the vicus Ursi Pileati, 
 (the street of " The Bear with the Hat on,^') in the Esquiliae. 
 The nature of their signs, also, is well known. The Bush, their 
 tavern-sign, gave rise to the proverb, "Vino vendibili suspensa 
 hedera non opus est and hence we derive our sign of the Bush, 
 
 * Sir Gardiner Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, voL iii. p. 158. Also, Rosellini 
 Monumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia. 
 
 t Aristotle, Problematum x. 14: "As with the things drawn above the shops, which, 
 though they are small, appear to have breadth and depth." 
 
 ; <« He hung the well-known sign in the front of his hou.se." 
 
 A 
 
2 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 and our proverb, "Good Wine needs no BusL" An ansa, or liandle 
 of a pitcher, was the sign of their post-houses, (stathmoi or 
 allagcCy) and hence these establishments were afterwards denomi- 
 nated ansce."^ That they also had painted signs, or exterior deco- 
 rations which served their purpose, is clearly evident from various 
 authors : — 
 
 Quum victi Mures Mustelarum exercitu 
 (Historia quorum in tabernis pingitur.)" + 
 
 PHiEDRUs, lib. iv. fab. vi. 
 
 These Koman street pictures were occasionally no mean works 
 of art, as we may learn from a passage in Horace : — 
 
 " Contento poplite miror 
 Proelia, rubrico picta aut carbone ; velut si 
 Re vera pugnent, feriant vitentque moventes 
 Arma viri." + 
 
 Cicero also is supposed by some scholars to allude to a sign 
 when he says : — 
 
 "Jam ostendamcujus modi sis : quum ille ' ostende quseso* demonstravi 
 digito pictum Galium in Mariano scuto Cimbrico, sub Novis, distortum 
 ejecta lingu^, buccis fluentibus, risus est commotus."§ 
 
 Pliny, after saying that Lucius Mummius was the first in Eome 
 who affixed a picture to the outside of a house, continues : — 
 
 " Deinde video et in foro positas vulgo. Hinc enim Crassi oratoris lepos, 
 [here follows the anecdote of the Cock of Marius the Cimberian] ... In 
 foro fuit et ilia pastoris senis cum baculo, de qua Teutonorum legatus re- 
 spondit, interrogatus quanti eum sestimaret, sibi donari nolle talem vivum 
 verumque." II 
 
 Fabius also, according to some, relates the story of the cock, 
 and his explanation is cited : — "Taberna autem erant circa Forum, 
 ac scutum illud signi gratia positum."ir 
 
 But we can judge even better from an inspection of the Eoman 
 
 * Hearne, Antiq. Disc, i. 39. 
 
 t "When the mice were conquered by the army of the weasels, (a story which we sett 
 painted on the taverns.)" 
 
 X Lib. ii. sat. vii. : "I admire the position of the men that are fighting, painted in 
 red or in black, as if they were really alive ; striking and avoiding each other's weapons, 
 as if they were actually moving." 
 
 i De Oratore, lib. ii. ch. 71 : "Now I shall shew you howyou are, to which he answered, 
 * Do, please.' Then I pointed with my finger towards the Cock painted on the signboard 
 of Marius the Cimberian, on the New Forum, distorted, with his tongue out and hanging 
 cheeks. Everybody began to laugh." 
 
 II llist. Nat., XXXV. ch. 8 : " After this I find that they were also commonly placed ou 
 the Forum. Hence that joke of Crassus, the orator. ... On the Forum was also that 
 of an old shepherd with a staff, concerning which a German legate, being asked at how 
 much he valued it, answered that he would not care to have such a man given to him as 
 a present, even if he were real and alive." 
 
 ^ "There were, namely, taverns round about the Forum, and that picture [the Cock] 
 had been put up as a sign." 
 
ANCIENT SIGNS A T POMPEII. 
 
 3 
 
 signs themselves, as they have come down to us amongst the ruins 
 of Herculaneum and Pompeii. A few were painted ; but, as a 
 rule, they appear to have been made of stone, or terra-cotta 
 relievo, and let into the pilasters at the side of the open shop- 
 fronts. Thus there have been found a goat, the sign of a dairy ; 
 a mule driving a mill, the sign of a baker, (plate 1.) At the door 
 of a schoolmaster was the not very tempting sign of a boy re- 
 ceiving a good birching. Very similar to our Two Jolly Brewers, 
 carrying a tun slung on a long pole, a Pompeian public- house 
 keeper had two slaves represented above his door, carrying an am- 
 phora ; and another wine-merchant had a painting of Bacchus 
 pressing a bunch of grapes. At a perfumer's shop, in the street of 
 Mercury, were represented various items of that profession — viz., 
 four men carrying a box with vases of perfume, men occupied in 
 laying out and perfuming a corpse, &c. There was also a sign 
 similar to the one mentioned by Horace, the Two Gladiators, 
 ander which, in the usual Pompeian cacography, was the follow- 
 ing imprecation : — Abiat Yenerem Pompeiianama ieadam qui 
 HOC L^SERIT, i.e., Haheat Venerem Pompeianam iratam, &c. 
 Besides these there were the signs of the Anchor, the Ship, (perhaps 
 a ship-chandler's,) a sort of a Cross, the Chequers, the Phallus on 
 a baker's shop, with the words, Hic habitat felicitas ; whilst 
 in Herculaneum there was a very cleverly painted Amorino, or 
 Cupid, carrying a pair of ladies' shoes, one on his head and the 
 other in his hand. 
 
 It is also probable that, at a later period at all events, the va- 
 rious artificers of Eome had their tools as the sign of their house, 
 to indicate their profession. We find that they sculptured them 
 on their tombs in the catacombs, and may safely conclude that 
 they would do the same on their houses in the land of the living. 
 Thus on the tomb of Diogenes, the grave-digger, there is a pick- 
 axe and a lamp ; Bauto and Maxima have the tools of carpenters, 
 a saw, an adze, and a chisel ; Yeneria, a tire-woman, has a mirror 
 and a comb : — then there are others who have wool-combers' im- 
 plements ; a physician, who has a cupping-glass ; a poulterer, a 
 case of poultry ; a surveyor, a measuring rule ; a baker, a bushel, 
 a millstone, and ears of corn ; in fact, almost every trade had its 
 symbolic implements. Even that cockney custom of punning on 
 the name, so common on signboards, finds its precedent in those 
 mansions of the dead. Owing to this fancy, the grave of Dracon- 
 tius bore a dragon ; Onager, a wild ass ; Umbricius, a shady 
 
4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 tree ; Leo, a lion ; Doleus, father and son, two casks ; Herbacia, 
 two baskets of herbs ; and Porcula, a pig. Now it seems most 
 probable that, since these emblems were used to indicate where a 
 baker, a carpenter, or a tire-woman was buried, they would adopt 
 similar symbols above ground, to acquaint the public where a 
 baker, a carpenter, or a tire-woman lived. 
 
 We may thus conclude that our forefathers adopted the sign- 
 board from the Romans ; and though at first there were certainly 
 not so many shops as to require a picture for distinction, — as the 
 open shop-front did not necessitate any emblem to indicate the 
 trade carried on within, — yet the inns by the road-side, and in the 
 towns, would undoubtedly have them. There was the Roman 
 bush of evergreens to indicate the sale of wine ;* and certain de- 
 vices would doubtless be adopted to attract the attention of the 
 different classes of wayfarers, as the Cross for the Christian cus- 
 tomer, t and the Sun or the Moon for the pagan. Then we find 
 various emblems, or standards, to court respectively the custom 
 of the Saxon, the Dane, or the Briton. He that desired the pa- 
 tronage of soldiers might put up some weapon ; or, if he sought 
 his customers among the more quiet artificers, there were the 
 various implements of trade with which he could appeal to the 
 different mechanics that frequented his neighbourhood. 
 
 Along with these very simple signs, at a later period, coats of 
 arms, crests, and badges, would gradually make their appearance 
 at the doors of shops and inns. The reasons which dictated the 
 choice of such subjects were various. One of the principal was 
 this. In the Middle Ages, the houses of the nobility, both in 
 town and country, when the family was absent, were used as hos- 
 telries for travellers. The family arms always hung in front of 
 the house, and the most conspicuous object in those arms gave a 
 name to the establishment amongst travellers, who, unacquainted 
 with the mysteries of heraldry, called a lion gules or azure by tlie 
 vernacular name of the Red or Blue Lion.X Such coats of arms 
 gradually became a very popular intimation that there was — 
 
 * The Bush certainly must be counted amongst the most ancient and popular of signs. 
 Traces of its use are not only found among Roman and other old-world remains, but during 
 the Middle Ages ^vq have evidence of its display. Indications of it are to be seen in the 
 Bayeux tapestry, In that part where a house is set on fire, with the inscription. Hie domus 
 incenditur, next to which appears a large building, from which projects something very 
 like a pole and a bush, both at the front and the back of the building. 
 
 t In Ca3dmon's Metrical Paraphrase of Scripture History, (circa A.d. 1000,) in the 
 drawings relating to the history of Abraham, there are distinctly represented certain 
 cruciform ornaments painted on the walls, which might serve the purpose of signs. (See 
 upon this subject under "Religious Signs.") 
 
 ' I The palace of St Laurence Poulteuey, the town residence of Charles Brandon, 
 
SYMBOLS OF TRADES. 
 
 5 
 
 ** Good entertainment for all that passes, — 
 Horses, mares, men, and asses ; " 
 
 and innkeepers began to adopt them, hanging out red lions and 
 green dragons as the best way to acquaint the public that they 
 offered food and shelter. 
 
 Still, as long as civilisation was only at a low ebb, the so-called 
 open-houses few, and competition trifling, signs were of but little 
 use. A few objects, typical of the trade carried on, would suffice ; 
 a knife for the cutler, a stocking for the hosier, a hand for the 
 glover, a pair of scissors for the tailor, a bunch of grapes for the 
 vintner, fully answered public requirements. But as luxury in- 
 creased, and the number of houses or shops dealing in the same 
 article multiplied, something more was wanted. Particular trades 
 continued to be confined to particular streets ; the desideratum 
 then was, to give to each shop a name or token by which it might 
 be mentioned in conversation, so that it could be recommended 
 and customers sent to it. Reading was still a scarce acquirement ; 
 consequently, to write up the owner's name would have been of 
 little use. Those that could, advertised their name by a rebus ; 
 thus, a hare and a bottle stood for Harebottle, and two cocks for 
 Cox. Others, whose names no rebus could represent, adopted 
 pictorial objects; and, as the quantity of these augmented, new 
 subjects were continually required. The animal kingdom was 
 ransacked, from the mighty elephant to the humble bee, from the 
 eagle to the sparrow ; the vegetable kingdom, from the palm-tree 
 and cedar to the marigold and daisy ; everything on the earth, 
 and in the firmament above it, was put under contribution. Por- 
 traits of the great men of all ages, and views of towns, both 
 painted with a great deal more of fancy than of truth ; articles of 
 dress, implements of trades, domestic utensils, things visible and 
 invisible, ea qiice sunt tamquam ea qiice non sunt, everything was 
 attempted in order to attract attention and to obtain publicity. 
 Finally, as all signs in a town w^ere painted by the same small 
 number of individuals, whose talents and imagination were limited, 
 
 Duke of Suffolk, and also of the Dukes of Buckingham, was called the Rose, from that 
 badge being hung up in front of the house : — 
 
 "The Duke being at the Rose, within the parish 
 Of St Laurence Poultney." — Henri/ VIII. ^ a. i. s. 2. 
 "A house in the town of Lewes was formerly known as The Three Pelicaxs, the fact 
 of those birds constituting the arms of Pelham having been lost sight of. Anotlier is 
 still called The Cats," which is nothing more than "the arms of the Dorset family, 
 whose supporters are two leopards argent, spotted sable."— Lower, Curiosities of Har- 
 j,ldry. 
 
6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 it followed that the same subjects were naturally often repeated, 
 introducing only a change in the colour for a difference. 
 
 Since all the pictorial representations were, then, of much the 
 same quality, rival tradesmen tried to outvie each other in the 
 size of their signs, each one striving to obtrude his picture into 
 public notice by putting it out further in the street than his 
 neighbour's. The "Liber Albus," compiled in 1419, names this 
 subject amongst the Inquisitions at the Wardmotes : " Item, if 
 the ale-stake of any tavern is longer or extends further than ordi- 
 nary. And in book iii. part iii. p. 389, is said : — 
 
 "Also, it was ordained that, whereas the ale-stakes projecting in front of 
 taverns in Chepe, and elsewhere in the said city, extend too far over the 
 King's highways, to the impeding of riders and others, and, by reason of 
 their excessive weight, to the great deterioration of the houses in which 
 they are fixed ; — to the end that opportune remedy might be made thereof, 
 it was by the Mayor and Aldermen granted and ordained, and, upon sum- 
 mons of all the taverners of the said city, it was enjoined upon them, under 
 pain of paying forty pence* unto the Chamber of the Guildhall, on every 
 occasion upon which they should transgress such ordinance, that no one 
 of them in future should have a stake, bearing either his sign, or leaves, ex- 
 tending or lying over the King's highway, of greater length than seven feet 
 at most, and that this ordinance should begin to take etFect at the Feast of 
 Saint Michael, then next ensuing, always thereafter to be valid and of full 
 effect." 
 
 The booksellers generally had a woodcut of their signs for the 
 colophon of their books, so that their shops might get known by 
 the inspection of these cuts. For this reason, Benedict Hector, 
 one of the early Bolognese printers, gives this advice to the 
 buyers in his Justinus et Florus :" — 
 
 Emptor, attende quando vis emere libros formates in ofiicina mea ex- 
 cussoria, inspice signum quod in liminari pagina est, ita numquam falleris. 
 Nam quidam malevoli Impressores libris suis inemendatis et maculosia 
 apponunt nomen meum ut fiant vendibiliores/'f 
 
 Jodocus Badius of Paris, gives a similar caution : — 
 " Oratum facimus lectorem ut signum inspiciat, nam sunt qui titulum 
 nomenque Badianum mentiantur et laborem suffurentur."^ 
 
 Aldus, the great Venetian printer, exposes a similar fraud, and 
 points out how the pirate had copied the sign also in his colo- 
 phon ; but, by inadvertency, making a slight alteration : — 
 
 ♦ Rather a heavy fine, as the best ale at that time was not to be sold for more than 
 three-halfpence a gallon. 
 
 t "Purchaser, be aware when you wish to buy books issued from my print! npr-oflBce. 
 Look at my sign, which is represented on the title-page, and you can never be mistaken. 
 For some evil-disposed printers have affixed my name to their uncorrected and faulty 
 works, in order to secure a better sale lor them." 
 
 X " We beg the reader to notice the sign, for there are men who have adopted the same 
 lltle« and the uame of I3adius, and so filch oui* labour." 
 
ORNAMENTAL IRONWORK, 
 
 7 
 
 " Extremum est ut admoneamus studiosissimum quemque, Florentinos 
 quosdam impressores, cum viderint se diligentiam nostram in castigando et 
 imprimendo non posse assequi, ad artes confugisse solitas ; hoc est Gram- 
 maticis Institutionibus Aldi in sua ofi&cina formatis, notam Delphini 
 Anchorse Involuti nostram apposuisse ; sed ita egerunt ut quivis mediocriter 
 versatus in libris impressionis nostrae animadvertit illos impudent er fecisse. 
 Nam rostrum Delphini in partem sinistram vergit, cum tamen nostrum in 
 dexteram totum demittatur." * 
 
 No wonder, then, that a sign was considered an heirloom, and 
 descended from father to son, like the coat of arms of the nobility, 
 which was the case with the Brazen Serpent, the sign of Eeynold 
 Wolfe. " His trade was continued a good while after his demise 
 by his wife Joan, who made her will the 1st of July 1574, 
 whereby she desires to be buried near her husband, in St Faith's 
 Church, and bequeathed to her son, Eobert Wolfe, the chapel- 
 house, [their printing-office,] the Brazen Serpent, and all the 
 prints, letters, furniture/' &c. — Dibdin's Typ. Ant, vol. iv. p. 6. 
 
 As we observed above, directly signboards were generally 
 adopted, quaintness became one of the desiderata, and costliness 
 another. This last could be obtained by the quahty of the 
 picture, but, for two reasons, was not much aimed at — firstly, 
 because good artists were scarce in those days ; and even had they 
 obtained a good picture, the ignorant crowd that daily passed 
 underneath the sign would, in aU probability, have thought the 
 harsh and glaring daub a finer production of art than a Holy 
 Virgin by Bafaelle himself. The other reason was the instability 
 of such a work, exposed to sun, wind, rain, frost, and the nightly 
 attacks of revellers and roisters. Greater care, therefore, was 
 bestowed upon the ornamentation of the ironwork by which it 
 was suspended ; and this was perfectly in keeping with the taste 
 of the times, when even the simplest lock or hinges could not be 
 launched into the world without its scrolls and strapwork. 
 
 The signs then were suspended from an iron bar, fixed either 
 in the wall of the house, or in a post or obelisk standing in front 
 of it ; in both cases the ironwork was shaped and ornamented 
 with that taste so conspicuous in the metal-work of the Renaissance 
 period, of which many churches, and other buildings of that 
 
 * "Lastly, I must draw the attention of the student to the fact that some Florentine 
 printers, seeing that they could not equal cur diligence in correcting and printing, have 
 resorted to their usual artifices. To Aldus's Institutioues GrammatiCiV, printed in their 
 offices, they have affixed our well-known sign of the Dolphin wound round the Anchor. 
 But they have so managed, that any person who is in the least act] uainLed with the books 
 of our production, cannot fail to observe that this is an impudent fraud. For the head 
 of the Dolphin is turned to the left, whereas that of oura is well known to be turn-jd to 
 Uie right."— iVe/acv to Aldus's Livy, 151H 
 
8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 period, still bear witness. In provincial towns and villages, where 
 there was sufficient room in the streets, the sign was generally 
 suspended from a kind of small triumphal arch, standing out in 
 the road, partly wood, partly iron, and ornamented with all that 
 carving, gilding, and colouring could bestow upon it, {see descrip- 
 tion of White-Hart Inn at Scole.) Some of the designs of this 
 class of ironwork have come down to us in the works of the old 
 masters, and are indeed exquisite. 
 
 Painted signs then, suspended in the way we have just pointed 
 out, were more common than those of any other kind ; yet not a 
 few shops simply suspended at their doors some prominent article 
 in their trade, which custom has outlived the more elegant sign- 
 boards, and may be daily witnessed in our streets, where the iron- 
 monger's frying-pan, or dust-pan, the hardware-dealer's teapot, the 
 grocer's tea-canister, the shoemaker's last or clog, with the Golden 
 Boot, and many similar objects, bear witness to this old custom. 
 
 Lastly, there was in London another class of houses that had a 
 peculiar way of placing their signs — viz., the Stews upon the Bank- 
 side, which were, by a proclamation of 37 Hen. VIII., " whited 
 and painted with signs on the front, for a token of the said 
 houses." Stow enumerates some of these symbols, such as the 
 Cross-Keys, the Gun, the Castle, the Crane, the Cardinal's Hat, 
 the Bell, the Swan, &c. 
 
 Still greater variety in the construction of the signs existed in 
 France; for besides the painted signs in the iron frames, the 
 shopkeepers in Paris, according to H. Sauval, (" Antiquit^s de la 
 Ville de Paris,") had anciently banners hanging above their doors, 
 or from their windows, with the sign of the shop painted on 
 them ; whilst in the sixteenth century carved wooden signs were 
 very common. These, however, were not suspended, but formed 
 part of the wooden construction of the house ; some of them w^ere 
 really chefs-d'oeuvres, and as careful in design as a carved cathe- 
 dral stall. Several of them are still remaining in Rouen and 
 other old towns ; many also have been removed and placed in 
 various local museums of antiquities. The most general rule, 
 however, on the Continent, as in England, was to have the painted 
 signboard suspended across the streets. 
 
 An observer of James I.'s time has jotted down the names 
 of all the inns, taverns, and side streets in the line of road be- 
 tween Charing Cross and the old Tower of London, w^iicli docu- 
 ment lies now embalmed amongst the Harl. MS., 6850, fol. 31. 
 lu imagination we can walk with him through the metropolis : — 
 
THE WATER-POETS CATALOGUE OF TAVERNS. 9 
 
 On the way from Whitehall to Charing Cross we pass : the AVhite 
 Hart, the Red Lion, the Mairmade, iij. Tuns, Salutation, the Graihound, 
 the Bell, the Golden Lyon. In sight of Charing Crosse : the Garter, the 
 Crown, the Bear and Ragged StafFe, the Angel, the King Harry Head. 
 Then from Charing Cross towards ye cittie : another White Hart, the Eagle 
 and Child, the Helmet, the Swan, the Bell, King Harry Head, the Flower-de- 
 luce, Angel, the Holy Lambe, the Bear and Harroe, the Plough, the 
 Shippe, the Black Bell, another King Harry Head, the Bull Head, the 
 Golden Bull, * a sixpenny ordinarye,' another Flower-de-luce, the Red 
 Lyon, the Horns, the White Hors, the Prince's Arms, Bell Savadge's In, the 
 S. John the Baptist, the Talbot, the Shipp of War, the S. Dunstan, the 
 Hercules or the Owld Man Tavern, the Mitar, another iij. Tunnes Inn, and 
 a iij. Tunnes Tavern, and a Graihound, another Mitar, another King Harry 
 Head, iij. Tunnes, and the iij. Cranes." 
 
 Having walked from Wliitechapel "straight forward to the 
 Tower," the good citizen got tired, and so we hear no more of 
 Mm. 
 
 In the next reign we find the following enumerated by Taylor 
 the water-poet, in one of his facetious pamphlets : — 5 Angels, 4 
 Anchors, 6 Bells, 5 BuUsheads, 4 Black Bulls, 4 Bears, 5 Bears and 
 Dolphins, 10 Castles, 4 Crosses, (red or white,) 7 Three Crowns, 
 7 Green Dragons, 6 Dogs, 5 Fountains, 3 Fleeces, 8 Globes, 5 
 Greyhounds, 9 White Harts, 4 White Horses, 6 Harrows, 20 
 King's Heads, 7 King's Arms, 1 Queen's Head, 8 Golden Lyons, 
 6 Red Lyons, 7 Halfmoons, 10 Mitres, 33 Maidenheads, 10 
 Mermaids, 2 Mouths, 8 Nagsheads, 8 Prince's Arms, 4 Pope's 
 Heads, 13 Suns, 8 Stars, &c. Besides these he mentions an 
 Adam and Eve, an Antwerp Tavern, a Cat, a Christopher, a 
 Cooper's Hoop, a Goat, a Garter, a Hart's Horn, a Mitre, &c. 
 These were all taverns in London ; and it will be observed that 
 their signs were very similar to those seen at the present day — 
 a remark applicable to the taverns not only of England, but of 
 Europe generally, at this period. In another work Taylor gives 
 us the signs of the taverns''^ and alehouses in ten shires and 
 counties about London, all similar to those we have just enumer- 
 ated ] but amongst the number, it may be noted, there is not 
 one combination of two objects, except the Eagle and Child, and 
 the Bear and Ragged Staff. In a black-letter tract entitled 
 
 Newes from Bartholomew Fayre," the following are named : — 
 
 "There has been great sale and utterance of Wine, 
 Besides Beer, Ale, and Hippocrass fine, 
 In every Country, Region, and ISTation, 
 Chiefly at Billingsgate, at the Salutation ; 
 
 • Th.e number of taverns In tkcso tea shires was 686, or thereabouts-" 
 
lO 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 And Boreshead near London Stone, 
 The Swan at Dowgate, a tavern well knowne ; 
 The Mitre in Cheap, and the Bullhead, 
 And many like places that make noses red ; 
 The Boreshead in Old Fish Street, Three Cranes in the Vintree, 
 And now, of late, Saint Martin's in the Sentree ; 
 The Windmill in Lothbury, the Ship at the Exchange, 
 King's Head in New Fish Street, where Roysters do range ; 
 The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand, 
 Three Tuns in Newgate Market, in Old Fish Street the Swan." 
 Drunken Barnaby, (1634,) in his travels, called at several of the 
 London taverns, which he has recorded in his vinous flights : — 
 " Country left I in a fury. 
 
 To the Axe in Aldertnanbury 
 
 First arrived, that place slighted, 
 
 I at the Rose in Holborn lighted. 
 
 From the Rose in Flaggons sail I 
 
 To the Griffin i' th' Old Bailey, 
 
 Where no sooner do I waken, 
 
 Than to Three Cranes I am taken. 
 
 Where I lodge and am no starter. 
 
 Yea, my merry mates and I, too, 
 Oft the Cardinal's Hat do fly to. 
 There at Hart's Horns we carouse," &c. 
 
 Already, in very early times, publicans were compelled by law 
 to have a sign; for w^e find that in the 16 Eichard II., (1393,) 
 Florence North, a brewer of Chelsea, was " presented" for not 
 putting up the usual sign." * In Cambridge the regulations were 
 equally severe; by' an Act of Parliament, 9 Henry YL, it was 
 enacted : Quicunq ; de villa Cantebrigg * braciaverit ad vendend' 
 exponat signum suum, alioquin omittat cervisiam." — Rolls of 
 Parliament, vol. v. fol. 426 a.t But with the other trades it 
 was always optional. Hence Charles I., on his accession to the 
 throne, gave the inhabitants of London a charter by which, 
 amongst other favours, he granted them the right to hang out 
 signboards : — 
 
 "And further, we do give and grant to the said M^yor, and Commonalty, 
 and Citizens of the said city, and their successors, that it may and shall be 
 lawful to the Citizens of the same city and any of them, for the time 
 being, to expose and hang in and over the streets, and ways, and alleys of 
 the said city and suburbs of the same, signs, and posts of signs, affixed tu 
 their houses and shops, for the better finding out such citizens' dwellings, 
 
 * " The original court roll of this presentation is still to be found amongst the records 
 of the Dean and Chapter of Westmin-ter."— Lyson's Env. oj London, vol. iii. p. 74> 
 
 t "Wliosoever shall brew ale in the town of Cambridge, with intention of selling it, 
 must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeii his ale." 
 
SIGNBOARD REGULATIONS IN FRANCE, I I 
 
 shops, arts, or occupations, without impediment, molestation, or interrup- 
 tion of his heirs or successors." 
 
 In France, the innkeepers were under the same regulations as 
 in England ; for there also, by the edict of Moulins, in 1567, all 
 innkeepers were ordered to acquaint the magistrates with their 
 name and address, and their " affectes et enseignes ; " and Henri 
 III., by an edict of March 1577, ordered that all innkeepers 
 should place a sign on the most conspicuous part of their houses, 
 " aux lieux les plus apparents ; ^' so that everybody, even those 
 that could not read, should be aware of their profession.. Louis 
 XIV., by an ordnance of 1693, again ordered signs to be put up, 
 and also the price of the articles they were entitled to sell : — 
 
 " Art. XXIII. — Taverniers metront enseignes et bouchons. . . . Kul 
 ne pourra tenir taverne en cette dite ville et faubourgs, sans mettre enseigne 
 et bouchon/' * 
 
 Hence, the taking away of a publican's licence was accompanied 
 by the taking away of his sign : — • 
 " For this gross fault I here do damn thy licence, 
 Forbidding thee ever to tap or draw ; 
 For instantly I will in mine own person, 
 Command the constables to pull down thy sign.'* 
 
 Massinger, a Neio Way to Pay Old Debts, iv. 2. 
 
 At the time of the great Civil War, house-signs played no in- 
 considerable part in the changes and convulsions of the state, and 
 took a prominent place in the politics of the day. AVe may cite 
 an earlier example, where a sign was made a matter of high 
 treason — namely, in the case of that unfortunate fellow in Cheap- 
 side, who, in the reign of Edward lY., kept the sign of the 
 Crown, and lost his head for saying he would ^' make his son 
 heir to the Crown.'' But more general examples are to be met 
 with in the history of the Commonwealth troubles. At the death 
 of Charles I, John Taylor the water-poet, a Eoyalist to the bacli- 
 bone, boldly shewed his opinion of that act, by taking as a sign 
 for his alehouse in Phoenix Alley, Long Acre, the ^Mourning 
 Crown ; but he was soon compelled to take it down. Eichard 
 Flecknoe, in his ^^Enigmatical Characters,'' (1665,) tells us how 
 many of the severe Puritans were shocked at anything smelling of 
 Popery : — " As for the signs, they have pretty well begun their 
 reformation already, changing the sign of the Salutation of Our 
 Lady into the Souldier and Citizen, and the Catherine AVheel 
 
 * "Art. XXIII. — Tavernkeepers must put up signboards and a bush. . . . Nobody 
 shall be allowed to open a tayern in the said city and its suburbs without having a siiju 
 and a bush." 
 
12 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 into the Cat and Wheel ; such ridiculous work they make of this 
 reformation, and so jealous they are against all mirth and joUity, 
 as they would pluck down the Cat and Fiddle too, if it durst but 
 play so loud as they might hear it." No doubt they invented 
 very godly signs, but these have not come down to us. 
 
 At that time, also, a fashion prevailed which continued, indeed, 
 as long as the signboard was an important institution — of using 
 house-signs to typify political ideas. Imaginary signs, as a part 
 of secret imprints, conveying most unmistakably the sentiments 
 of the book, were often used in the old days of political plots and 
 violent lampoons. Instance the following : — 
 
 " Vox BoREALis, or a Northerne Discoverie, Ly Way of Dialogue, between 
 Jamie and Willie. Amidst the Babylonians — printed by Margery Marpre- 
 late, in Thwack Coat Lane, at the sign of the Crab-Tree Cudgell, without 
 any privilege of the Catercaps. 1641." 
 
 Articles of High Treason made and enacted by the late Half quarter 
 usurping Convention, and now presented to the publick view for a general 
 satisfaction of all true Englishmen. Imprinted for Erasmus Thorogood, 
 and to be sold at the signe of the Roasted Rump. 1659." 
 
 " A Catalogue of Books of the Newest Fashion, to be sold by auction 
 at the Whigs' Coffeehouse, at the sign of the Jackanapes in Prating Alley, 
 near the Deanery of Saint Paul's." 
 
 " The Censure of the Rota upon Mr Milton's book, entitled ' The 
 Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth/ &c. Printed at 
 London by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the sign of the Windmill, 
 in Turn-again Lane. 1660." 
 
 " An Address from the Ladies of the Provinces of Munster and Lein- 
 
 ster to their Graces the Duke and Duchess of D 1, Lord G , and 
 
 Caiaphas the High Priest, with sixty original toasts, drank by the Ladies 
 at their last Assembly, with Love-letters added. London : Printed for 
 John Pro Patria, at the sign of Vivat Rex. 1754." 
 
 " Chivalry no Trifle, or the Knight and his Lady : a Tale. To which 
 is added the Hue and Cry after Touzer and Spitfire, the Lady's two lap- 
 dogs. Dublin : Printed at the sign of Sir Tadi/s Press, etc. 1754." 
 
 An Address from the Influential Electors of the County and City of 
 Galway, with a Collection of 60 Original Patriot Toasts and 48 Munster 
 Toasts, with Intelligence from the Kingdom of Eutopia. Printed at the 
 sign of the Pirate s Swo7xl in the Captain's Scahhavd. London, 1754." 
 
 The C t's Apology to the Freeholders of this Kingdom for their 
 
 conduct, containing some Pieces of Humour, to which is added a Bill of 
 
 C 1 Morality. London : Printed at the sign of Betty Ireland, d — d of a 
 
 Tyrant in Purple, a Monster in Black, etc." 
 
 In the newspapers of the eighteentli century, we find that 
 signs were constantly used as emblems of, or as sharp hits at, tlie 
 politics of the day ; thus, in the Weelcly Journal for August 17, 
 1718, allusions are made to the sign of the Salutation, in New- 
 gate Street, by the opposition party, to which the Original 
 
sig:n's hunq in mourning. 
 
 13 
 
 Weeldy Journal, the week after, retaliates by a description and 
 explanation of an indelicate sign said to be in King Street, West- 
 minster. In 1763, the following pasquinade went the round of 
 the newspapers, said to have been sent over from Holland : — 
 
 ** HOTELS POUR LES MINISTRES DES COURS ETRANGERES AU FUTUR CONGRESS. 
 
 De I'Empereur, 
 A la Bonne Volenti ; rue d'Impuissance. 
 De Rassie, 
 Au Chimere ; rue des Caprices. 
 De France, 
 Au Coq deplume ; rue de Canada. 
 D'Autriche, 
 A la Mauvaise Alliance, rue des Invalides. 
 D'Angleterre, 
 A la Fortune, Place des Victoires, rue des Subsides. 
 De Prusse, 
 
 Aux Quatre vents, rue des Renards, pres la Place des Guindes. 
 De Suede, 
 
 Au Passage des Courtisans, rue des Visionaires. 
 De Pologne, 
 
 Au Sacrifice d' Abraham, rue des Innocents, pres la Place des Devots. 
 Des Princes de I'Empire, 
 Au Roitelet, pres de IHopital des Incurables, rue des Charlatans. 
 De Wirtemberg, 
 
 Au Don Quichotte, rue des Fantomes pres de la Montagne en Couche. 
 D'Hollande, 
 
 A la Baleine, sur le Marche aux Fromages, pres du Grand Observatoire." 
 
 On the morning of September 28, 1736, all the tavern-signs in 
 London were in deep mourning; and no wonder, their dearly 
 beloved patron and friend Gin was defunct, — killed by the new Act 
 against spirituous liquors ! But they soon dropped their mourn- 
 ing, for Gin had only been in a lethargic fit, and woke up much 
 refreshed by his sleep. Fifteen years after, vv^hen Hogarth painted 
 his " Gin Lane," royal gin was to be had cheap enough, if we 
 may believe the signboard in that picture, which informs us that 
 "gentlemen and others" could get "drunk for a penny," and 
 " dead drunk for twopence," in which last emergency, " clean 
 straw for nothing" was provided. 
 
 Of the signs which were to be seen in London at the period of 
 the Restoration, — to return to the subject we were originally con- 
 sidering, — we find a goodly collection of them in one of the 
 " Hoxburghe Ballads," (vol. i. 212,) entitled :— 
 
 " -London's ordinarie, or every man in ms humour. 
 
 THROUGH the Royal Exchange as I walked, 
 Where Gallants in sattin doe shine. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 At midst of tlie day, they parted away, 
 To seaverall places to dine. 
 
 The Gen trie went to the King's Heady 
 
 The Nobles unto the Crowne : 
 The Knights went to the Golden Fleece, 
 
 And the Ploughmen to the Clowne. 
 The Cleargie will dine at the Miter, 
 
 The Vintners at the Three Tunnes, 
 The Usurers to the Devill will goe, 
 
 And the Fryers to the Nunnes. 
 The Ladyes will dine at the FeatJiers, 
 
 The Globe no Captaine will scorne, 
 The Huntsmen will goe to the Grayhound below. 
 
 And some Townes-men to the Home. 
 
 The Plummers will dine at the Fountaine, 
 
 The Cookes at the Holly Lamhe, 
 The Drunkerds by noone, to the Man in the Moonef 
 
 And the Cuckholdes to the Ramme. 
 
 The Roarers will dine at the Lyon, 
 
 The Watermen at the Old Swan ; 
 And Bawdes will to the Negro goe, 
 
 And Whores to the Nalced Man. 
 
 The Keepers will to the White Hart, 
 
 The Marchants unto the Shippe, 
 The Beggars they must take their way 
 
 To the Egge-shell and the Whippe. 
 
 The Farryers will to the Horse, 
 
 The Blackesmith unto the Locke, 
 The Butchers unto the Bull will goe, 
 
 And the Carmen to Bridewell Cloche. 
 
 The Fishmongers unto the Dolphin, 
 
 The Barbers to the Cheat Loafe,^ 
 The Turners unto the Ladle will goe, 
 
 Where they may merrylie quaffe. 
 
 The Taylors will dine at the Sheer es, 
 
 The Shooemakers will to the Boote, 
 The Welshmen they will take their way, 
 
 And dine at the signe of the Gote. 
 
 The Hosiers will dine at the Legge, 
 The Drapers at the signe of the Brush, 
 
 The Fletchers to Robin Hood will goe, 
 And the Spendthrift to Beggers Bush. 
 
 The Pewterers to the Quarte Pot, 
 
 The Coopers will dine at the Hoope, 
 The Coblers to the Last will goe, 
 
 And the Bargemen to the Sloope. 
 * A Cheat loaf was a licueehold loaf, wheaten seconds bread."— Nares's Glossary. 
 
THE BALLAD OF THE LONDON OEDINARIE. 15 
 
 The Carpenters will to the Axe, 
 
 The Colliers will dine at the SacJce, 
 Your Fruterer he to the Cherry-Tree, 
 
 Good fellowes no liquor will lacke. 
 
 The Goldsmith will to the Three Cups, 
 
 For money they hold it as drosse ; 
 Your Puritan to the Pewter Canne, 
 
 And your Papists to the Crosse. 
 
 The Weavers will dine at the Shuttle, 
 
 The Glovers will unto the Glove, 
 The Maydens all to the May den Head, 
 
 And true Louers unto the Done. 
 
 The Sadlers will dine at the Saddle, 
 
 The Painters will to the Greene Dragon, 
 The Dutchmen will go to the Froe,^ 
 
 Where each man will drinke his Flagon. 
 
 The Chandlers will dine at the Shales, 
 
 The Salters at the signe of the Bagge ; 
 The Porters take pain at the Lahour in Vaine, 
 
 And the Horse-Courser to the White Nagge* 
 
 Thus every Man in his humour, 
 
 That comes from the North or the South, 
 
 But he that has no money in his purse. 
 May dine at the signe of the Mouth, 
 
 The Swaggerers will dine at the Fencers, 
 
 But those that have lost their wits : 
 With Bedlam Tom let that be their home, 
 
 And the Drumme the Drummers best fits. 
 
 The Cheter will dine at the ChecTcer, 
 
 The Picke-pockets in a blind alehouse, 
 Tel on and tride then up Holborne they ride. 
 
 And they there end at the Gallowes." 
 
 Thomas Hey wood introduced a similar song in his " Eape of 
 Lucrece." This, the first of the kind we have met with, is in all 
 probability the original, unless the ballad be a reprint from an 
 older one ; but the term Puritan used in it, seems to fix its date 
 to the seventeenth century. 
 
 « rpHE Gintry to the Kings Head, 
 JL The Nobles to the Crown, 
 The Knights unto -^he Golden Fleece, 
 And to the Flougn the Clowne. 
 
 The Churchmen to the Mitre, 
 
 The Shepheard to the Star, 
 The Gardener hies him to the Fose, 
 
 To the Drum the Man of War. 
 * Froe— !«., Vrouw, woman. 
 
1 6 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The Huntsmen to the White Harty 
 
 To the Ship the Merchants goe, 
 But you that doe the Muses love, 
 
 The sign called River Po, 
 
 The Banquerout to the World's End, 
 
 The Fool to the Fortune hie, 
 Unto the Mouth the Oyster-wife, 
 
 The Fiddler to the Pie, 
 
 The Punk unto the Cockatrice, * 
 
 The Drunkard to the Vine, 
 The Begger to the Bush, there meet, 
 
 And with Duke Humphrey dine." + 
 
 After tlie great fire of 1666, many of the houses that were re- 
 built, instead of the former wooden signboards projecting in the 
 streets, adopted signs carved in stone, and generally painted or 
 gilt, let into the front of the house, beneath the first floor win- 
 dows. Many of these signs are still to be seen, and will be 
 noticed in their respective places. But in those streets not 
 visited by the fire, things continued on the old footing, each shop- 
 keeper being fired with a noble ambition to project his sign a few 
 inches farther than his neighbour. The consequence was that, 
 what with the narrow streets, the penthouses, and the signboards, 
 the air and light of the heavens were well-nigh intercepted from 
 the luckless wayfarers through the streets of London. We can 
 picture to ourselves the unfortunate plumed, feathered, silken gal- 
 lant of the period walking, in his low shoes and silk stockings, 
 through the ill-paved dirty streets, on a stormy November day, 
 when the honours were equally divided between fog, sleet, snow, 
 and rain, (and no umbrellas, be it remembered,) with flower-pots 
 blown from the penthouses, spouts sending down shower-baths 
 from almost every house, and the streaming signs swinging over- 
 head on their rusty, creaking hinges. Certainly the evil was 
 great, and demanded that redress which Charles II. gave in the 
 seventh year of his reign, when a new Act " ordered that in all 
 the streets no signboard shaU hang across, but that the sign shall 
 be fixed against the balconies, or some convenient part of the side 
 of the house." 
 
 The Parisians, also, were suffering from the same enormities ; 
 everj^thing was of Brobdignagian proportions. " J'ai vu," says an 
 essayist of the middle of the seventeenth century, " suspendu aux 
 boutiques des volants de six pieds de hauteur, des perles grosses 
 
 * This was in those days a slang term for a mistress, 
 t i.e. Walk about in St Paul's during the dinner hour. 
 
PLATE II. 
 
 ALE-POLE. BLACK JACK AND PEWTER PLATTER. 
 
 (Picture of Wouwverman, l7th cent.) (Print by Schavelin, 1480.) 
 
 NAG S HEAD. 
 (Cheapside, 1640.) 
 
 BUSH. 
 (MS. of the 15th cent.) 
 
PARISIAN SIGNBOARD ENORMITIES. 
 
 17 
 
 comme des tonneaux, des plumes qui allaient au troisieme 6tage." * 
 There, also, the scalpel of the law was at last applied to the evil ; 
 for, in 1669, a royal order was issued to prohibit these monstrous 
 signs, and the practice of advancing them too far into the streets, 
 which made the thoroughfares close in the daytime, and pre- 
 vented the lights of the lamps from spreading properly at night." 
 
 Still, with all their faults, the signs had some advantages for 
 the wayfarer ; even their dissonant creaking, according to the old 
 weather proverb, was not without its use : — 
 
 " But when the swinging signs your ears offend 
 With creaking noise, then rainy floods impend." 
 
 Gay's Trivia, canto i. 
 This indeed, from the various allusions made to it in the 
 literature of the last century, was regarded as a very general hint 
 to the lounger, either to hurry home, or hail a sedan-chair or a 
 coach. Gay, in his didactic — fidneur — poem, points out another 
 benefit to be derived from the signboards : — 
 
 If drawn by Bus'ness to a street unknown, 
 Let the sworn Porter point thee through the town ; 
 Be sure observe the Signs, for Signs remain 
 Like faithful Landmarks to the walking Train." 
 
 Besides, they offered constant matter of thought, speculation, 
 and amusement to the curious observer. Even Dean Swift, and 
 the Lord High Treasurer Harley, 
 
 " Would try to read the lines 
 Writ underneath the country signs." 
 And certainly these productions of the country muse are often 
 highly amusing. Unfortunately for the compilers of the present 
 work, they have never been collected and preserved ; although 
 they would form a not unimportant and characteristic contribution 
 to our popular literature. Our Dutch neighbours have paid more 
 attention to this subject, and a great number of their signboard 
 inscriptions were, towards the close of the seventeenth century, 
 gathered in a curious little 12mo volume,t to which we shall often 
 refer. Nay, so much attention was devoted to this branch of 
 literature in that country, that a certain H. van den Berg, in 
 1693, wrote a little volume,^ which he entitled a "Banquet," 
 giving verses adapted for all manner of shops and signboards ; 
 
 * " I have seen, hanging from the shops, shuttlecocks six feet high, pearls as large 
 as a hogshead, and feathers reaching up to the third story." 
 
 t "Koddige en ernstige opschriften op LuiflFels, wagens, glazen, uithangbf rden en 
 andere tafereelen door Jeroen Jeroense. Amsterdam, 1682." 
 
 t "Het gestoffeerde Winkelen en Luifelen Banquet. H. van den Berg. Amster 
 dam, 1693." 
 
 £ 
 
l8 • THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 so that a shopkeeper at a loss for an inscription had only to open 
 the book and make his selection ; for there were rhymes in it 
 both serious and jocular, suitable to everybody's taste. The 
 majority of the Dutch signboard inscriptions of that day seem 
 to have been eminently characteristic of the spirit of the nation. 
 No such inscriptions could be brought before "a discerning 
 public," without the patronage of some holy man mentioned in 
 the Scriptures, whose name was to stand there for no other pur- 
 pose than to give the Dutch poet an opportunity of making a 
 jingling rhyme j thus, for instance, — 
 
 " Jacob was David's neef maar 't waren geen Zwagers. 
 Hier slypt men allerhande Barbiers gereedschappen, ook voor 
 vischwyven en slagers."* 
 
 Or another example : — 
 
 Men vischte Moses uit de Biezen, 
 Hier trekt men tanden en Kiezen."t 
 
 In the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find the 
 following signs named, which puzzled a person of an inquisitive 
 turn of mind, who wrote to the British Apollo,X (the meagre 
 Notes and Queries of those days,) in the hope of eliciting an ex- 
 planation of their quaint combination : — 
 
 " I'fn amazed at the Signs 
 As I pass through the Town, 
 To see the odd mixture : 
 A Magpie and Crown, 
 The Whale and the Crow, 
 The Razor and Hen, 
 The Leg and Seven Stars, 
 The Axe and the Bottle, 
 The Tun and the Lute, 
 The Eagle and Child, 
 The Shovel and Boot." 
 
 All these signs are also named by Tom Brown : § — " The first 
 amusements we encountered were the variety and contradictory 
 language of the signs, enough to persuade a man there were no 
 rules of concord among the citizens. Here we saw Joseph's Dream, 
 the Bull and Mouth, the Whale and Crow, the Shovel and Boot, 
 the Leg and Star, the Bible and Swan, the Frying-pan and Drum, 
 
 ♦ ** Jacob was David's nephew, but not his brother-in-law. 
 
 All sorts of barbers' tools gi'ound here, also fishwives' and butchers' knives." 
 t *' Moses was pick'd up among the rushes. 
 
 Teeth and grinders drawn here." 
 t The British Apollo, 1710, vol. iii. p. 34. 
 i Amusements for the Meridian of Lonaon, 1708, p. 72. 
 
THE OLD COMBINATIONS OF SIGNS. 19 
 
 tlie Lute and Tun, tlie Hog in Armour, and a thousand others 
 that the wise men that put them there can give no reason for.'' 
 
 From this enumeration, we see that a century had worked 
 great changes in the signs. Those of the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century were all simple, and had no combinations. 
 But now we meet very heterogeneous objects joined together. 
 Various reasons can be found to account for this. First, it must 
 be borne in mind that most of the London signs had no inscrip- 
 tion to tell the public "this is a lion," or, "this is a bear;" 
 hence the vulgar could easily make mistakes, and call an object 
 by a wrong name, which might give rise to an absurd combination, 
 as in the case of the Leg and Star; which, perhaps, was nothing 
 else but the two insignia of the order of the Garter ; the garter 
 being represented in its natural place, on the leg, and the star of 
 the order beside it. Secondly, the name might be corrupted 
 through faulty pronunciation ; and when the sign was to be 
 repainted, or imitated in another street, those objects would 
 be represented by which it was best known. Thus the Shovel 
 and Boot might have been a corruption of the Shovel and Boat, 
 since the Shovel and Ship is still a very common sign in places 
 where grain is carried by canal boats ; whilst the Bull and Mouth 
 is said to be a corruption of the Boulogne Mouth — the Mouth 
 of Boulogne Harbour. Finally, whimsical shopkeepers would 
 frequently aim at the most odd combination they could imagine, 
 for no other reason but to attract attention. Taking these 
 premises into consideration, some of the signs which so puzzled 
 Tom Brown might be easily accounted for ; the Axe and Bottle, 
 in this way, might have been a corruption of the Battle-axe. 
 The Bible and Swan, a sign in honour of Luther, who is generally 
 represented by the symbol of a swan, a figure of which many 
 Lutheran Churches have on their steeple instead of a weather- 
 cock ; whilst the Lute and Tun was clearly a pun on the name 
 'of Luton, similar to the Bolt and Tun of Prior Bolton, who 
 adopted this device as his rebus. 
 
 Other causes of combinations, and many very amusing and 
 instructive remarks about signs, are given in the following from 
 the Spectator, No. 28, April 2, 1710:— 
 
 " There is nothing like sound literature and good sense to be 
 met with in those objects, that are everywhere thrusting them- 
 selves out to the eye and endeavouring to become visible. Our 
 streets are filled with blue hoars, black sivans, and red lions, not 
 
20 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 to mention flying-pigs and hogs in armour^ with many creatures 
 more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. Strange 
 that one, who has all the birds and beasts in nature to choose out 
 of, should live at the sign of an ens rationis. 
 
 " My first task, therefore, should be like that of Hercules, to 
 clear the city from monsters. In the second place, I should 
 forbid that creatures of jarring and incongruous natures should 
 be joined together in the same sign ; such as the Bell and the 
 Neat's Tongue, the Bog and the Gridiron, The Fox and the 
 Goose may be supposed to have met, but what has the Fox and 
 the Seven Stars to do together ? And when did the Lamb and 
 Dolphin ever meet except upon a signpost ] As for the Cat and 
 Fiddle, there is a conceit in it, and therefore I do not intend 
 that anything I have here said should affect it. I must, however, 
 observe to you upon this subject, that it is usual for a young 
 tradesman, at his first setting up, to add to his own sign that 
 of the master whom he served, as the husband, after mariiage, 
 gives a place to his mistress's arms in his own coat. This I take 
 to have given rise to many of those absurdities which are com- 
 mitted over our heads ; and, as I am informed, first occasioned 
 the Three Nuns and a Hare, which we see so frequently joined 
 together. I would therefore establish certain rules for the deter- 
 mining how far one tradesman may give the sign of another, and 
 in w^hat case he may be allowed to quarter it with his own. 
 
 " In the third place, I would enjoin every shop to make use 
 of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. 
 What can be more inconsistent than to see a bawd at the sign 
 of the Angel, or a tailor at the Lion ? A cook should not live at 
 the Boot, nor a shoemaker at the Roasted Pig ; and yet, for 
 want of this regulation, I have seen a Goat set up before the 
 door of a perfumer, and the French King's Head at a sword- 
 cutler's. 
 
 " An ingenious foreigner observes that several of those gentle- 
 men who value themselves upon their families, and overlook 
 3ucli as are bred to trades, bear the tools of their forefathers in 
 their coats of arms. I will not examine how true this is in fact ; 
 but though it may not be necessary for posterity thus to set up 
 the sign of their forefathers, I think it highly proper that those 
 who actually profess the trade should shew some such mark of it 
 before their doors. 
 
 " When the name gives an occasion for an ingenious signpost^ 
 
^IHE ''SPECTATOR'' ON SIGIfS. 
 
 21 
 
 I would likewise advise tlie owner to take that opportunity of let- 
 ting the world know who he is. It would have been ridiculous 
 for the ingenious Mrs Salmon to have lived at the sign of the trout, 
 for which reason she has erected before her house the figure of the 
 fish that is her namesake. Mr Bell has likewise distinguished 
 himself by a device of the same nature. And here, sir, I must 
 beg leave to observe to you, that this particular figure of a Bell 
 has given occasion to several pieces of wit in this head. A man 
 of your reading must know that Abel Drugger gained great 
 applause by it in the time of Ben Jonson. Our Apocryphal 
 heathen god is also represented by this figure, which, in conjunc- 
 tion with the Dragon,'"* makes a very handsome picture in several 
 of our streets. As for the Bell Savage, which is the sign of a 
 savage man standing by a bell, I was formerly very much 
 puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the 
 reading of an old romance translated out of the French, which 
 gives an account of a very beautiful woman, who was found in a 
 wilderness, and is called la Belle Sauvage, and is everywhere 
 translated by our countrymen the Bell Savage, f This piece of 
 philology will, I hope, convince you that I have made signposts 
 my study, and consequently qualified myself for the employment 
 which I solicit at your hands. But before I conclude my letter, 
 I must communicate to you another remark which I have made 
 upon the subject with which I am now entertaining you — 
 namely, that I can give a shrewd guess at the humour of the 
 inhabitant by the sign that hangs before his door. A surly, 
 choleric fellow generally makes choice of a Bea?^ as men of 
 milder dispositions frequently live at the Lamb. Seeing a Punch- 
 howl painted upon a sign near Charing Cross, and very curiously 
 garnished, with a couple of angels hovering over it and squeezing 
 a lemon into it, I had the curiosity to ask after the master of 
 the house, and found upon inquiry, as I had guessed by the 
 little agremens upon his sign, that he was a Fren-chman." 
 
 Another reason for quartering " signs was on removing from 
 one shop to another, when it was customary to add the sign of 
 the old shop to that of the new one. 
 "VTTHEREAS Anthony Wilton, who lived at the Green Cross pubiick- 
 
 house against the new Turnpike on New Cross Hill, has been 
 removed for two years past to the new boarded house now the sign of the 
 
 * Bell and the Dragon, still to be met on the signboard. 
 
 f Addison is wrong in this derivation, {see under Miscellaneous SignS; at the end.) 
 
22 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Green Cross and Kross Keyes on the same hill/' &c. — Weekly Journal, 
 November 22, 1718. 
 
 " rflHOMAS BLACKALL and Francis Ives, Mercers, are removed from 
 JL the Seven Stars on Ludgate Hill to the Black Lion and Seven 
 
 Stars over the way." — Daily Courant, November 17, 1718. 
 "pETER DUNCOMBE and Saunders Dancer, who lived at the Naked 
 JL Boy in Great Russell Street, Co vent Garden, removed to the Naked 
 
 Boy and Mitre, near Sommerset House, Strand," &c. — Postboy, January 
 
 2-4, 1711. 
 
 ICHARD ME ARES, Musical Instrument maker, is removed from 
 JZV y' Golden Viol in Leaden Hall Street to y* North side of St Paul's 
 Churchyard, at y' Golden Viol and Hautboy, where he sells all sorts of 
 musical instruments," &c. — [Bagford bills.] 
 
 To increase this complexity still more, came the corruption of 
 names arising from pronunciation ; thus Mr Burn, in his intro- 
 duction to the " Beaufoy Tokens," mentions the sign of Pique and 
 Carreau, on a gambling-house at Newport, Isle of Wight, which 
 was Englished into the Pig and Carrot ; again, the same sign at 
 Godmanchester was still more obliterated into the Pig and 
 Checkers. The sign of the Island Queen I have frequently heard, 
 either in jest or in ignorance, called the Iceland Queen. The 
 editor of the recently-published " Slang Dictionary " remarks that 
 he has seen the name of the once popular premier, George Can- 
 ning, metamorphosed on an alehouse-sign into the George and 
 Cannon ; so the Golden Faemer became the Jolly Farmer ; 
 whilst the Four Alls, in Whitechapel, were altered into the Four 
 Awls. Along with this practice, there is a tendency to translate 
 a sign into a sort of jocular slang phrase ; thus, in the seventeenth 
 century, the Blackmoorshead and Woolpack, in Pimlico, was 
 called the Devil and Bag of Nails by those that frequented 
 that tavern, and by the last part of that name the house is still 
 called at the present day. Thus the Elephant and Castle is vul- 
 garly rendered as the Pig and Tinderhox ; the Bear and Eagged 
 Staff, the Angel and Flute ; the Eagle and Child, the Bird and 
 Bantling ; the Hog in Armour, the Pig in Misery ; the Pig in 
 the Pound, the Gentleman in Trouble^ &c. 
 
 Some further information, in illustration of the different sign- 
 boards, is to be obtained from the Adventurer^ No. 9, (1752:) — 
 
 " It cannot be doubted but that signs were intended originally 
 to express the several occupations of their owners, and to bear some 
 affinity in their external designations with the wares to be dis- 
 posed of, or the business carried on within. Hence the Hand 
 iind Shears is justly appropriated to tailors, and the Hand and 
 
THE "ADVENTURER" ON SIGNS. 
 
 23 
 
 Pen to writing-masters; though the very reverend and right 
 worthy order of my neighbours, the Fleet-parsons, have assumed 
 it to themselves as a mark of * marriages performed without im- 
 position.' The Woolpack plainly points out to us a woollen 
 draper ; the Naked Boy elegantly reminds us of the necessity of 
 clothing ; and the Golden Fleece figuratively denotes the riches 
 of our staple commodity ] but are not the Hen and Chickens and 
 the Three Pigeons the unquestionable right of the poulterer, and 
 not to be usurped by the vender of silk or linen ? 
 
 " It would be useless to enumerate the gross blunders committed 
 in this point by almost every branch of trade. I shall therefore 
 confine myself chiefly to the numerous fraternity of publicans, 
 whose extravagance in this affair calls aloud for reprehension and 
 restraint. Their modest ancestors were contented with a plain 
 Bough stuck up before their doors, whence arose the wise proverb, 
 ' Good Wine needs no Bush ; ' but how have they since deviated 
 from their ancient simplicity ! They have ransacked earth, air, 
 and seas, called down sun, moon, and stars to their assistance, 
 and exhibited all the monsters that ever teemed from fantastic 
 imagination. Their Hogs in Armour, their Blue Boars, Black 
 Bears, Green Dragons, and Golden Lions, have already been suf- 
 ficiently exposed by your brother essay-writers : — 
 * Sus horridus, atraque Tigris, 
 Squamosusque Draco, et fulva cervice Lesena. 
 
 Virgil. 
 
 ' With foamy tusks to seem a bristly boar, 
 Or imitate the lion's angry roar ; 
 Or kiss a dragon, or a tiger stare.' — Dryden. 
 
 It is no wonder that these gentlemen who indulged themselves in 
 such unwarrantable liberties, should have so little regard to the 
 choice of signs adapted to their mystery. There can be no ob- 
 jection made to the Bunch of Grapes, the Bummer, or the Tuns ; 
 but would not any one inquire for a hosier at the Leg, or for a 
 locksmith at the Cross Keys ? and who would expect anything 
 but water to be sold at the Fountain? The Turkshead may 
 fairly intimate that a seraglio is kept within ; the Rose may be 
 strained to some propriety of meaning, as the business transacted 
 there may be said to be done ' under the rose ; ' but why must 
 the Angel, the Lamb, and the Mitre be the designations of the 
 seats of drunkenness or prostitution ? 
 
 " Some regard should likewise be paid by tradesmen to their 
 situation ; or, in other words, to the propriety of the place ; and 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 in this, too, tlie publicans are notoriously faulty. The King*3 
 Arms, and the Star and Garter, are aptly enough placed at the 
 ^ourt end of the town, and in the neighbourhood of the royal 
 palace ; Shakespeare's Head takes his station by one playhouse, 
 and Ben Jonson's by the other ; Hell is a public-house adjoining 
 to Westminster Hall, as the Devil Tavern is to the lawyers' quar- 
 ter in the Temple : but what has the Crown to do by the 'Change, 
 or the Gun, the Ship, or the Anchor anywhere but at Tower Hill, 
 at Wapping, or Deptford ? 
 
 " It was certainly from a noble spirit of doing honour to a supe- 
 rior desert, that our forefathers used to hang out the heads of 
 those who were particularly eminent in their professions. Hence 
 we see Galen and Paracelsus exalted before the shops of chemists ; 
 and the great names of TuUy, Dryden, and Pope, &c., immortal- 
 ised on the rubric posts* of booksellers, while their heads denom- 
 inate the learned repositors of their works. But I know not 
 whence it happens that publicans have claimed a right to the 
 physiognomies of kings and heroes, as I cannot find out, by the 
 most painful researches, that there is any alliance between them. 
 Lebec, as he was an excellent cook, is the fit representative of 
 luxury; and Broughton, that renowned athletic champion, has an 
 indisputable right to put up his own head if he pleases ; but what 
 reason can there be why the glorious Duke William should draw 
 porter, or the brave Admiral Vernon retail flip ? Why must 
 Queen Anne keep a ginshop, and King Charles inform us of a 
 skittle-ground Propriety of character, I think, require that 
 these illustrious personages should be deposed from their lofty 
 stations, and I would recommend hereafter that the alderman's 
 effigy should accompany his Intire Butt Beer, and that the comely 
 face of that public-spirited patriot who first reduced the price of 
 punch and raised its reputation Pro Bono Puhlico^ should be set 
 up wherever three penn'orth of warm rum is to be sold. 
 
 " I have been used to consider several signs, for the frequency 
 of which it is difficult to give any other reason, as so many hiero- 
 glyphics with a hidden meaning, satirising the follies of the 
 people, or conveying instruction to the passer-by. I am afraid 
 that the stale jest on our citizens gave rise to so many Horns in 
 public streets ; and the number of Castles floating with the wind 
 
 * From Martial and other Latin poets, we learn that it was usual for the bibliopoles of 
 tliose (lays to advertise new works by affixing copies of the title-pages to a post outside 
 their shops ; but whetlier this method obtained in the last century, the history of Patera 
 Do ,ter Row does not inform us. 
 
THE ADVENTURER'' ON SIGNS. 25 
 
 was probably designed as a ridicule on tliose erected by soaring 
 projectors. Tumbledown Dick, in tbe borough of Southwark, is 
 a fine moral on the instability of greatness, and the consequences 
 of ambition ; but there is a most ill-natured sarcasm against the 
 fair sex exhibited on a sign in Broad Street, St Giles's, of a head- 
 less female figure called the Good Woman. 
 
 * Quale portentum neque militaris 
 Daunia in latis aht esculetis, 
 Nec Jubse tellus generat, leonum 
 Arida Nutrix.' — Hora.ce. 
 
 * No beast of such portentous size 
 In warlike Daunia's forest lies, 
 Nor such the tawny lion reigns 
 
 Fierce on his native Afric's plains.' — Francis. 
 
 " A discerning eye may also discover in many of our signs evi- 
 dent marks of the religion prevalent amongst us before the Ee- 
 formation. St George, as the tutelary saint of this nation, may 
 escape the censure of superstition; but St Dunstan, with his 
 t(rngs ready to take hold of Satan's nose, and the legions of 
 Angels, Nuns, Crosses, and Holy Lambs, certainly had their 
 origin in the days of Popery. 
 
 " Among the many signs which are appropriated to some parti- 
 cular business, and yet have not the least connexion with it, I 
 cannot as yet find any relation between blue balls and pawnbrokers. 
 Nor could I conceive the intent of that long pole putting out at 
 the entrance of a barber's shop, till a friend of mine, a learned 
 etymologist and glossariographer, assured me that the use of this 
 pole took its rise from the corruption of an old English w^ord. 
 ' It is probable,' says he, ' that our primitive tonsors used to 
 stick up a wooden block or head, or poll, as it w^as called, before 
 their shop windows, to denote their occupation ; and afterwards, 
 through a confounding of different things with a like pronuncia- 
 tion, they put up the parti-coloured staff of enormous length, 
 which is now called a pole, and appropriated to barbers/ 
 
 The remarks of the Adventurer have brought us down to the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, when the necessity for signs 
 was not so great as formerly. Education was spreading fast, and 
 reading had become a very general acquirement ; yet it w^ould 
 appear that the exhibitors of signboards wished to make up in 
 extravagance what they had lost in use. Be it known, however, 
 
 * For the Three Balls of the Pawnbrokers, see under Miscellaneous Signs ; for the 
 Barber's Pole, under Trades' Signs. 
 
26 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 to posterity," says a writer in tlie GentlemarCs Magazine, " that 
 long after signs became unnecessary, it was not unusual for an 
 opulent shopkeeper to lay out as much upon a sign, and the 
 curious ironwork with which it was fixed in the house, so as to 
 project nearly in the middle of the street, as would furnish a less 
 considerable dealer with a stock in trade. I have been credibly 
 informed that there were many signs and sign irons upon Ludgate 
 Hill which cost several hundred pounds, and that as much was 
 laid out by a mercer on the sign of the Queen's Head, as would 
 have gone a good way towards decorating the original for a birth- 
 day." Misson, a French traveller who visited England in 1719, 
 thus speaks about the signs : — 
 
 " By a decree of the police, the signs of Paris must be small, and not too 
 far advanced from the houses. At London, they are commonly very large, 
 and jut out so far, that in some narrow streets they touch one another ; 
 nay, and run across almost quite to the other side. They are generally 
 adorned with carving and gilding ; and there are several that, with the 
 branches of iron which support them, cost above a hundred guineas. They 
 seldom write upon the signs the name of the thing represented in it, so 
 that there is no need of Moliere's inspector. But this does not at all please 
 the German and other travelling strangers ; because, for want of the things 
 being so named, they have not an opportunity of learning their names in 
 England, as they stroll along the streets. Out of London, and par- 
 ticularly in villages, the signs of inns are suspended in the middle of a 
 great wooden portal, which may be looked upon as a kind of triumphal 
 arch to the honour of Bacchus.'* 
 
 M. Grosley, another Frenchman, who made a voyage through 
 England in 1765, makes very similar remarks. As soon as he 
 landed at Dover, he observes, — 
 
 " I saw nothing remarkable, but the enormous size of the public-house 
 signs, the ridiculous magnificence of the ornaments with which they are 
 overcharged, the height of a sort of triumphal arches that support them, 
 and most of which cross the streets," &c. Elsewhere he says, In fact 
 nothing can be more inconsistent than the choice and the placing of the 
 ornaments, with which the signposts and the outside of the shops of the 
 citizens are loaded." 
 
 But gaudy and richly ornamented as they were, it would seem 
 that, after all, the pictures w^ere bad, and that the absence of 
 inscriptions was not to be lamented, for those that existed only 
 "made fritters of English." The Tatler, No. 18, amused his 
 readers at the expense of their spelling : — "There is an offence I 
 have a thousand times lamented, but fear I shall never see 
 remedied, which is that, in a nation where learning is so frequent 
 as in Great Britain, there should be so many gross errors as there 
 
THE " TATLER" ON SIGNS. 
 
 27 
 
 are^ in the very direction of things wherein accuracy Is necessary 
 for the conduct of life. This is notoriously observed by all men 
 of letters when they first come to town, (at which time they are 
 usually curious that way,) in the inscriptions on signposts. I 
 have cause to know this matter as well as anybody, for I have, 
 when I went to Merchant Taylor's School, sufiered stripes for 
 spelling after the signs I observed in my way ; though at the 
 same time, I must confess, staring at those inscriptions first gave 
 me an idea and curiosity for medals, in which I have since arrived 
 at some knowledge. Many a man has lost his way and his dinner, 
 by this general want of skill in orthography; for, considering 
 that the paintings are usually so very bad that you cannot know 
 the animal under whose sign you are to live that day, how must 
 the stranger be misled, if it is wrong spelled as well as ill painted ] 
 I have a cousin now in town, who has answered under bachelor 
 at Queen's College, whose name is Humphrey Mopstaff, (he is 
 akin to us by his mother;) this young man, going to see a 
 relation in Barbican, wandered a whole day by the mistake of 
 one letter; for it was written, 'This is the Beer,' instead of 
 * This is the Bear.' He was set right at last by inquiring for 
 the house of a fellow who could not read, and knew the place 
 mechanically, only by having been often drunk there. ... I 
 propose that every tradesman in the city of London and West- 
 minster shall give me a sixpence a quarter for keeping their 
 signs in repair as to the grammatical part ; and I will take into 
 my house a Swiss count * of my acquaintance, who can remember 
 all their names without book, for despatch' sake, setting up the 
 head of the said foreigner for my sign, the features being strong 
 and fit to hang high." 
 
 Had the signs murdered only the king's English, it might have 
 been forgiven ; but even the lives of his majesty's subjects were 
 not secure from them ; for, leaving alone the complaints raised 
 about their preventing the circulation of fresh air, a more serious 
 charge was brought against them in 1718, when a sign in Bride's 
 Lane, Fleet Street, by its weight dragged down the front of the 
 house, and in its fall killed two young ladies, the king's jeweller, 
 and a cobbler. A commission of inquiry into the nuisance was 
 appointed ; but, like most commissions and committees, they 
 talked a great deal and had some dinners ; in the meantime the 
 
 * Probably John James Heidegger, director of the Opera, a very ugly man- 
 
28 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 public interest and excitement abated, and matters remained as 
 they were. 
 
 In the year 1762 considerable attention was directed to sign- 
 boards by Bonnell Thornton, a clever wag, who, to burlesque the 
 exhibitions of the Society of Artists, got up an Exhibition of 
 Signboards. In a preliminary advertisement, and in his pub- 
 lished catalogue, he described it as the " Exhibition of the 
 Society of Sign-painters of all the curious signs to be met 
 with in town or country, together with such original designs as 
 might be transmitted to them, as specimens of the native genius 
 of the nation." Hogarth, who understood a joke as well as any 
 man in England, entered into the spirit of the humour, was on 
 the hanging committee, and added a few touches to heighten the 
 absurdity. The whole affair proved a gi-eat success.* 
 
 This comical exhibition was the greatest glory to which sign- 
 boards were permitted to attain, as not more than four years 
 after they had a fall from which they never recovered. Educa- 
 tion had now so generally spread, that the majority of the people 
 could read sufficiently well to decipher a name and a number. 
 The continual exhibition of pictures in the streets and thorough- 
 fares consequently became useless ; the information they con- 
 veyed could be imparted in a more convenient and simple 
 manner, whilst their evils could be avoided. The strong feeling 
 of corporations, too, had set in steadily against signboards, and 
 henceforth they were doomed. 
 
 Paris, this time, set the example : by an act of September 17, 
 1761, M. de Sartines, Lieutenant de Police, ordered that, in a 
 month's time from the publication of the act, all signboards in 
 Paris and its suburbs were to be fixed against the walls of the 
 houses, and not to project more than four inches, including the 
 border, frame, or other ornaments ; — also, all the signposts and 
 sign irons were to be removed from the streets and thoroughfares, 
 and the passage cleared. 
 
 London soon followed : in the Daily News, November 1762, 
 we find : — " The signs in Duke's Court, St Martin's Lane, were 
 all taken down and affixed to the front of the houses.^' Thus 
 Westminster had the honour to begin the innovation, by pro- 
 curing an act with ample powers to improve the pavement, <fcc., 
 of the streets ; and this act also sealed the doom of the sign- 
 
 * For a full account of the Exhibition," see in the Supplement at the end of this 
 work. 
 
ACTS OF PARLIAMENT TO REMOVE SIGNS. 2g 
 
 boards, which, as in Paris, were ordered to be affixed to the 
 houses. This was enforced by a statute of 2 Geo. III. c. 21, 
 enlarged at various times. Other parishes were longer in mak- 
 ing up their mind ; but the great disparity in the appearance of 
 the streets westward from Temple Bar, and those eastward, at 
 last made the Corporation of London follow the example, and 
 adopt similar improvements. Suitable powers to carry out the 
 scheme were soon obtained. In the 6 Geo. III. the Court of 
 Common Council appointed commissions, and in a few months 
 all the parishes began to clear away : St Botolph in 1767 ; St 
 Leonard, Shoreditch, in 1768 ; St Martin's-le-Grand in 1769 ; 
 and Marylebone in 1770.* By these acts — 
 
 " The commissioners are empowered to take down and remove all signs 
 or other emblems used to denote the trade, occupation, or calling of any 
 person or persons, signposts, signirons, balconies, penthouses, showboards, 
 spouts, and gutters, projecting into any of the said streets, &c., and all other 
 encroachments, projections, and annoyances whatsoever, within the said 
 cities and liberties, and cause the same, or such parts thereof as they think 
 fit, to be affixed or placed on the fronts of the houses, shops, warehouses, or 
 buildings to which they belong, and return to the owner so much as shall 
 not be put up again or otherwise made use of in such alterations ; and any 
 person having, placing, erecting, or building any sign, signpost, or other 
 post, signirons, balcony, penthouse, obstruction, or annoyance, is subject to 
 a l^enalty of £5, and twenty shillings a day for continuing the same." f 
 
 With the signboards, of course, went the signposts. The re- 
 moving of the posts, and paving of the streets with Scotch 
 granite, gave rise to the following epigram : — 
 
 " The Scottish new pavement well deserves our praise ; 
 To the Scotch we 're obliged, too, for mending our ways ; 
 But this we can never forgive, for they say 
 As that they have taken our posts all away." 
 After the signs and posts had been removed, we can imagine 
 how bleak and empty the streets at first appeared ; how silent 
 in the night-time ; what a difficulty there must have been in 
 finding out the houses and shops ; and how everybody, particu- 
 larly the old people, grumbled about the innovations. 
 
 Now numbers appeared everywhere. As early as 1512 an 
 
 * The last streets that kept them swinging were Wood Street and Whitecross Street, 
 where they remained till 1773 ; whilst in Holywell Street, Strand, not more than twenty 
 years ago, some were still dangling above the shop doors. In the suburbs many may 
 be observed even at the present day. 
 
 t Laws, Customs, Usages, and Regulations of the City and Port of London. By Alex- 
 ander Pulling. LonJon, 1854. 
 
 Under the 72d section of the 57 Geo. III. ch. 29, post. 315, Mr Ballantine, some 
 years ago, decided against a pawnbroker's sign being considered a nuisance, notwitb- 
 Btanding it projected over the footway, unless it obstructed the circulation of light and 
 air, or was inconvenient or incommodious. 
 
30 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 attempt had been made in Paris at numbering sixty-eight new 
 houses, built in that year on the Pont N6tre-Dame, which were 
 all distinguished by 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. ; yet more than two centuries 
 elapsed before the numerical arrangement was generally adopted. 
 In 1787 the custom in France had become almost universal, 
 but was not enforced by police regulations until 1805. In 
 London it appears to have been attempted in the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century ; for in Hatton's " New View of London," 
 1708, we see that *4n Prescott Street, Goodman's Fields, instead 
 of signs the houses are distinguished by numbers, as the stair- 
 cases in the Inns of Court and Chancery.'' In all probability 
 reading was not sufficiently widespread at that time to bring 
 this novelty into general practice. Yet how much more simple 
 is the method of numbering, for giving a clear and unmistakable 
 direction, may be seen from the means resorted to to indicate a 
 house under the signboard system ; as for instance : — 
 rilO BE LETT, Newbury House, in St James's Park, next door but one to 
 JL Lady Oxford's, having two balls at the gate, and iron rails before 
 the door," &c., &c. — Advertisement in the original edition of the Specta- 
 tor, No. 207. 
 
 "AT HER HOUSE, the Hed Ball and Acorn, over against the Globb 
 xjL Tavern, in Queen Street, Cheapside, near the Three Crowns, 
 liveth a Gentlewoman," &c. 
 
 At night the difficulty of finding a house was greatly increased, 
 for the light of the lamps was so faint that the signs, generally 
 hung rather high, could scarcely be discerned. Other means, 
 therefore, were resorted to, as we see from the advertisement of 
 *^ Doctor James Tilbrogh, a German Doctor," who resides " over 
 against the New Exchange in Bedford Street, at the sign of the 
 Peacock, where you shall see at night two candles burning 
 within one of the chambers before the balcony, and a lanthorn 
 with a candle in it upon the balcony." And in that strain all 
 directions were given : over against, or next door to, were among 
 the consecrated formulae. Hence many dispensed with a picture of 
 their own, and clung, like parasites, to the sign opposite or next 
 door, particularly if it was a shop of some note. Others resorted 
 to painting their houses, doors, balconies, or doorposts, in some 
 striking colour ; hence those Eed, Blue, or White Houses still so 
 common ; hence also the Blue Posts and the Green Posts. So 
 we find a Dark House in Chequer Alley, Moorfields, a Green 
 Door in Craven Building, and a Blue Balcony in Little Queen 
 Street, all of which figure on the seventeenth century trades 
 
HOUSES DISTINGUISHED BY COLOUR. 3 I 
 
 tokens.* Those who did much trade by night, as coffee-houses, 
 quacks, &c., adopted lamps with coloured glasses, by which they 
 distinguished their houses. This custom has come down to us, 
 and is still adhered to by doctors, chemists, public-houses, and 
 occasionally by sweeps. 
 
 Yet, though the numbers were now an established fact, the 
 shopkeepers still clung to the old traditions, and for years con- 
 tinued to display their signs, grand, gorgeous, and gigantic as 
 ever, though affixed to the houses. As late as 1803, a traveller 
 thus writes about London : — " As it is one of the principal 
 secrets of the trade to attract the attention of that tide of people 
 which is constantly ebbing and flowing in the streets, it may 
 easily be conceived that great pains are taken to give a striking 
 form to the signs and devices hanging out before their shops. 
 The whole front of a house is frequently employed for this pur- 
 pose. Thus, in the vicinity of Ludgate Hill, the house of S , 
 
 who has amassed a fortune of £40,000 by selling razors, is 
 daubed with large capitals three feet high, acquainting the public 
 that * the most excellent and superb patent razors are sold here.' 
 As soon, therefore, as a shop has acquired some degree of repu- 
 tation, the younger brethren of the trade copy its device. A 
 grocer in the city, who had a large Beehive for his sign hanging 
 out before his shop, had allured a great many customers. No 
 sooner were the people seen swarming about this hive than 
 the old signs suddenly disappeared, and Beehives, elegantly gilt, 
 were substituted in their places. Hence the grocer was obliged 
 to insert an advertisement in the newspapers, importing ' that 
 he was the sole proprietor of the original and celebrated Beehive,'' 
 
 A similar accident befell the shop of one E in Cheapside, 
 
 who has a considerable demand for his goods on account of their 
 cheapness and excellence. The sign of this gentleman consists 
 in a prodigious Grasshopj)ei\ and as this insect had quickly pro- 
 pagated its species through every part of the city, Mr E has 
 
 in his advertisements repeatedly requested the public to observe 
 that ^ the genuine Grasshopper is only to be found before his 
 warehouse.' He has, however, been so successful as to persuade 
 several young beginners to enter into engagements with him, on 
 conditions very advantageous to himself, by which they have 
 obtained a licence for hanging out the sign of a Grasshopper 
 
 * Trades tokens were brass farthings issued by shopkeepers in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and stiivpecl with the sign of the shop and the name of its owner. 
 
32 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 before tlieir shops, expressly adding this clause in large capitals^ 
 that ^ they are genuine descendants of the renowned and match* 
 
 less Grasshopper of Mr E in Cheapside/ "'^ 
 
 Such practices as these, however, necessarily gave the deathblow 
 to signboards ; for, by reason of this imitation on the part of rival 
 shopkeepers, the main object — distinction and notoriety — was 
 lost. How was a stranger to know which of those innumerable 
 Beehives in the Strand was the Beehive ; or which of all those 
 genuine Grasshoppers'^ was the genuine one So, gradually, 
 the signs began to dwindle away, first in the principal streets, 
 then in the smaller thoroughfares and the suburbs ; finally, in 
 the provincial towns also. The publicans only retained them, 
 and even they in the end were satisfied with the name without 
 the sign, vox et loroeterea nihil. 
 
 In the seventeenth century signs had been sung in sprightly 
 ballads, and often given the groundwork for a biting satire. 
 They continued to inspire the popular Muse until the end, but 
 her latter productions were more like a wail than a ballad. 
 There is certainly a rollicking air of gladness about the following 
 song, but it was the last flicker of the lamp : — 
 
 THE MAIL-COACH GUARD. 
 
 At each inn on the road I a welcome could find : — 
 
 At the Fleece I 'd my skin full of ale ; 
 The Two Jolly Brewers were just to my mind ; 
 
 At the Dolphin I drank like a whale. 
 Tom Tun at the Hogshead sold pretty good stuff ; 
 
 They *d capital flip at the Boar ; 
 And when at the Angel I 'd tippled enough, 
 
 I went to the Devil for more. 
 Then I 'd always a sweetheart so snug at the Car ; 
 
 At the B,ose I 'd a lily so white ; 
 Few planets could equal sweet Nan at the Star^ 
 
 No eyes ever twinkled so bright. 
 I 've had many a hug at the sign of the Bear ; 
 
 In the Sun courted morning and noon ; 
 And when night put an end to my happiness there, 
 
 I 'd a sweet little girl in the Moon. 
 To sweethearts and ale I at length bid adieu, 
 
 Of wedlock to set up the sign : 
 Hand-in-hand the Good Woman I look for in you. 
 
 And the Horns I hope ne'er will be mine. 
 Once guard to the mail, I *m now guard to the fair ; 
 
 But though my commission 's laid down, 
 Yet while the King's Arms I 'm permitted to bear, 
 
 Like a Lion I '11 fight for the Crown.'*' 
 • Memorials of Nature and Art collected on a Journey in Great Britain during thf 
 tears 1802 and 1803. Ity C. A. a. Goede. London, 1808. Vol. i. p. 68. 
 
PLATE III. 
 
 CRISPIN AND CRISPIAN. 
 (Roxburghe Ballads. 17th ceutiiry.) 
 
 TRUSTY SERVANT. 
 (Circa 1700.) 
 
 HOG IN ARMOUR. 
 
LOVE-SIGNS AT OXFORD. 
 
 33 
 
 This was written in the beginning of the century, when eighteen 
 hundred was still in her teens. A considerable falling off may be 
 observed in the following, contributed by a correspondent of 
 William Hone : — 
 
 SIGNS OF LOVE AT OXFORD. 
 
 By an Inn-consolable Lover. 
 She's as light as The Greyhound, as fair as The Anrjel^ 
 Her looks than The Mitre more sanctified are ; 
 But she flies like The Roebuck, and leaves me to range ill. 
 Still looking to her as my true polar Star. 
 New /iin-ventions I try, with new art to adore, 
 But my fate is, alas, to be voted a Boar ; 
 My Goats I forsook to contemplate her charms, 
 And must own she is fit for our noble King's Arms; 
 Now Crossed, and now Jockey'd, now sad, now elate, 
 The Checquers appear but a map of my fate ; 
 I blush'd like a Blue CuVy to send her a Pheasant, 
 But she call'd me a TurJc, and rejected my present ; 
 So I moped to The Barley Mow, grieved in my mind. 
 That The ArTc from the Flood ever rescued mankind ! 
 In my dreams Lions roar, and The Green Dragon grins, 
 And fiends rise in shape of The Seven Deadly Sins, 
 "When I ogle The Bells, should I see her approach, 
 I skip like a Nag and jump into The Coach. 
 She is crimson and white like a Shoidder of Mutton, 
 Not the red of The Ox was so bright when first put on ; 
 Like The Holly-hush prickles she scratches my liver, 
 While I moan and die like a Swan by the river." 
 
 But tame as this last performance is, it is " merry as a brass 
 band^' when compared with a ballad sung in the streets some 
 twenty years later, entitled, " Laughable and Interesting Picture 
 of Drunkenness." Speaking of the publicans, who call them- 
 selves Lords," it says : — 
 
 If these be the Lords, there are many kinds. 
 
 For over their doors you will see many signs ; 
 
 There is The King, and likewise The Crown, 
 
 And beggars are made in every town. 
 
 There is The Queen, and likewise her Head, 
 
 And many I fear to the gallows are led ; 
 
 There is The Angel, and also The Deer, 
 
 Destroying health in every sphere. 
 
 There is The Lamb, likewise The Fleece, 
 
 And the fruit's bad throughout the whole piece; 
 
 There is The White Hart, also The Cross Keys, 
 
 And many they 've sent far over the seas. 
 
 There is The Bull, and likewise his Head, 
 
 His Horns are so strong, they will gore you quite deacl^ 
 
 C 
 
34 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 There 's The Hare and Hounds that never did run. 
 And many 's been hung for the deeds they 've done. 
 There are Two Fighting CocJcs that never did crow, 
 Where men often meet to break God's holy vow ; 
 There is The New Inn, and the Rodney they say, 
 Which send men to jail their debts for to pay. 
 The Hope and The Anchor, The Turk and his Head, 
 Hundreds they 've caused for to wander for bread ; 
 There is The White Horse, also The Woolpach, 
 Take the shoes off your feet, and the clothes off your back. 
 The Axe and the Cleaver, The Jockey and Horse, 
 Some they 've made idle, some they 've made worse ; 
 The George and the Dragon, and Nelson the brave, 
 Many lives they 've shorten'd and brought to the grave. 
 The Fox and the Goose, and The Guns put across, 
 But all the craft is to get hold of the brass ; 
 The Bird in the Cage, and the sign of The Thrush, 
 But one in the hand is worth two in the bush." 
 
 There is an unpleasant musty air about this ballad, a taint of 
 Seven Dials, an odour of the ragged dresscoat, and the broken, ill- 
 used hat. The gay days of signboard poetry, when sparks in 
 feathers and ruffles sang their praises, are no more. Our fore- 
 fathers were content to buy " at the Golden Frying-pan," but we 
 must needs go to somebody's emporium, mart, repository, or 
 make our purchases at such grand places as the Pantocapelleion, 
 Pantometallurgicon, or Panklibanon. The corruptions and mis- 
 applications of the old pictorial signboards find a parallel in the 
 modern rendering of our ancient proverbs and sayings. When 
 the primary use and purpose of an article have fallen out of 
 fashion, or become obsolete, there is no knowing how absurdly it 
 may not be treated by succeeding generations. We were once 
 taken many miles over fields and through lanes to see the great 
 stone coffins of some ancient Romans, but the farmer, a sulky 
 man, thought we were impertinent in wishing to see his pig- 
 troughs. In Haarlem, we were once shewn the huge cannon-ball 
 which killed Heemskerk, the discoverer of Nova Zembla. When 
 not required for exhibition, however, the good man in charge 
 found it of great use in grinding his mustard-seed. Amongst the 
 middle classes of to-day, no institution of ancient times has been 
 more corrupted and misapplied than heraldry. The modern 
 " Forrester," or member of the " Ancient Order of Druids,'' is 
 scarcely a greater burlesque upon the original than the beer- 
 retailers' Arms '' of the present hour 
 
MODERN CORRUPTIONS OF THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 35 
 
 Good wine and beer were formerly to be had at the Boar s 
 Head, or the Three Tuns ; but those emblems will not do now, 
 it must be the " Arms " of somebody or something ; whence we 
 find such anomalies as the Angel Arms, (Clapham Eoad ;) Dun- 
 Stan's Arms, (City Road ;) Digger's Arms, (Pet worth, Surrey ;) 
 Farmer's Arms and Gardener's Arms, (Lancashire ;) Grand Junc- 
 tion Arms, (Praed Street, London ;) Griffins Arms, (Warrington ;) 
 Mount Pleasant Arms, Paragon Arms, (Kingston, Surrey;) St 
 Paul's Arms, (Newcastle;) Portcullis Arms, (Ludlow;) Puddler's 
 Arms, (Wellington, Shropshire;) Railway Arms, (Ludlow;) SoVs 
 Arms, (Hampstead Eow ;) the Vulcan Arms, (Sheffield ;) General's 
 Arms, (Little Baddon, Essex ;) the Wateodoo Arms, (High Street, 
 MarylelDone,) &c. Besides these, a quantity of newfangled, high- 
 sounding, but unmeaning names seem to be the order of the day 
 with gin-palaces and refreshment-houses, as, Perseverance, Enter- 
 2mse, Paragon, Criterion, 
 
 Notwithstanding these innovations, the majority of the old 
 objects still survive, in name at least, on the signboards of ale- 
 houses and taverns. Their use may still be regarded as a rule 
 with publicans and innkeepers, although they have become the 
 exception in other trades. Occasionally, also, we may still come 
 upon a painted signboard, but these are daily becoming scarcer. 
 Not so in France ; there the good old tradition of the painted 
 signboard is yet kept up. We get a good glimpse of this subject 
 in the following : * — " But it is the signs that so amuse and abso- 
 lutely arrest a stranger. This is a practice that has grown into a 
 mania at Paris, and is even a subject for the ridicule of the stage, 
 since many a shopkeeper considers his sign as a primary matter, 
 and spends a little capital in this one outfit. Many of them 
 exhibit figures as large as life, painted in no humble or shabby 
 style; while history, sacred and classical, religion, the stage, &c., 
 furnish subjects. You may see the Horatii and Curiatii — a 
 scene from the ' Fourberies de Scapin ' of Moliere — a group of 
 French soldiers, with the inscription, A la Valeur des Soldats 
 Franqais, or a group of children inscribed a la reunion des Pons 
 Enfants,\ — or d la Baigneuse, depicting a beautiful njmiph just 
 issuing from the bath ; ov a la Somnambide, a pretty girl walking 
 in her sleep and nightdress, and followed by her gallant.:}: 
 
 * Mementos, Historical and Classical, of a Tour through part of France, Switzerland, 
 ftnd Italy, in tlie Years 1821 and 1822. London, 1824. 
 t Un ban enfant is in French "a jolly good fellow," as well as a "good child.*' 
 t Taken from the Onera *'La Somnambula." 
 
36 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " In ludicrous things, a barber will write under his sign : — 
 ' La Nature donne barbe et cheveux, 
 Et moi, je les coupe tous les deux/ * 
 * A toutes les figures dediant mes rasoirs, 
 Je nargue la censure des fidelea miroirs.'t 
 
 " Also a frequent inscription with a barber is, ' Ici on rajeunit/ 
 
 A breeches-maker writes up, M , Culottier de Mme. la 
 
 Duchesse de Devonshire. A perruquier exhibits a sign, very well 
 painted, of an old fop trying on a new wig, entitled, Au ci-devant 
 jeune homme. A butcher displays a bouquet of faded flowers, 
 with this inscription, Alt tendre Souvenir, An eating-house ex- 
 hibits a punning sign, with an ox dressed up with bonnet, lace veil, 
 shawl, &c., which naturally implies, Boeuf a-la-mode. A pastry- 
 cook has a very pretty little girl climbing up to reach some cakes 
 in a cupboard, and this sign he calls, A la petite Gourmande, 
 A stocking-maker has painted for him a lovely creature, trying 
 on a new stocking, at the same time exhibiting more charms than 
 the occasion requires to the young fellow who is on his knees at 
 her feet, with the very significant motto, A la belle occasion,^' % 
 
 Though it is forty years since these remarks were written, they 
 8till, mutatis mutandis^ ^-pply to the present day. Even the 
 greatest and most fashionable shops on the Boulevards have their 
 names or painted signs ; the subjects are mostly taken from the 
 principal topic of conversation at the time the establishment 
 opened, whether politics, literature, the drama, or fine arts : thus 
 we have a la Presidence ; au Pro2:)hete; au Palais d' In- 
 dustrie ; aux En f ants d'Edouard, (the Princes in the Tower ;) 
 au Golosse de Rhodes ; a la Tour de Malakoff ; a la Tour de 
 Nesles, (tragedy ;) au Sonneur de St Paul, (tragedy ;) a la 
 Dame Blanche; h la Bataille de Solferino ; au Trois Mous- 
 quetaires; au Lingot d'Or^ (a great lottery swindle in 1852 ;) d 
 la Peine Blanche, &c.§ Some of these signs are remarkably well 
 painted, in a vigorous, bold style, with great bravura of brush ; 
 for instance, les Noces de Vulcain, on the Quai aux Fleurs, is 
 painted in a style which would do no discredit to the artist of 
 les Romains de la Decadence. Roger Bontemps is still frequent 
 
 * " Nature provides man with hair and beard, 
 
 But I cut them both." 
 f " I devote my razors to all faces, 
 
 And defy the criticism of faithful mirrors." 
 X A sort of pun, "Za helle occasion" implying the same idea that cur shopkeepers ex* 
 pn-ss by their " Now is your time," and similar puffs. 
 
 \ Similar instances may also be occasionally met with in London ; for instance, the 
 Ccrsimn Brothers, (Coffee-house, Fulham Road.) 
 
MARCHANDS DE VIN8. 
 
 37 
 
 on the Frencli signboard, where lie is represented as a jolly 
 rubicund toper, crowned with vine-leaves and seated astride a 
 tun, with a brimming tumbler in his hand ; this is a favourite 
 sign with publicans. At the tobacconist's door we may see a sign 
 representing an elderly Paul Pry-looking gentleman enjoying a 
 pinch of snuff. The Bureaux des E emplacements Militaires par- 
 ticularly excel in a gaudy display of military subjects, where the 
 various passages of a soldier's life are represented with all the 
 romance of the warriors of the comic opera. Here can be seen 
 the gallant troopers now courting Jeanette or Fanchon ; now 
 charging Russians, Cabyles, or Austrians, according to the date of 
 the picture. Elsewhere a lancer on a fantastic wild horse ; a 
 guide, walking with a pretty vivandiere, or an old grenadier 
 with the Legion of Honour upon his breast ; — " all the glorious 
 pomp and circumstance of war" portrayed to entice the French 
 clodhopper to sell himself to death or to glory" More pacific 
 pictures may be observed at the door of the midwife ; there we 
 see a sedate-looking matron in ecstasy over the interesting young 
 stranger she has just ushered forth into the world, whilst pater- 
 familias stands with a triumphant look in the background. Then 
 there is the Herculean coalheaver at the door of the auvergnat, 
 who sells coals and firewood ; and landscapes with cattle at the 
 dairjT^shops. But amongst the best painted are those at the doors 
 of the marcliands de vins et de comestibles, where we see fre- 
 quently bunches of fruit, game, flowers, glasses, hams, fowls, fish, 
 all cleverly grouped together, and painted in a dashing style. 
 There is one, for instance, in the Rue Bellechasse, and another in 
 the Rue St Lazare, that are well worth inspection. These paint- 
 ings are generally on the door-posts and window-frames; they 
 are painted on thin white canvas, fixed with varnish at the back 
 of a thick piece of plateglass, and so let into the woodwork. 
 
 And now a few words concerning the painters of signs. Their 
 head-quarters were in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane, where, until lately, 
 gilt grapes, sugar-loaves, lasts, teapots, &c., &c., were displayed 
 ready for the market. Here Messrs Barlow, Craddock, and 
 others, whose names are now as completely lost as their works, 
 had their studios, and produced some very creditable signs, both 
 carved and painted. A few, however, were the productions of no 
 mean artists. The Spectator, January 8, 1743, No. 744, says: — 
 
 The other day, going down Ludgate Street, several people were gaping 
 a:: a very splendid sign of Qaeen Elizabeth, which by far exceeded all the 
 
38 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 other signs in the street, the painter having shewn a masterly judgment, 
 and the carver and gilder much pomp and splendour. It looked rather 
 like a capital picture in a gallery than a sign in the street." 
 
 UnfortuDately the name of the artist who painted this has not 
 come down to us. 
 
 Those who produced the best signs, however, were not exactly 
 the Harp Alley sign-painters, but the coach-painters, who often 
 imited these two branches of art. In the last century, both the 
 coaches and sedans of the wealthy classes were walking picture 
 galleries, the panels being painted with all sorts of subjects.* 
 And when the men that painted these turned their hands to sign- 
 painting, they were sure to produce something good. Such was 
 Clarkson, to whom J. T. Smith ascribed the beautiful sign of 
 Shakespeare that formerly hung in Little Eussell Street, Drury 
 Lane, for which he was paid £500. — John Baker, {oh. 1771,) 
 who studied under the same master as Catton, and was made 
 a member of the Koyal Academy at its foundation. — Charles 
 Catton {oh. 1798) painted several very good signs, particularly a 
 Lion for his friend Wright, a famous coachmaker, at that time 
 living in Long Acre. This picture, though it had weathered 
 many a storm, was still to be seen in J. T. Smith's time, at a 
 coachmaker s on the west side of Well Street, Oxford Street. A 
 Turk's head, painted by him, was long admired as the sign of a 
 mercer in York Street, Covent Garden. — John Baptist Cipriani, 
 {oh. 1785,) a Florentine carriage-painter, living in London, also 
 a Royal Academician. — Samuel Wale, RA. {oh. 1786) painted a 
 celebrated FalstafF and various other signs ; the principal one 
 was a whole length of Shakespeare, about five feet high, which 
 was executed for and displayed at the door of a public-house 
 at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, Drury Lane. 
 It was enclosed in a most sumptuous carved gilt frame, and was 
 suspended by rich ironwork. But this splendid object of attrac- 
 tion did not hang long before it was taken down, in consequence 
 of the Act of Parliament for removing the signs and other obstruc- 
 tions in the streets of London. Such was the change in the 
 public appreciation consequent on the new regulations in signs, 
 that this representation of our great dramatic poet was sold for 
 a trifle to Mason the broker in Lower Grosvenor Street, where it 
 stood at his door for several years, until it was totally destroyed 
 by the weather and other accidents, t 
 
 * Two or three good examples are to be seen in the South Kensington Museum, 
 t Edwards's Anecdotes of Painters, 1808, p. 117. 
 
HOOARTirS MAN LOADED WITH MISCHIEF, 39 
 
 The universal use of signboards furnished no little employment 
 for the inferior rank of painters, and sometimes even to the supe- 
 rior professors. Among the most celebrated practitioners in this 
 branch was a person of the name of Lamb, who possessed con- 
 siderable ability. His pencil was bold and masterly, and well 
 adapted to the subjects on which it was generally employed. 
 There was also Gwynne, another coach-painter, who acquired 
 some reputation as a marine painter, and produced a few good 
 signs. Robert Dalton, keeper of the pictures of King George III., 
 had been apprenticed to a sign and coach-painter ; so were Ralph 
 Kirby, drawing-master to George lY. when Prince of Wales, 
 Thomas Wright of Liverpool, the marine painter, Smirke, R.A., 
 and many artists who acquired considerable after-reputation. 
 
 Peter Monamy (oh. 1749) was apprenticed to a sign and house- 
 painter on London Bridge. It was this artist who decorated the 
 carriage of Admiral Byng with ships and naval trophies, and 
 painted a portrait of Admiral Vernon's ship for a famous public- 
 house of the day, well known by the sign of the Portohello, a few 
 doors north of the church in St Martin's Lane.'"* 
 
 Besides these, we have the " great professors," as Edwards 
 calls them, who occasionally painted a sign for a freak. At the 
 head of these stands Hogarth, whose Man loaded with Mischief 
 is still to be seen at 414 Oxford Street, where it is a fixture in 
 the alehouse of that name. 
 
 Richard Wilson, R.A., {oh. 1782,) painted the Three Logger- 
 heads for an alehouse in North Wales, which gave its name to 
 the village of Loggerheads, near the town of Mould. The paint- 
 ing was still exhibited as a signboard in 1824, though little of 
 Wilson's work remained, as it had been repeatedly touched up. 
 
 George Morland painted several; the Goat in Boots on the 
 Fulham Road is attributed to him, but has since been painted 
 often over ; he also painted a White Lion for an inn at Padding- 
 ton, where he used to carouse with his boon companions, Ibbetson 
 and Rathbone ; and in a small public-house near Chelsea Bridge, 
 Surrey, there was, as late as 1824, a sign of the Cricketers 
 painted by him. This painting by Morland, at the date mentioned, 
 had been removed inside the house, and a copy of it hung up 
 for the sign ; unfortunately, however, the landlord used to travel 
 about with the original, and put it up before his booth at Staines 
 and Egham races, cricket matches, and similar occasions. 
 
 * J. T. Smith's NoUekens and his Times, vol. i. p. 25 
 
40 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Ibbetson painted a sign for the village alehouse at Troutbeck, 
 near Ambleside, to settle a bill run up in a sketching, fishing, 
 and dolce-far-7iiente expedition ; the sign represented two faces, 
 the one thin and pale, the other jolly and rubicund ; under it 
 was the following rhyme : — 
 
 " Thou mortal man that liv'st by bread, 
 What made thy face to look so red? 
 
 Thou silly fop, that looks so pale, 
 'Tis red with Tommy Burkett's ale.*' * 
 
 David Cox painted a Eoyal Oak for the alehouse at Bettws-y- 
 Coed, Denbighshire ; fortunately this has been taken down, and 
 is now preserved behind glass inside the inn. 
 
 The elder Crome produced a sign of the Sawyers at St Martins, 
 Norwich ; it was afterwards taken down by the owner, framed, 
 and hung up as a picture. 
 
 At Kew Inn Lane, Epsom, Harlow painted a front and a back 
 view of Queen Charlotte, to settle a bill he had run up ; he imi- 
 tated Sir Thomas Lawrence's style, and signed it "T. L.," Greek 
 Street, Soho. When Lawrence heard this, he got in a terrible 
 rage and said, if Harlow were not a scoundrel, he would kick 
 him from one street's end to the other ; upon which Harlow very 
 coolly remarked, that when Sir Thomas should make up his 
 mind to it, he hoped he would choose a short street. 
 
 In his younger days Sir Charles Eoss painted a sign of the 
 Magpie at Sudbury, and the landlady of the house, with no small 
 pride, gave the informant to understand that, more than thirty 
 years after, the aristocratic portrait-painter came in a carriage to 
 her house, and asked to be shewn the old sign once more. 
 
 Herring is said to have painted some signs. Amongst them 
 are the Flying Dutchman, at Cottage Green, CamberweU, and a 
 White Lion at Doncaster ; underneath the last are the words, — 
 " Painted by HerringP 
 
 Millais painted a Saint George and Dragon, with grapes round 
 it, for the Yidler's Inn, Hayes, Kent ; and we learn that a sign 
 at Singleton, Lancashire, was painted by an E.A. and an RS., 
 each painting one side of it ; on the front was represented a 
 wearied pilgrim, at the back the same refreshed, but the sign was 
 never hung up. 
 
 Great men of former ages, also, are known to have painted signs; 
 
 * Tommy Burkett was the name of mine liost The painting is now gone, but the 
 rerses remain. 
 
HOLBEIN, CORREOGIO, WATTE AU. 
 
 41 
 
 in the museum at Basle, in Switzerland, there are two pictures 
 of a school, painted by Holbein when fourteen years old, for a 
 sign of the schoolmaster of the town. The Mule and Muleteer 
 in the Sutherland collection, is said to have been painted by 
 Correggio as a sign for an inn ; a similar legend is told about the 
 Young Bull of Paul Potter, in the museum of the Hague, in 
 Holland, which is reported to have been painted for a butcher's 
 signboard. The Chaste Susannah (la chaste Susanne) was for- 
 merly a fine stone bas-relief in the Eue aux Feves, Paris ; it was 
 attributed to Goujon, and bought as such by an amateur. A 
 plaster cast of it now occupies its place. Watteau executed a 
 sign for a milliner on the Pont Notre-Dame, which was thought 
 sufficiently good to be engraved. Horace Vernet has the name 
 of having produced some signs in his younger days ; and there is 
 still at the present time a sign of the White Horse, in one of the 
 villages in the neighbourhood of Paris, which is pointed out as a 
 work of Guericault. 
 
 Besides these, there are, and have been at various times, excel- 
 lent signboards in Paris, the artists of which are not know^n. 
 Thus there was, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, a sign 
 at the foot of the Pont Neuf, called le Petit Dunkerque, which 
 was greatly admired ; and in the reign of Louis XY. an armourer 
 on the Pont Saint Michel had a sign, which was so fine a work 
 of art that it was bought as a cabinet picture by a w^ealthy 
 citizen. In the beginning of this century there w^as a much 
 admired sign on the shutters of a glass and china shop in the Eue 
 Koyale St Honore, which unfortunately was destroyed during 
 some repairs that took place upon the building passing into otlier 
 hands. In 1808, the sign of la Fille mat gardee, (a vaudeville,) 
 at a mercer's, attracted great attention. About this period the 
 Rue Yivienne was very rich in good signboards ; there were la 
 Toison de Cachemire ; les Trois Sultanes ; le Couronnement de 
 la Rosiere, and la Joconde^ all very good w^orks of art. There 
 was a gay Comte Ory on the Boulevard des Italiens, and la 
 Blanche Marguerite, most comely to look upon, in the Rue Mont- 
 martre. All these are now gone, but many good specimens of 
 French signboard painting may yet be met with. 
 
 Before closing this general survey of signboard history, we 
 must direct attention to the number of streets named after signs, 
 both in England and abroad* A w^alk down Fleet Street will 
 give, in a small compass, as many illustrations as are to be met 
 
42 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 witli in any other thorougMare in town, for there nearly all the 
 courts are named after signs that were either hung within them, 
 or at their entrance. Not only streets, but families also have to 
 thank signs for their names. 
 
 Many names that seem unfitting for men, as of brutish beasts, etc., 
 come from the very signes of the houses where they inhabited ; for I have 
 heard of them which sayd they spake of knowledge, that some in late time 
 dwelling at the sigue of the Dolphin, Bull, White Horse, Racket, Pea- 
 cocke, etc., were commonly called Thomas at the Dolphin, Will at the Bull, 
 George at the White Horse, Eobin at the Racket, which names, as many 
 other of like sort, with omitting at the^ became afterwards hereditary to 
 their children." — Camden's liemaines, p. 102. 
 
 As examples of such names we have, " Arrow, Axe, Barrell, 
 Bullhead, Bell, Block, Board, Banner, Bowles, Baskett, Cann, 
 Coulter, Chisell, Clogg, Crosskeys, Crosier, Funnell, Forge, Fire- 
 brand, Grapes, Griffin, Horns, Hammer, Hamper, Hodd, Harrow, 
 Image, (the sign originally in honour of some saint perhaps,) 
 Jugg, Kettle, Knife, Lance, Mallet, Maul, Mattock, Needle, Pail, 
 Pott, Potts, Plowe, Plane, Pipes, Pottle, Patten, Posnet, (a purse 
 or money-bag,) Pitcher, Rule, Rainbow, Sack, Saw, Shovel, 
 Shears, Scales, Silverspoon, Swords, Tankard, Tabor, (a drum,) 
 Trowel, Tubb and Wedge, and a good many others/^ ^ 
 
 And now, having taken a passing glance at signboard history, 
 from the earliest times down to the present day, we may not im- 
 properly conclude this chapter with an enumeration of the inn, 
 tavern, and public-house signs which occur most frequently in 
 London, in this present year of grace, 1864 : — 
 
 12 Adam and Eves, 13 Albions, 5 Alfred's Heads, 13 Anchor 
 and Hopes, 18 Angels, 8 Angels and Crowns, 3 Antigallicans, 
 5 Artichokes, 13 Barley Mows, 9 Beehives, 31 Bells, 7 Ben 
 Jonsons, 5 Birds in Hand, 5 Black Boys, 16 Black Bulls, 5 Black 
 Dogs, 29 Black Horses, 10 Black Lions, 6 Black Swans, 19 Blue 
 Anchors, 5 Blue Coat Boys, 6 Blue Lasts, 14 Blue Peters, 27 
 Bricklayers' Arms, 5 Bridge Houses, 22 Britannias, 15 Brown Bears, 
 8 Builders' Arms, 17 Bulls, (some combined with Bells, Butchers, 
 &c.,) 22 Bull's Heads, 4 Camden Heads, 6 Capes of Good Hope, 
 14 Carpenters' Arms, 19 Castles, 6 Catherine Wheels, 7 Champions, 
 5 Chequers, 5 Cherry-trees, 8 Cheshire Cheeses, 11 City Arms, 
 1 8 Cities of London, and other cities, (as Canton, Paris, Quebec, 
 itc.,) 52 Coach and Horses, 12 Cocks, 16 Cocks in combination 
 with Bottles, Hoops, Lions, Magpies, &c., 6 Constitutions, 17 
 
 * M. A. Lower's Essay on Family Nomenclature, vol. i. p. 201. 
 
LONDON SIGNS IN 18G4. 
 
 43 
 
 Coopers' Arms, 7 Crooked Billets, 5 Cross Keys, 61 Crowns, 18 
 Crown and Anchors, 5 Crown and Cushions, 11 Crown and 
 Sceptres, 17 Crowns, combined with other objects, as Anvils, 
 Barley Mows, Thistles, Dolphins, &c., (in all, 112 Crowns; 
 certainly we are a loyal nation !) 12 Devonshire Arms, 2 Devon- 
 shire Castles, 10 Dolphins, 6 Dover Castles, 34 Dukes of 
 Wellington, 32 Dukes of York, 6 Dukes of Sussex, 16 Dukes of 
 Clarence, 7 Dukes of Cambridge, 26 other Dukes, (including 
 Albemarle, Argyle, Bedford, Bridgewater, Gloucester, &c.,) 7 
 various Duchesses, (as Kent, York, Oldenburgh, (fee.,) 14 Duke's 
 Heads, 18 Earls, (Aberdeen, Cathcart, Chatham, Durham, Essex, 
 (fee.,) 6 Edinburgh Castles, 5 Elephants and Castles, 9 Falcons, 
 21 Feathers, 4 Fishmongers' Arms, 4 Five Bells, 5 Fleeces, 6 
 Flying Horses, 5 Fortunes of War, 24 Fountains, 8 Foxes, 12 
 Foxes, combined with Grapes, Hounds, Geese, (fee, 8 Freemasons' 
 Arms, 8 various Generals, (Elliott, Hill, Abercrombie, Picton, 
 Wolfe, (fee.,) 52 Georges, 14 George and Dragons, 19 George the 
 Fourths, 31 Globes, 6 Gloster Arms, 7 Goats, 5 Golden Anchors, 
 5 Golden Fleeces, 15 Golden Lions, 6 Goldsmith's Arms, 56 Grapes, 
 15 Green Dragons, 4 Green Gates, 24 Green Men, 9 Greyhounds, 
 
 7 Griffins, 5 Grosvenor Arms, 8 Guns, 4 Guy of Warwicks, 6 
 Half-moons, 4 Hercules, 2 Hercules Pillars, 5 Floles in the Wall, 
 5 Hoop and Grapes, 4 Hop-poles, 12 Hopes, 11 Horns, 21 
 Horses and Grooms, 7 Horseshoes, 5 Horseshoe and Magpies, 6 
 Jacob's Wells, 5 John Bulls, 16 various "Jolly'' people, as Jolly 
 Anglers, Caulkers, Gardeners, (fee, 12 Kings of Prussia, 10 Kings 
 and Queens, 89 King's Arms, 63 King's Heads, (loyalty again!) 
 
 8 Lambs, 3 Lambs and Flags, 4 Lion and Lambs, 55 different 
 Lords, amongst which, 23 Lord Nelsons, 4 Magpie and Stumps, 
 
 3 Mail-coaches, 3 Men in the Moon, 2 Marlborough Arms, 6 
 ]\Iarlborough Heads, 18 Marquis of Granbys, 6 Marquis of 
 Cornwallises, 14 various Marquises, 9 Masons' Arms, 17 Mitres, 
 
 4 Mulberry-trees, 15 Nag's Heads, 3 Nell Gwynns, 7 Noah's 
 Arks, 7 Norfolk Arms, 4 North Poles, 9 Northumberland Arms, 
 3 Old Parr's Heads, 6 Olive Branches, 6 Oxford Arms, 10 Pea- 
 cocks, (1 Peahen,) 5 Perseverances, 5 Pewter Platters, 10 Phoe- 
 nixes, 3 Pied Bulls, 5 Pine Apples, 9 Pitt's Heads, 15 Ploughs, 6 
 Portland Arms, 5 Portman Arms, 19 Prince Alberts, 5 Prince 
 Alfreds, 3 Prince Arthurs, 15 other Princes, (mostly of the Eoyal 
 Family,) 43 Princes of Wales, 12 Prince Eegents, 6 Princess 
 Ptoyals, 3 Princess Victorias, and a few of the younger Princesses, 
 
44 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 2 Punchbowls, 3 Queens, 3 Queen and Prince Alberts, 17 Queen 
 Victorias, 23 Queen's Arms, 49 Queen's Heads, 8 Railway Taverns, 
 
 8 Eed Cows, 4 Eed Crosses, 73 Eed Lions, 26 Rising Suns, 9 
 Robin Hoods, 5 Rodney Heads, 10 Roebucks, 14 Roses, 48 Rose 
 and Crowns, 4 Royal Alberts, 28 various Royal personages and 
 objects, as Champions, Cricketers, Crowns, Dukes, Forts, &c., 8 
 Royal Georges, 26 Royal Oaks, 13 Royal Standards, 7 Running 
 Horses, 23 Saints, (3 Saint Andrews, 4 St Georges, 3 St Jameses, 
 
 3 St Johns, 2 St Luke's Heads, 2 St Martins, 2 St Pauls, <fec.,) 
 5 Salisbury Arms, 2 Salmons, 4 Salutations, 6 Scotch Stores, 4 
 Seven Stars, 8 Shakespeare Heads, 2 Shepherds and Flocks, 2 
 Shepherds and Shepherdesses, 53 Ships, (23 in combination, on 
 launch, aground, &c.,) 3 Ship and Stars, 2 Ships and Whales, 
 19 Sirs, (including 4 Falsta£fs, Sir John Barleycorn, Middleton, 
 Newton, Wren, Abercrombie, Pindar, Peel, Raleigh, Walworth, 
 &c.,) 5 Skinners' Arms, 4 Southampton Arms, 4 Sportsmen, 3 
 Spotted Dogs, 14 Spread Eagles, 3 Stags, 3 Staghounds, 11 
 Stars, 17 Star and Garters, 8 Sugar-loaves, 19 Suns, 19 Swans, 
 
 9 Talbots, 4 Telegraphs, 3 Thatched Houses, 5 Thistles and 
 Crowns, 21 Three Compasses, 8 Three Crowns, 3 Three Cranes, 
 3 Three Cups, 3 Three Kings, 19 Three Tuns, 8 Tigers, (1 Tiger 
 Cat,) 10 Turk's Heads, 28 Two Brewers, 5 Two Chairmen, 4 
 Unicorns, 10 Unions, 2 Union Flags, 11 Victories, o Vines, 3 
 Waggon and Horses, 10 Watermen's Arms, 9 Weavers' Arms, 
 3 Westminster Arms, 20 Wheat Sheaves, 15 White Bears, 63 
 White Harts, 44 White Horses, 25 White Lions, 35 White 
 Swans, 3 Whittington and Cats, (1 Whittington and Stone,) 16 
 William the Fourths, 11 Windmills, 12 Windsor Castles, 4 Wood- 
 men, 8 Woolpacks, 10 York Arms and York Minster, 12 York- 
 Bhire Greys. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE SIGNS. 
 
 The Greeks honoured their great men and successful command' 
 ers by erecting statues to them ; the Eomans rewarded their 
 popular favourites with triumphal entries and ovations ; modern 
 nations make the portraits of their celebrities serve as signs for 
 public-houses. 
 
 " Vernon, the Butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke, 
 
 Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe, 
 Evil and good have had their tithe of talk, 
 
 And fill'd their signpost then, like Wellesley now.'* 
 
 As Byron hints, popular admiration is generally very short- 
 lived ; and when a fresh hero is gazetted, the next new alehouse 
 will most probably adopt him for a sign in preference to the last 
 great man. Thus it is that even the Duke of Wellington is now 
 neglected, and in his place we see General Havelock, Sir Colin 
 Campbell, Lord Palmerston, and Mr Gladstone, the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, not omitting the fair Princess of Denmark. We 
 will not now dwell upon these modern celebrities, but rather 
 direct our attention to those illustrious dead upon w^hom the 
 signboard honours were bestowed in bygone ages. 
 
 Many signboards have an historic connexion of some sort with 
 the place w^here they are exhibited. Thus the Alfred's Head, 
 at Wantage, in Berkshire, was in all probability chosen as a sign 
 because Wantage was the birthplace of King Alfred. So the 
 Canute Castle, at Southampton, owes its existence to a local 
 tradition ; whilst admiration for the great Scotch patriot made 
 an innkeeper in Stowell Street, Newcastle, adopt Sir William 
 Wallace's Arms. The Caesar's Head was, in 1761, to be seen 
 near the New Church in the Strand,"^ and, in the beginning of 
 this century, was the sign of a tavern in Soho, which afterwards 
 removed to Great Palace Yard, Westminster. Even at the pre- 
 sent day, his head may be seen outside certain village alehouses ; 
 but this we may attribute to that provincial popularity which tlie 
 Roman hero shares with Oliver Cromwell ; for as the Protector 
 gets the blame of having made nearly all the ruins which are to 
 be found in the three kingdoms, so Csesar is generally named by 
 country people as the builder of every old wall or earthwork tJie 
 origin of which is unknown. 
 
 ♦ Lloyd's Evening Postj February 11-13, 176L 
 
46 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Notwithstanding tiie popular censure, Cromwell is still hon- 
 oured with signboards in places where his memory has lingered, 
 as at Kate's Hill, near Dudley. 
 
 In most cases, however, signboard popularity is rather short- 
 lived ; " dulcique animos novitate teneho " seems to be essentially 
 the motto of those that choose popular characters for their sign. 
 Had this modern tribute of admiration been in use at the time of 
 the Preacher, it might have afforded him one more illustration of 
 the vanity of vanities to be found in all sublunary things. Horace 
 Walpole noticed this fickleness of signboard fame in one of his 
 letters : — 
 
 I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs, as I passed through 
 the villages, made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of 
 fame and popularity. I observed how the Duke's Head had succeeded 
 almost universally to Admiral Vernon's, as his had left but few traces of 
 the Duke of Ormond's. I pondered these things in my breast, and said to 
 myself, ^ Surely all glory is but as a sign !' " * 
 
 Some favourites of the signboard have, however, been more 
 fortunate than others. Heney VIII., for instance, may still be 
 seen in many places ; indeed, for more than two centuries after 
 his death, almost every King's Head invariably gave a portrait 
 of Bluff Harry. 
 
 Older kings occasionally occur, but their memories seem to 
 have been revived rather than handed down by successive inn- 
 keepers. If we are to believe an old Chester legend, however, 
 The King Edgar Inn, in Bridge Street of that city, has existed 
 by the same name since the time of the Saxon king. The sign 
 represents King Edgar rowed down the river Dee by the eight 
 tributary kings. The present house has the appearance of being 
 built anterior to the reign of Elizabeth, and the sign looks almost 
 as old, but it would be unwise to give the place or the sign a 
 much higher antiquity. King John is the sign under whose 
 auspices Jem Mace, the pugilist, keeps a public-house in Holywell 
 Lane, Shoreditch. The same king also figures in Albemarle Street 
 and in Bermondsey ; whilst the great event of his reign, Magna 
 Charta, is a sign at ISTew Holland, Hull. John of Gaunt may 
 be seen in many places ] and we may surmise that his upholders 
 are stanch Protestants, who value his character as a reformer and 
 supporter of Wicliffe. The Black Prince may not unlikely 
 have come down to us in an uninterrupted line of signboards ; so 
 little was his identity sometimes understood, that there is a shop- 
 
 * Horace Walpole's Letters. Thirteenth Letter to Mr Conwav Anril 16, 1747. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE, 47 
 
 bill in tlid " Banks Collection " * on wHcli this liero is represented 
 as a negro ! 
 
 There is a Queen Eleanor in London Fields, Hackney, pro- 
 bably the beautiful and affectionate queen of Edward I., buried in 
 Westminster Abbey, 1290, in honour of whom Charing Cross, 
 Cheapcross, and seven other crosses, were erected on the places 
 where her body rested on its way to the great Abbey. What 
 prompted the choice of this sign it is hard to say. 
 
 At Hever, in Kent, a rude portrait of Henry VIII. may be 
 seen. Near this village the Bolleyn or Bullen family formerly 
 held large possessions ; and old people in the district yet shew 
 the spot where, as the story goes, King Henry often used to meet 
 Sir Thomas Bolleyn's daughter Anne. Be this as it may, yearg 
 after the unhappy death of Anne, the village alehouse had for its 
 sign, Bullen Butcheeed ; but the place falling into new hands, 
 the name of the house was altered to the Bull and Butcher, 
 which sign existed to a recent date, and would probably have 
 swung at this moment, but for a desire of the resident clergyman 
 to see something different. He suggested the King's Head ; and 
 the village painter was forthwith commissioned to make the alter- 
 ation. The latter accepted the task, drew the bluff features of 
 the monarch, and represented it as other King's Heads, but in 
 his hands placed a large axe, which signboard exists to this day. 
 
 As for Queen Elizabeth, she was the constant type of the 
 Queen's Head, as her father was of the King's Head ; and, like 
 him, she may still be seen in many places. It is somewhat more 
 difficult to ascertain who is meant by the Queen Catherine in 
 Brook Street, Eatcliffe Highway ; whether it be Queen Catherine 
 of Aragon, or Queen Catherine of Braganza. Queen Anne, in 
 South Street, Walworth, has evidently come down to us as the 
 token of that house since the day of its opening, just as the Queen 
 OF Bohemia, who, until about fifty years ago, continued as a sign 
 in Drury Lane, t This was Elizabeth, daughter of James I,, mar- 
 ried to Frederic V., Elector-Palatine, who, after her husband's 
 death, lived at Craven House, Drury Lane, and died there, 
 February 13, 1661, having been privately married, it is thought, 
 to Lord Craven, who was foremost in fighting the battles of her 
 husband. 
 
 Of KingV Heads, Henry VIII. is the oldest on authentic re- 
 
 * In the Print-room of the British Museum, 
 t Pennant's Histoiy of London, vol. i. p. 99, 
 
48 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 cord. But tliis does not prove that lie was the first ; for, as there 
 lived great men before Agamemnon, so most kings during their 
 reign will, in all probability, have had their signs. Among 
 Henry's successors, we find the head of Edward VI. on a trades 
 token ; whilst Charles the First's Head was the portrait hang- 
 ing from the house of that scoundrel Jonathan Wild, in the Old 
 Bailey. Even at the present day there is a sign of Charles the 
 First at Goring Heath, Beading. The Martyr's Head in Smith- 
 field, 1710, seems also to have been a portrait of Charles I. ; so, 
 at least, the following allusion gives us to understand : — 
 " May Hyde, near Smithfield, at the Martyr's Head, 
 Who charms the nicest judge with noble red, 
 Thrive on by drawing wines, which none can blame, 
 But those who in his sign behold their shame ; " * 
 
 which seems to be an allusion to Puritanical water-drinkers. 
 To this unfortunate king belongs also the sign of the Mourning 
 Bush, set up by Taylor the water-poet over his tavern in Phoenix 
 Alley, Long Acre, to express his grief at the beheading of Charles I. ; 
 but he was soon compelled to take it down, when he put up the 
 Poet's Head, his own portrait, with this inscription : — 
 
 There is many a head hangs for a sign ; 
 
 Then, gentle reader, why not mine ? 
 
 This Poeta Aquaticus," as he sometimes called himself, w^as 
 a boatman on the Thames, and alehouse-keeper by profession, 
 besides being the author of fourscore books of very original 
 poetry. At the same time that he put up his new sign of the 
 Poet's Head, he issued a rhyming pamphlet, in which occur tho 
 following lines : — 
 
 My signe was once a Crowne, but now it is 
 
 Changed by a sudden metamorphosis. 
 
 The crowne was taken downe, and in the stead 
 
 Is placed John Taylor's, or the Poet's Head, 
 
 A painter did my picture gratis make, 
 
 And (for a signe) I hang'd it for his sake. 
 
 Now, if my picture's drawing can prevayle, 
 
 'Twill draw my friends to me, and I'll draw ale. 
 
 Two strings are better to a bow than one ; 
 
 And poeting does me small good alone. 
 
 So ale alone yields but small good to me, 
 
 Except it have some spice of poesie. 
 
 The fruits of ale are unto drunkards such, 
 
 To make 'em sweare and lye that drinke too much. 
 
 But my ale, being drunk with moderation, 
 ♦ "The Quack Vintuers, 1710," a tract written against Brooke and Hilliers, the f(iinOTi3 
 wlne-m^irchants of that time, fr-i'^iently mentioned by the Spectator* 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 49 
 
 VVill quench thirst, and make merry recreation. 
 My book and signe were pubHsh'd for two enda, 
 ; T' invite my honest, civill, sober friends. 
 
 From such as are not such, I kindly pray, 
 Till I send for 'em, let 'em keep away. 
 From Phoenix Alley, the Globe Taverne neare, 
 The middle of Long Acre, I dwell there. 
 
 " John Taylor, Poeta Aquaticus.'* 
 
 The Mourning Crown was afterwards revived, and in the last 
 century it was the sign of a tavern in Aldersgate, where, on Satur- 
 days, when Parliament was not sitting, the Duke of Devonshire, 
 the Earls of Oxford, Sunderland, Pembroke, and Winchelsea, Mr 
 Bagford the antiquary, and Britton the musical small-coalman, 
 used to refresh themselves, after having passed the forepart of 
 the day in hunting for antiquities and curiosities in Little Britain 
 and its neighbourhood. 
 
 Not only was the Crown put in mourning at the death of 
 Charles I., but also the Mitre. Hearne has an anecdote which 
 he transcribed from Dr Bichard Eawlinson : — " Of Daniel Rawlin- 
 son, who kept the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street, and of 
 whose being sequestered in the Bump time, I have heard much. 
 The Whigs tell this, that upon the king's murder he hung his sign 
 in mourning. He certainly judged right ; the honour of the mitre 
 was much eclipsed through the loss of so good a parent of the 
 Church of England. Those rogues say, this endeared him so 
 much to the Churchmen that he soon throve amain, and got a 
 good estate." 
 
 Charles the Second's Head swung at the door of a " music- 
 house" for seafaring men and others, in Stepney, at the end of the 
 seventeenth century In a great room of this house there was an 
 organ and a band of fiddles and hautboys, to the music whereof 
 it was no unusual thing for parties, and sometimes single per- 
 sons, — and those not of very inferior sort, — to dance. At the pre- 
 sent day, that king's memory is still kept alive on a signboard in 
 Herbert Street, Hoxton, under the name of the Merry Monarch. 
 
 To his miraculous escape at Boscobel we owe the Eoyal Oak, 
 which, notwithstanding a lapse of two centuries and a change of 
 dynasty, still continues a very favourite sign. In London alone 
 it occurs on twenty- six public-houses, exclusive of beerhouses, 
 coffee-houses, &c. Sometimes it is called King Charles in the 
 Oak, as at Willen Hall, Warwickshire. The Eoyal Oak, soon 
 after the Kestoration, became a favourite with the shops of 
 
 1/ 
 
50 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 London ; tokens of some half a dozen houses bearing that sign 
 are extant. What is rather curious is that, not many years since, 
 one of the descendants of trusty Dick Pendrell kept an inn at 
 Lewes, in Sussex, called the Eoyal Oak. 
 
 There is a trades token of " William Hagley, at the Restora- 
 tion, in St George's Fields;" but how this event was represented 
 does not appear. At Charing Cross it was commemorated by 
 the sign of the Pageant Tavern, which represented the triumphal 
 arch erected at that place on occasion of the entry of Charles IL, 
 and which remained standing for a year after. This was evi' 
 dently the same house which Pepys calls the Triumph. It seems 
 to have been a fashionable place, for he went there, on the 25th 
 May 1662, to see the Portuguese ladies of Queen Catherine. 
 " They are not handsome," says he, " and their fardingales a 
 strange dress. Many ladies and persons of quality come to see 
 them. I find nothing in them that is pleasing ; and I see they 
 have learned to kiss and look freely up and down already, and, I 
 believe, will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country. 
 They complain much for lack of good water to drink.'' The 
 Triumph is still the sign of a public-housc in Skinner Street, 
 Somers Town. 
 
 Queen Mary was in her day a very popular sign, as may be 
 gathered from many of the shop-bills in the Banks Collection ; 
 whilst William and Mary are still to be seen in Maiden Cause- 
 way, Cambridge. The accession of the house of Brunswick pro- 
 duced the Brunswick, still very common, particularly in the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire. Then come the Georges, of whom 
 George III. and George IV. still survive in nearly as many 
 instances as their successor, William IV. ; with them a few of 
 the royal Dukes of Clarence, Suffolk, and, above all, "the 
 Butcher Cumberland until at length we come to Princess 
 Victoria, and, finally, the Queen Victoria, the British Queen, 
 Island Queen, &c. Under one of her signs at Coopersale, in 
 Essex, is the following inscription : — 
 
 The Queen some day 
 
 May pass this way, 
 And see our Tom and Jerry. 
 
 Perhaps she'll stop, 
 
 And stand a drop, 
 To make her subjects merry." 
 Among the foreign kings and potentates who liave figured in 
 mr open-air walhalla, the Turkish sultans seem to have stood 
 
BISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 51 
 
 foremost. Mokat (Amurat) and Soliman" were constant coffee- 
 house signs in the seventeenth century. Trades tokens are extant, 
 in the Beaufoy and other collections, of a coffee-house in Exchange 
 Alley, the sign of Morat, with this distich: — 
 
 "MoRAT . . Great . Men . Did . Mee . Call 
 Where . Ere . I . Came . I . Conquer'd . All." 
 On the reverse : " Coffee^ tobacco, slierhett, tea, and chocolat retaVd 
 in Exchange Alley. The same house figures in advertisements of 
 the time, giving the prices of those various articles : — 
 
 *^ AT THE Coffee-house in Exchange Alley is sold by Eetail the right 
 Jl\. Coffee -powder, from 4s. to 6 s. per pound, as in goodness : that 
 pounded in a mortar at 3s. per pound ; also that termed the right Turkie 
 Berry, well garbled, at 3s. per pound — the ungarbled for less ; that termed 
 the East India Berry at 20d. per pound, with directions gratis how to make 
 and use the same. Likewise, there you may have Tobacco, Yerinas and 
 Virginia, Chocolatta — the ordinary pound-boxes at 2s. per pound; also 
 Sherbets (made in Turkie) of Lemons, Roses, and Violets perfumed; and 
 Tea according to its goodness, from 6s. to 60s. per pound. For all of which, 
 if any Gentleman shall write or send, they shall be sure of the best as they 
 shall order; and to avoid deceit, warranted under the House Seal — viz., 
 Morat the Great," &c. — Mercurius Puhlicus, March 12-19, 1662. 
 
 The Geeat Mogol also had his share of signboards, of which 
 a few still survive ; one, for instance, in New Bartholomew 
 Street, Birmingham. Kouli Khan we find only in one instance, 
 (though there were probably many more,) namely, on the sign of 
 a tavern by the Quayside, Newcastle, in 1746.'"' This house had 
 formerly been called the Crown, but changed its sign in honour 
 of Thomas Nadir Shah, or Kouli Khan, who, from having been 
 chief of a band of robbers, at last sat himself on the throne of 
 Persia. He was killed in 1747. One of the reasons of his popu- 
 larity in this country was the permission he granted to the Eng- 
 lish nation to trade with Persia, the most chimerical ideas being 
 entertained of the advantages to be derived from that commerce. 
 Hanway, the philanthropist, was for some time concerned in it, 
 but died before he could carry out the scheme ; ultimately, the 
 death of Nadir Shah himself put an end to it. 
 
 The Indian King, which we meet with so frequently, is an 
 extremely vague personage, which various Indian potentates might 
 take for themselves as the cap fitted. It was generally set up 
 when some king from the far East visited the metropolis, and for 
 a short time created a sensation. Thus, in 1710, there were four 
 Indian kings from states between New England, New York 
 
 * Newcaiitle Journal, June 28, 1746. 
 
52 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 and Canada," who had audiences with Queen Anne, and seems to 
 have been a good deal talked about. (See Spectator, No. 50.) 
 
 Again, in 1762, London was honoured with the visit of a 
 Cherokee king, and thus many before and after him have created 
 their nine days' wonder. 
 
 Visits of European monarchs were also commemorated by 
 complimentary signs. One of the oldest was the King of Den- 
 mark, and few kings better than he deserved the exalted place at 
 the alehouse door ; yet, such is the ingratitude of the world, that 
 he seems now completely forgotten. The sign originated in the 
 reign of James I., who married a daughter of Christian IV., King 
 of Denmark. In July 1606, the royal father-in-law came over 
 on a visit, when the two kings began "bousing" and carousing 
 right royally, the court, of course, duly following the example. 
 " I came here a day or two before the Danish king came," says 
 Sir John Harrington, " and from that day he did come till this 
 hour, I have been well-nigh overwhelmed with carousal and 
 sport of all kinds. I think the Dane has strangely wrought on 
 dur English nobles ; for those whom I could never get to taste 
 good liquor, now follow the fashion and wallow in beastly delights. 
 The ladies abandon their society, and are seen to roll about in 
 intoxication," &c.* So late as thirty years ago, not less than 
 three of these signs were left, the most notorious being in the 
 Old Bailey. It used to be open all night for the sale of creature 
 comforts to the drunkard, the thief, the nightwalker, and profli- 
 gates of every description. Slang was the language of the place, 
 and doubtless the refreshments were mostly paid for with stolen 
 money. On execution nights, the landlord used to reap a golden 
 harvest; then there were such scenes of drunkenness as must 
 have done the old king on the signboard good to survey, and 
 made him wish to be inside. The visit of another crowned votary 
 ol Bacchus is commemorated by the sign of the Czar's Head, 
 Great Tower Street: — 
 
 *• Peter the Great and his companions, having finished their day's work, 
 used to resort to a public-house in Great Tower Street, close to Tower 
 Hill, to smoke their pipes and drink beer and brandy. The landlord had 
 the Czar of Muscovy's Head painted, and put it up for his sign, which con- 
 tinued till the year 1808, when a person of the name of Waxel took a fancy 
 to the old sign, and offered the then occupier of the house to paint him 
 a new one for it. A copy was accordingly made of the original, which 
 maintains its station to the present day as the Czar of Muscovy." f 
 
 Nug;e Antique, yol. i. p. 348, f Barrow's Lite of Peter tne Great. 
 
niSTORlC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 53 
 
 The sign is now removed, but tlie public-house still bears the 
 same name. PfiiNCE Eugene also was at one time a popular 
 tavern portrait in England, more particularly after his visit to this 
 country in January 1712. It is named as one of the signs in 
 Norwich in 1750,* but is now, we believe, completely extinct in 
 England ; in Paris there is still one surviving on the Boulevard 
 St Martin. 
 
 The Grave Maurice is of very old standing in London, being 
 named by Taylor the water-poet as an inn at Knightsbridge in 
 1636; at present there are two left, one in Whitechapel Eoad, 
 the other in St Leonard's Eoad. Who this Grave Maurice was 
 is not quite clear. Grave {Ger. Graf, Dutch Graaf, i.e. Count,) 
 Maurice of Nassau, afterwards Maurice, Prince of Orange, was, 
 on account of his successful opposition to the Spanish domination 
 in the Netherlands, very popular in this country. In Baker's 
 Chronicles, anno 1612, we read that : — '^Upon St Thomas-day, 
 the Paltzgrave and Grave Maurice were elected Knights of the 
 Garter ; and the 27 th of December, the Paltzgrave was betrothed 
 to the Lady Elizabeth. On Sunday the 7th of February, the 
 Paltzgrave in person was installed a Knight of the Garter at 
 Windsor, and at the same time was Grave Maurice installed by 
 his deputy, Count Lode wick of Nassau." The Garter conferred 
 on the Grave Maurice was that which had been previously worn 
 by Henri Quatre^ King of France and Navarre. The Palzgrave 
 was Grave Maurice's nephew, the Palatine Count Frederick, by 
 whose marriage with King James's daughter were born the bro- 
 thers Eupert and Maurice, (the latter in 1620,) who distinguished 
 themselves in England during the civil wars. It was this Prince 
 Maurice's great uncle, the Grave Maurice of Nassau, whose coun- 
 terfeit presentment still gives a name to two of our taverns. 
 Another Maurice, about this period, was very popular in England 
 — viz., Maurice Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who "carried away 
 the palm of excellency in whatever is to be wished in a brave 
 prince."t Peacham, enumerating this prince's qualifications, says 
 that he was a good musician, spoke ten or twelve languages, was 
 a universal scholar, could dispute, " even in boots and spurs," for 
 an hour with the best professors on any subject, and was the best 
 bone-setter in the country. He gained, too, much of his popu- 
 larity by his adherence to the Protestant religion during the 
 Thirty Years' War. 
 
 * Gent. Mag., March 1842. 
 
 t Peacham's Compleat Gentleman, p. 79. 
 
54 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 The Paltsgrave became a popular sign at the marriage of 
 Frederick Casimir Y., Elector and Count Palatine of the Khine, 
 King of Bohemia, with Elizabeth, daughter of James I. Trades 
 tokens are extant of a famous tavern, the sign of the Palsgrave's 
 Head, without Temple Bar,* which gave its name to Paltsgrave 
 Court, whilst the Palatine Head was an inn near the French 
 'Change, Soho. Prince Kupert, the Palsgrave's son, who be- 
 haved so gallantly in many of the fights during the Civil War, was 
 no doubt a favourite sign after the Bestoration. We have an in- 
 stance of one on the trades token of Jacob Bobins, in the Strand. 
 
 One of the last foreign princes to whom the signboard honour 
 was accorded, was the King of Prussia. This still occurs in 
 many places. After the battle of Bosbach, Frederick the Great, 
 our ally, became the popular hero in England. Ballads were 
 made, in which he was called " Frederick of Prussia, or the Hero." 
 " Portraits of the hero of Bosbach, with his cocked hat and long 
 pigtail, were in every house. An attentive observer will at this 
 day find in the parlours of old-fashioned inns, and in the port- 
 folios of printsellers, twenty portraits of Frederick for one of 
 George II. The sign-painters were everywhere employed in 
 touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of PRUssiA.t " 
 
 These words of Macaulay remind us of a passage in the Mirror^ 
 No. 82, Saturday, February 19, 1780, bearing on the same sub- 
 ject. In 1739, after the capture of Portobello, Admiral Vernon's 
 
 portrait dangled from every signpost, and he may be figuratively 
 said to have sold the ale, beer, porter, and purl of England for 
 six years. Towards the close of that period, the admiral's favour 
 began to fade apace with the colours of his uniform, and the 
 battle of Culloden was total annihilation for him. . . . The 
 Duke of Cumberland kept possession of the signboard a long 
 time. In the beginning of the last war, our admirals in the 
 Mediterranean, and our generals in North America, did nothing 
 that could tend in the least degree to move his Boyal Highness 
 from his place ; but the doubtful battle of Hamellan, followed 
 by the unfortunate convention of Stade, and the rising fame of 
 
 * The taverns of the seventeenth century appear in many instances to have been up- 
 gtairs. above shops. In 1679, there was a "Mr Crutch, goldsmith, near Temple Bar, at 
 tlie Palsgrave Head.''^ In a similar way, a bookseller lived at the sign of the Rainbow, 
 at thp same time as one Farr, who opened this place as a coffee-house. Another bookseller, 
 .Tames Roberts, who printed most of the satires, epigrams, and other wasp-stings against 
 Pope, lived at the Oxford Arms^ a carriers' inn in Warwick Lane. Finally, Isaac Wal- 
 ton sold his "Complete Angler" **at his shopp in Fleet Street, under the King's Bcod 
 Tavern." 
 
 * Macaulay's Biographical Essays, Frederick the Great. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 55 
 
 the King of Prussia, obliterated the glories of the Duke of Cum- 
 berland as effectually as his Royal Highness and the battle of 
 Oulloden had effaced the figure, the memory, and the renown of 
 Admiral Vernon. The duke was so completely displaced by his 
 Prussian majesty, that we have some doubts whether he met with 
 fair play. One circumstance, indeed, was much against him ; his 
 figure being marked by a hat with the KevenhuUer cock, a mili- 
 tary uniform, and a very fierce look, a slight touch of the painter 
 converted him into the King of Prussia. But what crowned the 
 success of his Prussian majesty, was the title bestowed upon him 
 by the brothers of the brush, ' The Glorious Protestant Hero,' 
 words which added splendour to every signpost, and which no 
 British hero could read without peculiar sensation of veneration 
 and of thirst. 
 
 " For two years, ^ the glorious Protestant hero ' was unrivalled ; 
 but the French being defeated at Minden, upon the 1st of August 
 1759, by the army under Prince Frederick of Brunswick, the 
 King of Prussia began to give place a little to two popular 
 favourites, who started at the same time j I mean Prince 
 Ferdinand, and the Marquis of Granby. Prince Ferdinand was 
 supported altogether by his good conduct at Minden, and by his 
 high reputation over Europe as a general. The 3Iarquis of 
 Granby behaved with spirit and personal courage everywhere ] 
 but his success on the signposts of England was very much owing 
 to a comparison generally made between him and another British 
 general of higher rank, but who was supposed not to have be - 
 haved so well. Perhaps, too, he was a good deal indebted to 
 another circumstance — to wit, the baldness of his head.'' 
 
 That crowned heads, as well as other human beings, were sub- 
 ject to the law of change on the signboard, is amusingly illustrated 
 in an anecdote told by Goldsmith : — 
 
 " An alehouse keeper near Islington, who had long lived at the sign of 
 the French King, upon the commencement of the last war, pulled down 
 his old sign, and put up that of the Queen of Hungary. Under the 
 influence of her red nose and golden sceptre, he continued to sell ale, till 
 she was no longer the favourite of his customers ; he changed her therefore, 
 some time ago, for the King of Prussia, who may probably be changed in 
 turn for the next great man that shall be set up for vulgar admiration."* 
 
 Of all great men, "bene meriti de patria,'' military men 
 appear at all times to have captivated the popular favour much 
 more than those men who promoted the welfare of the country in 
 
 * Ooldsmith's Essay on the Versatility of Popular Favour. 
 
56 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the Cabinet, or who made themselves famous by the arts of peace, 
 and the more quiet productions of their genius. We find hundreds 
 of admirals and generals on the signboard, but we are not awaro 
 that there is one Watt, or one Sir Walter Scott ; yet, what glory 
 and pleasure has the nation not derived from their genius ! Book- 
 sellers formerly honoured the heads and names of great authors 
 with a signboard ; but that custom fell into disuse when signs 
 became unnecessary. At present, the publicans only have signs, 
 and they and their customers can much better appreciate the 
 glorious pomp and pageantry of war," than a parliamentary de- 
 bate. A victory, with so many of the enemy killed and wounded, 
 and so many colours and stands of arms captured, awakens much 
 more thrilling emotions in their breasts than the most useful in- 
 vention, or the most glorious work of art. 
 
 The sea being our proper element, admirals have always had 
 the lion's share of the popular admiration, and their fame appears 
 more firmly rooted than that of generals. Signs of Admirat 
 Drake, Sir Francis Drake, or the Drake Arms, so common 
 at the water-side in our seaports, shew that the nation has not yet 
 forgotten the bold navigator of good Queen Bess, Sir Walter 
 Ealeigh has not been quite so fortunate ; for though he also 
 came in for a great share of signboard honour, yet it was lesa 
 owing to his qualities as a commander, than to his reputation of 
 having introduced tobacco into England, whence he became a 
 favourite tobacconist's sign ; and in that quality, we find him on 
 several of the shop-bills in the Banks Collection. Signs being 
 frequently used in the last century for political pasquinades, ad- 
 vantage was taken of a tobacconist's sign for the following sharp 
 hit at Lord North : — 
 
 " To the Printer of the General Advertiser : — 
 
 " Sir, — Being a smoaker, I take particular notice of the devices used by 
 different dealers in tobacco, by way of ornament to the papers in which 
 that valuable plant is enclosed for sale ; and that used by the worthy 
 Alderman in Ludgate Street, has often given me much pleasure, it having 
 the head of Sir Walter Ealeigh, and the following motto round it : — 
 * Great Britain to great Raleigh owes 
 This plant and country where it grows.* 
 To which I offer the following lines by way of contrast; the truth 
 thereof no one can doubt : — 
 
 To Rubicon and North, old England owes 
 The loss of country where tobacco grows. 
 
 I suppose no dealer will chuse to adopt so unfortunate a subject for 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 57 
 
 their insignia; but perhaps, when you have a spare corner in your 
 General Advertiser j it may not be inadmissible, which will oblige. — Yours, 
 kc.f A Smoaker. 
 
 **Feb. 1, 1783. General Advertiser, March 13, 1784." 
 
 Brave old Admiral Benbow, who held up the honour of the 
 British flag in the reign of William III., is still far from uncommon. 
 Admiral Duncan, Howe, and Jervis still preside over the sale 
 of many a hogshead of beer or spirits ; whilst Admiral Vernon 
 seems to have secured himself an everlasting place on the front 
 of the alehouse, by reason of his dashing capture of Portobello ; 
 the name of that town, or sometimes the Portobello Arms, being 
 also frequently adopted, instead of the admiral's name. Admiral 
 Keppel is another great favourite. There is a public-house with 
 that sign, on the Fulham Eoad, where, some years ago, the por- 
 trait of the admiral used to court the custom of the passing 
 traveller, by a poetical appeal to both man and beast : — 
 " Stop, brave boys, and quench your thirst ; 
 If you won't drink, your horses murst." 
 
 But, above all. Admiral Eodney seems to have obtained a 
 larger share of popularity than even Nelson himself. In Boston 
 there is the Eodney and Hood ; and in Creggin, Montgomery- 
 shire, the Eodney Pillar Inn, with the following Anacreontic 
 effusion on a double-sided signboard : — 
 
 " Under these trees, in sunny weather, 
 Just try a cup of ale, however ; 
 And if in tempest or in storm, 
 A couple then to make you warm ; 
 But when the day is very cold. 
 Then taste a mug a twelvemonth old." 
 Ou the reverse : — 
 
 " Rest and regal yourself, 'tis pleasant ; 
 Enough is all the present need, 
 That 's the due of the hardy peasant 
 "Who toils all sorts of men to feed. 
 Then muzzle not the ox when he treads out the corn, 
 Nor grudge honest labour its pipe and its horn." 
 The last addition to this portrait gallery, before Sir Charles 
 Napier, was the head of the gallant besieger of Algiers, Lord 
 ExMOUTH. In 1825, there was one at Barnstaple, in Devon, with 
 the following address to the wayfarer : — 
 
 " All you that pace round field or moor, 
 Pray do not pass John Armstrong's door ; 
 There 's what will cheer man in his course. 
 And entertainment for his horse." 
 
58 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Finally, there is still one sign left in honour of that deserving 
 but unfortunate commander, Captain Cook, murdered by the 
 natives of Owhyhee in 1779. His name is preserved as the sign 
 of an alehouse in Mariner Street, London. 
 
 Though the fame of generals seems to be more short-lived than 
 that of admirals, yet a few ancient heroes still remain . Amongst 
 these, General Elliott, or Lord Heathfield, the defender of 
 Gibraltar, seems to be one of the greatest favourites ; perhaps his 
 popularity in London was not a little increased by the present 
 which he made to Astley, of his charger named Gibraltar ; who, 
 performing every evening in the ring, and shining forth in the 
 circus bills, would certainly act as an excellent puff for the 
 generaFs glory. This hero's popularity is only surpassed by that 
 of the Marquis of Granby. Though nearly a century has elapsed 
 since the death of the latter, (Oct. 19, 1770,) his portrait is still 
 one of the most common signs. In London alone, he presides over 
 eighteen public-houses, besides numerous beerhouses. The first 
 one is said to have been hung out at Hounslow, by one Sumpter, 
 a discharged trooper of the regiment of Horse Guards, which the 
 Marquis of Granby had commanded as colonel. 
 
 Among the generals of a later period, are General Tarleton, 
 (or, as he is called on a sign in Clarence Street, Newcastle, Colonel 
 Tarlton,) General Wolfe, General Moore, and Sir Ralph 
 Abercrombie. At a tavern of this last denomination in Lombard 
 Street, some thirty-five or forty years ago, the House of Lords' 
 Club " used to meet, not composed, as might be expected from the 
 name, of members of the peerage, but simply of the good citizens 
 of the neighbourhood, each dubbed with a title. The president 
 was styled Lord Chancellor ; he wore a legal wig and robes, and a 
 mace was laid on the table before him. The title bestowed upon 
 the members depended on the fee — one shilling constituted a 
 Baron, two shillings a Viscount, three shillings an Earl, four 
 shillings a Marquis, and five shillings a Duke ; beyond that rank 
 their ambition did not reach. This club originated early in the 
 eighteenth century, at the Fleece in Cornhill, but removed to the 
 Three Tuns in South wark, that the members might be more re- 
 tired from the bows and compliments of the liondon apprentices, 
 who used to salute the noble lords by their titles as they passed 
 to and fro in the streets about their business. One of their last 
 houses was the Yorkshire Grey, near Eoll's Buildings. At 
 present they are, we believe, extinct. In Newcastle, also, there was 
 
MISTOEIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 59 
 
 a House of Lords, of which Bewick the wood-engraver was a 
 member. They used to hold their meetings in the Groat Market 
 of that town. 
 
 The Duke's Head, and the Old Duke, are signs that, for the 
 last two or three centuries, have always been applied to some 
 ducal hero or other, for the time being basking himself in the 
 noontide sun of fame. One of the first to whom it was applied, 
 was Monck, Duke of Albemaele after the Restoration ; then 
 came Oemond, Marlborough, Cumberland, York, and, at 
 present, Wellington and the Duke of Cambridge. The Duke's 
 Head in Upper Street, corner of Gad's Eow, Islington, was the 
 sign of a public-house kept by Thomas Topham, the strong man, 
 who, in 1741, in honour of Admiral Vernon's birthday, lifted 
 three hogsheads of water, weighing 1859 lb., in Coldbath 
 Fields.* 
 
 The Duke of Albemarle figured on numberless signboards 
 after the Restoration ; but at the same period, there existed still 
 older signs, on which his grace was simply called Monck ; as for 
 instance, that hung out by Will. Kidd, suttler to the Guard at 
 St James's," t which was the Monck's Head. Kidd had 
 probably followed the army in many a campaign in former years, 
 and was much more accustomed to the name of General Monck 
 than that of his Grace the Duke of Albemarle. Of the Duke of 
 Ormond there is still one instance remaining in Longstreet, Tet- 
 bury, Gloucester, under the name of the Ormond's Head. A 
 very few Dukes of Marlborough are also left. In the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century, the Duke of Marlborough's Head 
 in Fleet Street, was a tavern used for purposes very similar to 
 those which we are accustomed now-a-days to behold at the St 
 James' and the Egyptian Halls. Among the Bagford Bills, and 
 in the newspapers of the time, it is constantly mentioned as the 
 place where something wonderful or amusing was to be seen — 
 panoramas, dioramas, moving pictures, marionnettes, curious pieces 
 of mechanism, (S^c, &c.J 
 
 The Lord Craven was once a very popular sign in London. 
 It occurs amongst the trades tokens of Bishopsgate Street Without, 
 and even at present there is a Craven Head and two Craven 
 
 * For more particulars about Topham, see p. 88. 
 t Trades tokens in the Beaufoy Collection. 
 
 X For several centuries. Fleet Street was the head-quarters for shows and exhibitions 
 out of fair-time. Ben Jonson speaks of "the City of Nineveh at Fleetbridge." This was 
 in the reign of James I. Mrs Salmon's waxworks were among the last remaining lights 
 in that locality. 
 
6o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Arms in London. These signs were in honour of William Ciaven, 
 eldest son of Sir William Craven, knt., (Sheriff of London temp. 
 Queen Elizabeth.) This nobleman passed the greater part of his 
 life abroad, serving the Protestant cause in Holland and in 
 Germany. During the Civil War, he at various times gave 
 pecuniary assistance to King Charles II., who at the Restoration 
 created him Viscount Craven of Uffington, &c. He is said to 
 have been privately married to Elizabeth, daughter of James L, the 
 Queen of Bohemia. He died, April 19, 1697. Though his 
 public and military career had certainly been brilliant, yet he 
 owed his popularity probably more to his civic virtues, shewn 
 during the plague period, when he and General Monck were 
 almost the only men of rank that remained in town to keep order. 
 He even erected a pesthouse at his own expense in Pesthouse 
 Field, Carnaby Market, (now Marshall Street, Golden Square.) 
 His assistance during the frequent London fires, also tended to 
 make him a favourite with the Londoners. 
 
 " Lord Craven, in the time of King Charles II., was a constant man at a 
 fire ; for which purpose he always had a horse ready saddled in his stables, 
 and rewarded the first that gave him notice of such an accident. It was a 
 good-natured fancy, and he did a good deal of service ; but in that reign 
 everything was turned to a joke. The king being told of a terrible fire 
 that was broke out, asked if Lord Craven was there yet. ' Oh !' says some- 
 body by, ' an't please your majesty, he was there before it began, waiting 
 for it, he has had two horses burnt under him already.'* On such occasions 
 he usually rode a white horse, well known to the London mob, which was 
 said to smell the fires from afar ofi"." 
 
 The Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's quondam favourite, might have 
 been met with on many signs long after the Restoration. There 
 are trades tokens of a shop or tavern with such a sign on the 
 Bankside, Southwark, and tokens are extant of two other shops 
 that had the Essex Arms. In the last century there was an 
 Essex Head in Essex Street ; in this tavern the Eobin Hood 
 Society, " a club of free and candid inquiry,^' used to meet. It 
 was originally established in 1613, at the house of Sir Hugh 
 Middleton, the projector of the New Eiver for supplying London 
 with water. Its first meetings were held at the houses of mem- 
 bers, but afterwards, the numbers increasing, they removed to 
 the above tavern, and its name was altered into the " Essex 
 Head Society." In 1747 it removed to the Robin Hood in 
 Butcher Row, near Temple Bar. The society attained a position 
 of so much importance, that a history of its proceedings was pub- 
 
 ^ Richardsoniana, p. 140. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORA TI VE. 6 I 
 
 lished in 1764, giving an account of the subjects debated, and re- 
 ports of some of the speeches. Seven minutes only were allowed 
 to each speaker, at the expiration of which the Baker ^ or president, 
 summed up. Many a young politician here winged his first flight.'^ 
 
 In 1784, the year of his death, Dr Johnson instituted at this 
 house a club of twenty-four members, in order to insure him- 
 Belf society for at least three days in the week. He composed the 
 regulations himself, and wrote above them the following motto 
 from Milton : — 
 
 To-day deep thoughts with me resolve to drench 
 In mirth which after no repenting draws." 
 
 The house at that time was kept by Samuel Greaves, an oJd 
 servant of Mrs Thrale. Each night of non-attendance was visited 
 on the members by a fine of threepence. Members were to spend 
 at least sixpence, besides a penny for the waiter. Each member 
 had to preside one evening a month. 
 
 That the Earl of Essex, who had taken up arms against hia 
 queen, should have continued more than a century after his death, 
 is easily accounted for by the immense popularity he enjoyed, ex- 
 ceeding that of any of his cotemporaries. More difficult to explain 
 is the presence on English signboards of the Dutch Admiral van 
 Tromp ; yet we find him in Church Street, Shoreditch, and in St 
 Helen's, Lancashire. His countryman. Mynheer van Donck, would 
 certainly make a much more appropriate public-house sign, 
 
 Names of battles and glorious faits d' armes have also been 
 much used as signs, — thus, Gibraltar, Portobello, the Battle 
 OF THE Nile, the Mouth of the Nile, Trafalgar, the Battle 
 OF Waterloo, the Battle of the Pyramids, are all more or 
 less common. The Bull and Mouth is said to have a similar 
 origin, being a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, the entry to 
 Boulogne Harbour, which grew into a popular sign after the cap- 
 ture of that place by Heniy YIII. The first house with this sign 
 is said to have been an inn in Aldgate. In less than a century 
 the name was already corrupted into the " Bull and Mouth," and 
 the sign represented by a black bull and a large mouth. Thus it 
 appears on the trades tokens, and also in a sculpture in the fagade 
 of the Queen's Hotel, St Martin's-le- Grand, formerly the Bull 
 and Mouth Inn. Of the same time also dates the Buil and 
 
 ♦ Grosley, in his Tour to London, 1772. vol i. p. loO, mentions this society, whi h 
 at that period was held at the Robin Hood, and says it was a semi-public club, into 
 which all sorts of people were admitted, and all sorts of topics, religious as wpU as politi- 
 cal, were discussed. He makes an odd mistake, however, when he says that the 
 president ,vas a baker by trade. 
 
62 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Gate, a corruption of the Boulogne Gates, which Henry VIII. 
 ordered to be taken away, and transported to Hardes, in Kent, 
 -where they still (?) remain. The Bull and Gate was a noted inn 
 in the seventeenth century in Holborn, where Fielding makes his 
 hero Tom Jones put up on his arrival in London. It is still in 
 existence under the same name, though much reduced in size. 
 There is another in New Chapel Place, Kentish Town ; and a 
 few imitations of it were carried to distant provincial towns by 
 the coaches of old times. 
 
 Another sign of the same period, although not commemorative 
 of a battle, was the Golden Field Gate, mentioned by Taylor 
 the water-poet, in 1632, as the sign of an inn at the upper end 
 of Holborn. It was put up in honour of the Champ du Drap 
 d'Or, where Henry YIII. and Francis I., 
 
 Those suns of glory, those two lights of men, 
 
 Met in the vale of Arde." — Henry VIII., a. i. s. 1. 
 
 The signs of great men who have distinguished themselves in 
 the civil walks of life are much more scarce. Archimedes we 
 meet with as an optician s sign. He had been adopted by that 
 class of workmen on account of the burning lenses with which he 
 set the Roman fleet on fire at Syracuse. Various implements of 
 their trade were added as distinctions by the several shops who 
 sold spectacles under his auspices, such as Golden Peospects oi 
 Perspectives, {i.e., spectacles or any other glass that assisted the 
 sight,) Globes, King's Arms, &c. Among the Bagford Bills there 
 is one of John Marshall, optician on Ludgate Hill, " at the sign 
 of the Old Archimedes and Two Golden Spectacles, which 
 represents Archimedes taking astronomical observations, a huge 
 pair of spectacles being suspended on one side of the sign, and on 
 the other a lantern.* Archimedes and Three Pair of Golden 
 Spectacles was the sign of another optician in Ludgate Street, 
 1697, who evidently had adopted Marshall's sign with the addition 
 of one pair of spectacles, in the hope of filching some of his cus- 
 tomers. Sir Isaac Newton was another telescope-maker's sign 
 in Ludgate Street circa 1795. f At the present day he occurs 
 on a few public-houses ; but it is somewhat more gratifying for 
 our national pride to see a coflfee-house in the Rue Arcade, Paris, 
 
 * This John Marshall afterwards, when he was appointed the king's optician, changed 
 his sign into the Archimedes and King's Arms, under which we find him, in 1718, adver- 
 tising his "chrystall dressing-glasses for ladies, which shew the face as nature hath 
 made it, which other looking-glasses do not." 
 
 t Banks's Collection. 
 
BISTOEIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 63 
 
 named after him. Loed Bacon's Head was the sign of W. 
 Bickerton, a bookseller, without Temple Bar, in 1735 ; Locke's 
 Head, of T. Peele, between the Temple Gates, 1718 ; James 
 Ferguson figured at the door of an optical instrument maker in 
 New Bond Street in 1780.* No doubt this optician was a 
 Scotchman, who had given preference to a national celebrity. 
 Just 60, Andrew Miller, the great publisher and friend of Thom- 
 son, Hume, Fielding, &c., took the Buchanan Head for the sign 
 of his shop in the Strand, opposite St Catherine Street, the house 
 where the famous Jacob Tonson had lived, in whose time it was 
 the Shakespeare's Head. But Miller preferred his countryman, 
 and put up the less known head of George Buchanan, (1525-1582.) 
 Buchanan was author of a version of the Psalms, and at various 
 times of his life tutor to Queen Mary Stuart, Moderator of the 
 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Principal of St 
 Leonard's, preceptor to James I., director of the Chancery, Privy 
 Seal, &c. 
 
 Cardinal Wolsey occurs in many places, particularly in Lon- 
 don, Windsor, and the neighbourhood of Hampton Court. An- 
 drew Marvel is stiU commemorated on a sign in Whitefriargate, 
 Hull, of which town he was a native. Thomas Gresham, the 
 founder of the Eoyal Exchange, was a favourite in London after 
 the opening of the first Exchange in 1566 ; and Sir Hugh 
 Middleton, the projector of the New River, is duly honoured 
 with two or three signs in Islington. 
 
 There exists a curious alehouse picture, called the Three 
 Johns, in Little Park Street, Westminster, and in White Lion 
 Street, Pentonville. The same sign, many years ago, might have 
 been seen in Bennett Street, near Queen Square, in the former 
 locality. It represented an oblong table, with John Wilkes in 
 the middle, the Rev. John Horne Tooke at one end, and Sir John 
 Glynn (sergeant-at-law) at the other. There is a mezzotinto 
 print of this picture (or the sign may be from the print) drawn 
 and engraved by Richard Houston, 1769. John Wilkes, on whom 
 the popular gratitude for writing the Earl of Bute out of power 
 conferred many a signboard, still survives in a few spots. In a 
 small Staffordshire town called Leek-with-Lowe, there is a stanch 
 re-publican, who to this day keeps the Wilkes'-Head as his sign , 
 whilst another one occurs in Bridges Street, St Ives. Sir Francis 
 Burdett is also far from forgotten, and may still be seen " hang 
 
 * Banks's Collection. 
 
64 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 in effigy" at Castlegate, Berwick, in Nottingham, and in a few 
 other places. 
 
 In 1683, we find Sir Edmundbury Godfrey on the picture- 
 board of Langley Curtis, a bookseller near Fleetbridge. Being 
 the martyr of a party, he undoubtedly for a while must have been 
 a popular sign. Lord Anglesey was, in 1679, adopted by an inn 
 in Drury Lane. This, we suppose, was Arthur, second Viscount 
 Valentia, son of Sir Thomas Annesley, (Lord Mountmorris,) and 
 elevated to the British peerage by the title of Earl of Anglesey 
 in 1661 ; he died in 1686. One of the acts which probably con- 
 tributed most to his popularity was that he, with the Lord Caven- 
 dish, Mr Howard, Dr Tillotson, Dr Burnet, and a few others, 
 appeared to vindicate Lord Kussell in the face of the court, and 
 gave testimony to the good life and conversation of the prisoner. 
 
 The bulky figure of Paracelsus, or, as he called himself, Philip- 
 pus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 
 used formerly to be a constant apothecaries' symbol. From an 
 advertisement in the London Gazette^ July 22-26, 1680, about a 
 stolen horse " with a sowre head," we gather that there was at 
 that time a sign of Paracelsus in Old Fish Street. Informa- 
 tion about the horse with "the sowre head" would also be re- 
 ceived at a house in Lambeth, with no less a dignitary for its 
 sign than the Bishop of Canterbury, his grace having been 
 thus honoured from a neighbourly feeling. 
 
 Doctor Butler, {pb. 1617,) physician to James I., and, accord- 
 ing to Fuller, " the iEsculapius of that age," invented a kind of 
 medicated ale, called Dr Butler's ale, "which, if not now, (1784,) 
 was, a few years ago, sold at certain houses that had the Butler's 
 Head for a sign."* One of the last remaining Butler's Heads 
 was in a court leading from Basinghall into Coleman Street. 
 
 That singularly successful quack, Lilly, though he ought not 
 to be placed in such good company as the king's physician, was 
 also a constant sign, in the last century, at the door of sham 
 doctors and astrologers. Not unfrequently they combined the 
 Balls (a favourite sign of the quacks) with Lilly's head, as the 
 Black Ball and Lillyhead, the sign of Thomas Saffold, " an 
 approved and licensed physician and student in astrology : he 
 .hath practised astronomy for twenty-four years^ and hath had 
 the Bishop of London's licence to practise physick ever since the 
 4th day of September 1674, and hath, he thanks God for it, 
 
 * The Angler. Hawkins's edition. 1784. 
 
PLATE V. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORA TI VE. 6 5 
 
 great experience and wonderful success in those arts.'** He pro- 
 mised to perform the usual tours de force. 
 
 " foretell what s'ever wai* 
 
 By consequence to come to pass ; 
 
 As death of great men, alterations, 
 
 Diseases, battles, inundations, 
 
 Or search'd a planet's house to know 
 
 Who broke and robb'd a house below. 
 
 Examined Venus and the Moon 
 
 To find who stole a silver spoon." 
 
 Butler's Hudibras, 
 
 This address was " at the Black Ball and Lilly Head, next door 
 to the Feather shops that are within Blackfriars gateway, which 
 is over against Ludgate Church, just by Ludgate in London." * 
 
 Classic authors also have come in for their share of signboard 
 popularity in this country, which, at the time they flourished, 
 was about as little civilized as the Sandwich Islands in the days 
 of Captain Cook. These signs were set up by booksellers ; thus 
 Homer's Head was, in 1735, the signof Lawton Gilliver, against 
 St Dunstan's Church, publisher of some of Pope's works, and 
 in 1761, of J. Walker at Charing Cross. Cicero, under the 
 name of Tully's Head, hung at the door of Robert Dodsley, a 
 famous bookseller in Pall Mall. In a newspaper of 1756, ap- 
 peared some verses " on Tully's head in Pall Mall, by the Be v. 
 
 Mr G s, of which the following are the first and the last 
 
 stanzas : — 
 
 " Where Tully's bust and honour'd name 
 Point out the venal page, 
 There Dodsley consecrates to fame 
 The classics of his age. 
 
 Persist to grace this humble post, 
 
 Be Tully's head the sign, 
 Till future booksellers shall boast 
 
 To sell their tomes at thine." 
 
 About the same time, the favourite Tully's Head was also the 
 sign of T. Becket, and P. A. de Hondt, booksellers in the Strand, 
 near Surrey Street. Hoeaces Head graced the shop of J. 
 White in Fleet Street, publisher of several of Joseph Strutt^s 
 antiquarian works; and Yirgil's Head of Abraham van den 
 Hoeck and George Richmond, opposite Exeter Change in the 
 Strand, in the middle of the last century. Of Seneca's Head 
 two instances occur, J. Round in Exchange Alley in 1711, and 
 
 ♦ Basrford Bills, Bib- Harl. 5964. 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Varenne, near Somerset House, in the Strand, at the same 
 
 period. 
 
 A few of our own poets are also common tavern pictures. As 
 early as 1655 we find a (Ben) Jonson's Head tavern in the 
 Strand, where Ben Jonson's chair was kept as a relic* In that 
 same year it was the sign of Robert Pollard, bookseller, behind 
 the Eoyal Exchange. Ten years later it occurs in the following 
 advertisement : — 
 
 " "YTTHEREAS Thomas Williams, of the society of real and well-mean- 
 V V ing Chymists hath prepaired certain Medicynes for the cure and 
 
 prevention of the Plague, at cheap rates, without Benefit to himself, and 
 for the publick good, In pursuance of directions from authority, be it 
 known that these said Medicynes are to be had at Mr Thomas Fidges, in 
 Fountain Court, Shoe Lane, near Fleet Street, and are also left by him to 
 be disposed of at the Green Ball, within Ludgate, the Ben Jonson's 
 Head, near Yorkhouse," &c.t 
 
 There is still a Ben Jonson's Head tavern with a painted por- 
 trait of the poet in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street ; a Ben Jonson's Inn 
 at Pemberton, Wigan, Lancashire ; and another at Weston-on-the 
 Green, Bicester. 
 
 Shakespeare's Head is to be seen in almost every town 
 where there is a theatre. At a tavern with that sign in Great 
 Russell Street, Govent Garden, the Beefsteak Society (diflferent 
 from the Beefsteak Club,) used to meet before it was removed to 
 the Lyceum Theatre. George Lambert, scene-painter to Covent 
 Garden Theatre, was its originator. This tavern was at one time 
 famous for its beautifully painted sign. The well-known Lion^s 
 Head, first set up by Addison at Button's, was for a time placed 
 at this house. J There was another Shakespeare Head in Wych 
 Street, Drury Lane, a small public-house at the beginning of 
 this century, the last haunt of the Club of Owls, so called on 
 account of the late hours kept by its members. The house was 
 
 * " On the chair of Ben Johnson, now remaining at Robert Wilson's, at the sign of 
 the Johnson's Head, in the Strand." — Wit and Drollery^ 1655, p. 79. 
 
 t The Newes, August 24, 1655. This may have been the above-mentioned tavern, as 
 York House was situated in the Strand on the site of the present York Buildings. 
 
 X Addison's Lion's Head, the box for the deposition of the correspondence of the 
 Guardian, was originally placed at Button's, over against Tom's in Great Russell 
 Street. " After having become a receptacle of papers and a spy for the Guardian, it 
 was moved to the Shakespeare's Head Tavern, under the Piazza in Covent Garden, 
 kept by a person named Tomkins. and in 1751 was for a short time placed in the Bod- 
 ford Coffeehouse, immediately adjoining the Shakespeare Tavern, and there employed 
 as a medium of literary communication by Dr Jolin Hill, author of the 'Inspector.' In 
 1769, Tomkins was succeeded by his waiter, named Campbell, as proprietor of the 
 tavern and Lion's Head, and by him the latter was retained till 1804, when it was pur- 
 chased by the late Charles Richarason, after whose death in 1827 it devolved to his son, 
 and has since become the property of his Grace the Duke of Bedford." — Till, in hia 
 Prefi&ce to Descriptive Catalosue of English Medals. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORA TI VE. 6 J 
 
 then kept by a lady under the protection of Dutch Sam the 
 pugilist. After this it was for one year in the hands of the well- 
 known Mr Mark Lemon, present editor of Punchy then just newly 
 married to Miss Eomer, a singer of some renown, who assisted him 
 in the management of this establishment. The house was chiefly 
 visited by actors from Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the 
 Olympic, whilst a club of literati used to meet on the first floor. 
 
 Sir John Falstaff, who so dearly loved his sack, could not 
 fail to become popular with the publicans, and may be seen on 
 almost as many signboards as his parent Shakespeare. 
 
 Milton's Head was, in 1759, the sign of George Hawkins, a 
 bookseller at the corner of the Middle Temple gate. Fleet Street ; 
 at present there are two Milton's Head public-houses in Notting- 
 ham. Dryden's Head was to be seen in 1761, at the door of 
 H. Payne and Crossley, booksellers in Paternoster Eow. At 
 Kate's Cabin, on the Great Northern Eoad, between Chesterton 
 and Alwalton, there is a sign of Dryden's head, painted by Sir 
 William Beechey, when engaged as a house-painter on the decora- 
 tion of Alwalton Hall. Dryden was often in that neighbourhood 
 when on a visit to his kinsman, John Dryden of Chesterton. 
 
 Pope's Head was in favour with the booksellers of the last 
 century ; thus the Gentleman's Magazine, Sept. 1770, mentions 
 a head of Alexander Pope in Paternoster Eow, painted by an 
 eminent artist, but does not say who the painter was. Edmund 
 Curll, the notorious bookseller in Eose Street, Covent Garden, 
 had Pope's head for his sign, not out of affection certainly, but 
 out of hatred to the poet. After the quarrel w^hich arose out of 
 Curll's piratical publication of Pope's literary correspondence, 
 Curll, in May 22, 1735, addressed a letter of thanks to the House 
 of Lords, ending thus, — " I have engraved a new plate of Mr 
 Pope's head from Mr Jervas's painting, and likewise intend to 
 hang him up in effigy for a sign to all spectators of his falsehood 
 and my own veracity, which I will always maintain under the 
 Scotch motto, ' Nemo me impune lacessit.' " E. Griffiths, a 
 bookseller in St Paul's Churchyard since 1750, had the Dunciad 
 for his sign. He was agent for a very primitive social-evil move- 
 ment ; advertisements emanating from this " sett of gentlemen 
 sympathising with the misfortunes of young girls'* occur in the 
 papers of June and July 1752. One of the regulations was, 
 8^ None need to apply but such as are Fifteen years of age, 
 and not above Twenty-five ; older are thought past being re- 
 
68 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 claim' d, unless good Eecommendations are given. Drinkers ol 
 spirits and swearers have a bad chance." 
 
 The Man of Eoss is at the present day a signboard at Wye 
 Terrace, Eoss, Herefordshire ; the house in which John Kyrle, the 
 Man of Eoss, dwelt, was, after his death, converted into an inn. 
 Twenty or thirty years ago the following poetical effusion was to 
 be read stuck up in that inn : — 
 
 *' Here dwelt the Man of Ross, 0 traveller here. 
 Departed merit claims the rev' rent tear. 
 Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health, 
 With generous joy he vievv'd his modest wealth. 
 If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheer'd moments pass, 
 Fill to the good man's name one grateful glass. 
 To higher zest shall memory wake thy soul, 
 And virtue mingle in th' ennobled bowl. 
 Here cheat thy cares, in generous visions melt, 
 And dream of goodness thou hast never felt." 
 The head of Eowe, the first emendator, corrector, and illus- 
 trator of Shakespeare, was in 1735 the sign of a bookseller in 
 Essex Street, Strand. The Camden Head and Camden Arms 
 occur in four instances as the sign of London publicans. Cam- 
 den Town, however, may perhaps take the credit of this last sign. 
 Addison's Head was for above sixty years the sign of the then 
 well-known firm of Corbett & Co. — first of C. Corbett, aftep 
 wards of his son Thomas, booksellers in Fleet Street from 1740 
 till the beginning of this century. Dr Johnson's Head, ex- 
 hibiting a portrait of the great lexicographer, is a modern 
 sign in Bolton Court, Fleet Street, opposite to where the great 
 man lived, and which was in his time occupied by an upholsterer. 
 It is sometimes asserted to be the house in which the Doctor 
 resided, but this statement is wrong, for the house in which he 
 had apartments was burned down in 1819. Finally, a portrait 
 of Sterne, under the name of the Yorick's Head, was the sign of 
 John Wallis, a bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1795. 
 
 Of modern poets Lord Byron is the only one who has been 
 exalted to the signboard. In the neighbourhood of Nottingham his 
 portrait occurs in several instances ; his Mazeppa also is a great 
 favourite, but it must be confessed its popularity has been greatly 
 assisted by the circus, by sensational engravings, and, above aU, 
 by that love for horse flesh innate to the British character. Don 
 Juan also occurs on a publican's signboard at Cawood, Selby, 
 West Eiding ; and Don John at Maltby, Eotheram, in the same 
 county ; but perhaps these are merely the names of race horses. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORA TI VE. 69 
 
 The latest of all literary celebrities who attained sufficient 
 popularity to entitle him to a signboard was Sheridan Knowles, 
 who was chosen as the sign of a tavern in Bridge Street, Covent 
 Garden, facing the principal entrance to Drury Lane Theatre, 
 (now a nameless eating-house.) There the Club of Owls used to 
 meet. Sheridan Knowles was one of the patrons, and Augustine 
 Wade, an author and composer of some fame, was chairman of 
 the club in those days. Pierce Egan and Leman Kede were 
 amongst its members ; so that it may be conjectured that the 
 nights were not passed in moping.* 
 
 Mythological divinities and heroes, also, have been very fairly 
 represented on our signboards. At this head, of course, Bacchus 
 (frequently with the epithet of Jolly) well deserves to be placed. 
 In the time when the Bush was the usual alehouse sign, or 
 rather when it had swollen to a crown of evergreens, a chubby 
 little Bacchus astride on a tun was generally a pendant to the 
 crown. In Holland and Germany we have seen a Beer king, (a 
 modern invention, certainly,) named Cambrinus, taking the place 
 of Bacchus at the beer-house door ; but, according to the six- 
 teenth century notions, Bacchus included beer in his dominions. 
 Hence he is styled " Bacchus, the God of brew'd wine and sugar, 
 grand patron of robpots, upsey freesy tipplers, and supernaculum 
 takers, this Bacchus, who is head warden of Vintner's Hall, ale 
 Connor, mayor of all victualling houses," &c. — Massinger's Virgin 
 Martyr, a. ii. s. 1. Next to Bacchus, Apollo is most frequent, but 
 whether as god of the sun or leader of the Muses it is difficult to 
 say. Sometimes he is called Glorious Apollo, which, in heraldic 
 language, means that he has a halo round his head.t In the 
 beginning of this century there was a notorious place of amuse- 
 ment in St George's Fields, Westminster Eoad, called the Apollo 
 Gardens — a Vauxhall or a Ranelagh of a very low description. 
 It was tastefully fitted up, but being small and having few attrac- 
 tions beyond its really good orchestra, it became the resort of 
 the vulgar and the depraved, and was finally closed and built 
 over. 
 
 Minerva also is not uncommon — probably not so much be- 
 cause she was the goddess of wisdom, but as " ye patroness of 
 scholars, shoemakers, diers," &c.J Juno has a temple in Church 
 
 * Our slang friends the burlesque writers and parodists, would probably say something 
 About mopping. — Ed. 
 
 ♦ An "Apollo in his erlory" is a charge in the apothecarios' arms. 
 
 X Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaism. Lansdovfne MSS. 231, p. 106. 
 
70 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Lane, Hull, and Neptune of course is of frequent occurrence in 
 a country that holds the 
 
 " Imperium pelagi saevumque tridentem." 
 The smith being generally a thirsty soul, his patron Vulcan 
 constitutes an appropriate alehouse sign, and in that capacity he 
 frequently figures, particularly in the Black country. Amongst 
 the quaint Dutch signboard inscriptions there is one which, in 
 the seventeenth century, was written under a sign of Vulcan 
 lighting his pipe : — • 
 
 " In Vulcanus. Hy steekt zyn pyp op aan't vyer 
 Die goed tabak wil hebben die komt alhier. 
 Je krygt een gestopte pyp toe en op kermis een glas dik bier." * 
 
 Vulcan, as the god of fire, without which there is no smoke, was 
 a common tobacconist's sign in Holland two hundred years ago. 
 One of these dealers had the following rhymes affixed to his 
 Vulcan sign : — 
 
 " Vulcan die lamme smid als hy was moci van smeden 
 Ging hy wat zitten neer en ruste zyne leden 
 De'Goden zagen 't aan, hy haalde nit zyn zak 
 Zyn pypye en zyn doos en rookte doen tabak." + 
 
 Mercury, the god of commerce, was of frequent occurrence, 
 as might be expected. Amongst the Banks collection of shop- 
 bills there is one of a fanshop in Wardour Street with the sign of 
 the Mercury and Fan. Both Cupid and Flora were signs at 
 Norwich in 1750,:|: and Comus is frequently the tutelary god of 
 our provincial public-houses. Castor and Pollux, represented 
 in the dress of Eoman soldiers of the empire standing near a cask 
 of tallow, was the sign of T. & J. Bolt, tallow-chandlers, at the 
 corner of Berner Street, Oxford Street, at the end of the last 
 century, for the obvious reason that, like the Messrs Bolt, they 
 were two brothers that spread light over the world. Our ad- 
 miration for athletic strength and sports suggested the sign of 
 Hercules, as well as his biblical parallel Samson. 
 
 As for the Hercules Pillars, this was the classic name for 
 the Straits of Gibraltar, which by the ancients was considered 
 the end of the world ; in the same classic sense it was adopted 
 on outskirts of towns, where it is more common now to see the 
 
 * At the Vulcan. He lights his pipe at the fire ;— whosoever wants to buy good 
 tobacco let him come here ; — you will get a pipe filled into the bargain, and a glass of 
 strong beer in fair time. 
 
 t Vulcan, that lame blacksmith, when he got tirea over his work, sat down a while to 
 rest his limbs. The gods saw it ; he took his cutty pipe and his tobacco box fjut of bis 
 pocket and smoked a pipe of tobacco. 
 
 : 6' ml. Mag., March 1843. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 71 
 
 World's End. In 1667 it was tlie sign of Eichard Penck in 
 Pall Mall, and also of a public-house in Piccadilly, on the site 
 of the present Hamilton Place, both which spots were at that 
 period the end of the inhabited world of London. The sign 
 generally represented the demi-god standing between the pillars, 
 or pulling the pillars down — a strange cross between the biblical 
 and the pagan Hercules. 
 
 The Pillars of Hercules in Piccadilly is mentioned by Wycherley 
 in the " Plain Dealer," 1676 : — " I should soon be picking up all 
 our own mortgaged apostle spoons, bowls, and beakers out of 
 most of the alehouses betwixt the Hercules Pillars and the Boat- 
 swain in Wapping.'^ The Marquis of Granby often visited the 
 former house, and here Fielding, in Tom Jones," makes Squire 
 Western put up : — " The Squire sat diown to regale himself over 
 a bottle of wine with his parson and the landlord of the Her- 
 cules Pillars, who, as the Squire said, would make an excellent 
 third man, and would inform them of the news of the town ; for, 
 to be sure, says he, he knows a great deal, since the horses of 
 many of the quality stand at his house.''* In Pepys' time there 
 was a Hercules Pillars tavern in Fleet Street. Here the merry 
 clerk of the Admiralty supped with his wife and some friends on 
 Feb. 6, 1667-8 ; his return home gives a good idea of London 
 after the fire : — 
 
 Coming from the Duke of York's playhouse I got a coach, and a 
 humour took us and I carried them to the Hercules Pillars, and there did 
 give them a kind of supper of about 7s. and very merry, and home round 
 the town, not through the ruins. And it was pretty how the coachman by 
 mistake drives us into the ruins from London Wall unto Coleman Street, 
 and would persuade me that I lived there. And the truth is, I did think 
 that he and the linkman had contrived some roguery, but it proved only a 
 mistake of the coachman ; but it was a cunning place to have done us a 
 mischief in, as any I know, to drive us out of the road into the ruins, and 
 there stop, while nobody could be called to help us. But we came home 
 safe." 
 
 Atlas carrying the World was the very appropriate sign of 
 the map and chart makers. In 1674 there was one in Cornhill,t 
 and under a print of Blanket fair (the fair held on the Thames 
 when frozen over) occurs the following imprint : — " A map of 
 the river Thames merrily called Blanket-fair, as it was frozen in 
 the memorable year 1683-4, describing the Booths, Footpaths, 
 Coaches, Sledges, Bull -baitings, and other remarks. Sold by 
 
 * The History of Tom Jones, oook xrl ch. ii, 
 t Lond. Guz., June 18-22, 1674. 
 
72 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Joseph Moxon on the West side of Fleet ditch, at the sign of the 
 Atlas." Equally appropriate was Orpheus as the sign of the 
 music shop of L. Peppard, next door to Bickerstaffe's coffee- 
 house, Eussell Street, Covent Garden, 1711. No fault either 
 can be found with the Golden Fleece as the sign of a woollen 
 draper — Jason's golden fleece being an allegory of the wool 
 trade ; but at the door of an inn or public-house it looks very 
 like a warning of the fate the traveller may expect within — in 
 being fleeced. In the seventeenth century there was a Fleece 
 Tavern in St James's : — 
 
 *^ A RARE Consort of four Trumpets Marine, never heard of before in 
 jlJl. England.* If any person desire to come and hear it, they may 
 repair to the Fleece Tavern near St James's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon 
 every day in the week except Sundays. Every consort shall continue one 
 hour and so to begin again. The best places are 1 shilling, the others six- 
 pence." — London Gazette, Feb. 1-4, 1674. 
 
 This is amongst the earliest concerts on record in London. 
 Another example of this sign worth mentioning was the Fleece 
 Tavern, (in York Street,) Covent Garden, which, says Aubrey, 
 " was very unfortunate for homicides ; there have been several 
 killed — three in my time. It is now (1692) a private house. 
 Clifton, the master, hanged himself, having perjured himself." t 
 Pepys does not give this house a better character : — " Decemb. 
 1, 1660. Mr Flower did tell me how a Scotch knight waa 
 killed basely the other day at the Fleece in Covent Garden, 
 where there had been a great many formerly killed." On the 
 Continent, also, this symbol was used; for instance, in 1687, by 
 Jean Camusat, a printer in the Rue St Jacques, Paris ; his colo- 
 phon represented Jason taking the golden fleece off a tree, with 
 the motto — " Tegit et quos tangit inaurat." 
 
 Another sign, of which the application is not very obvious, is 
 Pegasus or the Flying Hoese, unless it refers to this rhyme : — 
 " If with water you fill up your glasses, 
 
 You' 11 never write anything wise ; 
 For wine is the horse of Parnassus, 
 
 Which hurries a bard to the skies." 
 
 John Gay, at the Flying Horse, between St Dunstan's Church 
 
 * This was not true, for Pepys went (24th Oct. 1667) to hear the same instrument 
 played by a Mr Prin, a Frenchman, " which he do beyond belief, and the truth is, it do 
 BO far outdo a trumpet as nothing more, and he do play anything very true. The instru- 
 ment is open at the end I discovered, but he would not let me look into it," Philips, in 
 his "New World of Words," 1696, describes it as "an instrument with a bellows, re- 
 sembling a lute, having a long neck with a string, which being struck with a hairbow 
 sounds like a trumpet." 
 
 + Aubrey, Miscellanies upon various subjects. 
 
niSTORIG AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 73 
 
 and Chancery Lane, 1680," is an imprint under many ballads. 
 John Gay undoubtedly had adopted this sign as a compliment to 
 the Templars, in whose vicinity he lived, and whose arms are a 
 Pegasus on a field arg. As for the poor balladmongers, whose 
 works Gay printed, they certainly put Pegasus too much to the 
 plough, to imagine that he alluded to theirs as a Flying Horse 
 Instead of the Flying Horse, a facetious innkeeper at Rogate 
 Petersfield, has put up a parody in the shape of the Flying Bull 
 The Hope and the Hope and Anchor are constant signh 
 with shop and tavern keepers. Pepys spent his Sunday, the 
 23d September 1660, at the Hope Tavern, in a not very godly 
 manner ; and his account shews the curious business manage- 
 ment of the taverns in the time : — 
 
 " To the Hope and sent for Mr Chaplin, who with Nicholas Osborne and 
 one Daniel come to us, and we drank of two or three quarts of wine, which 
 was very good ; the drawing of our wine causing a great quarrel in the 
 house between the two drawers which should draw us the best, which 
 caused a great deal of noise and falling out, till the master parted them, 
 and came up to us and did give us a long account of the liberty he gives 
 his servants, all alike, to draw what wine they will to please his customers ; 
 and we eat above two hundred walnuts." 
 
 In consequence of these excesses Master Pepys was very ill 
 next day, but the particulars of the illness, though very graphi- 
 cally entered into the diary, are unfit for publication.'* 
 
 The Fortune was adopted from considerations somewhat 
 similar to those that prompted the choice of the Hope. It 
 occurs as the sign of a tavern in Wapping in 1667. The trades 
 tokens of this house represent the goddess by a naked figure 
 standing on a globe, and holding a veil distended by the wind, — 
 a delicate hint to the customers, for it is a well-known fact that 
 a man who has "a sheet in the wind" is as happy as a king. 
 Doubtless the name of the Elysium, a public-house m Drury Lane 
 about thirty years ago, had also been adopted as suggestive of 
 the happiness in store for the customers who honoured the place 
 by their company. 
 
 Ballads, novels, chapbooks, and songs, have also given their 
 contingent. Thus, for instance, the Blind Beggar of Bethnal 
 Green — still a public-house in the Whitechapel Koad — has deco- 
 rated the signpost for ages. The ballad was written in the reign 
 of Queen Elizabeth ; but the legend refers to Henry de Montfort, 
 son of the Earl of Leicester, who was supposed to have fallen at 
 the battle of Evesham in the reign of Henry III. Not only wad 
 
74 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the Beggar adopted as a sign by publicans, but be also figured on 
 the staff of the parish beadle ; and so convinced were the Bethnal 
 Green folks of the truth of the story, that the house called Kirby 
 Castle was generally pointed out as the Blind Beggar's palace, and 
 two turrets at the extremity of the court wall as the place where 
 he deposited his gains. 
 
 Still more general all over England is Guy of Warwick, who 
 occurs amongst the signs on trades tokens of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury : that of Peel Beckford, in Field Lane, represents him as an 
 armed man holding a boar's head erect on a spear. The wondrous 
 strange feats of this knight form the subject of many a ballad. 
 In the Roxburgh Collection there is one headed, " The valiant 
 deads of chivalry atchieved by that noble knight, Sir Guy of 
 Warwick, who, for the love of fair Phillis, became a hermit, and 
 dyed in a cave of a craggy rock a mile distant from Warwick. 
 In Normandy stoutly won by fight the Emperor's daughter of 
 Almayne from many a valiant, worthy knight."* His most 
 popular feat is the slaying of the Dun Cow on Dunsmore Heathj 
 which act of valour is commemorated on many signs, 
 " By gallant Guy of Warwick slain 
 "Was Colbrand, that gigantick Dane. 
 Nor could this desp'rate champion daunt 
 A dun cow bigger than elephaunt. 
 But he, to prove his courage sterling, 
 His whinyard in her blood embrued ; 
 He cut from her enormous side a sirloin, 
 And in his porridge-pot her brisket stew'd, 
 Then butcher'd a wild boar, and eat him barbicu*d." 
 
 H udder sf or d Wiccamical CTiaplet 
 A public-house at Swainsthorpe, near Norwich, has the follow* 
 ing inscription on his sign of the Dun Cow : — 
 " Walk in, gentlemen, I trust you'll find 
 The Dun Cow's milk is to your mind." 
 Another on the road between Durham and York : — 
 " Oh, come you from the east, 
 Oh, come you from the west, 
 If ye will taste the Dun Cow's milk, 
 Ye '11 say it is the best." 
 
 The King and Miller is another ballad-sign seen in many 
 places. It alludes to the adventure of Henry II. with the Miller 
 
 ♦ See in Bib. Top. Brit., vol. iv., a Critical Memoir on the Story of Guy of Warwick, 
 by the Rev. Samuel Pegge, who supposes that Guy lived in Saxon times, and was the 
 eon of Simon, Baron of Wallingford. He married Felicia, (Phillis,) the daughter and 
 heiress of Rohand. Earl of Warwick, who flourished in the reign of Edward the Elder, 
 ai)d eo became Earl of Warwick, 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 75 
 
 of Mansfield.* Similar stories are told of many different kings : 
 of King John and the Miller of Charlton, (from whom Cuckold's 
 Point got its name ;) of King Edward and the tanner of Drayton 
 Basset ; of Henry VIII. ; of James Y. of Scotland, (the guidman 
 of Ballageich ;) of Henry IV. of France and the pig- merchant ; 
 of Charles V. of Spain and the cobbler of Brussels ; of Joseph II. ; 
 of Frederick the Great ; and even of Haroun-al-Easchid, who used 
 to go about incognito under the name of II Bondocani. 
 
 The most frequent of all ballad signs is unquestionably Eobin 
 Hood and Little John, his faithful accolyte. Robin Hood has 
 for centuries enjoyed a popularity amongst the English people 
 shared by no other hero. He was a crack shot, and of a manly, 
 merry temper, qualities which made the mob overlook his confused 
 notions about meum and tuum, and other peccadilloes. His sign 
 is frequently accompanied by the following inscription : — 
 " You gentlemen, and yeomen good, 
 Come in and drink with Robin Hood. 
 If Robin Hood be not at home, 
 Come in and drink with Little John." 
 
 Which last line a country publican, not very well versed in 
 ballad lore, thus corrected : — 
 
 " Come in and drink with J emmie Webster." 
 At Bradford, in Yorkshire, the following variation occurs : — 
 " Call here, my boy, if you are dry, 
 The fault's in you, and not in I. 
 If Robin Hood from home is gone. 
 Step in and drink with Little John," 
 
 At Overseal, in Leicestershire : — 
 
 " Robin Hood is dead and gone, 
 Pray call and drink with Little John." 
 Finally, at Turnham Green : — 
 
 " Try Charrington's ale, you will find it good. 
 Step in and drink with Robin Hood. 
 
 If Robin Hood," &c. 
 And to shew the perfect application of the rhyme, mine host 
 informs the public that he is Little John from the old Pack 
 Horse," (a public-house opposite.) 
 
 One of the ballads in Robin Hood's Garland has given another 
 signboard hero, namely, the Pindar of AVakefield, t George a 
 Green. 
 
 * In Ritson's Ancient Songs and Ballads. 
 
 t The "pindar"wastheinanwhotooKcareofstraycattle, which he kept in the pinfold, 
 or pound, until it was claimed and the expenses paid. 
 
76 
 
 THE HIISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 *• In Wakefielde there lives a jolly Pindar, 
 In Wakefielde all on the greene. 
 * There is neither knight nor squire/ said the Pindar, 
 ' Nor baron so bold, nor baron so bold, 
 Dares make a trespass to the town of Wakefielde, 
 But his pledge goes to the Pinfold.' " 
 
 Drunken Barnaby mentions the sign in Wakefield in 1634 : — * 
 
 " Straight at Wakefielde I was seen, a', 
 Where I sought for George-a-Green, a*, 
 But could find not such a creature, 
 Yet on sign I saw his feature. 
 Whose strength of ale had so much stirr'd me. 
 That I grew stouter far than Jordie." 
 
 There was formerly a public-house near St Chad's "Well, 
 Clerkenwell, bearing this sign, which at one period, to judge from 
 the following inscription, would seem to have been more famous 
 than the celebrated Bagnigge Wells hard by. A stone in the 
 garden-wall of Bagnigge House said : — 
 
 S. T. 
 
 This is Bagnigge 
 House, neake 
 THE Pindar A 
 Wakefeilde. 
 1680. 
 
 Among the more uncommon ballad signs, we find the Babes 
 IN THE Wood at Hanging Heaton, Dewsbury, West Biding. 
 Jane Shoee was commemorated in Shoreditch in the seventeenth 
 century, as we see from trades tokens. Valentine and Orson we 
 find mentioned as early as 1711,^ as the sign of a cofiee-house in 
 Long Lane, Bermondsey ; and there they remain till the present day. 
 
 Other chapbook celebrities are Mother Shipton, Kentish 
 Town, and Low Bridge, Knaresboro' ; which latter village disputes 
 with Shipton, near Londesborough, the honour of giving birth 
 to this remarkable character in the month of July 1488. The fact 
 is duly commemorated under her signboard in the former place : — 
 " Near to this petrifying wall f 
 I first drew breath, as records tell." 
 
 Her life and prophecies have at all times been a favourite theme 
 in popular literature. If we may believe her biographers, she 
 
 * Daily Courant, Feb. 19, 1711. 
 
 t The "Dropping Well," one of the most noted petrifying springs in England, and w 
 named on account of its percolating through the rock that hangs over it. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 77 
 
 predicted the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the dissolution of the 
 monasteries, the establishment of the Protestant religion under 
 Edward VI., the cruelty of Queen Mary, the glorious reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, the defeat of the Armada, the Plague and Great 
 Eire, and many things not yet come to pass. Like the Delphic 
 oracles, her predictions were given in metre, and veiled in mystery. 
 The plague and fire, for instance, are thus foretold : — 
 Triumphant death rides London thro', 
 And men on tops of houses go." 
 She is represented as of a most unprepossessing appearance ; 
 although we certainly might have expected better from the 
 daughter of a necromancer, or ^Hhe phantasm of Apollo, or some 
 aerial daemon who seduced her mother — her body was long, 
 and very big-boned ; she had great goggling eyes, very sharp and 
 fiery ; a nose of unproportionable length, having in it many crooks 
 and turnings, adorned with great pimples, and which, like vapours 
 of brimstone, gave such a lustre in the night, that the nurst 
 needed no other light to dress her by in her childhood.""^ 
 
 Another necromancer. Merlin, shares renown with Mother 
 Shipton, both in chapbooks and on signboards. Merlin's Cave 
 is the sign of a public-house in Great Audley Street, and in 
 Upper Eosomon Street, Clerkenwell, in which places he doubtless 
 still plays his old pranks, of changing men into beasts. In- 
 numerable romances and histories of Merlin were printed in the 
 middle ages. He appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth as early 
 as the twelfth century, and Alain de I'lsle gave an ample 
 explanation of his prophecies in seven books, printed in 1608. 
 " This Merlin," says M. de la Monnoye, " tout magicien et fils 
 du diable que Ton I'a cru,'' has by the good Carmelite, Baptiste 
 Mantuanus, been metamorphosed into a saint. At the end of his 
 " Tolentinum," a poem in three books, in honour of St Nicholas, 
 (anno 1509,) he thus speaks of Merlin : — 
 
 " Vitse veaerabilis ohm 
 
 Vir fuit et vates, venturi prsescius eevi, 
 
 "Merlinus, laris infando de semine cretus. 
 
 Hie satus infami coitu pietate refulsit 
 
 Eximia superum factus post funera consors." 
 
 * This information we gather from a chapbook entitled " The Strange an J Wonderful 
 History and Prophecies of Mother Shipton, by Ferraby, printer on the Market Place, 
 Hull. It is evidently a reprint of a chapbook of the time oi Charles II., as appears from 
 many allusions. 
 
 t Once there \^as a man who lei a holy life, and was a prophet, who could see 
 what wouUi come to pass ; his name was Merlin, and he was the offspring of an evil and 
 fiendish spirit. But though born from such a father, he shone forth in virtue, and afte^ 
 his death, became a companion of the saints. 
 
78 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 His prophecies were also translated into Italian, and printed at 
 Venice in 1516. The annotators say it was reported that Merlin, 
 by his enchantments, transported from Ireland those huge stones 
 found in Salisbury plain. His cave was in Clerkenwell, on the 
 site where the alehouse now stands, and was in the reign of 
 James I., one of the London sights strangers went to see."^ 
 
 We have a well-known chapbook hero in Jack of Newbury, . 
 who had already attained to the signboard honours in the 
 seventeenth century, when we find him on the token of John 
 Wheeler, in Soper Lane (now Queen Street, Cheapside,) whilst at 
 present, he may be seen in a full-length portrait in Chiswell Street, 
 Finsbury Square. This Jack of Newbury, alias Winchcombe, 
 alias Smallwoode, " was the most considerable clothier England 
 ever had. He kept an hundred looms in his house, each managed 
 by a man and a boy. He feasted King Henry VIII. and his first 
 Queen Catherine at his own house in Newbury, now divided into 
 sixteen clothiers' houses. He built the Church of Newbury, 
 from the pulpit westward to the town."t At the battle of 
 Flodden in 1513, he joined the Earl of Surrey with a corps of one 
 hundred men, well equipped at his sole expense, who distin- 
 guished themselves greatly in that fight. He is buried in New- 
 Dury, where his brass effigy is still to be seen, purporting that he 
 died February 15, 1519. An inn bearing his sign in Newbury, is 
 said to be built on the site of the house where he entertained 
 King Harry. Thomas Deloney, the ballad-writer, wrote a tale 
 about him, entitled, The pleasant history of John Winchcomb, in 
 his younger years called Jack of Newberry, the famous and 
 worthy clothier of England, declaring his life and love, together 
 with his charitable deeds and great hospitalitie. Entered in the 
 Stationers' Book, May 7, 1596.'* 
 
 Whittington and his Cat is still very common, not only in 
 London but in the country also. Sometimes the cat is repre- 
 sented without her master, as on the token of a shop in Long- 
 acre, 1657, and on the sign of Varney, a seal-engraver in 
 
 New Court, Old Bailey, 1783, whose shopbillj represents a 
 large cat carved in wood holding an eye-glass by a chain. The 
 story of Whittington is still a favourite chapbook tale, and has 
 its parallel in the fairy tales of various other countries. Strapa- 
 rola, in his Piacevole Notte," is, we believe, the first who men- 
 
 * Henrv Peacham's Compleat Gentleman. 
 
 ♦ .lohnCollet's Historical Anecdotes, Add. MSS. 3890, p. 113. 
 X In the Banks Collection. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 79 
 
 tions it The earliest English narrative occurs in Johnson's 
 " Crown Garland of Golden Koses," 1612, but there is an allu- 
 sion to " Whittington and his Puss" in the play of ^' Eastward 
 Hoe !" 1603. For more than a century it was one of the stock 
 pieces of Punch and his dramatic troop. Sept. 21, 1688, Pepys 
 went to see it : " To Southwark Fair, very dirty, and there saw 
 the puppet-show of Whittington, which is pretty to see ; and how 
 that idle thing do work upon people that see it, and even myself 
 too." Foote, in his comedy of the " Nabob," makes Sir Matthew 
 Mite account for the legend by explaining the cat as the name 
 of some quick-sailing vessels by which Whittington imported 
 coals, which should have been the source of the Lord Mayor's 
 wealth. In the Highgate Eoad there is a skeleton of a cat in a 
 public-house window, which by the people who visit there is 
 tirmly believed to be the earthly remains of Whittington's identi- 
 cal cat. The house is not far distant from the spot where the 
 future Lord Mayor of London stopped to listen to the city bells 
 inviting him to return. It is now marked by a stone, with the 
 event duly inscribed thereon. 
 
 King Arthur's Eound Table is to be seen on various public- 
 houses. There is one in St Martin's Court, Leicester Square, 
 where the American champion, Heenan, put up when he cama 
 to contest the belt with the valiant Tom Sayers. The same 
 sign is also often to be met with on the Continent. In the seven- 
 teenth century there was a famous tavern called la Tables 
 Roland in the Yallee de Misere at Paris. John-o'-Groat's 
 House is also used for a sign ; there was one some years ago 
 in Windmill Street, Haymarket ; and at present there is a John- 
 o'-Groat's in Gray Street, Blackfriars Eoad. Both these and 
 the Eound Table contain, we conceive, some intimation of that 
 even-handed justice observed at the houses, where all comers are 
 treated alike, and one man is as good as another. 
 
 Darby and John, a corruption of Darby and Joan, and bor- 
 rowed from an old nursery fable, is a sign at Crowle, in Lin- 
 colnshire ] and Hob in the Well, with a similar origin, at Little 
 Port Street, Lynn ; w^hilst Sir John Barleycorn is the hero 
 of a ballad allegorical of the art of brewing, tfec. 
 
 A favourite ballad of our ancestors oricrinated the sign of the 
 London Apprentice, of which there are still numerous examples. 
 How they were represented appears from the Spectator, No. 428, 
 viz., " with a lion's heart in each hand." The ballad informs us 
 
80 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 that tlie apprentice came off with flying colours, after endless 
 adventures, one of which was that like Richard Coeur-de-Lion — 
 he "robbed the lion of his heart." The ballad is entitled " The 
 Honour of an Apprentice of London, wherein he declared his 
 matchless manhood and brave adventures done by him in Turkey, 
 and by what means he married the king's daughter of that same 
 country." 
 
 The Essex Serpent is a sign in King Street, Covent Garden, 
 and in Charles Street, Westminster, perhaps in allusion to a fabu- 
 lous monster recorded in a catalogue of wonders and awful prog- 
 nostications contained in a broadside of 1704,* from which we 
 learn that, " Before Henry the Second died, a dragon of marvel- 
 lous bigness was discovered at St Osyph, in Essex." Had we any 
 evidence that it is an old sign, w^e might almost be inclined to con- 
 sider it as dating from the civil war, and hung up with reference to 
 Essex, the Parliamentary general ; for though we have searched 
 the chroniclers fondest of relating wonders and monstrous appari- 
 tions, we have not succeeded in finding any authority for the St 
 Osyph Dragon, other than the above-mentioned broadside. 
 
 Literature of a somewhat higher class than street ballads, has 
 likewise contributed material to the signboards. One of the oldest 
 instances is the Lucrece, the chaste felo-de-se of Roman history, 
 who, in the sixteenth century, was much in fashion among the 
 poets, and was even sung by Shakespeare. We find that " Thomas 
 Berthelet, prynter unto the kynges mooste noble grace, dwellyng(i 
 at the sygne of the Lucrece, in Fletestrete, in the year of our Lordc^ 
 1536." In 1557, it was the sign of Leonard Axtell, in St Paul's 
 Churchyard ; and in the reign of Charles I., of Thomas Purfoot, 
 in New Rents, Newgate Market, both booksellers and printers. 
 The Complete Angler was the usual sign of fish-tackle sellers in 
 the last century, and the essays of the Spectator made the charac- 
 ter of Sir Roger de Coverley very popular with tobacconists. 
 
 * This broadside is reprinted in Notes and Queries for January 15, 1859. Sussex had 
 its snake as late as 1614. There is a pamphlet m the Harl. Collection, entitled, " True 
 and Wonderful — a discourse relating a strange and monstrous serpent, (or dragon,) 
 Aately discovered, and yet living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughter both of 
 men and cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson, in Sussex, two miles from Horsam, in 
 a woode called St Leonard's Forrest, and thirtie miles from London, this present month 
 of August 1614." That this Sussex snake caused a great sensation, appears from the 
 fact that seventeen years after, it is alluded to in ''Whimsies: or, A New Cast of Cha- 
 racters," 1631 : " Nor comes his [the ballad-monger's] invention far short of his imagi i- 
 ation. For want of truer relations for a neede, he can find you out a Sussex dragon^ 
 some sea or inland monster, drawn out by some Shoe Lane man, [i.e., a sign-painter ; 
 they all lived in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane,] in Gorgon-like features, to enforce more horrf>f 
 in the beholder." 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 Si 
 
 Doctor Syntax hangs at the door of many public-houses, as at 
 Preston, Oldham, Newcastle, Gateshead, &c. ; the Lady of thi5 
 Lake at Lowestoft ; Dandie Dinmont at West Linton, Carlisle ; 
 Pickwick in Newcastle ; the Red Eover, Barton Street, Glou- 
 cester ; * Tam o' Shanter, Laurence Street, York, and various 
 other towns ; Eobin Adair, Benwell, Newcastle. Popular songs 
 also belong to this class, as the Labs o' Gowrie, Sunderland and 
 Durham; Auld Lang Syne, Preston Street, Liverpool ; Tulloch- 
 GoRUM and Loch-na-Gar, both in Manchester ; Eob Roy, Tithe- 
 burn Street, Liverpool ; Flowers of the Forest, Blackfriars 
 Road. On the whole, however, this class of names is much more 
 prevalent in the northerly than in the southerly districts of Eng- 
 land. In the south, if we except The Old English Gentleman, 
 who occurs everywhere, the great Jim Crow is almost the only 
 instance of the hero of a song promoted to the signboard. Robin- 
 son Crusoe is common to all the seaports of the kingdom, whilst 
 Uncle Tom, or Uncle Tom's Cabin, is to be found everywhere, 
 not only in England, but also on the Continent. Any little un- 
 derground place of refreshment or beer-house difficult of access, is 
 considered as fittingly named by Mrs Beecher Stowe's novel. 
 
 A very appropriate, and not uncommon public-house sign is 
 the Toby Philpott. That he well deserves this honour, appears 
 from the following obituary notice, (in the Geiit Mag,, Dec. 
 1810:)— 
 
 " At the Ewes farm-house, Yorkshire, aged 76, Mr Paul Parnell, farmer, 
 grazier, and maltster, who, during his lifetime, drank out of one silver pint 
 cup upwards of £2000 sterling worth of Yorkshire Stingo, being remark- 
 ably attached to Stingo tipple of the home-brewed best quality. The cal- 
 culation is taken at 2d. per cupful. He was the bon-vivant whom O'Keefe 
 celebrated in more than one of his Bacchanalian songs under the appella- 
 tion of Toby Philpott." 
 
 Between St Albans and Harpenden, there was, some years ago. 
 and perhaps there is still, a public-house called the Old Eosoij. 
 This name also appears to be borrowed from the well-known scng, 
 Old Rosin the Beau/' beginning thus : — 
 
 " I have travell'd this wide world over, 
 And now to another I'U go, 
 
 * The title of Cooper's novel seems to have taken hold of the popular fancy to an as- 
 tonishing degree : not only are there several public-houses who have adopted it as tlicij 
 sign, but also race-horses, ships, and locomotive engines have been named after \\. 
 There is even a baked potato-can in the streets of London, decorated with that name ; it 
 is built in the shape of a locomotive-engine, japanned red, and wheeled about the ftT'^o?^ 
 by an old woman. The name on a brass plate is screwed to the can, similar U5 the namea 
 of locomotive-engines. 
 
 f 
 
82 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 I know that good quarters are waiting 
 
 To welcome old Rosin the Beau (ter.) 
 When I am dead and laid out on the counter, 
 
 A voice you will hear from below, 
 Singing out brandy and water 
 
 To drink to old Rosin the Beau (ter.) 
 You must get some dozen good fellows, 
 
 And stand them all round in a row. 
 And drink out of half-gallon bottles, 
 
 To the name of old Rosin the Beau," &c. 
 
 These stanzas, and one or two more to the same import, weie 
 quite sufficient to make the old Beau a fit subject for the sign- 
 board, irrespective of his other amiable qualities held forth, in the 
 song. The very common Old House at Home, too, is borrowed 
 from a once-popular ballad, the verse of which is too well known 
 to need quotation here. 
 
 The equally common Hearty Good Fellow is adopted from 
 a Seven Dials ballad : — 
 
 " I am a hearty good fellow, 
 I live at my ease, 
 I work when I am willing, 
 I play when I ploase. 
 
 With my bottle and my glass, 
 
 Many hours I pass, 
 Sometimes with a friend, 
 
 And sometimes with a lass," &c. 
 
 Of signboards portraying artists, but few instances occur ; and 
 when they do, they are almost exclusively the property of print- 
 sellers. We have only met with three : Eembrandt's Head, the 
 sign of J. Jackson, printseller, at the corner of Chancery Lane, 
 Fleet Street, 1759 ; and of Nathaniel Smith, the father (1) of J. 
 T. Smith, in Great May's Buildings, St Martin's Lane. Another 
 member of that family, J. Smith, who kept a printshop in Cheap- 
 side, where several of Hogarth's engravings were published, 
 assumed the Hogarth's Head for his sign. The third is the 
 Van Dyke's Head, the sign of C. Philips, engraver and print- 
 publisher in Portugal Street, in 1761. Hogarth also had a head 
 of Van Dyke as his trade symbol, made from small pieces of cork, 
 but being gilt, he called it the Golden Head, {see under Miscel- 
 laneous Signs.) 
 
 In old times, more than at present, music was deemed a neces- 
 sary adjunct to tavern hospitality and public-house entertainment. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 83 
 
 The fiddlers and ballad singers of the " tap " room, however, gave 
 way to the newer brass band at the doors, and this, in its turn, is 
 now gradually fading before the "music hair' and so-called 
 " concert " arrangement. Singing, it may be remarked, is one of 
 the first follies into which a man falls after a too free indulgence 
 in the cup. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that musical 
 signboards should have swung from time to time over the ale- 
 house door. Paganini, who contributed so much to the popu- 
 larity of that well-known part of the " Carnival de Yenise ^' — still 
 the shibboleth of all fiddlers — is of very common occurrence. 
 
 The love for music is also eloquently expressed by the sign of 
 the Fiddlek's Arms, Gornal Wood, Staffordshire. Jenny Lind 
 seems to be the only musician of modern times who has found her 
 way to the signboard. In the last century, Handel's Head 
 was common ; but at the present moment, no instance of its use 
 remains. The Maid and the Magpie, a very common tavern 
 title, is believed to be the only sign borrowed from an opera. In 
 Queen Anne's time, there was a Puec ell's Head in Wych Street, 
 Drury Lane, the sign of a music-house. It represented that 
 musician in a brown, full-bottomed wig, and green nightgown, 
 and was very well painted. Purcell, who died in 1682, greatly 
 improved English melody; he composed sonatas, anthems, and 
 the music to various plays. His " Te Deum " and " Jubilate " are 
 still admired. 
 
 Actors, and favourite characters from plays, have frequently 
 been adopted as signs. The oldest instance we fiud is Tarleton, 
 or Dick Tarleton, who, in the sixteenth century, seems to have 
 been common enough to make Bishop Hall allude to him in hia 
 " Satyres," (b. vi., s. 1)— 
 
 *^ 0 honour far beyond a brazen shrine, 
 To sit with Tarlton on an ale-post's sign." 
 Tarleton is seen on the trades token of a house in Wheeler Street, 
 So;ithwark ; and it is only within a very few years that this sign 
 has been consigned to oblivion. Richard, or " Dick " Tarleton 
 was a celebrated low-comedy actor, born at Condover in Shrop- 
 shire, and brought to town in the household of the Earl of Lei- 
 cester. He first kept an ordinary in Paternoster Eow, called the 
 Castle, much frequented by the booksellers and printers of St 
 Pa-al's Churchyard. Afterwards, he kept the Tabor, in Grace- 
 church Street. He was one of Queen Elizabeth's twelve player, 
 in receipt of wages, and was at that time living as one of the 
 
84 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 grooms of the cliamber at Barn Elms, but lost his situation by 
 reason of some scurrilous reflections on Leicester and Raleigh. 
 He probably also performed at the Curtain in Shoreditch, in which 
 parish he was buried, September 3, 1588. " The great popularity 
 which Tarlton possessed may be readily seen from the numerous 
 allusions to him in almost all the writers of the time, and few 
 actors have been honoured with so many practical tokens of 
 esteem. His portrait graced the ale-house, game-cocks were 
 named after him, and a century after his death, his effigy adorned 
 the jakes." * The portrait of this famous wit is prefixed to the 
 edition of his jests, printed in 1611, where he is represented in 
 the costume of a clown playing on the tabor and pipe. Another 
 portrait of him occurs as an accompaniment to the letter T, in a 
 collection of ornamental letters,t with the following rhymes : — 
 
 This picture here set down within his letter T, 
 
 Aright doth shew the forme and shape of Tharleton unto thee. 
 
 When he in pleasaunt wise the counterfeit expreste, 
 
 Of clowne with cote of russet hew, and startups wth the reste ; 
 
 Who merry many made when he appear'd in sight, 
 
 The grave, the wise, as well as rude, att him did take delight. 
 
 The partie now is gone, and closlie clad in claye ; 
 
 Of all the jesters in the lande, he bare the praise awaie. 
 
 Now hath he plaied his parte, and sure he is of this, 
 
 If he in Christe did die to live with Him in lasting bliss." 
 
 Spiller's Hea.d was the sign of an inn in Clare Market, where 
 one of the most famous tavern clubs was held. This meeting of 
 artists, wits, humorists, and actors originated with the per- 
 formances at Lincoln's Inn, about the year 1697. They counted 
 many men of note amongst their members. CoUey Gibber was 
 one of the founders, and their best president, not even excepting 
 Tom d'Urfey. James Spiller, it should be stated, was a celebrated 
 actor circa 1700. His greatest character was " Mat o' the Mint," 
 in the Beggar's Opera. He was an immense favourite with the 
 butchers of Clare Market, one of whom was so charmed with 
 his performances, that he took down his sign of the Bull and 
 Butcher, and put up Spiller' s Head. At Spillei's death, 
 (Feb. 7, 1729,) the following elegiac verse was made by one of 
 the butchers in that locality : — 
 
 Down with your marrow-bones and cleavers all, 
 And on your marrow-bones ye butchers fall I 
 For prayers from you who never pray'd before, 
 
 * Introduction to Tarlton's Jests, by J. 0. Halliwe*i 
 t Harl. MSS. 3885. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE, 
 
 85 
 
 Perhaps poor Jimmie may to life restore. 
 
 * What have we done ? ' the wretched bailiffs cry, 
 
 ' That th* only man by whom we lived should die !' 
 
 Enraged they gnaw their wax and tear their writs, 
 
 While butchers' wives fall in hysteric fits ; 
 
 For, sure as they 're alive, poor Spiller 's dead. 
 
 But, thanks to Jack Legar I we 've got his head. 
 
 He was an inoffensive, merry fellow, 
 
 When sober, hipp'd, blythe as a bird when mellow.'* 
 
 A ticket for one of his benefit representations, engraved by 
 Hogarth, is still a morceau recherche amongst print collectors, 
 as much as £12 having been paid for one. " Spiller's Life and 
 Jests" is the title of a little book published at that time. 
 
 Garrick's Head was set up as a sign in his lifetime, and in 
 1768 it hung at the door of W. Griffiths, a bookseller of Cathe- 
 rine Street, Strand. It is still common in the neighbourhood of 
 theatres. There is one in Leman Street, Whitechapel, not far 
 from the place of his first successes, where, in 1742, he played 
 at the theatre in Goodman's Fields, and " the town ran horn-mad 
 after him," so that there were " a dozen dukes of a night at 
 Goodman's Fields sometimes." * 
 
 RoxELLANA was, in the seventeenth century, the sign of 
 Thomas Lacy, of Cateaton Street, (now Gresham Street,) City. • 
 It was the name of the principal female character in " The Siege 
 of Ehodes,'^ and was originally the favourite part of the hand- 
 some Elizabeth Davenport, whose sham marriage to the Earl of 
 Oxford, (who deceived her by disguising a trumpeter of his trooj) 
 as a priest,) is told in De Grammont's Memoirs. After she had 
 found out the Earl's deception, she continued under his protec- 
 tion, and is occasionally mentioned, (always under the name of 
 Roxellana,) with a few words of encomium on her good looks by 
 that entertaining gossip, Pepys. 
 
 Formerly there was a sign of Joey Grimaldi at a public-house 
 nearly opposite Sadler's Wells Theatre ; not only had it the name, 
 but addidit vultum verbis, in the shape of a clown with a goose 
 under his arm, and a string of sausages issuing from his pocket. 
 Joey's name being less familiar to the public of the present day, 
 the house is now called the Clown. This, we think, is the last 
 instance of an actor being elevated to signboard honours. 
 
 Abel D rugger is one of the dramatis 'personce in Ben Jon- 
 son's comedy of the Alchymist, and from the character giver 
 
 » Gray's Letter to Chute. Mitford, il 138. 
 
86 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 him by his friend Captain Face, we get some curious information 
 concerning the mysteries of the tobacco trade of that day : — 
 
 This is my friend Abel, an honest fellow, 
 
 He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not 
 
 Sophisticate it with sack lees or oil. 
 
 Nor washes it with muscadel and grains, 
 
 Nor buries it in gravel underground, 
 
 Wrapp'd up in greasy leather or p clouts. 
 
 But keeps it in fine lily pots, that open'd 
 
 Smell like conserve of roses, or French beans. 
 
 He has his maple block, his silver tongs, 
 
 Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper. 
 
 A neat, spruce, honest fellow, and no goldsmith/* 
 
 This worthy was, in the end of the last century, the sign of 
 Peter Cockburn, a tobacconist in Fenchurch Street, formerly 
 shopman at the Sir Eoger de Coverley, as he informs the 
 public on his tobacco paper.* According to the custom of the 
 times, and one which has yet lingered in old-fashioned neighbour- 
 hoods, this wrapper is adorned with some curious rhymes : — 
 
 " At Drugger's Head, without a puff, 
 You '11 ever find the best of snuff. 
 
 Believe me, I 'm not joking ; 
 Tobacco, too, of every kind, 
 The very best you '11 always find, 
 
 For chewing or for smoaking. 
 Tho' Abel, when the Humour 's in, 
 At Drury Lane to make you grin. 
 
 May sometimes take his station; 
 At number Hundred-Forty- Six, 
 In Fenchurch Street he now does fix 
 
 His present Habitation. 
 His best respects he therefore sends, 
 And thus acquaints his generous Friends, 
 
 From Limehouse up to Holborn, 
 That his rare snuffs are sold by none, 
 Except in Fenchurch Street alone, 
 
 And there by Peter Cockburn." 
 
 Falstaff, whom we have already mentioned when speaking 
 of Shakespeare, and Paul Pry, are both very common. The last 
 is even of more frequent occurrence than " honest Jack " himself. 
 
 Lower down in the scale of celebrities and public characters, 
 we find the court-jester of Henry VIII., Old Will Somers, the 
 sign of a public-house in Crispin Street, Spittalfields, at the pre- 
 sent day. He also occurs on a token issued from Old Fish 
 Street, in which he is represented very much the same as in hia 
 
 * Banks's Gollectioa. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE, 87 
 
 portrait by Holbein, viz., wearing a long gown, with hat on liis 
 head, and blowing a horn. Under an engraving of this picture 
 are the following lines : — 
 
 ** What though thou think'st me clad in strange attire, 
 Knowe I am suted to my own deseire ; 
 And yet the characters described upon mee 
 May shew thee that a king bestowed them upon mefi. 
 This horn I have betokens Sommers' game, 
 Which sportive tyme will bid thee reade my name, 
 All with my nature well agreeing too, 
 As both the name, and tyme, and habit doe/' 
 Formerly there used to be in the town a wooden figure of 
 Will with rams' horns and a pair of large spectacles ; and the 
 story was told that he never would believe that his wife had pre- 
 sented him with the " bull's feather" until he had seen it through 
 his spectacles. 
 
 Two portraits of Sommers are preserved at Hampton Court, 
 one in a picture after Holbein, representing Henry VII. with his 
 queen, Elizabeth, and Henry VIII. with his queen, Jane Sey- 
 mour. Will is on one side, his wife on the other. The other 
 portrait is by Holbein, three-quarter life size, where he is repre- 
 sented looking through a closed window.* He also figures in 
 Henry VIII.'s illuminated Psalter, t in which King Henry's 
 features are given to David, and those of Will Sommers to the 
 fool who accompanies him. 
 
 Sommers was born at Eston Neston, Northamptonshire, 
 where his father was a shepherd. His popularity arose from his 
 frankness, which is thus eulogised by Ascham in his " Toxo- 
 philus :" — **They be not much unlike in this to Wyll Sommers, 
 the kingis foole, which smiteth him that standeth alwayes before 
 his face, be he never so worshipful a man, and never greatlye 
 lokes for him which lurkes behinde another man's backe that 
 hurte him indeede." 
 
 We next come to BROUGHTOisr, the champion pugilist of Eng- 
 land in the reign of George II. He kept a public-house in the 
 Haymarket, opposite the present theatre j his sign was a por- 
 trait of himself, without a wig, in the costume of a bruiser. 
 Underneath was the following line, from ^neid, v. 484 : — ■ 
 
 *' HiC VICTOR CiESTUS, ARTEMQUE REPONO." 
 
 Numerous public-houses already retail their good things under 
 
 * This is engraved in Caulfield's Portraits of Remarkable and Eccentric Characters, za 
 ■rell as the wooden figure in the Tower, 
 i MSS. Reg., 2 A. xvi. 
 
88 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the auspices of the great Tom Sayers. One in Pimlico, 
 Brighton, deserves especial mention, as it is reported to be the 
 identical house in which the mighty champion made his entry 
 on the stage of this world, for the noble purpose of dealing and 
 receiving the blows of fistic fortune. But, as in the case of 
 Homer's birthplace, the honour is contested ; almost every house 
 in Pimlico lays claim to his nativity, and unless the great man 
 writes his life and settles this mooted point, it is likely to give 
 serious trouble to future historiographers. 
 
 Another athlete, Topham, " the strong man," had also his 
 quantum of signboards. " The public interest which his extra- 
 ordinary exhibitions of strength had always excited did not die 
 with him. His feats were delineated on many signs which were 
 remaining up to 1800. One in particular, over a public-house 
 near the Maypole, in East Smithfield, represented his first great 
 feat of pulling against two dray horses." * 
 
 Thomas Topham was born in London in 1710. His strength 
 almost makes the feats of Homer s heroes credible, for, besides 
 pulling against two dray horses, in which he would have been 
 successful if he had been properly placed, he lifted three hogs-i 
 heads of water, weighing 1836 lbs, broke a rope two inches in 
 circumference, lifted a stone roller, weighing 800 lbs., by a chain 
 with his hands only, lifted with his teeth a table six feet long, 
 with half a hundredweight fastened to the end of it, and held it 
 a considerable time in a horizontal position, struck an iron poker, 
 a yard long and three inches thick, against his bare left arm 
 until it was bent into a right angle, placed a poker of the same 
 dimensions against the back of his neck, and bent it until the 
 ends met, and performed innumerable other remarkable feats. 
 
 In Daniel Lambert, whose portly figure acts as sign to a 
 coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, and to a public-house in the High 
 Street, St Martins, Stamford, Lincolnshire, we behold another 
 wonder of the age. This man weighed no less than 52 stone 1 1 
 lb. (14 lbs. to the stone.) He was in his 40th year when he 
 died, and the circumstances of his burial give a good idea of his 
 enormous proportions. His coffin, in which there was great 
 difficulty of placing him, was 6 ft. 4 in. long, 4 ft. 4 in. wide, 
 and 2 ft. 4 in. deep. The immense size of his legs made it 
 almost a square case. It consisted of 112 superficial feet of elm, 
 and was built upon two axletrees and four clogwheeis, and upon 
 
 * Pairholt, Remarkable and Eccentric Characters, p. 55. 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE, 89 
 
 theD. Lis remains were rolled into the grave, a regular descent 
 having been made by cutting the earth away for some distance 
 slopingly down to the bottom. The window and part of the wall 
 had to be taken down to allow his exit from the house in which 
 he died. His demise took place on June 21, 1809. 
 
 Over the entrance to Bullhead Court, Newgate Street, there is 
 a stone bas-relief, according to Horace Walpole once the sign of 
 a house called The King's Poetee and the Dwarf, with the 
 date 1660. The two persons represented are William Evans 
 and Jeffrey Hudson. Evans is mentioned by Fuller.* Jeffrey 
 Hudson, the dwarf, had a very chequered life. He was born in 
 1609 at Okeham in Rutlandshire, from a stalwart father, keeper 
 of baiting-bulls to the Duke of Buckingham. Having been intro- 
 duced at court by the Duchess, he entered the Queen s service. 
 On one occasion, at an entertainment given by Charles I. to his 
 queen, he was served up in a cold pie ; at another time at a court 
 ball, he was drawn out of the pocket of Will Evans, the huge 
 door porter, or keeper, at the palace. In 1630 he was sent to 
 France to bring over a midwife for the queen, but on his return 
 was taken prisoner by Flemish pirates, who robbed him of £2500 
 worth of presents received in France. Sir John Davenant wrote 
 a comic poem on this occasion entitled " Jeffereidos." During the 
 civil wars Jeffrey was a captain of horse in the royal army ; he 
 followed the queen to France, and there had a duel with a Mr 
 Crofts (brother of Lord Crofts) whom he shot, for which mis- 
 demeanour he was expelled the court. Taken prisoner by pirates 
 a second time, he was sold as a slave in Barbary. When he ob- 
 tained his liberty he returned to London, but got into prison for 
 participation in the Titus Gates plot, and died shortly after his 
 release in 1682. Walter Scott has introduced him in his 
 " PeverH of the Peak." 
 
 Jeffrey is not the only dwarf who has figured on a signboard, 
 for in the last century there was a Dwaef Taveen in Chelsea 
 Fields, kept by John Coan, a Norfolk dwarf. It seems to have been 
 a place of some attraction, since it was honoured by the repeated 
 visits of an Indian king. " On Friday last the Cherokee king 
 and his two chiefs, were so greatly pleased with the curiosities of 
 the Dwarfs Tavern in Chelsea Fields, that they were there again 
 on Sunday at seven in the evening to drink tea, and will be there 
 again in a few days." — Daily AdvertUer, July 12, 1762. Two 
 
 * Fuller's Worthies, voot Monmouthshire; 
 
90 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 years after we find the following advertisement: — "Yesterday 
 died at the Dwarf Tavern in Chelsea Fields, Mr John Coan, the 
 unparalleled Norfolk Dwarf." — Daily Advertiser^ March 17, 
 1764. 
 
 The name of Dirty Dick, which graces a public-house in 
 Bishopsgate Without, was transferred to those spirit stores from 
 the once famous Diety Warehouse formerly in Leadenhall Street, 
 a hardware shop kept in the end of the last century by Eichard 
 Bentley, alias Dirty Dick, in which premises, until about fifteen or 
 twenty years ago, the signboard of the original shop was still 
 to be seen in the window. Bentley was an eccentric character, the 
 son of an opulent merchant, who kept his carriage and lived in 
 great style. In his early life he was one of the beaux in Paris, 
 was presented at the court of Louis XVI., and enjoyed the re- 
 putation of being the handsomest and best dressed Englishman 
 at that time in the capital of France. On his return to London 
 he became a new, though not a better, man. Brooms, mops, and 
 brushes were rigorously proscribed from his shop ; all order was' 
 aboHshed, jewellery and hardware were carelessly thrown together, 
 covered by the same shroud of undisturbed dust. So they re- 
 mained for more than forty years, when he relinquished business 
 in 1804. The outside of his house was as dirty as the inside, to 
 the great annoyance of his neighbours, who repeatedly offered 
 Bentley to have it cleaned, painted, and repaired at their expense ; 
 but he would not hear of this, for his dirt had given him cele- 
 brity, and his house was known in the Levant, and the East and 
 West Indies, by no other denomination than the Dirty Ware- 
 house in Leadenhall Street." The appearance of his premises is 
 thus described by a contemporary : — 
 
 " Who but has seen, (if lie can see at all,) 
 'Twixt Aldgate's well-known pump and Leadenhall, 
 A curious hardware shop, in generall full 
 Of wares from Birmingham and Pontipool ? 
 Begrimed with dirt, behold its ample front, 
 With thirty years* collected filth upon 't ; 
 In festoon'd cobwebs pendant o'er the door, 
 While boxes, bales, and trunks are strew'd around the floor* 
 
 Behold how whistling winds and driving rain 
 Gain free admission at each broken pane. 
 Safe when the dingy tenant keeps them out^ 
 With urn or tray, knife-case or dirty clout I 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 91 
 
 Here snufifers, waiters, patent screws for corks, 
 There castors, cardracks, cheesetrays, knives and forks; 
 There empty cases piled in heaps on high, 
 There packthread, papers, rope, in wild disorder lie." 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 The present Dirty Dick is a small public-house, or rather a tap 
 of a wholesale wine and spirit business in Bishopsgate Street 
 Without. It has all the appearance of one of those establish- 
 ments that started up in the wake of the army at Varna and 
 Balaclava, or at newly-discovered gold-diggings. A warehouse 
 or barn without floorboards ; a low ceiling, with cobweb festoons 
 dangling from the black rafters ; a pewter bar battered and dirty, 
 floating with beer ; numberless gas-pipes, tied anyhow along the 
 struts and posts, to conduct the spirits from the barrels to the 
 taps ; sample phials and labelled bottles of w^ine and spirits on 
 shelves, — everything covered with virgin dust and cobweb, — in- 
 deed, a place that would set the whole Dutch nation frantic. 
 
 Yet, though it has been observed that cleanliness of the body 
 is conducive to cleanliness of the soul, and vice versa, the regu- 
 lations of this dirty establishment, (hung up in a conspicuous 
 place,) are more moral than those of the cleaner gin-palaces, 
 — as, for. instance : — *'No man can be served twice.''* "No 
 person to be served if in the least intoxicated.'* " No improper 
 language permitted." " No smoking permitted whilst the last 
 request, for fear of this charming place tempting customers to 
 lounge about, says, " Our shop being small, difficulty occasionally 
 arises in supplying the customers, who will greatly oblige by bear- 
 ing in mind the good old maxim : — 
 
 ' When you are in a place of business, 
 Transact your business 
 And go about your business.' " 
 
 By a trades token we see that Old Parr's Head was already 
 in the seventeenth century the sign of a house in Chancery Lane. 
 Circa 1825, a publican in Aldersgate put up the old patriarch, 
 with the following medical advice : — 
 " Your head cool, 
 Your feet warm. 
 But a glass of good gin 
 Would do you no harm." 
 
 * This is an old "dodge," mentioned long ago by Decker in his "Seven Deadly Sins, 
 seven times pressed to Death," &c. " Then you have another brewing called HuflPs ale, 
 at which, because no man must have hut a pot at a sitting, and so be gone, the restraint 
 makes them more eager to come in, so that by this policie one may huffe it four or fiv« 
 limes a dav." 
 
92 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Thomas Parr was born in 1483, and dying November 15, 163»5, 
 at the age of 152, had lived in the reigns of ten several princes, — 
 viz., Edward lY., Edward Y., Eichard III, Henry YII., Henry 
 YIIL, Edward YI., Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James I., and 
 Charles 1. He was not the only one of the family who attained 
 to a great age, for the London Evening Post, August 24, 1757, 
 has the following note : — " Last w^eek died at Kanne, in Shrop- 
 shire, Eobert Parr, aged 124. He was great-grandson of old 
 Thomas Parr, who died in the reign of King Charles I., and lies 
 buried in Westminster Abbey. What is very remarkable is, that 
 the father of Eobert was 109; the grandfather 113; and the 
 great-grandfather, the said Thomas, is well known to have died 
 at the age of 152." Signs of old Parr are still remaining at 
 Gravesend and at Eochester. 
 
 Thomas Hobson, (Hobson's Choice,) the benevolent old carrier, 
 is the sign of two public-houses in Cambridge, — the one called Old 
 Hobson, the other Hobson's House. His own inn in London 
 was the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate Street, where he was repre- 
 sented in fresco, having a £100 bag under his arm, with the 
 words, " The fruitful mother of an hundred more." lliere is an 
 engraving of him by John Payne, his contemporary, which also 
 represents him holding a bag of money. Under it are these 
 lines : — 
 
 " Laugli not to see so plaine a man in print; 
 The shadow 's homely, yet there 's something in 't. 
 Witness the Bagg he wears, (though seeming poore,) 
 The fertile Mother of a thousand more. 
 He was a thriving man, through lawful gain, 
 And wealthy grew by warrantable faime. 
 Men laugh at them that spend, not them that gather, 
 Like thriving sonnes of such a thrifty father." 
 
 The print also informs us that he died at the age of eighty-six, 
 in the year 1630. Milton, who wrote two epitaphs upon him, 
 says, that " he sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid 
 to go to London by reason of the plague.'' 
 
 Among this class of minor celebrities we may also place those 
 who put up their own head for signs. Taylor, the water poet, 
 (see Mourning Crown, pp. 49,) was one of the first. Next to him 
 followed Pasqua Eosee ; according to his handbill, " the first 
 who made and publicly sold coffee-drink in England." His 
 establishment was "in St Michael's Alley, in Cornhill, at the 
 sign of his own head." This handbill largely enters into the vir- 
 tues of the coffee-drink/' gives the natural history of the plant, 
 
HISTORIC A ND COMMEMORA TI VE. 93 
 
 prescribes how to make the drink, and advises that " it is to be 
 drunk, fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and 
 to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured ; the which will 
 never fetch the skin off the mouth, or raise any blisters by reason 
 of that heat." The next enters upon a glowing description of all 
 the evils cured by that drink, as fumes, headaches, defiuxions of 
 rhumes, dropsy, gout, scurvy, king's-evil, spleen, hypochondriac, 
 winds, stone, &c. This coffee-house was opened in 1652. 
 
 Lebeck's Head was another instance of the owner setting up 
 his own head as a sign ; and though his name has not filled the 
 trumpet of fame, yet had he many times bravely stood the fire, 
 and filled the mouths of his contemporaries, for he kept an ordi- 
 nary (about 1690) at the north-west corner of Half -moon Passage, 
 (since called Bradford Street.) The sign seems to have found 
 imitators at the time, and is even yet kept up by tradition. 
 There is Lebeck's Head in Shadwell, High Street ; a Lebeck's 
 Inn and Lebeck's Tavern in Bristol ; and a Lebeck and Chaff- 
 cutter at a village in Gloucestershire. 
 
 A still more famous house was the Pontack's Head, formerly 
 called the White Bear, in Christ Church Passage, (leading from 
 Newgate Street to Christ Church.) This tavern having been de- 
 stroyed by fire, Pontack, the son of a president of the parliament 
 of Bordeaux, opened a new establishment on its site, and assum- 
 ing his father's portrait as its sign, called it the Pontack's Head. 
 It was the first fashionable eating-house in London, was opened 
 soon after the Eestoration, and continued in favour until about the 
 year 17 80, when it was pulled down to make room for the building 
 of the vestry hall of Christ Church. De Foe describes it as " a con- 
 stant ordinary for all comers at very reasonable prices, where you 
 may bespeak a dinner from four or five shillings a head to a guinea, 
 or what sum you please." * In the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century the dinners had become proverbially extravagant : — 
 
 Now at Pontack's we '11 take a bit, 
 
 Shall quicken Nature's appetite. 
 
 Here, shew a room ! what have you got ? 
 
 The waiter (cries) What have we not ? 
 
 All that the season can afford, 
 
 Fresh, fat, and fine, upon my word 
 
 A Guinea ordinary, sir." 
 This Guinea ordinary was : — 
 
 " every way compleat, 
 
 Adorn'd and beautifully dress' d. 
 
 But what it was could not be guessM." 
 ♦ Journey through England, vol. i. p. 176. 
 
94 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The waiter, however, gives the menu, which contains — Bird's 
 nest soup from China ; a ragout of fatted snails ; bantam pig, 
 but one day old, stuffed with hard row and ambergris ; French 
 peas stewed in gravy, with cheese and garlick ; an incomparable 
 tart of frogs and forced meat ; cod, with shrimp sauce ; chickens 
 en surprise, (they had not been two hours from the shell,) and 
 similar dainties.* Pontack contributed much towards bringing 
 the French wines in fashion, being proprietor of some of the 
 Bordeaux vineyards v/hich bore his name. 
 
 About the same time another tavern flourished, with its mas- 
 ter's head for sign ; this was CAVEAc's,t celebrated for wine ; of 
 him Amhurst sang : — 
 
 *' Now sumptuously at Caveac*s dine, 
 And drink the very best of wine." 
 
 Though it cannot be said that Don Saltero put up his por- 
 trait for a sign, yet his coffee-house was named after him, and is 
 still extant under the same denomination in Cheyne Walk, Chel- 
 sea. This house was opened in 1695 by a certain Salter, who had 
 been serv-^nt to Sir Hans Sloane, and had accompanied him on his 
 travels. Chelsea at that time was a village, full of the suburban 
 residences of the aristocracy, and the pleasant situation of Salter's 
 house soon made it the resort of merry companions, on their way 
 to or from friends' villas, or Vauxhall, Jenny Whin's, and other 
 places of public resort in the neighbourhood. Vice-Admiral 
 Mundy, on his return from the coast of Spain, amused with the 
 pedantic dignity of Salter, christened him Don Saltero, and under 
 that name the house has continued till this day. 
 
 From his connexion with the great Sir Hans Sloane, and the 
 tradition of a descent from the Tradescants, Salter was of 
 course in duty bound to have a museum of curiosities, which, by 
 gifts from Sir Hans and certain aristocratic customers in the 
 army and navy, soon became sufficiently interesting to constitute 
 one of the London sights. It existed more than a century, and 
 was at last sold by auction in the summer of 1798. From his 
 catalogue % (headed with the words, " 0 Rare !'') we gather that 
 the curiosities fully deserved that name, for amongst them we 
 find : " a piece of St Catherine's skin " a painted ribbon from 
 Jerusalem, with which our Saviour was tied to the pillar when 
 
 * Metamorphosis of the Town ; or, a View of the Present Fashions. London : Printed 
 for J. Wilford at the Three Flower de Luces, behind the Chapter House in St Paul'g 
 Churchyard, 1730. 
 
 t Oddly enough, both Cave and Ponto are terms of some games at cards. 
 I There is a copy in the British Museum. 
 
IIISTOEIC AND COMMEMOBATIVE. 
 
 95 
 
 scourged, with a motto;"* "a very curious young mermaid- 
 fish;^' " manna from Canaan, it drops from the clouds twice a 
 year, in May and June, one day in each month ;" "a piece of 
 nun's skin ;" a necklace made of JoVs tears ;" " the skeleton 
 (sic) of a man's finger " petrified rain ;" "a petrified lamb, or a 
 Btone of that animal ;" " a starved cat in the act of catching two 
 mice, found between the walls of Westminster Abbey when re- 
 pairing f " Queen Elizabeth's chambermaid's hat," &c. t 
 
 A most amusing paper in the Taller^ No. 34, gives a full- 
 length portrait of Salter, who appears to have been an " original" 
 Music was his besetting sin, and with very little excuse for it. 
 In that paper the museum, too, is taken to task. Eichard Crom- 
 well used to be a visitor to this house, where Pennant's father, 
 when a child, saw him, " a very neat old man, with a placid 
 countenance." Franklin also, when a printer's apprentice, " one 
 day made a party to go by water to Chelsea in order to see the 
 college, and Don Saltero's curiosities.'' 
 
 There is a rather amusing advertisement of the Don's in the 
 WeeUy Journal for June 23, 1723 : — 
 
 " Sir, — Fifty years since to Chelsea great, 
 From Rodnam on the Irish main, 
 I stroll'd with maggots in my pate, 
 Where much improved they still remain. 
 Through various employs I 've past, 
 
 Toothdrawer, trimmer, and at last, 
 I'm now a gimcrack whim-collector. 
 
 Monsters of all sorts here are seen, 
 Strange things in nature as they grew so ; 
 
 Some relicks of the Sheba queen, 
 And fragments of the famed Bob Cruso ; 
 
 Knicknacks to dangle round the wall, 
 Some in glass cases, some on shelf ; 
 
 But what 's the rarest sight of all, 
 Your humble servant shows himself. 
 
 On this my chiefest hope depends. 
 Now if you will the cause espouse, 
 
 ♦ Ts\\%motto was : " Misura della Colonna di Christo n^o," Measure of the column 
 ef our Saviour. 
 
 t A brother Boniface, Adams, "at the Royal Swan in Kingsland Road, leading fiom 
 ghoreditch Church," (1756) had also a knackatory, which, from his catalogue, looks very 
 like a parody on the Don's. He exhibited, for instance, " Adam's eldest daughter's 
 hat;" " the heart of famous Bess Adams, that was hanged with Lawyer Carr, January 
 18, 1736-37 "the Vicar of Bray's clogs ;" "an engine to shell green peas with ;" "teeth 
 that grew in a fish's belly;" "Black Jack's ribs ;" "the very comb that Adam combed 
 his son Isaac's and Jacob's head with ;" "rope that cured Captain Lowry or the head- 
 ach, earach, toothach, and bellyach;" "Adam's key to the fore and back door of the 
 parden of Eden," kc, ko., and 500 other curiosities. 
 
96 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 v In journals pray direct your friends 
 
 To my Museum-CofFeehouse ; 
 
 And in requital for the timely favour 
 I '11 gratis bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver. 
 
 Nay, that your pate may with my noddle tally, 
 And you shine bright as I do — marry shall ye. 
 
 Freely consult my revelation Molly ; 
 Nor shall one jealous thought create a huff, 
 For she has taught me manners long enough. 
 Chelsea Knackatory. Don Saltero." 
 
 At the end of Ms catalogue a list of the donors is added, most 
 of whom, doubtless, also frequented his house. Amongst them 
 the following names appear : — the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earl 
 of Sutherland, Sir John Balchen, Sir Eob. Cotton, Bart., Sir 
 John Cope, Bart., Sir Thomas de Veil, Sir Francis Drake, Lady 
 Humphrey, Sir Thomas Littleton, Sir John Molesworth, the Hon. 
 Capt. William Montague, Sir Yelverton Peyton, George Selwyn, 
 the Hon. Mr Yerney, Sir Francis Windham, &c., besides numbers 
 of naval and military officers. 
 
 The Mother Eedcap is a sign that occurs in various places, 
 as in Upper Holloway, in the High Street, Camden Town, in 
 Blackburn, Lancashire, in Edmund's Lowland, Lincolnshire, &c. : 
 whilst there is a Father Bed cap at Camberwell Green, but he 
 is merely a creature of the publican's fancy. From the way iji 
 which Brathwaite mentions this sign in his Whimsies of a new 
 Cast of Characters," 1631, it would seem to have been not 
 uncommon at that time. He [the painter] bestows his pencile 
 on an aged piece of decayed canvas, in a sooty alehouse vv^here 
 Mother Redcap must be set out in her colours." W^ho the 
 original Mother Eedcap was, is believed to be unknown, but not 
 unlikely it is an im personification of Skelton's famous " Ellinor 
 Bumming,'' the alewife. 
 
 The Mother Bedcap at Holloway is named by Drunken 
 Barnaby in his travels. Formerly the following verses accom- 
 panied this sign : — 
 
 " Old Mother Redcap, according to her tale, 
 
 Lived twenty and a hundred years by drmking this good ale ; 
 It was her meat, it was her drink, and medicine besides, 
 And if she still had drank this ale, she never would have died." 
 At one time the Mother Bedcap, in Kentish Town, was kept 
 by an old crone, from her amiable temper surnamed Mother 
 Damnable.* This was probably the same person we find else- 
 
 * Her portrait, with a poem upon her, too \on^ to quote, occurs in "Portraits and 
 Lives of Eemarkable and Eccentric Characters," Westminster, 1819. 
 
PLATE VI. 
 
 king's porter and dwarf. 
 
 (Newgate Street, circa 1668.) 
 
 ROYAL OAK. 
 (Roxbiirghe Ballads, 1660.) 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE, 
 
 97 
 
 where alluded to under the name of Mother HufF, as in Baker's 
 Comedy of Hampstead Heath," 1706, a. ii. s. 1. ''Arabella. — 
 Well, this Hampstead 's a charming place, to dance all niglit at 
 the Wells, and be treated at Mother Huff's'^ 
 
 Only a few more celebrities now remain to be disposed of ; but 
 they are of such a varied character, and so heterogeneous, that 
 they can scarcely be ranged under any of the former divisions : 
 thus we meet with the stern reformer, Melancthon's Head, as 
 the sign of an orthodox publican, in Park Street, Derby. Pretty 
 Nell Gwynn occurs on several London public-houses : one in 
 Chelsea, where she must have been well known, since her mother 
 resided in that neighbourhood, and popular tradition allows Nell 
 to have been one of the principal promoters of the erection of the 
 famous hospital there. Another house, named after Charles 11. 's 
 favourite mistress, may be observed in Drury Lane, in which 
 street she lived, and where Pepys, on May-day, 1667, saw her 
 " standing at her lodgings door, in her smock sleeves and boddice," 
 and thought her " a mighty pretty creature." 
 
 The Sir John Oldcastle was a tavern, in Coldbath fields, in 
 the beginning of the last century ; near this house, Bagford and 
 a Mr Conyers, an antiquarian apothecary of Fleet Street, dis- 
 covered the skeleton of an elephant in a gravel pit.* This house 
 is also named in the following bill : — t 
 
 " All gentlemen, who are lovers of the ancient and noble exercise of 
 archery, are hereby invited, by the stewards of the annual feast for the 
 Clerkenwell Archers, to dine with them at Mrs Mary Barton's, at the sign 
 of Sir John Oldcastle, upon Friday, the 18th day of July 1707, at one o*^ 
 the clock, and to pay the bearer, Thomas Beaumont, Master of the Regi- 
 ment of Archers, two shillings and sixpence, and to take a sealed ticket, 
 that the certain number may be known, and provision made accordingly. 
 
 Opposite this house stood the Loed Cobham's Head, as ap- 
 pears from the Daily Advertiser for August 9, 1742, which con- 
 tains an advertisement puff of this place, praising its beer at 3d 
 a tankard, and mentioning the concert and illuminations. The 
 correspondent concludes his letter by saying : " Note. — In seeing 
 this great preparation, I thought it a duty incumbent upon me 
 to inform my fellow-citizens and others, that they may distinguish 
 this place from any pretended concerts, which are nothing but 
 
 * narl. MSS. 5900 
 
 t Bagfonl Bills, Harl. MSS. 5962. 
 
98 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 noise and nonsense, in particular, one that is riglitly -styled the 
 Hog-concert^^ &c. 
 
 Both these houses were named after " the Good Lord Cobham," 
 — Sir John Oldcastle, who married the heiress of the Cobham family 
 — the first author, as well as the first martyr of noble family in 
 England. Being one of the Lollards, he was accused of rebellion, 
 hanged in chains, and burned alive at St Giles in the Fields, in 
 December 1417. Lord Cobham's estates were close to the site 
 of these two public-houses, which were supposed to comprise a 
 part of the ancient mansion of that nobleman. 
 
 The Sir Paul Pindar public-house, in Bishopsgate Street 
 Without, is all that remains of the splendid mansion of the rich 
 merchant of that name, who had here a beautiful park, well 
 stocked with game. The house continues almost in its original 
 state, in the Cinque Cento style of ornament ; the best part of it 
 is the fagade. In Londiniana," ii. p. 137, is an engraving of a 
 lodge, standing in Half-Moon Alley, ornamented with figures, 
 which tradition says was the keeper's lodge of Sir Paul Pindar's 
 Park. Mulberry trees, and other park-like vestiges, were still 
 within memory in 1829. In Pennant's time it was already a 
 public-house, having for a sign, " a head, called that of the ori- 
 ginal owner.'' Sir Paul was a contemporary of Gresham, the 
 founder of the Exchange. He travelled much, and by that 
 means acquired many languages, which, at that time, was a sure 
 way to advancement. James I. sent him as ambassador to the 
 Sultan, from whom he obtained valuable concessions for the 
 English trade throughout the Turkish dominions. After his 
 return, he was appointed farmer of the customs, and frequently 
 advanced money to King James, and afterwards to Charles I. 
 In 1639 he was esteemed worth £236,000, exclusive of bad 
 debts. He expended .£19,000 in repairing St Paul's Cathedral, 
 and contributed large sums to various charities, yet, strange to 
 say, died insolvent, Aug. 22, 1650, the year after his royal master 
 had been beheaded. His executor, William Toomes, was so 
 shocked at the hopeless state of Sir Paul's affairs, that he com- 
 mitted suicide, and was buried with all the degrading ceremonies 
 of a felo-de-se. 
 
 The Welch Head was the sign of a low public-house in Dyot 
 Street, St Giles. In the last century there was a mendicants' 
 club held here, the origin of which dated as far back as 1660, at 
 which time they used to hold their meetings at the Three 
 
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE. 
 
 99 
 
 Crowns in the Poultry. Saunders Welcli was one of the justices 
 of the peace for Westminster, and kept a regular office for the 
 police of that district, in which he succeeded Fielding. He died 
 Oct. 31, 1784, and lies buried in the church of St George's, 
 Bloomsbury. He was a very popular magistrate : a story is 
 told that in 1766 he went unattended into Cranboume Alley, to 
 quell the riotous meetings of the journeymen shoemakers there, 
 who had struck for an advance of wages. One of the crowd 
 soon recognised him, when they at once mounted him on a beer 
 barrel, and patiently listened to all that he had to say. He 
 quieted the rioters, and prevailed upon the master shoemakers to 
 grant an additional allowance to the workmen. This little in- 
 cident, joined to his well-known benevolence, and skill in captur- 
 ing malefactors, gave him that popularity which rewards by a 
 signboard fame. 
 
 The Bedford Head, Covent Garden, represented the head of 
 one of the Dukes of Bedford, ground landlords of that district. 
 Pope twice alludes to this tavern, as a place where to obtain a 
 delicate dinner. This house Mr Cunningham * suspects to have 
 occupied the north-east corner of the Piazza, and there it appears 
 in a view of old Covent Garden, about 1780, preserved in the 
 " Crowle Pennant," (vii. p. 25.) There was another Bedford 
 Head in Southampton Street, which was kept by Wildman, the 
 brother-in-law of Horne Tooke. A Liberal club used to meet at 
 this house, of which Wilkes was a member, for several years. 
 There is still a Bedford Head in Maiden Lane, hard by, at which 
 the Eeunion Literary Club is held. 
 
 Under the historical signs may be ranged a class of more 
 modern signs, referring to local celebrities, — " mighty hunters 
 before the Lord " probably — such as Captain Harmer, White 
 Horse Plain, Yarmouth ; Captain Ross on Clinker, at Nat- 
 land, a village in Westmoreland ; Captain Digby (the name of 
 a vessel wrecked), at St Peter s, Margate ; Colonel Linskill, 
 Charlotte Street, North Shields, (fee. 
 
 The Don Cossack, so frequently seen, dates from the celebrity 
 acquired by those troops in the extermination of the unfortunate 
 half-starved and frozen soldiers, on their retreat from Moscow ; 
 though a more intimate acquaintance with the formidable Cos- 
 sacks, during the Crimean campaign, considerably damaged theii 
 ancient reputation. The signs of the Druid, the Druid's Head. 
 
 ♦ London, Past and Present, p. 43. 
 
100 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 the DuuiD AND Oak, and the Eoyal Arch Druid, are more to 
 be attributed to various kinds of raasonic brotherhoods, than as a 
 mark of respect paid to our aboriginal clergy. The Union origi- 
 nated with the union of Ireland with this kingdom ; the Jubilee 
 dates from the centenary of the revolution of 1688, held with 
 considerable pomp and national rejoicing, in 1788. The Hero 
 OF Switzerland, Loughborough Road, Brixton, and in a few 
 other places, refers to William Tell ; and the Spanish Patriot, 
 (Lambeth Lower Marsh and White Conduit Street,) dates from 
 the excitement of our proposed intervention in the Spanish Suc- 
 cession question, in 1833. The Spanish Galleon, Church 
 Street, Greenwich, simply owes its origin to the pictures of our 
 naval victories in the Greenwich Hospital. 
 
 These, then, are some of the principal and most curious historic 
 signs. From the perusal of this catalogue, we can draw one con- 
 clusion- — namely, that only a few of what we have termed " his- 
 torical signs," outlive the century which gave them birth. If the 
 term of their duration extends over this period, there is some 
 chance that they will remain in popular favour for a long time. 
 Thus, in the case of most heroes of the last century, few publicans 
 certainly will know anything about the Marquis of Granby, 
 Admiral Rodney, or the Duke of Cumberland, yet their names 
 are almost as familiar as the Red Lion, or the Green Dragon, and 
 have indeed become public-household words. Once that stage 
 past, they have a last chance of continuing another century or 
 two — namely, when those heroes are so completely forgotten, that 
 the very mystery of their names becomes their recommendation ; 
 such as the Grave Morris, the Will Sommers, the Jack of New- 
 bury, (fee. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC SIGNS. 
 
 Royalty stands prominently at the head of the heraldic signs 
 in its triple hieroglyphic of the Crown, (no coronets ever occur,) 
 the King's or Queen's Arms, and the various royal badges. 
 
 The Ceown seems to be one of the oldest of English signs. 
 We read of it as early as 1467, when a certain Walter Walters, 
 who kept the Crown in Cheapside, made an innocent Cockney 
 pun, saying he would make his son heir to the Crown, which so 
 displeased his gracious majesty. King Edward IV., that he 
 ordered the man to be put to death for high treason. 
 
 The Crown Inn at Oxford was kept by Davenant, (Sir William 
 Davenant's father.) Shakespeare, on his frequent journeys 
 between London and his native place, generally put up at this 
 inn, and the malicious world said that young Davenant (the 
 future Sir William) was somewhat nearer related to him than as 
 a godson only. One day, when Shakespeare was just arrived, 
 and the boy sent for from school to see him, a master of one of 
 the colleges, pretty well acquainted with the affairs of the family, 
 asked the boy why he was going home in so much haste, who 
 answered, that he was going to see his godfather Shakespeare. 
 " Fie, child," said the old gentleman, " why are you so super- 
 fluous ? Have you not learnt yet that you should not use the 
 name of God in vain V 
 
 On the site occupied by the present Bank of England there 
 used to stand four taverns ; one of them bore the sign of the 
 Crown, and was certainly in a good line of business, for, accord- 
 ing to Sir John Hawkins,* it was not unusual in those toping 
 days to draw a butt (120 gallons) of mountain in half -pints in 
 the course of a single morning. 
 
 About the same period there was another Crown Tavern in 
 Duck Lane, W. Smithfield. One of the rooms in that house was 
 decorated by Isaac Fuller (ob. 1672) with pictures of the Muses, 
 Pallas, Mars, Ajax, Ulysses, &c. Ned Ward praises them highly 
 in his " London Spy." The dead figures appeared with such 
 lively majesty that they begot reverence in the spectators towards 
 the awful shadows!" Such painted rooms in taverns were not 
 uncommon at that period. 
 
 * History of Musick. 
 
102 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The origin of the sign of the Three Crowns is thus accounted 
 for by Bagford :* — " The mercers trading with Collen (Cologne) 
 set vp ther singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the three kinges 
 of Collen, with the Armes of that Citye, which was the Three 
 Crouens of the former kinges, in memory of them, and by those 
 singes the people knew in what wares they deld in." Afterwards, 
 like all other signs, it was used promiscuously, and thus it gave 
 a name to a good old-fashioned inn in Lichfield, the property of 
 Dr Johnson, and the very next house to that in which the doctor 
 was born. 
 
 Frequently the Royal Crown is combined with other objects, to 
 amplify the meaning, or to express some particular prerogative ; 
 such are the Crown and Cushion, being the Crown as it is 
 carried before the king in coronation, and other ceremonies. We 
 even meet with the Two Crowns and Cushions ; that is, the 
 Crown for the King and for the Queen, which was the sign of a 
 Mr Arne, an upholsterer in Covent Garden, the hero of several 
 Tatters and Spectators, and father of the celebrated musician and 
 composer, Dr Arne. This political upholsterer also figures in a 
 farce by Murphy, entitled "The Upholsterer; or what news?" 
 The four Indian princes referred to in Tatler, No. 155, who came 
 to England in the reign of Queen Anne, to implore the help of 
 the British Government against the encroachments of the French 
 in Canada, seem to ha^e lodged in this man's house, — a circum- 
 stance frequently alluded to in the papers of the Tatler and other 
 periodicals of the time. 
 
 The Crown and Glove refers to the well-known ceremony of 
 the lloyal Champion at the Coronation. It occurs as a sign at 
 Stannington, Sheffield, Eastgate Eow, South Chester, &c. The 
 EoYAL Champion himself figures in George Street, Oxford. In 
 the Gazetteer for August 20, 1784, we find an anecdote recorded 
 concerning the lloyal Champion, which is almost too good to be 
 true : — " At the coronation of King Wilham and Queen Mary, 
 the Champion of England dressed in armour of complete and 
 glittering steel ; his horse richly caparisoned, and himself, and 
 beavor finely capped with plumes of feathers, entered Westminster 
 Hall while the King and Queen were at dinner. And, at giving 
 
 • Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i. fol. 193. The reader will be amused with the spelling of 
 this extract from the original manuscript, written when Addison was penning "Spec- 
 tators," and many classic English compositions were issuing from the press. Old Mr 
 Bagford was a genuine anti(|uary, and despised new hats, new coats, and anything 
 approaching the new style of spelling, with other changes then teing introduced. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 1 03 
 
 the usual challenge to any one that disputed their majesties' 
 right to the crown of England, (when he has the honour to drink 
 the Sovereign's health out of a golden cup, always his fee,) after 
 he had flung down his gauntlet on the pavement, an old woman, 
 who entered the hall on crutches, (which she left behind her,) 
 took it up, and made off with great celerity, leaving her own 
 glove, with a challenge in it to meet her the next day at an 
 appointed hour in Hyde Park. This occasioned some mirth at 
 the lower end of the hall : and it was remarkable that every one 
 was too well engaged to pursue her. A person in the same dress 
 appeared the next day at the place appointed, though it was 
 generally supposed to be a good swordsman in that disguise. 
 However, the Champion of England politely declined any contest 
 of that nature with the fair sex, and never made his appear- 
 ance." 
 
 The Crown and Sceptee, another of the royal insignia, is 
 named by Misson^ in the following incident : — " Butler, the 
 keeper of the Crown and Sceptre tavern, in St Martin's Lane, 
 told me that there was a tun of red port drunk at his wife's 
 burial, besides mulled white wine. Note. — No men ever goe to 
 women's burials, nor the women to the men's ; so ^ hat there 
 w^ere none but women at the drinking of Butler's wane. Such 
 women in England will hold it out with the men, when they 
 have a bottle before them, as well as upon th' other occasion, 
 and tattle infinitely better than they." 
 
 The Crown and Mitre, indicative of royalty and the church, 
 is the sign of a High Church publican at Taunton ; and the 
 Bible and Crown has for more than a century and a half been 
 the sign of Rivingtons the publishers. (See under Eeligious 
 Signs.) The King and Parliament are represented by the wtII- 
 known Crown and Woolpack, w^hich at Gedney Holbeach, in 
 Lincolnshire, has been corrupted into the Crown and Wood- 
 pecker. The Crown and Tower, at Taunton, may refer to the 
 regalia kept in the Tower, or to the king being "a toAver of 
 strength." A similar symbol seems to be intended in the 
 Crown and Column, Ker Street, Devonport, perhaps implying 
 the strength of royalty when supported by a pow^erful and united 
 nation. 
 
 The Crown and Anchor, the well-known badge of the Xa^y, 
 Is a great favourite. One of the most famous taverns with this 
 
 * Misson'B Memoirs and Obserratioiis in his Trayels over England. London, 1719. 
 
1 04 THE HIS TOE Y OF SIGN BO A RDS. 
 
 sign was in the Strand, where Dr Johnson often used to make a 
 night of it/' "Soon afterwards," says Bos well, "in 1768, he 
 supped at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, with a company 
 whom I collected to meet him. There were Dr Percy, now 
 bishop of Dromore ; Dr Douglas, now bishop of Salisbury ; Mr 
 Langton ; Dr Robertson, the historian ; Dr Hugh Blair, and Mr 
 Thomas Davis/' On this occasion the great doctor was unusually 
 colloquial, and according to his amiable custom " tossed and 
 gored several persons/' 
 
 The famous "Crown and Anchor Association" against so- 
 called Republicans and Levellers — as the reformers were styled by 
 the ministerial party in 1792 — owed its name to this tavern. 
 Its rise and progress is rather curious : it was undertaken at the 
 instance of Pitt and Dundas, by John Reeves, a barrister. Reeves, 
 at first, could get no one to join him, but, to meet the wishes of 
 his employers, used to go to the Crown and Anchor, draw up 
 some resolutions, pass them nem. con.y and sign them John Reeves, 
 chairman : thus being in his own person, meeting, chairman, and 
 secretary. In this way they were inserted in all the papers of 
 the three kingdoms, the expense being no object to the persons 
 concerned. Meetings of the counties were advertised, but the 
 first, second, and third consisted of Reeves alone, and it was not 
 till the fourth meeting that he had any coadjutors. The political 
 effervescence created by this society, its imitations and branches, 
 form part of the history of the nation. 
 
 In the year 1800 the Farming Society proposed to have an 
 experimental dinner in order to ascertain the relative qualities 
 of the various breeds of cattle in the kingdom ; the dinner was 
 planned and patronised by Sir John Sinclair, and the execution 
 iatrusted to Mr Simpkins, landlord of the Crown and Anchor, 
 who sent a tender of the most Brobdignagian dinner probably 
 ever heard of. Twelve kinds of oxen and sheep of the most 
 famous breed, eight kinds of pork, and various specimens of 
 poultry, w^ere to bleed as victims in this holocaust to the devil 
 of gluttony ; the fish was only to be from fresh waters, such as 
 were "entitled to the attention of British farmers;" there were 
 various kinds of vegetables, nine sorts of bread, besides veal, lamb, 
 hams, poultry, tarts and puddings, all of which were to be washed 
 down by a variety of strong and mild ales, stout, cider, Perry, 
 and " British" spirits. Tickets one guinea each.* 
 
 * England is the country, par excellence^ for gigantic dinners, amongst which agii- 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 
 
 The Anchor and Ckown was also the sign of the great booth 
 at Greenwich fair ; it was 323 feet long, and 60 feet wide, was 
 used for dancing, and could easily accommodate 2000 persons at a 
 time. The other booths also had signs ; amongst them were the 
 KoYAL Standard, the Lads of the Village, the Black Boy 
 AND Cat, the Moonrakers, and others. 
 
 The Crown and Dove, Bridewell Street, Bristol, may refer 
 to the order of the Holy Ghost, or may have been suggested by 
 the Three Pigeons and Sceptre. 
 
 Objects of various trades, with a crown above them, were very 
 common : the Crown and Fan was an ordinary fan-maker's sign.* 
 The Crown and Rasp, belonging to snuff-makers, occurs as the 
 sign of Fribourg and Treyer, tobacconists, at the upper end of 
 Pall Mall, near the Haymarket, in 1781 : it is still to be seen on 
 the fagade of the house. The oldest form of taking snuff was to 
 scrape it with a rasp from the dry root of the tobacco plant ; 
 the powder was then placed on the back of the hand and so 
 snuffed up ; hence the name of rdpe (rasped) for a kind of 
 snuff, and the common tobacconist's sign of la carotte d'or, 
 (the golden root,) in France. The rasps for this purpose were 
 carried in the waistcoat pocket, and soon became articles of 
 luxury, being carved in ivory and variously enriched. Some of 
 them, in ivory and inlaid wood, may be seen at the Hotel Cluny 
 in Paris, and an engraving of such an object occurs in Archse- 
 ologia," vol. xiii. One of the first snuff-boxes was the so-called 
 rape, or grivoise box, at the back of which was a little space for 
 a piece of the root, whilst a small iron rasp was contained in the 
 middle. When a pinch was wanted, the root was drawn a few 
 times over the iron rasp, and so the snuff was produced and 
 could be offered to a friend with much more grace than under the 
 above-mentioned process with the pocket grater. 
 
 The Crown and Last originated with shoemakers, but the 
 gentle craft having the reputation of being thirsty souls, it 
 
 cultural repasts stand foremost ; even that nuptial dinner of Camacho, at which honest 
 Sancho Panza did such execution, would scarcely rank as a lunch beside the Homeric 
 dinners of our farmers. In our times we have seen Soyer roast a whole ox for the 
 Agricultural Society at Exeter ; the details of this culinary feat are somewhat interest- 
 ing; it was called a "baron with saddle back of beef d la magna charta, weighing 535 
 lbs., the joints being the whole length of the ox, rumps, rounds, loins, ribs, and shoulders 
 to the neck. It was roasted in the open air within a temporary enclosure of brick 
 work, the monster joint steaming and frizzling away over 216 jets of gas from pipes of 
 an inch diameter, the whole being covered in with sheet iron ; when in 5 hours the 
 beef was dressed for 5 shillings." — Hints for the Table 
 * Various examples of it occur la the i3anks Bills, 
 
/ 
 
 I06 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 was also adopted as an alehouse sign : we find it as such in 
 1718:— 
 
 " Easter Monday, at, the Crown and Last at Prinilico {sic) in Chel- 
 
 \J sea road, a silver watch, value 30 sh., is to be bowled for ; three 
 bowls for six pence, to begin at Eight of the clock in the morning and 
 continues till Eight in the evening. N.B. — They that win the watch may 
 have it or 30s." * 
 
 The Crown and Halbert was, in 1790, the sign of a cutler 
 in St Martin's Churchyard ; t the Crown and Can occurs in 
 St John Street ; and the Crown and Trumpet at Broadway, 
 Worcester : this last may either allude to the trumpet of the 
 royal herald, or simply signify a crowned trumpet. 
 
 Of the King's Arms, and the Queen's Arms, there are in- 
 numerable instances ; they are to be found in almost every town 
 or village. The story is told that a simple clodhopper once 
 walked ever so many miles to see King George IV. on one of 
 his journeys, and came home mightily disgusted, for the king 
 had arms like any other man, while he had always understood 
 that his majesty's right arm was a lion and his left arm a uni- 
 corn. 
 
 Grinling Gibbons, the celebrated carver and sculptor, lived at 
 the sign of the King's Arms in Bow Street, from 1678 until 
 1721, when he died. This house is alluded to in the Postman^ 
 January 24, 1701-2 :— 
 
 " On Thursday, the house of Mr Gibbons, the carver in Bow Street, fell 
 down, but by special providence none of the family were killed ; but, 'tis 
 said, a young girl which was playing in the court being missed, is sup- 
 posed to be buried in the rubbish." 
 
 At the Haymarket, corner of Pall Mall, stood the Queen's 
 Arms tavern, in the reign of Queen Anne. At the accession of 
 George I. it was called the King's Arms, and there, in 1734, the 
 Whig party used to meet to plan opposition to Sir Eobert Wal- 
 pole. This club went by the name of the Rump-steak Club. 
 
 Faulkner J says that at the King's Arms, in the High Street, 
 Fulham, the Great Fire of London was annually commemorated 
 on the 1st of September, and had been continued without inter- 
 ruption until his time. It was said to have taken its rise from a 
 number of Londoners who had been burnt out, and who, having 
 no employment, strolled out to Fulham, on their way collecting 
 a quantity of hazel nuts, from the hedges, with which they 
 
 ♦ Original Weekly Journal, March 29 to April 3, 1718. 
 t Banks Bills. 
 
 % Historical and Topographical Account of the Parish of Fulham, 1813, p. 271. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 107 
 
 resorted to tliis house. A capital picture of the great conflagra- 
 tion used to be exhibited on that day. 
 
 In 1568 the prizes of the first lottery held in England were 
 exhibited at the Queen s Arms in Cheapside, the house of Mr 
 Dericke, goldsmith to Queen Elizabeth. There were no blanks, 
 and the prizes consisted of ready money, and certain sorts of 
 merchandises having been valued and prized.'' It had 400,000 
 lots of 10s. each, and the profits were to go towards repairing the 
 havens of the kingdom. The drawing was at first intended to 
 have taken place at Dericke's house, but finally was done at the 
 west door of St Paul's. The programme of tliis lottery, printed 
 by Binneman, was exhibited to the Antiquarian Society by Dr 
 Eawlinson in 1748, The next lottery was in 1612. It was 
 drawn on the same plan, and granted by King James, as a special 
 favour, for the establishment of English colonies in Virginia. 
 Thomas Sharpley, a tailor, had the chief prize, which consisted of 
 £4000 of " fair plate." 
 
 "On Friday, April 6," (1781) says Boswell* " Dr Johnson 
 carried me to dine at a club, which, at his desire, had been lately 
 formed at the Queen's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard. He told 
 Mr Hoole that he wished to have a City-club, and asked him to 
 collect one ; but, said he, don't let them be patriots. The com- 
 pany were that day very sensible well-behaved men." This same 
 tavern was also patronised by Garrick. " Garrick kept up an 
 interest in the city by appearing about twice in a winter at 
 Tom's coffeehouse in Cornhill, the usual rendezvous of young 
 merchants at Changetimes ; and frequented a club established for 
 the sake of his company at the Queen s Arms Tavern in St 
 Paul's Churchyard, where were used to assemble Mr Samuel 
 Sharpe, the surgeon ; Mr Paterson, the City solicitor ; Mr Draper, 
 the bookseller ; Mr Clutterbuck, a mercer ; and a few others : 
 they were none of them drinkers, and in order to make a reckon- 
 ing, called only for French wines. These were his standing 
 counsel in theatrical affairs." t 
 
 Sometimes we meet with the King's or Queen's Arms in very 
 odd comxbinations ; thus in the reign of Queen Anne there was 
 a Queen's Arms and Corncutter % King Street, West- 
 minster ; the sign of Thomas Smith, who, according to his hand- 
 
 * Boswell's Johnson, vol. iv. p. 60. 
 
 t Hawkins's Life of Dr Johnson, p. 433. 
 
 X This corncutter was probably the antique statue of the boy picking a thorn out of 
 his foot, and was usual with pedicures. See under the sign " Old pick my toe." 
 
I08 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 bill, (in the Bagford collection,) had, "by experience and ingenuity 
 learnt the art of taking out and curing all manner of corns 
 without any pain;" he also sold "the famoust est ware in all 
 England, which never fails curing the toothache in half an hour." 
 It was customary with those who were " sworn servants to his 
 Majesty," — i.e., who had the lord chamberlain's diploma, to set 
 up the royal arms beside their sign. The said Thomas, however, 
 does not appear to have had this honour, for not a word about 
 it is mentioned in his bill, so that he must have set up the 
 Queen's Arms merely to blind the public. The name of the 
 person who filled the important office of corncutter to Queen 
 Anne, I am afraid is lost to posterity, but, en revanche, we 
 know who drew King Charles II.'s teeth, for the Kev. John 
 Ward has recorded in his Diary.* " Upon a sign about Fleet- 
 bridge this is written, — * Here lives Peter de la Roch and George 
 Goslin, both which, and no others, are sworn operators to the 
 king's teeth.'" 
 
 Eoyal badges, and the supporters of the arms of various kings, 
 were in former times largely used as signs. The following is ;i 
 list of the supporters : — 
 
 EiCHARD II., Two Angels, (blowing trumpets.) 
 
 Henry IY., Swan and Antelope. 
 
 Henry V., Lion and Antelope. 
 
 Henry VI., Two Antelopes. 
 
 Edward IV., Lion and Bull. 
 
 Edward V., Lion and Hind. 
 
 EiCHARD III., Two Boars. 
 
 Henry VII. , Dragon and Greyhound. 
 
 Henry VIII., Lion and Dragon. 
 
 Edward VI., Lion and Dragon. 
 
 Mary, Eagle and Lion. 
 
 Elizabeth, Lion and Dragon. 
 
 James I., Lion and Unicorn, which have continued ever since. 
 Of early royal badges an interesting list occurs in Harl. MS., 
 304, f. 12 :— 
 
 King Edward the first after the Conquest, sonne to Henry tlie third, 
 gave a Rose gold, the stalke vert. 
 
 " King Edward the iij gave a lyon in his proper coulor, armed azure 
 langued or. The oustrich fether gold, the pen gold, and a faucon in his 
 proper coulor and the Sonne Rising. 
 
 " The prince of "Wales the ostrich fether pen and all arg. 
 
 * Diary of the Rev. John Ward, M. A., 1648-1679. London, 1839. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 109 
 
 " Queen Philipe, wyff of Edward the iij^ gave the whyte hynd. 
 Edmond, Duk of York, sonne of Edward the iij, gave the Faucon arg. 
 and the Fetterlock or. 
 
 " Richard the second gave the White hart, armed, horned, crowned or, 
 and the golden son. 
 
 " Henry, sonne to the Erl of Derby, first Dnk of Lancaster, gave the red 
 rose uncrowned, and his ancestors gave the Fox tayle in his prop, coulor 
 and the ostrich fether ar. the pen ermyn. 
 
 " Henry the iiij gave the Swan ar. and the antelope. 
 Henry the v gave the Antelope or, armed, crowned, spotted (?) and 
 horned gold and the Red Rose oncrowned and the Swan silver, crown and 
 collar gold, by the Erldom of Herford. 
 
 Henry the vi gave the same that his father gave. 
 
 " Edward the iiij gave the Whyte Lyon and the Whyte Rose and the 
 Blak Bull uncrowned. 
 
 " Richard the iij gave the Whyte Boar and the Whyte Rose, the clayes 
 gold. 
 
 " Henry the seventh gave the hawthorn tree vert and the Porte Cullya 
 and the Red Rose and the Whyte Crowned. 
 
 The Ostrych fether silver, the pen gobone sylver and azur, is the 
 Duk of Somerset's bage. 
 
 " The Shypmast with the tope and sayle down is the bage of , , , 
 " The Cresset and burnyng fyer is the bage of the Admyralyte. 
 " The Egle Russet with a maydenshead, abowt her neke a Crowne gold, 
 is the bage of the manner of Conysborow. 
 
 The Duk of York's bage is the Faucon and the Fetterlock. 
 " The Whyte Rose by the Castell of ClyfFord. 
 
 The Black Dragon by the Erldom of Ulster. 
 " The Black Bull horned and clayed gold by the honor of Clare. 
 " The Whyte Hynd by the fayre mayden of Kent. 
 " The Whyte Lyon by the Erldom of Marche. 
 
 The ostrych fether silver and pen gold ys the kinges. 
 •* The ostrych fether pen and all sylver ys the Prynces. 
 " The ostrych fether sylver, pen ermyn is the Duke of Lancasters. 
 
 The ostrych fether sylver and pen gobone is the Duke of Somersets.'* 
 Many of these badges, as will be seen afterwards, have come 
 down on signboards even to the present day. Equally common 
 are the Stuart badges, which were : — 
 
 The red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York frequently 
 placed on sunbeams j sometimes the red rose charged with the 
 white. 
 
 The rose dimidiated with the pomegranate, symbolical of 
 the connexion between England and Spain by the marriage of 
 Catherine of Arragon ; for the same reason the castle of Castille, 
 and the sheaf of arrows of Granada, occur amongst their badges. 
 
 The portcullis, borne by the descendants of John of Gaunt, who 
 was born in Beaufort Castle, whence, pars j^ro toto, the gate was 
 used to indicate the castle.. 
 
I lO THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 ThQ falcon and fetterlock, badge of Henry VII., on account of 
 Ills descent from Edmond of Langley, Duke of York. 
 
 The red dragon, the ensign of the famous Cadwaller, the last 
 of the British kings, from whom the Tudors descended. 
 
 The hawthorn bush crowned, which Henry YII. adopted in 
 allusion to the royal crown of Eichard III. having been found 
 hidden in a hawthorn bush after the battle of Bosworth. 
 
 The white falcon crowned and holding a sceptre was the badge 
 of Queen Anna Boleyn, and of Queen Elizabeth her daughter. 
 
 The phoenix in flames was adopted by Edward VI. in allusion 
 to his birth, having been the cause of his mother's death ; after- 
 wards he also granted this badge to the Seymour family. 
 
 In pondering over this class of signs great difficulty often arises 
 from the absence of all proof that the object under considera- 
 tion was set up as a badge, and not as a representation of the 
 actual animal. As no amount of investigation can decide this 
 matter, we have been somewhat profuse in our list of badges, in 
 order that the reader should be able to form his OAvn opinion upon 
 that subject. Thus, for instance, with the first sign that offers 
 itself, the Angel and Trumpet, it is impossible to say whether 
 the supporters of Richard II. gave rise to it, or whether it repre- 
 sents Fame. Various examples of it still occur, and a very 
 good carved specimen may be seen above a draper's shop in Ox- 
 ford Street. It is also the name of alehouses in King Street, 
 Holborn, and in Stepney, High Street, &c. 
 
 The Antelope is not very common now, although in 1664 there 
 was a tavern with this sign in W. Smithfield, the trades token of 
 this house bearing the following legend : — BiBis . Vinum . Saluta . 
 Antelop. The Eev. John Ward tells a very feeble college joke 
 concerning the Antelope Tavern in Oxford : — 
 
 " I have heard of a fellow at Oxford, one Ffrank Hil by name, who kept 
 the Antelope ; and if one yawned, hee could not chuse but yawne, that 
 vppon a time some schollars hawing stoln his ducks, hee had them to the 
 Vice chancelor, and one of the scholars got behind the Vice chancelor, and 
 when the fellow beganne to speak hee would presently fall a yawning, in- 
 somuch that the Vice chancelor turned the fellow away in great indig- 
 nation." * 
 
 Macklin, the centenarian comedian, who died in 1797, used 
 for thirty years and upwards to visit a public-house called the 
 Antelope in White Hart yard, Covent Garden, where his usual 
 
 * Diary of Rev. John Ward, M.A., 1648-1679, p. 122. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 I I T 
 
 beverage was a pint of stout made hot and sweetened almost to a 
 syrup. This, he said, balmed his stomach, and kept him from 
 having any inward pains.* He died at the age of upwards of 
 107, a proof that if, as the teetotallers inform us, fermented 
 liquors be a poison, it is certainly a slow one. 
 
 The Dragon appears to have been one of the oldest heraldic 
 charges of this kingdom. It was the standard of the West 
 Saxons, and continued so until the arrival of William the Con- 
 queror, for in the Bayeux tapestry a winged dragon on a pole 
 constantly represented near the person of King Harold. It was 
 likewise the supporter of the royal arms of Henry VII. and all 
 the Tudor sovereigns except Queen Mary. Before that time it 
 had been borne by some of the early Princes of Wales, and also 
 by several of the kings. Thus it is recorded, 28 Hen. III., the 
 king ordered to be made — 
 
 Unum draconem in modum unius vexilli de quodam rubro sanulo, qui 
 ubique sit de auro exteusillatus, cujus lingua sit facta tamquam ignis com- 
 burens et continue appareat moveatur, et ejus oculi fiant de sapphiris vei 
 de aliis lapidibus eidem convenientibus." + 
 
 At the battle of Lewes, 1264, the chronicler says that — 
 
 *^ The king schewed forth his schild his Dragon full austere." % 
 
 In that time, however, it appears not to have been the royal 
 standard, but it was borne along with it, for Matthew of West* 
 minster says, " Begins locus erat inter Draconem et standardum."§ 
 Edward III., at the battle of Crescy, also had a standard " with 
 a dragon of red silk adorned and beaten with very broad and fair 
 lilies of gold." Then, again, it occurs on a coin struck in the 
 reign of Henry VI., and was also one of the badges of Edward IV. 
 
 The Green Dragon was of very frequent occurrence on the 
 signboard. When Taylor, the water poet, wrote his Travels 
 through London," there were not less than seven Green Dragons 
 amongst the metropolitan taverns of that day. One of these is 
 still in existence, the well-known Green Dragon in Bishopsgate 
 Street, for nearly two centuries one of the most famous coach and 
 carriers' inns. At present it is simply a public-house. The Bed 
 Dragon is much less common, whilst the White Dragon occurs 
 
 * Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Esq. By J F. Kirkman. Vol. ii. p. 419. 
 
 t A dragon in the manner of a banner, of a certain red silk embioidered with gold; 
 its tongue like a flaming fire must always seem to be moving ; its eyes must be made of 
 sapphire, or of some other stone suitable for that purpose." 
 
 X Peter Langtoflfe's Chronicle of Robert of Bmnne, p. 217. 
 
 i " The king's place was between the Dragon and the standard.** 
 
IT2 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 on a trades token of Holborn, representing a dragon pierced 
 with an arrow, evidently some family crest. 
 
 The White Hart was the favourite badge of Eichard II. 
 At a tournament held in Smithfield in 1390, in honour of the 
 Count of St Pol, Count of Luxemburg, and the Count of Ostre- 
 vant, eldest son of Albert, Count of Holland and Zealand, 
 who had been elected members of the garter, " all the kynges 
 house were of one sute ; theyr cotys, theyr armys, theyr sheldes, 
 and theyr trappours, were browdrid all with whyte hertys, with 
 crownes of gold about their neck, and cheynes of gold hanging 
 thereon, whiche hertys was the kynges 1 every e that he gaf to 
 lordes, ladyes, knyghtes, and squyers, to knowe his household 
 people from others." * 
 
 The origin of this White Hart, with a collar of gold round its 
 neck, dates from the most remote antiquity. Aristotle t reports 
 that Diomedes consecrated a white hart to Diana, which, a thou- 
 sand years after, was killed by Agathocles, king of Sicily. Pliny [j; 
 states that it was Alexander the Great, who caught a white stag 
 and placed a collar of gold round its neck. This marvellous 
 story highly pleased the fancy of the mediaeval writers, always in 
 quest of the wonderful. They substituted Julius Caesar for 
 Alexander the Great, and transplanted the fable to western 
 regions, in consequence of which various countries now claim the 
 honour of having produced the white hart, collared with gold. 
 One was said to have been caught in Windsor Forest, another 
 on Eothwell Haigh Common, in Yorkshire, a third at Senlis, in 
 France, and a fourth at Magdeburg. This last was killed by 
 Charlemagne. The same emperor is also reported to have caught 
 a white stag in the woods of Hoi stein, and to have attached the 
 usual golden collar round its neck. More than three centuries after, 
 in 1172, this animal was killed by Henry the Lion, and the 
 whole story is, to this day, recorded in a Latin inscription on the 
 walls of Lubeck Cathedral. 
 
 Amongst the oldest inns which bore this sign, the White Hart, 
 in the High Street, Borough, ranks foremost in historical interest. 
 Here it was that Jack Cade established his headquarters, July 1, 
 1450. " And you, base peasants, do ye believe him ? Will you 
 needs be hanged with your pardons about your necks 1 Hath 
 my sword therefore broken through London gates, that ye should 
 
 * Cax ton's Chronicle at the end of Polychronicon, lib. ult, chap. Ti, 
 
 t Hist., lib. ix. cap. vi. 
 
 i Nat. Hist., lib. viii. cap. iL 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 
 
 1 I ^ 
 
 leave me at the White Hart in Southwark." — Henry VI., p. ii. 
 a. 1. s. 8. In the yard of that inn he beheaded " one Hawaydyne 
 of Sent Marty ns." * Many and wild must have been the scenes 
 of riot and debauchery enacted in this place during the stay of 
 the reckless rebel. The original inn that had sheltered Cade 
 and his followers, remained standing till 1676, when it was burnt 
 down in the great fire that laid part of Southwark in ashes. It 
 was rebuilt, and the structure is still in existence ; in Hatton's 
 time (1708) it could boast of the largest sign in London except 
 one, which was at the Castle Tavern in Fleet Street. Charles 
 Dickens has immortalised the White Hart Inn, by a most lifelike 
 description in his " Pickwick Papers." 
 
 The White Hart Tavern, in Bishopsgate, is also of very re- 
 spectable antiquity. It has the date 1480 in the front. Standing 
 on the boundary of the old hospital of Bethlehem, it is probable 
 that this building formed part of that religious house. Doubtless 
 it was the hostelry or inn for the entertainment of strangers, 
 which was a usual outbuilding belonging to the great hospitals 
 in those days. 
 
 In the reign of Queen Elizabeth there was a White Hart Inn 
 in the Strand, mentioned in a copy of an indenture of lease, 
 from the Earl of Bedford to Sir William Cecil (7 th September 
 1570) of a portion of pasture in Covent Garden, " beinge thereby 
 devyeded from certayne gardens belonginge to the Inne called the 
 Whyte Heart, and other Tenements scituate in the high streate 
 of Westm' comunly called the Stronde." It is not improbable 
 that this inn gave its name to Hart Street and White Hart 
 Yard, in that neighbourhood. 
 
 There was another inn of this name in Whitechapel, connected 
 with the name of a rather curious character, Mrs Mapp, the 
 female bone-setter. " On Friday, several persons who had the 
 misfortune of lameness, crowded to the White Haet Inn in 
 Whitechapel, on hearing j\Irs Mapp, the famous bonesetter, was 
 there. Some of them were admitted to her, and were relieved as 
 they apprehended. But a gentleman who happened to come by 
 declared Mrs Mapp was at Epsom, on which the woman thought 
 proper to move off."t The genuine Mrs Sarah Mapp was a 
 female bone-setter, or shape mistress," the daughter of a bone- 
 setter of Hindon, Wilts. Her maiden name was Wallis. It 
 
 ♦ Chronicle of the Grey Fryars, Camden Society, p. 19. 
 t Grub street Journal, Sept. 2, 1736. 
 
 H 
 
I 14 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARD^?, 
 
 appears that she made some successful cures before Sir Hans 
 Sloane, in the Grecian Coffee-house. For a time she was in 
 affluent circumstances, kept a carriage and four, had a plate of 
 ten guineas run for at the Epsom races, where she lived, fre- 
 quented theatres, and was quite the lion of a season. Ballads 
 were made upon her, songs were introduced on the stage, in 
 which the " Doctress of Epsom " was exalted to the tune of 
 Derry Down ; in short, she was called the " Wonder of the Age." 
 But, alas ! the year after all this eclat, we read in the same Grub 
 Street Journal, that had recorded all her greatness — " December 
 22, 1737. Died last week at her lodgings, near the Seven Dialls, 
 the much- talked of Mrs Mapp, the bonesetter, so miserably poor, 
 that the parish was obliged to bury her.'* Sic transit gloria 
 mundi f 
 
 Lastly, we must mention the White Hart, at Scole, in Norfolk, 
 as most of all bearing upon our subject, for that inn had certainly 
 the most extensive and expensive sign ever produced. It is 
 mentioned by Sir Thomas Brown, March 4, 166| — About 
 three miles further, I came to Scoale, where is a very handsome 
 inne, and the noblest sighnepost in England, about and upon which 
 are carved a great many stories as of Charon and Cerberus, 
 Actseon and Diana, and many others ; the signe itself is a White 
 Hart, which hanges downe carved in a stately wreath." A cen- 
 tury later, it is again mentioned. Speaking of Osmundestone, 
 or Scole, Blomefield says — " Here are two very good inns for 
 the entertainment of travellers. The White Hart is much noted 
 in these parts, being called by way of distinction Scole Inn ; the 
 house is a large brick building adorned with imagery and carved 
 work in several places, as big as the life ; it was built in 1655 
 by James Peck, Esq., whose arms impaling his wife's are over the 
 porch door. The sign is very large, beautified all over with a 
 great number of images of large stature carved in wood, and was 
 the work of Fairchiid; the arms about it are those of the chief 
 towns and gentlemen in the county." " There was lately a very 
 round large bed, big enough to hold 15 or 20 couples, in imitation 
 (I suppose) of the remarkable great bed at Ware. The house was 
 in all things accommodated at first for large business ; but the 
 road not supporting it, it is much in decay at present." A cor- 
 respondent in Notes and Queries says : — "I think the sign was not 
 taken down till after 1795, as I have a recollection of having 
 Dassed under it when a boy, in going from Norwich to Ipswich.'* 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEM A TIC. I I 5 
 
 We obtain full details of this wonderful erection from an engrav- 
 ing made in 1740, entitled : — 
 
 " The North East side of y® sign of y« "White Heart at Schoale Inn in 
 Norfolk, built in the year 1655 by James Peck, a merchant of Norwich, 
 which cost £1057. Humbly Dedicated to James Betts, Gent., by his most 
 ob* serv*, Harwin Martin." 
 
 The sign passed over the road, resting on one side on a pier of 
 brickwork, and joined to the house on the other ; its height was 
 sufficient to allow carriages to pass beneath. Its ornamentation 
 was divided into compartments, which contained the following 
 subjects according to the numbers in the engraving : — 1. Jonah 
 coming out of the fish's mouth. 2. A Lion supporting the arms 
 of Great Yarmouth. 3. A Bacchus. 4. The arms of Lindley. 
 5. The arms of Hobart. 6. A Shepherd playing on his pipe. 7. 
 An Angel supporting the arms of Mr Peck's lady. 8. An Angel 
 supporting the arms of Mr Peck. 9. A White Hart [the sign 
 itself] with this motto, — " Implentur veteris Bacchi pin- 
 GUiSQUE FERiNiE. Anno DOM. 1655." 10. The arms of the 
 Earl of Yarmouth. 11. The arms of the Duke of Norfolk. 12. 
 Neptune on a Dolphin. 13. A Lion supporting the arms of 
 Norwich. 14. Charon carrying a reputed Witch to Hades. 15. 
 Cerberus. 16. A Huntsman. 17. Actseon [addressing his dogs 
 with the words "Action ego sum, dominum cognoscite 
 VESTRUM."] 18. A White Hart couchant [underneath, the 
 name of the maker of the sign, Johannes Fair child, struxit^ 
 19. Prudence. 20. Fortitude. 21. Temperance. 22. Justice. 
 23. Diana. 24. Time devouring an infant [underneath, " Tempus 
 Edax rerum.''] 25. An Astronomer, who is seated on a " cir- 
 cumferenter, and by some chymical preparations is so affected 
 that in fine weather he faces that quarter from which it is about 
 to come." There is a ballad on this sign in " Songs and other 
 Poems," by Alexander Brome, Gent. London, 1661, p. 123. 
 
 This herd of white harts has led us over a large tract of ground, 
 but we wiU now return to other royal badges, and note the Hawk 
 AND Buckle, which occurs in Wrenbury, Nantwich, Cheshire ; 
 Etwall, Derby ; and various other places. This is simply a 
 popular rendering of the Falcon and the Fetterlock, one of the 
 badges of the house of York. The Hawk and Buck, which 
 appears to be only another version of the last corruption, occurs 
 at Pearsly Sutton Street, St Helens, Lancashire ; the Falcon 
 AND Horse-shoe, a sign in Poplar in the seventeenth century, 
 
I 1 6 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 [see Trades* Tokens,) may have had the same origin, whilst the 
 Bull and Stireup, in Upper Northgate, Chester, probably 
 comes from the Bull and Fetterlock, another combination of 
 badges of the house of York. 
 
 From this family are also derived the Blue Boar and the 
 White Boar. One of the badges of Eichard, Duke f'i York, 
 father of Edward lY., was " a blewe Bore with his tuskis and his 
 cleis and his membres of gold/'* The heraldic origin of this 
 sign, of which there are still innumerable instances all over Eng- 
 land, is now so completely lost sight of, that in many places it 
 passes under the ignoble appellation of the Blue Pig. 
 
 The White Boar was -the popular sign in Richard the Third's 
 time, that king's cognizance being a boar passant argent, whence 
 the rhyme which cost William CoUingborne his life : — 
 The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our Dogge, 
 Rulen.ali England vnder an Hogged f 
 
 The fondness of Richard for this badge appears from his 
 wardrobe accounts for the year 1483, one of which contains a 
 charge *'for 8000 bores made and wrought upon fustian," and 
 5000 more are mentioned shortly afterwards. He also estab- 
 lished a herald of arms called Blanc Sanglier, and it was this 
 trusty squire w^ho carried his master's mangled body from Bos- 
 worth battle-field to Leicester. 
 
 After Richard's defeat and death the White Boars were changed 
 into Blue Boars, this being the easiest and cheapest way of chang- 
 ing the sign ; and so the Boar of Richard, now painted " true 
 blue," passed for the Boar of the Earl of Oxford, who had largely 
 contributed to place Henry YII. on the throne. Even the White 
 Boar Inn at Leicester, in which Richard passed the last night of 
 his royalty and of his life, followed the general example, and 
 became the Blue Boar Inn, under which sign it continued until 
 taken down twenty-five or thirty years ago. The bed in which 
 the king slept was preserved, and continued for many generations 
 one of the curiosities shewn to strangers at Leicester. It was 
 said that a large sum of money had been discovered in its double 
 bottom, which the landlord himself quietly appropriated. The 
 discovery, however, got wind, and his widow was killed and 
 robbed by some of her guests, in connivance with a maid-servant. 
 
 * Badges of Coprnizance of Richard, Duke of York, written on a blank leaf at the be- 
 ginning of Digby MS. 82. Bodleian Library, Oxford. ArchiEologia xvii. 1814. 
 
 t The Cat, William Catesby ; the Rat, Sir jRichard Ratcliffe ; ^Lovell our dog, Lord 
 Level. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 117 
 
 They carried away seven horse-loads of treasure. This murder 
 was committed in 1605.* 
 
 The sign of the White Boar, however, did not become quite ex- 
 tinct with the overthrow of the York faction, for we find it still in 
 1542, as appears from the following title of a very scarce book : — 
 
 *^ David's Harp full of most delectable harmony newly strung and set in 
 Tune by Thos. Basille y® I^ord Cobham. Imprinted at London in Buttolp 
 lane at ye sign of White Boar by John Mayler for John Gough, 1542." f 
 
 The FiREBEACON, a sign at Fulston, Lincolnshire, was a badge 
 of Edward lY., and also of the Admiralty. 
 
 The Hawthoen, or Hawthornbush, which we meet in so 
 many places, may be Henry YII.'s badge, but various other 
 causes may have contributed to the popularity of that sign, such 
 as the custom of gathering bunches of hawthorn on the first of 
 May. Magic powers, too, are attributed to this plant. And 
 now,'' says Reginald Scott, " to be delivered from witches them- 
 selves they hange in their entrees an hearb called pentaphyllon, 
 cinquefole, also an oliue branch, also franckincense, myrrh, vale- 
 rian veruen, palme, anterihmon, &c. ; also Haythorne^ otherwise 
 whiteihorne, gathered on MaiedaieJ^ &c.J 
 
 The Gun, or Cannon, w^as the cognizance of King Edward YI., 
 Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. In the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century it was of such frequent occurrence that the 
 Craftsman, No. 638, observed — "Nothing is more common in 
 England than the sign of a cannon." Sarah Milwood, the " w^an- 
 ton" who led George Barnwell astray, lived, according to the 
 ballad, in Shoreditch, " next door unto the Gun." At the pres- 
 ent day it is still a great favourite. In the neighbourhood of 
 arsenals its adoption is easily explained. 
 
 About eighty years ago there was a famous Cannon Cofiee- 
 house at the corner of Trafalgar Square, at the end of Whitcombe 
 Street or Hedgelane ; its site is now occupied by the Union 
 Club. From this coffeehouse Hackman saw Miss Eay drive past 
 on her way to Covent Garden Theatre, when he followed and 
 shot her as she w^as entering her coach after the performance. 
 The Gun was also a sign with many booksellers, as in the case of 
 
 * Sir Roger Twisden's Commonplace Books, 1653, as quoted in extenso in Notes and 
 Queries, Aug. 8, 1857. Mr James Thompson, in his " History of Leicester," informs us 
 that one man was hanged and a woman burned for this crime, and not seven persons 
 capitally executed, according to the popular tradition. 
 
 t Harl. MS. 5910 ; of this printer Bagford says : ''I do not find he prented manj 
 books, or at lest few of them have come to my hand." 
 
 X Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft, b. xii. ch. xviii. p. 268, 1584. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Edward White at tlie Little North Door of St Paul's Church, 
 1579; Thomas Ewster in Ivy Lane, 1649; Henry Brome, at 
 the West End of St Paul's Churchyard, 1678, and various others. 
 
 The Swan was a favourite badge of several of our kings, as 
 Henry IV., Edward III. At a tournament in Smithfield the 
 last king wore the following rather profane motto : — 
 
 Hay, hay, the wyth Swan, 
 
 By God's soule I am thy man." 
 
 Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, used the same cog- 
 nizance ; whence Gower styles him " cignus de corde benignus f 
 whilst Cecily Nevil, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV. and 
 Eichard III., likewise had a swan as supporter of her arms. 
 
 The sign of the Swan and Maidenhead, at Stratford-on- 
 Avon, may have originated in one of the royal badges ; for we 
 find that in 1375 the Black Prince bequeathed to his son Pichard 
 his hangings for a hall, embroidered with mermen, and a border 
 of red and black empaled, embroidered with swans having ladies^ 
 heads!^ The Swan and Falcon (two badges of Edward III.) 
 was a sign in Hereford, in 1775, as appears from the following 
 advertisement : — 
 
 "HEREFORD MACHINE. 
 " XN a Day and a Half twice a week, continues flying from the Swan 
 JL and Falcon, in Hereford, Monday and Thursday mornings ; and from 
 the Bolt-in-Tun, in Fleet Street, London, Monday and Thursday evenings. 
 Fare 19s. ; outsides half." — Hereford Journaly January 12, 1775. 
 
 The Swan and White Hart may have been originally the 
 Swan and Antelope, supporters of the arms of Kenry IV., but as 
 it at present stands two distinct royal badges are represented. 
 This sign occurs on a trades-token of St Giles in the Fields, in 
 the second half of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The EisiNG Sun was a badge of Edward III., and forms part 
 of the arms of Ireland ; but the Sun Shining was a cognizance of 
 several kings. Various other causes may have led to the adop- 
 tion of that luminary as a sign. (See Miscellaneous Signs.) 
 
 Lions have been at all times, and stiU continue, greater sign- 
 board favourites than any other heraldic animals. The lion ram- 
 pant most frequently occurs, although in late years naturalism has 
 crept in, and the felis leo is often represented standing or crouch- 
 ing, quite regardless of his heraldic origin. The lion of the sign- 
 board being seldom seen passant, it is more than probable that it 
 was not derived from the national coat of arms, but rather from 
 
 * Archaeolofjia. vol. xxix. 1840. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEM A TIC. I 1 9 
 
 gome badge, either that of Edward III. or from the White Lion 
 of Edward IV. Though silver in general was not used on Eng- 
 lish signboards yet, the White Lion was anything but uncommon. 
 Several examples occur amongst early booksellers. Thus in 
 1604 the " Shepherd's Calendar" was "printed at London by G. 
 Elde, for Thomas Adams, dwelling in Paule's Churchyarde, at 
 the signe of the White Lion." In 1652 we meet with another 
 bookseller, John Fey, near the New Exchange ; and about the 
 same period John Andrews, a ballad printer, near Pye Corner, 
 who both had the sign of the White Lion. For inns, also, it was 
 not an uncommon decoration. Thus the White Lion in St 
 John's Street, Clerkenwell, was originally an inn frequented by 
 cattle-drovers and other wayfarers connected with Smithfield 
 market. Formerly it was a very extensive building, two of the 
 adjoining houses and part of White Lion Street, all being built 
 on its site. The house now occupied by an oilshop was in those 
 days the gateway to the inn-yard, and over it was the sign, in 
 stone relief, a lion rampant, painted white, inserted in the front 
 wall. It still remains in its original position, with the date 
 1714, when it was probably renewed. Pepys's cousin, Anthony 
 Joyce, drowned himself in a pond behind this inn. He was a 
 tavern-keeper himself, and kept the Three Stags at Holborn, (a 
 house of which tokens are extant.) Heavy losses by the fire of 
 1666 preyed upon his mind. He imagined that he had not 
 served God as he ought to have done, and in a moment of 
 despair committed the rash act. We have another, and not 
 uninteresting instance, of this sign. " Sir Thomas Lawrence's 
 father kept the White Lion Hotel at Bristol. He afterwards 
 removed to the Bear, at Devizes, where he failed in business. It 
 seemed that it was this last speculation in hotel-keeping which 
 ruined him, with reference to which local wits used to say, " It 
 was not the Lion but the Bear that eat him up." — Bristol Times, 
 June 4, 1859. 
 
 Since pictorial or carved signs have fallen into disuse, and 
 only names given, the Silver Lion is not uncommon, though 
 in all probability simply adopted as a change from the very 
 frequent Golden Lion. Thus there is one in the High Street, 
 Poplar ; in the London Road, and Midland Eoad, Derby ; in the 
 Lilly Road, Luton, Herts, &c. The Red Lion is by far the most 
 common ; doubtless it originated with the badge of John of 
 Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married to Constance, daughter of 
 
I20 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Don Pe(?ro the Cruel, king of Leon and Castille. The duke boro 
 the lion rampant gules of Leon as Ms cognizance, to represent his 
 claim to the throne of Castille, when that was occupied by 
 Henry de Transtamare. In after years it may often have been 
 used to represent the lion of Scotland. 
 
 The Ked Lion Inn at Sittingbourne is a very ancient estab- 
 lishment. A new landlord, who entered circa 1820, issued the 
 following advertisement : — 
 
 ^T/""'^^' WHITAKER having taken the above house, most respectfully 
 y V solicits the custom and support of the nobility and gentry, &c., &c. 
 
 " The antiquity of the inn, and the respectable character which it has in 
 history are recorded as under : — 
 
 " Sittingbourne, in Kent, is a considerable thoroughfare on the Dover 
 Koad, v^^here there are several good inns, particularly the Red Lion, which 
 is remarkable for an entertainment, made by Mr John Norwood, for King 
 Henry the Fifth, as he returned from the battle of Agincourt, in France, in 
 the year 1415, the whole amounting to no more than Nine Shillings and 
 Ninepence. Wine being at that time only a penny a pint, and all other 
 things being proportionably cheap. 
 
 P.S. — The same character in a like proportionate degree Wm. Whitaker 
 hopes to obtain by his moderate charges at the present time." 
 
 Red Lion Square, Holborn, was called after an inn known a? 
 the Eed Lion. " Andrew Marvell lies interred under y© pews in 
 the south side of St Giles church in ye Fields, under the window 
 wherein is painted on giasse, a red lyon, (it was given by the 
 Inneholder of the Eed lyon Inne, Holborn.)"* 
 
 Another celebrated tavern was the Old Eed Lion, St John's 
 Road, Islington, — which has been honoured by the presence of 
 several great literary characters. Thomson, of the " Seasons," was 
 a frequent visitor ; Paine, the author of the " Eights of Man,'* 
 lived here; and Dr Johnson, with his friends, are said often to 
 have sat in the parlour. Hogarth introduced its gable end in 
 his picture of Evening. 
 
 TJie Black Lion is somewhat uncommon ; it may have been 
 derived from the coat of arms of Queen Philippa of Hainault, 
 wife of Edward Ill.f We find an example of it in the following 
 advertisement : — :j: 
 
 "AT THE Union Society at the Black Lion against Short's Garden in 
 -LjL Drury Lane, a Linen Draper's, on Thursday the 21st past, was 
 * Aubrey, iii. 438. 
 
 t Owen Glendovver also bore a lion rampant sable, *'the black lion of P^)wyss;" his 
 arms were Paly of eight, arg. and gules, over all a lion sable. The black lion was the 
 royal ensign of his father Madoc ap Meredith, last sovereign prince of Powyss ; he died 
 at Winchester in IIW. The black lion consequently might sometimes be set up by 
 Welshmen. 
 
 I Daily Courant, January 1, 17U. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 121 
 
 opened three offices of Insurance on the birth of Children, by way of 
 dividend At the same place there is two offices for marriages/* &c. 
 
 In this advertisement we touch upon the joint-stock mania 
 then raging. Newspapers of the time teemed with advertise- 
 ments of insurance companies of all sorts : the above paper, 
 with less than a dozen advertisements, offers four schemes, by 
 which on payment of 10s. per week £1000 were eventually to be 
 received ! 
 
 Among the badges of the Tudors, Henry VII. and Henry 
 VIII. left us the still common sign of the Poetcullis. 
 
 "A portcullis, or porte-coulisse, is French for that wooden instrument or 
 machine, plated over with iron, made in the form of a harrow or lozenge, 
 hung up with pullies in the entries of gates or castles, to be let down upon 
 any occasion." — Anstls Garter. 
 
 It is the principal charge in the arms of the city of West- 
 minster, and is to be seen everywhere within and without the 
 beautiful chapel of Henry VII., whose favourite device it was 
 as importing his descent from the house of Lancaster. It was 
 also one of the badges of Henry VIII., with the motto, Securitas 
 Altera, and occurs on some of his coins. 
 
 To this same family we also owe the Rose and Ceown, which 
 sign, at the present day, may be observed on not less than forty-eight 
 public-houses in London alone, exclusive of beer-houses. One of 
 the oldest is in the High Street, Knightsbridge, which has been 
 licensed above three hundred years, though not under that name, 
 for anciently it was called the Oliver Ceomwell. The Protec- 
 tor's bodyguard is said to have been quartered here, and an in- 
 scription to that effect was formerly painted in front of the house, 
 accompanied by an emblazoned coat of arms of Cromwell, on an 
 ornamental piece of plaster work, which last is all that now 
 remains of it. It is the oldest house in Brompton, was formerly 
 its largest inn, and not improbably the house at which Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt put up, while his Kentish followers rested on the adjacent 
 green. Corbould painted this inn under the title of " The Old 
 Hostelrie at Knightsbridge," exhibited in 1849, but he trans- 
 ferred its date to 1497, altering the house according to his own 
 fancy. 
 
 During the persecutions, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of 
 booksellers suspected as publishers of the mysterious Martin Mar- 
 prelate tracts, we find one Bogue, at the loyal sign of the Koso 
 and Crown, in St Paul's Ghurchyardj who fell into the category 
 
122 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 of the suspected, and who was so severely persecuted that he was 
 almost ruined by it. 
 
 One more royal, or rather princely badge remains to be men- 
 tioned, — The Feathers, Prince of Wales' Feathers, occasion- 
 ally varied to the Prince of Wales' Arms. Ostrich feathers were 
 from a very early period among the devices of our kings and 
 princes. King Stephen, for instance, according to Guillim, bore 
 a plume of ostrich feathers with the motto : — vi nulla inverti- 
 TiTR ORDO, No force alters their fashion, meaning that no wind 
 can ruffle a feather into lasting disorder. Not only the Black 
 Prince, but also Edward III., himself and his sons, bore ostrich 
 feathers as their cognizances, each with some distinction in colour 
 or metal. The badge originally took the form of a single feather. 
 John Ardern, physician to the Black Prince, who is the first 
 to mention the derivation of the feathers from the King of 
 Bohemia, says : — 
 
 " Et nota quod talem pennam alham portabat Edwardus primogenitus 
 filius Edwardi regis super crestam suam, et illam pennam conquisivit de 
 rege Boemise, quern interfecit apud Cresse in Francia, et sic assumpsit sibi 
 illam pennam quse dicitur ostrich feather , quam prius dictus rex nobilis- 
 simus portabat super crestam." * 
 
 The feather, also, is drawn in the margin of the MS. as single^ 
 and in that shape, too, it is represented on the Black Prince's 
 tomb. This feather, however, appears only to have been an 
 ornament on the helmet of King John of Bohemia. A contem'- 
 porary Flemish poem, quoted by Baron van Reiffenberg, thus 
 describes his heraldic crest : — 
 
 " Twee ghiervogelen daer aen geleyt 
 
 Die al vol bespringelt zyn 
 
 Met Linden bladeren gult fyn, 
 
 Deze is, as in merken kan 
 
 Van Bohemen Koninck Jan." t 
 
 And in that shape it also occurs on the King's seal. More 
 difficulties are offered by the motto : Hou moet ich dien, for so 
 it is in full, — the Black Prince himself wrote it after this fashion 
 in a letter dated April 25, 1370. The last two words in Ger- 
 man mean "I serve," but no explanation is given of the remainder, 
 **Hou moet." Since no mottos in two languages occur, we must 
 
 * "And observe that such a white feather was borne on his crest by Edward the eldest 
 son of K. Edward ; and this feather he conquered from the King of Bohemia whom he 
 killed at Cressy in France, and so he assumed the feather, called the ostrich feather, 
 which that most noble king had formerly worn on his crest."— A^Zoan* MSS. No. 56. 
 
 t Added to this were two vultures, sprinkled all over with finely-gilt linden leavea 
 Therefore I know this is King John of Bohemia. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 
 
 123 
 
 look for a language wHcli can account for both parts of the 
 motto; and thus in Flemish we find these words to mean, " Keep 
 courage, I serve/' or, in less concise language, " Keep courage, I 
 serve with you, I am your companion in arms j " and though no 
 parentage has as yet been found for this motto, it may not im- 
 probably have been derived from the Black Prince's maternal 
 family, since his mother, Queen Philippa of Hainault, was a 
 Flemish princess. 
 
 Amongst the many shops which took the feathers for their 
 sign we find the following noted in an advertisement : — 
 
 " rriHE Late Countess of Kent's powder has been lately experimented 
 JL upon divers infected persons with admirable success. The virtues 
 of it against the Plague and all malignant distempers are sufficiently known 
 to all the Physicians of Christendom, and the Powder itself prepared by 
 the only person living that has the true Receipt, is to be had at the third 
 part of the ordinary price at Mr Calvert's, at the Feathers in the old Pall 
 Mall near St James's," &c. 
 
 This, and other advertisements announcing equally efficacious 
 panacea, appeared daily in the London papers during the plague 
 of 1665. Foe, in his little chronicle of the plague, often 
 
 speaks of these quack medicines. 
 
 Less dismal images are called up by ^Hhe Feathers at the 
 side of Leicester Fields," which sign was evidently complimentary 
 to its neighbour Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II., 
 who lived at Leicester House, " the pouting house of princes," 
 when on bad terms with his father, and died there in 1751. 
 The back parlour of this tavern was for some years the meeting- 
 place of a club of artists and well-known amateurs, amongst 
 whom Stuart, the Athenian traveller ; Scott, the marine painter ; 
 Luke Sullivan, the miniature artist, engraver of the March to 
 Finchley; burly Captain Grose, author of the ^'Antiquities of 
 England,'' and the greatest wit of his day; Mr Hearne, the 
 antiquary ; Nathaniel Smith, the father of J. T. Smith ; Mr 
 John Ireland, then a watchmaker in Maidenlane, and afterwards 
 editor of Boydell's edition of Dr Trusler s " Hogarth Moralised," 
 and several others. When this house was taken down to make 
 way for Dibdin's theatre, called the Sans-souci, the club ad- 
 journed to the Coach and Horses, in Castle Street, Leicester 
 Fields. But, in consequence of the members not proving cus- 
 tomers sufficiently expensive for that establishment, the landlord 
 one evening venturing to let them out with a farthing candle, they 
 betook themselves to Gerard Street and thence to the Bluj? 
 
124 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Posts in Dean Street, where tlie club dwindled to two ot 
 three members and at last died out. 
 
 An amusing anecdote is told about the Feathers, Grosvenor 
 Street West. A lodge of Oddfellows was held at this house, 
 into the private chamber of which George, Prince of Wales, one 
 night intruded very abruptly with a roystering friend. The 
 society was, at the moment, celebrating some of its aw^ful mys- 
 teries, which no uninitiated eye may behold, and these were 
 witnessed by the profane intruders. The only way to repair the 
 sacrilege was to make the Prince and his companion " Odd- 
 fellows," a title they certainly deserved as richly as any members 
 of the club. The initiatory rites were quickly gone through, and 
 the Prince was chairman for the remainder of the evening. In 
 1851 the old public-house was pulled down and a new gin palace 
 built on its site, in the parlour of which the chair used by the 
 distinguished Oddfellow is still preserved, along with a portrait 
 of his Eoyal Highness in the robes of the order. 
 
 Among the badges and arms of countries and towns, the 
 national emblem the Rose is most frequent, and has been so for 
 centuries. Bishop Earle observes, " If the vintner's Rose be at 
 the door it is sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied 
 by the ivy-bush.^' Hutton, in his " Battle of Bosw^orth," says 
 that ^^upon the death of PJchard III., and the consequent over- 
 throw of the York faction, all the signboards with white roses 
 were pulled down, and that none are to be found at the present 
 day." This last part of the statement, we believe, is true, but 
 that the White Eoses were not all immediately done away with 
 appears from the fact that, in 1503, a White Rose Tavern was 
 demolished to make room for the building of Henry VII.'s chapel 
 in Westminster ; that tavern stood near the chapel of Our Lady, 
 behind the high altar of the pbbey church. At present, however, 
 as the rose on the signboard represents in the eye of the public 
 simply the Queen of Flov/ers, — its heraldic history having been 
 forgotten long ago, — it is painted any colour according to taste, 
 or occasionally gilt. Long after the famous battles betw^een the 
 White and Bed Boses had ceased, the custom was continued of 
 adding the colour to the name of the sign. Thus, in Stow, 
 Then have ye one other lane called Bother Lane, or Red Rose 
 Lane, of such a sign," &c. In Lancashire w^e meet, in one or two 
 instances, with the old heraldic flow^er, as at Springwood, Chad- 
 derton, Manchester, where the Bed Bose of Lancaster is stiU 
 ill full bloom on a publican's signboard. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 Skelton's " Armony of Byrdes" was " imprynted at Londo' by 
 Jolin Wyght dwellig in Poule's Cliurch yarde at the sygne of tlie 
 Kose." Machyn, in his Diary, mentions many instances : — " The 
 vij day of Aprill (1563) at seint Katheryns beyond the Toure, 
 the wyff of the syne of the Rose, a tavarne, was set on the pelere 
 for ettyng of rowe flesse and rostyd boyth,^' which in our modern 
 English means that she was put in the pillory for breaking fast 
 in Lent. 
 
 The Rose Tavern in Russell Street, Covent Garden, was a 
 noted place for debauchery in the seventeenth century ] constant 
 allusions are made to it in the old plays. In those days a man 
 could npt go from the Rose Tavern to the Piazzi once but he 
 must venture his life twice." — Shadivell, the Scoivrers, 1691. 
 " Oh no, never talk on't. There will never be his fellow. Oh ! 
 had you seen him scower as I did ; oh ! so delicately, so like a 
 gentleman ! How he cleared the Rose Tavern !" — Ibid. In this 
 house, November 14, 1712, the duel between the Duke of Hamil- 
 ton and Lord Mohun was arranged, in which the latter was killed. 
 In the reign of Queen Anne the place was still a great resort for 
 loose women ; hence in the "Rake Reformed," 1718 — 
 " Not far from thence appears a pendant sign, 
 Whose bush declares the product of the vine, 
 Where to the traveller's sight the full-blown Rose 
 Its dazzling beauties doth in gold disclose, 
 And painted faces flock in tallied cloaths." 
 
 Hogarth has represented one of the rooms of the house in his 
 "Rake's Progress." In 1766 this tavern was swallowed up in 
 the enlargements of Drury Lane by Garrick, but the sign was 
 preserved and hung up against the front wall, between the first 
 and second floor windows.* 
 
 Two other Roses, not without thorns, are mentioned by Tom 
 Brown : — 
 
 " Between two Roses down I fell. 
 
 As 'twixt two stools a platter ; 
 
 One held me np exceeding well, 
 
 Th' other did no such matter. 
 
 The Rose by Temple Bar gave wine 
 
 Exchanged for cTialTc, and filled me. 
 
 But being for the ready coin, 
 
 The Rose in Wood Street killed me." 
 The " Rose by Temple Bar" stood at the corner of Thanet Place. 
 Strype says it was " a well customed house, with good conveni- 
 ences of rooms and a good garden." Walpole mentions a painted 
 
 ♦ See the engraving in Pennant's History of London, vol. i. p. 100. 
 
126 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 room in this tavern in his letters of January 26 and March 1, 
 1776. The Eose in Wood Street was a spunging-house : "I 
 have been too lately under their [the Bayliffs'] clutches, to desire 
 any more dealings with them, and I cannot come within a furlong 
 of the Eose spunging-house without five or six yellow boys in my 
 pocket to cast out those devils there, who would otherwise infal- 
 libly take possession of me." — Tom Brown's Works, iii. p. 24. 
 
 Innumerable other Eose inns and taverns might be mentioned, 
 but we will conclude with noting the Eose Inn at Wokingham, 
 once famous as the resort of Pope and Gay. There was a room 
 here called " Pope's room," and a chair was shown in which the 
 great little man had sat. It is also celebrated in the weU-known 
 song of Molly Mog, attributed to Gay, and printed in Swift's 
 " Miscellanies." " This cruel fair, who was daughter of John 
 Mog, the landlord of that inn, died a spinster at the age of 67. 
 Mr Standen of Arborfield, who died in 1730, is said to have 
 been the enamoured swain to whom the song alludes. The 
 current tradition of the place is, that Gay and his poetic friends 
 having met upon some occasion to dine at the Eose, and being 
 detained within doors by the weather, it was proposed that they 
 should write a song, and that each person present should contri- 
 bute a verse : the subject proposed was the Fair Maid of the Inn. 
 It is said that by mistake they wrote in praise of Molly, but that 
 in fact it was intended to apply to her sister Sally, who was the 
 greater beauty. A portrait of Gay still remains at the inn."* 
 The house at present is changed into a mercer's shop. 
 
 Sometimes the Eose is combined with other objects, as the 
 Eose and Ball, which originated in the Eose as the sign of a 
 mercer, and the Ball as the emblem or device which silk 
 dealers formerly hung at their doors like the Berlin wool shops 
 of the present day. {See under Ball.) The Eose and Key 
 was a sign in Cheapside in 1682.t This combination looks like 
 a hieroglyphic rendering of the phrase, " under the rose," but the 
 key is of very common occurrence in other signs, as will be seen 
 presently. 
 
 The Scotch Thistle and Crown is another not uncommon 
 national badge, adopted mostly by publicans of North British 
 origin. The Crown and Harp is less frequent ; there is one at 
 Bishop's Cleeve, Cheltenham. Of the Crown and Leek we 
 
 ♦ Lyson's Berkshire, vol. i. p 442. 
 t London Gazette, Sept. 18-21, 1682. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 
 
 127 
 
 know only one example, viz., in Dean Street, Mile End ; but 
 since both the rose and thistle are crowned, why not the leek 
 also ? It is " a wholesome food," according to Fluellen, and 
 would no doubt look just as well under a crown as in a Welsh- 
 man's cap. The Shamrock also is of common occurrence, but 
 we have never seen it combined with the Crown. 
 
 Among heraldic signs referring to towns are the Bible and 
 Three Crowns, the coat of arms of Oxford, which was not un- 
 common with the booksellers in former times. To one o^f them, 
 probably, belonged the carved stone specimen walled up in a 
 house at the corner of Little Distaff Lane and St Paul's Church- 
 yard. Such a sign is also mentioned in a rather curious adver- 
 tisement in the Postboy^ September 27, 1711 : — 
 
 " rpiHIS IS to give notice That ten Shillings over and above the Market 
 JL price will be given for the Ticket in the £1,500,000 Lottery, No. 
 132, by Nath. Cliff at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside.'* 
 
 The Spectator in his 191st number took occasion from this 
 advertisement to write a very amusing paper on the various lot- 
 tery superstitions with regard to numbers. 
 
 There is also an Oxford Arms Inn in Warwick Lane, New- 
 gate Street ; a fine, old, galleried inn, with exterior staircases 
 leading to the bed-rooms. This was already a carriers' inn before 
 the fire, as appears from the following advertisement : — 
 ' npHESE AEE to give notice, that Edward Barlet, Oxford Carrier, hath 
 
 JL removed his Inn in London from the Swan at Holborn Bridge, to 
 the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, where he did inne before the fire. His 
 coaches and waggons going forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednes- 
 days, and Fridays. He hath also a hearse with all things convenient to 
 carry a corps to any part of England." * 
 
 The Buck in the Park, Curzon Street, Derby, is the ver- 
 nacular rendering of the arms of that town, which are — a hart 
 cumbant on a mount, in a park paled, all proper. The Three 
 Legs was the sign of a bookseller named Thomas Cockerill, over 
 against Grocer s Hall, in the Poultry, about 1700. Sometimes his 
 house is designated on his publications as the Three Legs and 
 Bible. These three legs were the Manx arms. It is still a not 
 uncommon alehouse sign. There is one, for instance, in Call 
 Lane, Leeds, which is known to the lower classes under the jocular 
 • denomination of " the kettle with three spouts'* 
 
 County arms also are sometimes represented on the signboards ; 
 as the Fifteen Balls, (which refer to the Cornish arms, fifteen 
 
 * London Gazette, March 12, 1672-3, 
 
128 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 roundles arranged in triangular form) at Union Street, Bodmin, 
 Cornwall ; One and All, the motto of the county of Cornwall, 
 occurs at Cheapside, St Heliers, Jersey; and in Market Jew 
 Street, Penzance. This motto has, besides the advantage of 
 being a hearty appeal to all the thirsty sons of Bacchus, and will 
 call to the mind of a thoughtful toper, the relative position of 
 one and many, or all, as explained by the al-fresco artists, who 
 decorate the pavement in Piccadilly—" Many can help one, one 
 cannot help many." The Staffordshire Knot is common in 
 the pottery districts ; besides these almost every county is repre- 
 sented by its own arms, such as the Northumberland Arms, (fee, 
 but about these nothing need be said. 
 
 The Three Balls of the pawnbrokers are taken from the 
 lower part of the coat of arms of the Dukes of Medici, from 
 whose states, and from Lombardy, nearly all the early bankers 
 came. These capitalists also advanced m^oney on valuable goods, 
 and hence gradually became pawnbrokers. The arms of the 
 Medici family were five bezants azure, whence the balls formerly 
 were blue, and only within the last half century have assumed a 
 golden exterior, evidently to gild the pill for those who have 
 dealings with " my uncle as for the position in which they are 
 placed, the popular explanation is that there are two chances to 
 one that whatever is brought there will not be redeemed. 
 
 The Lion and Castle, of which there are a few instances, 
 (Cherry Garden Stairs, Rotherhithe, for example,) need not be 
 derived from royal marriage alliances with Spain, as it may simply 
 have been borrowed from the brand of the Spanish arms on the 
 sherry casks, and have been put up by the landlord to indicate the 
 sale of genuine Spanish wines, such as sack, canary, mountain. 
 
 The Flower de Luce was a frequent English sign in old 
 times, either taken from the quartering of the French arms with 
 the English, or set up as a compliment to private families who 
 bear this charge in their arms or as crest. The preface of " Edyth, 
 the lying widow," ends with these words : — 
 
 " In the cyte of Exeter by West away 
 The time not passed hence many a day, 
 There dwelled a yoman discret and wise, 
 At the siggne of the Flower de lyse • 
 Which had to name John Hawkyu." 
 
 Tokens are extant of an inn at Dover, in the seventeenth century, 
 with the sisn of the French Arms, a tavern name sufficiently com 
 
PLATE VII. 
 
 THE SUN. 
 (Sigii of Wynkyn de Worde, 1497.) 
 
 THREE PHEASANTS AND SCEPTRE. 
 (Banks's BiUs. 1795.) 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 I2g 
 
 mon also in London at tliat period to attract the travellers from 
 across the Channel. Thus James Johnson was a goldsmith, " that 
 kept running cash," — i.e.^ a banker, — in Cheapside, in 1677, living 
 at the sign of the Three Flower de Luces.* In the fifteenth 
 century, Gascon merchants and other strangers in London were 
 allowed to keep hostels for their countrymen, and, in order to get 
 known, they most likely put up the arms of those countries as 
 their signs. No doubt the Three Frogs, London Eoad, Woking- 
 ham, is a travesty of Johnny CrapaucCs Arms. 
 
 Boursault,t in his letter to Bizotin, has a burst of indignation 
 at a fournisseur of something or other to the royal family, who 
 had adopted as his sign the English Arms, with the arms of 
 France in the first quarter, and endeavours to call down the ire 
 of the Parisian police upon the head of the unfortunate shop- 
 keeper who had committed this act of treason : — 
 
 " Laissons I'Angleterre se repaitre de chimeres," saith he, "et s'imaginer 
 que ses souverains sont Rois de France, mais que des Frangais soyent assez 
 ignorants, ou assez mauvais sujets, pour mettre les armes de France ^car- 
 teles dans celles d'Angleterre, c'est ce que des sujets aussi zelez que Mon- 
 sieur d'Argenson et les autres officiers preposez pour la police ne doivent 
 nullement souffrir." + 
 
 He next, in a threatening manner, reminds the poor shopkeeper 
 how, according to " Candem [sic\ Historien Angloys," Queen Mary 
 Stuart was beheaded for having quartered the English arms with 
 those of Scotland, though she was the heir-presumptive of the 
 English throne ; and if such was the fate of that queen, what then 
 did the man deserve who quartered the arms of his sovereign with 
 those of a foreign king ? Indeed he deserved the same fate as 
 the arms. 
 
 Another sign, apparently of French origin, is the Dolphin and 
 Crown, the armorial bearing of the French Dauphin, and the 
 sign of R. Willington, a bookseller in St Paul's Churchyard 
 circa 1700. Some years after, this house seems to have been 
 occupied by James Young, a famous maker of violins and other 
 musical instruments, who lived at the west corner of London 
 
 * Little London Directory for 1677, the oldest printed lists of bankers and merchants 
 in London, reprinted, with historical introduction by John Camden Hotten, 1863. 
 
 t A very amusing French author of the time of Louis XIV., celebrated for his witty 
 letters. 
 
 X "Let England amuse herself with idle fancies, and imagine that her kings are kinars 
 cf France; but that there be Frenchmen who are ignorant enough, or bad subjects 
 enough, to quarter the arms of France with those of England, that is a thing which 
 auch zealous subjects as M. d'Argenson, and the other police magistrates, ought by no 
 means to permit." 
 
 I 
 
130 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 House Yard, St Paul's Churcliyard. On this man the following 
 catch appeared in the Pleasant Musicall Companion, 1726 : — 
 
 You scrapers that want a good fiddle well strung, 
 You must go to the man that is old while he's Young ; 
 But if this same fiddle you fain would play bold, 
 Tou must go to his son, who's Young when he's old. 
 There 's old Young and young Young, both men of renown : 
 Old sells and young plays the best fiddle in town. 
 Young and old live together, and may they live long — 
 Young to play an old fiddle, old to sell a new song." 
 
 This Young family afterwards removed to the Queen's Head 
 Tavern in Paternoster Row, where in a few years they grew rich 
 by giving concerts, when they removed to the Castle in the 
 same street. The Castle concerts continued a long time to be 
 celebrated. 
 
 Many signs are exceedingly puzzling under the name by which 
 they pass with the public. Such was that of "Rowland Hall, dwell- 
 ing in Guttur Lane, at the sygne of the Half Eagle and Key." 
 This quaint sign is no other than the arms of Geneva, described 
 in the non-heraldic language of the mob. Rowland Hall, a 
 bookseller and printer, lived as a refugee in Geneva during the 
 reign of Queen Mary ; hence on his return to London he set up 
 the arms of that town for his sign, as a graceful compliment to 
 the hospitality he had received, and as a tribute of admiration to 
 stanch Protestantism. Hall, at other periods of his life, lived 
 at the Cradle in Lombard Street, and at the Three Arrows 
 in Golden Lane, Cripplegate. In 1769 there was again the 
 Geneva Arms among the London signs, before the shop of Le 
 Grand, a " pastery-cook and cook,'* as he styled himself, in 
 Church Street, Soho. Formerly most pastry-cooks and con- 
 fectioners were Swiss, and many from that country still follow 
 those professions in Italy, Spain, and recently in England. This 
 last sign has found imitators in Soho ; for at the present day it 
 figures at a public-house in Hayes Court, where it is put up, no 
 doubt, in honour of the spirit which many call Geneva, but 
 which we may name Gin. The origin of this name, as applied 
 by piibUcans, is not a little curious. In Holland the juniper- 
 berry is used for flavouring the gin or hollands which they 
 distil there, and this, with the vulgar in that country, has 
 gradually become corrupted from Juniper to Jenever, the latter 
 term being still further corrupted here to Geneva^ and Gin, 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 
 
 The Cross Keys are the arms of the Papal See, the emblem of 
 Bfc Peter and his successors : — 
 
 '* Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain ; 
 The golden opes, the iron shuts amaine." 
 
 Milton. 
 
 This sign was frequently adopted by innkeepers and other tenants 
 of religious houses, even after the Reformation ; for the Cross 
 Keys figure in the arms of the Bishops of York, Cashel, Exeter, 
 Gloster, and Peterborough. At the Cross Keys in Gracechurch 
 Street, where Tarlton, the comic actor, went to see fashions, 
 Banks used to perform with his wonderful bay horse before 
 a crowded house. This was in the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
 when the inn consisted of a large court with galleries all round, 
 which, like many other old London inns, was often used as an 
 extempore theatre by our ancestors. It is named in 1681* 
 amongst the carriers' inns, and is in existence at the present day. 
 The Cross Keys was the sign of a tavern near Thavies Inn in 
 1712 :— 
 
 " May the Cross Keys near Thavies Inn succeed, 
 And famous grow for choicest white and red ; 
 That all may know, who view that costly sign, 
 Those golden keys command celestial wine." 
 
 The QuacJc Vintners. A Satire. 1712. 
 Besides, it is famous as the sign of Bernard Lintot, 1736, the 
 publisher of Gay's works, and many other popular books of that 
 day. His shop was situated between the Temple Gates, in Fleet 
 Street. The Cross Keys and Bible was the sign of J. Bell, in 
 CornhiU, 1711. 
 
 Most numerous among heraldic signs were the crests, arms, 
 and badges t of private families. The causes which dictated the 
 
 * Thos. Delaune's Present State of London, 1681. 
 
 t These badges consisted of the master's arms, crest, or device, either on a smnn 
 Silver shield or embroidered on a piece of cloth, and fastened on the left armcf seivants. 
 
 A baUad in the Roxburgh collection thus alludes to this custom : * 
 
 " The nobles of our Land 
 
 were much delighted then, 
 To have at their command 
 
 a Crue of lustie Men, 
 Which by their Coats were knowne, 
 
 of Tawnie, Red, or Blue ; 
 With crests on their sleeves showne 
 when this old cap was new." 
 
 * Time's alteration ; 
 or. 
 
 The old man's rehearsall what brave days he knew 
 A great while agone, when his old cap was new." 
 
 Rox. Ball., i. foL 407. 
 
132 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 choice of such subjects were various. One of the earliest waa 
 this : — 
 
 " In towns the hospitality of the burghers was not always given gratis, 
 for it was a common custom even amongst the richer merchants to make a 
 profit by receiving guests. These letters of lodgings were distinguished 
 from the innkeepers or hostelers by the name of herbergeors, or people who 
 gave harbour to strangers, and in large towns they were submitted to 
 municipal regulations. The great barons and knights were in the custom 
 of taking up their lodgings with those herbergeors rather than going to the 
 public hostel, and thus a sort of relationship was formed between particu- 
 lar nobles or kings and particular burghers, on the strength of which the 
 latter adopted the arms of their habitual lodgers as their sign." * 
 This, again, led to the custom of prefixing to inns the arms of 
 men of note who had sojourned in the house, as may be seen in 
 Machyn's Diary: — "The xxv day of January [1560] toke ys 
 gorney into Franse, inbassadur to the Frenche kyng, the yerle of 
 Bedford and he had iij dozen of logyng shochyons,'' (lodging 
 escutcheons). Thus, on the road from London to Westchester 
 the coats of arms of several of the lord-lieutenants of Ireland 
 might formerly have been observed, either as signs to inns or 
 else framed and hung in the best rooms. That this was a 
 general custom with ambassadors appears from Sir Dudley 
 T)igge's " Compleat Ambssador," 1654; who, alluding in his 
 preface to the reserve of English ambassadors, observes : — " We 
 have hardly any notion of them but their arms, which are hung 
 up in inns where they passed." Montaigne also mentions this 
 practice as usual in France : — " A Plombieres il me commanda a 
 la faveur de son hostesse, selon Vhumeur de la nation, de laisser 
 un escusson de ses armes en bois, quun peintre dudict Heu fist 
 pour un escu; et le fist I'hostesse curieusement attacher a la 
 muraille pas dehors.''^ 
 
 But the feudal relations between the higher and lower classes 
 contributed above all to the adoption of this description of signs. 
 A vassal, for instance, would set up the arms or crest of hia 
 
 stow gives us a good picture of a great nobleman's retinue in the good old time, before 
 "Vie nobility took to hotel-keeping : — " The late Earl of Oxford, father to him that now 
 iveth, has been noted within these forty years, to have ridden into this city and so 
 to his house by London Stone, with eighty gentlemen, in a livery of Reading tawny, and 
 chains of gold about their necks, before him, and one hundred tall yeomen in the like 
 livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his cognisance of the blue boar 
 embroidered on their left shoulder." These badges fell into disuse in the reign of 
 James I. 
 
 * Wright's Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages, 
 p. 333. 
 
 'Jj- "At Plombieres he ordered me to leave with his hostess, according to the fashion of 
 the country, ac escutcheon of his arms in wood, which a painter of that town made for 
 a «"rown • and the hostess had it carefully hung unon the wall outside the house." 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 feudal lord ; a retired soldier the arms of the knight under 
 whose banneret he had gathered both glory and plunder ; an old 
 servant the badge he had worn when he stood at the trencher, or 
 followed his master in the chase ; and, doubtless, many publicans 
 adopted for their sign the badge of the neighbouring wealthy 
 noble, in order to court the custom of his household and servants. 
 
 Bagford, in his MS. notes about the art of printing,* has 
 jotted down a list of signs originated from badges, which we will 
 transcribe in all the unrestrained freedom of Bagford's spelling, 
 in which, as well as in bad writing, he surpassed all his con- 
 temporaries, {see note, p. 102 :) — 
 
 " Then for ye original of signes used to be set over ye doners of trades- 
 men, as Inkepers, Taverns, etc., thay hauing been domestic saruants to 
 some nobleman, thay leaning ther Masters saruis toke to themselves for 
 ther signes ye crest, bag,+ or ye arms of ther Ld., and thes was a destine- 
 eion or Mark of one Mannes house from anouther, and [not] only by 
 printers but all outher trades : and these seruants of kinges, queenes, or 
 noblemen, being ther domestick saruants, and v^or ther LeuirsJ and 
 Bages, as may be sene these day ye maner of the Leuirs and Bagges by ye 
 wattermen : — 
 
 The Antelop was ye bag of Kg. Henery ye 8, as wel as ye porculouses § 
 ^ and ye Rose and Crown. 
 
 Ancor, Gould, ye Ld. of Lincolne and ye Lord High Admirall. 
 Bull, Black, with gould homes, ye House of Clarence. 
 Bull, Dun, ye Lord Nevill, Westmoreland, Burgayne, Latimer, and 
 Southamton. 
 
 BouR : White, ye Lord "Winsor ; Blew with a MuUit, ye Earle of Oxford. 
 Bucket and Chane, ye Lord Wills. 
 Bare and Ragged Staffe, ye Earle of Lester. 
 Bare, Black, ye Earle of Warwicke. 
 Bare, White, ye Earle of Kent. 
 Bears Head Muscled, ye Lord Morley. 
 , Roe Buck, ye Lord Montacute. 
 
 Bulls head erased : White, ye Ld. Wharton ; Red, ye Lord Ogle. 
 Crescent or halfe Moune, ye Earle of Northumberland and ye Tem- 
 
 poralati. 
 CoNDY, black, ye Ld. Bray. 
 
 Cat, ye Lord Euers; Cat of Mount and Leper,II Mar. of Worster and ye 
 Ld. Buckhurst. 
 
 Cbosses and Mitters, and Cross Keyes, Archbishop and Bishopes, 
 Abbots. 
 
 Cardij^ales Capes or hat, you have not meney of them, the war set up 
 
 by sume that had ben seruants to Tho. Wollsey. 
 Dragon: Black, WilsherU and Clifford; Red, Cumberland; Greene, ye 
 
 Earle of Pembrocke. 
 
 * Ilarl. »ISS., 5910, voL ii. p. 167. 
 g Portcullises. 
 
 f Badge. 
 ^ Leopard. 
 
 If Liveries. 
 ^ Wiltshire. 
 
^34 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Eagle, ye Earle of Cambridge; Eagel and Childe, ye Earle of Derby ; 
 
 Black, ye Lord Norris. 
 Eagle, sprede, ye Emperour. 
 
 Elephant, Sr. Ffrances Knowles, (and Henery Wyke, a printer, lining in 
 Fletstrete, 1570, was saruant to Sr. Ffr. Knowles, gane ye Elephant 
 for bis signe,) and likwise it was ye bag of ye Lord Beamont and ye 
 Ld. Sandes. 
 
 Phenix, ye Lord Hertford, and ye sign that Mansell [set up,] Copper, 
 
 etc.* 
 
 Ffox, Red, Gloster and ye Bishop of Winchester. 
 
 Ffalcolne, ye Marquess of Winchester ; armed and collered, ye Ld. St 
 
 John and Ld. Zouch. 
 Gripes Ffoot, ye Ld. Stanley. 
 
 GoTTE, ye Earle of Bedford. 
 
 Grayhond, ye Ld. Clenton, Druery, and ye Lord Rich,+ 
 Grifpen, ye Ld. Wintworth. 
 Harpe, for Irland. 
 
 Hedge-Hog, Sr. Henery Sidney ; Will. Seeres was his printer. 
 
 Hind, Sr. Christopher Haton; Hen. Beneyman his printer. 
 
 Lock, ye House of Suffolcke. Such a sign without Temple Bar. 
 
 Lion, Bleu, Denmarke. 
 
 Lion, Red, Rampant, Scotland. 
 
 Lion, White, Pasant, ye Earl of March. 
 
 Lion, White, Rampant, Norfolk and all ye Hawardes. 
 
 Maiden Head, ye Duck of Buckingatn. 
 
 Portcullis, ye Earle of Somerset, Wayles, and ye Lord of Worster. 
 The Pye, ye Ld. Reuiers.J 
 Pelican, ye Lord Cromwell. 
 Pecocke, ye Earle of Rutland. 
 
 Plum op Ffeathers, ye Earle of Lincolne ; azure, ye Lord Scrope. 
 Rauen, White, ye Earle of Comberland. 
 Rauen, BlacJce, ye King of Scots. 
 
 SwANE, ye Ducke of Buckingham, Gloster, Hartford, Hunsdon, Stal« 
 ford. 
 
 SuNE, ye Spirituallaty, ye Lord Willoby and York. 
 Staffe : White Ragged, Warwick ; Black, Kent. 
 Starre, ye Earle of Sussen and ye Lord Ffitzwalter. 
 Sarasok Head, ye Ld. Audley and ye Ld. Cobham. 
 Talbot, ye Earl of Shrewsbury and ye Lord Mountagew. 
 Tiger's Head, Sr. Ffrancis Walsingam. 
 Whete-sheafe, ye Earle of Exeter, ye Lord Burley, etc. 
 Ape, clogged, ye House of Suffolcke. 
 Butterflie, white, ye Lord Audle. 
 Camel, ye Earle of Worster. 
 Ye 3 fluer de luses, ye King of France. 
 Fooles Head, ye Earle of Bath. 
 
 Grayhond, ye Ld. Clinton ; white, ye f ameley of ye Druries. 
 
 ♦ A transcript adds to these the names of Archbishop Parker and Jugge. 
 
 t This statement is modified lower down. 
 
 X Rivenv 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 Grathondes Head, ye Lord Rich. 
 
 Hart, White, Kg. llichard ye 2 and Sir Walter Rowley.* 
 
 Horse, White, ye Earle of Arondele. 
 
 HoRNES, 2 of seluer,] ye Ld. Cheney. 
 
 MiLSALE or WiNDMiL, ye Lord Willobe. 
 
 Rose in te Sunbeams, ye Ld. Wardon of ye 8 ports. 
 
 Spearhead, Pembroke. 
 
 Vnicorne, White, ye Ld. Windsor. 
 
 The arms of the lord of the manor were often put up as a sign, 
 — a custom that has continued to our day, particularly in villages, 
 where the inn invariably displays the name or coat-armour of the 
 ground-landlord, whose steward once or twice in the year meets 
 at the house the tenantry with their rents and land dues. Should 
 the estate pass into other hands, the inn will most probably change 
 its sign for the arms of the new purchaser. The house, as it 
 were, wears the livery of the master, although, so far as heralds' 
 visitations are concerned, this may be as unauthorised as many 
 other advertisements of noble descent, or gentle extraction, in use 
 amongst the wealthy and the proud. 
 
 In ancient times, as we have seen, the great landowners per- 
 formed the duties of innkeepers, and their arms were hung or 
 carved at the entrances to the castles, as indications to wayfarers 
 who was the lord and master in those parts. The keep in those 
 days was rarely without a stranger or two, either travelling 
 mechanics or persons acquainted with mysteries, — as trades and 
 professions were termed in those days, — or vagabond soldiers on 
 the tramp for a new master to fight under. Greater people were 
 admitted further in the castle, but the common sort fared with 
 the servants. According to the good-nature of the all-powerful 
 lord was the fare good or bad, plentiful or meagre. It was, how- 
 ever, generally the custom in those early times to be profuse in 
 all matters of food-bounty. The house-steward made charges for 
 any extras, and the comfort obtainable generally depended on the 
 liberality or greediness of these personages. As population in- 
 creased, travellers became too numerous for the accommodation 
 provided. Stewards also became old, and detached premises were 
 given or built for them to carry on the business away from the 
 castle or great house. The arms of the landlord were of course 
 put up outside the house, and on occasion of predatory excur- 
 sions or family fights, when other nobles joined their troops with 
 those of the landlord, the soldiers were usually quartered at the 
 
 fialeigh. 
 
 t Silver. 
 
I 36 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 inn outside the castle. As in all cases of public resort, people 
 soon began to have fancies, and this Ked Lion and that Grey- 
 hound became famous through the country for the good enter- 
 tainment to be had there. In this manner Red Lions and 
 Greyhounds found their way on to the signboards of the inns 
 within the walled cities. The men of the castle, too. used those 
 houses bearing their master s arms when they visited the town. 
 It will be readily seen that the name of a favourite tavern would 
 quickly suggest its adoption elsewhere, and in this way the heraldic 
 emblem of a family might be carried where that family was 
 neither known nor feared. 
 
 Latterly, however, as all traces of the origin and meaning of 
 these Arms " have died out, or become removed from the under- 
 standing of publicans and brewers, the uses to which the word _ 
 has been applied are most absurd and ridiculous. Not only do 
 we meet constantly with arms of families nobody ever heard of, 
 nor cares to hear about, but all sorts of impossible "Arms'* are 
 invented, as Junction Arms, Geiffin's Arms, Chaffcutter's 
 Arms, Union Arms,* General's Arms, Antigallican Arms, 
 Farmers' Arms, Drovers' Arms, &c., {see Introduction.) 
 
 In tavern heraldry the Adam's Arms ought certainly to have 
 the precedence : the publicans generally represent these by a 
 pewter pot and a couple of crossed tobacco pipes, differing in thi? 
 from Sylvanus Morgan, a WTiter on heraldry, who says that 
 Adam's arms were " Paly Tranchy divided every way and tinc- 
 tured of every colour. "t The shield was in the shape of a spade, 
 which was used 
 
 " When Adam delved and Eve span/* 
 whilst from the spindle of our first mother the female lozenge- 
 shaped shield is said to be derived. 
 
 One of the most popular heraldic signs is the Bear and 
 Eagged Staff, the crest of the Warwick family : — 
 
 * The Union Arms in Panton Street, Haymarket, was the public-house of Cribb, the 
 pugilist champion, a fact commemorated by a poet of the prize ring, in all probability 
 a better "fist" at smashing than at "wooing the Muses — 
 *' The champion I see is again on the list, 
 His standard— the Union Arms. 
 His customers still he will serve with his fist, 
 
 But without creating alarms. 
 Instead of a floorer, he tips them a glass. 
 
 Divested of joking or fib ; 
 Then, < lads of the fancy,' don't Tom's house pass. 
 But take a hand at the game of Cribb." 
 t Sylvanus Morgan's Sphere of Gentry. London, 1661. 
 
HERALIHG AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 War, Now, by my father's badge, old Nevil's crest, 
 The rampant bear chain'd to the ragged staff, 
 This day I '11 wear aloft my burgonet." 
 
 Henry F/., Part II. a. v. g. 1. 
 
 Arthga], the first Earl of Warwick, in the time of King 
 Arthur, was called by the ancient British the Bear, for having 
 strangled such an animal in his arms ; and Morvidius, another 
 ancestor of this house, slew a giant with a club made out of 
 a young tree j hence the family bore the Bear and Bagged 
 Staff. 
 
 " When Eobert Dudley was governor in the Low Countries 
 with the high title of his Excellencie, disusing his own coat of 
 the Green Lion with two tails, he signed all instruments with 
 the crest of the Bear and Ragged Staff. He was then suspected 
 by many of his jealous adversaries to hatch an ambitious design 
 to make himself absolute commander (as the lion is king of 
 beasts) over the Low Countries. Whereupon some — foes to his 
 faction and friends to the Dutch freer! om — wrote under his crest 
 set up in public places : — 
 
 ' Ursa caret cauda, non queat esse leo.* 
 
 ' The Bear he never can prevail 
 To lion it for lack of tail.' 
 
 Which gave rise to a Warwickshire proverb, in use at this day,—. 
 The Bear wants a tail and cannot he a Lion^f 
 
 The Bear and Ragged Staff is still the sign of an inn at Cum- 
 nor, to which an historic interest is attached owing to its connexion 
 with the dark tragedy of poor Amy Robsart, who in this ver}? 
 house fell a victim to that stony-hearted adventurer, Robert 
 Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Sir Walter Scott has introduced the 
 house in the first chapter of Kenil worth." The power the 
 Warwick family once enjoyed gave this sign a popularity which 
 has existed to the present day, though the race of old Nevil, and 
 the kings he made and unmade, have each and all passed away. 
 Its heraldic designation has been better preserved than is the case 
 of some other signs ; only in one instance, at Lower Bridge Street, 
 Chester, it has been altered into the Bear and Billet. Some- 
 times the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff, we may inform the 
 reader, is jocularly spoken of as the Angel and Flute. 
 
 The Ragged Staff figures also in single blessedness. A car- 
 
 • There is a sign of the Green Lion in Short Street, Cambridge, the only one I have 
 teer seen. 
 
 t Fuller, in voce Warwickshire. 
 
138 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 riers' inn in West SmitMeld possessed this sign in 1682.* In 
 the wall of a house at the corner of Little St Andrew Street and 
 "West Street, St Giles, there is still a stone bas-relief sign of two 
 ragged staves placed salterwise, with the initials S. F. G., and 
 the date 1691. It was doubtless put there as a compliment to 
 Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, who in the reign of Charles II. 
 built Leicester House, which gave a name to Leicester Fields, now 
 the site of Leicester Square. Stow mentions that the king-maker, 
 Eichard Warwick, came to town for the convention of 1458, 
 accompanied by 600 men, all in red jackets, embroidered with 
 ragged staves before and behind." 
 
 Equally well known with the last sign is that of the Eagle 
 AND Child, occasionally called the Bird and Bantling, to 
 obtain the favourite alliteration. It represents the crest of the 
 Stanley family, and the following legend is told to account for 
 its origin : — In the reign of Edward III., Sir Thomas Latham, 
 ancestor of the house of Stanley and Derby, had only one legiti- 
 mate child, a daughter named Isabel, but at the same time he 
 had an illegitimate son by a certain Mary Oscatell. This child 
 he ordered to be laid at the foot of a tree on which an eagle had 
 built its nest. Taking a walk with his lady over the estate, he 
 contrived to bring her past this place, pretended to find the boy, 
 took him home, and finally prevailed upon her to adopt him as 
 their son. This boy was afterwards called Sir Oscatell Latham, 
 and considered the heir to the estates. Compunction or other 
 motive, however, made the old nobleman alter his mind and con- 
 fess the fraud, and at his death the greater part of the fortune 
 was left to his daughter, who afterwards married Sir John 
 Stanley. At the adoption of the child. Sir Thomas had assumed 
 for crest an eagle looking backwards ; this, out of ill feeling 
 towards Sir Oscatell, was afterwards altered into an eagle preying 
 upon a child. How matters were afterwards arranged may be 
 seen in " Memoirs containing a Genealogical and Historical 
 Account of the House of Stanley," p. 22. Manchester, 1767. 
 Bishop Stanley made an historical poem upon the legend, which 
 is not without parallel, and seems to be either a corruption of or 
 suggested by the fable of Ganimede. Edward Stanley, in his 
 "History of Birds," (vol. i. p. 119,) cites several similar stories. 
 But the Stanley family is not the only one that bears this crest. 
 Eandle Holme (b. iii. p. 403) gives the arms of the family of 
 
 * Delaune's Present State of London, 1682. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 Culclietli of Culcheth as " an infant in swaddling-clotlies proper, 
 mantle gules, swaddle band or, with an eagle standing upon it, 
 with its wings expanded sable in a field argent." The fause 
 fable of the Lo. Latham" is also told at length, with slight varia- 
 tions from the usual story, in a MS. in the College of Arms ; * in 
 this version the foundling is made the son of an Irish king. The 
 Eagle and Child occurs as the sign of a bookseller, Thomas Creede, 
 in the old Exchange, as early as 1584. Taylor the water-poet 
 also names some instances of the sign among inns and taverns, 
 and particularly extols one at Manchester : — 
 " I lodged at the Eagle and the Child, 
 Whereas my hostesse (a good ancient woman) 
 Did entertain me with respect not common, 
 She caused my linnen, shirts, and bands be washt, 
 And on my way she caused me be refresht ; 
 She gave me twelve silke points, she gave me baken, 
 Which by me much refused at last was taken. 
 In troath she proued a mother unto me, 
 For which I ever more will thankefull be." f 
 
 Another crest of the Derby family also occurs as a sign — namely, 
 the Eagle's Foot, which was adopted in the sixteenth century 
 by John Tysdall, a bookseller at the upper end of Lombard 
 Street. 
 
 The frequency of eagles in heraldry made them very common 
 on the signboard, although it is now impossible- to say whose 
 armorial bearings eacli particular eagle was intended to represent. 
 The Spread Eagle occurs as the sign of one of the early printers and 
 booksellers, Gualter Lynne, who, in the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, had two shops with that sign, — one on Sommer's Key, near 
 Billingsgate, and another next St Paul's Wharf. In 1659 there 
 was a Black Spread Eagle at the west end of St PauFs, which 
 shop was also a bookseller's, one Giles Calvert. As the signs in 
 large towns and cities were generally not altered when the house 
 changed hands, it is not improbable but that this may be the 
 same Black Eagle mentioned by Stow in the following words : — 
 During a great tempest at sea, in January 1506, Philip, King of Castille, 
 and his queen, were weather-driven at Falmouth. The same tempest 
 blew down the Eagle of brass off the spire of St Paul's Church in London, 
 and m the falling the same eagle broke and battered the Black Eagle that 
 hung for a sign in St Paul's Churchyard." 
 
 Milton's father, a scrivener by trade, lived in Bread Street, 
 
 * Printed in the Journal of Exit. Archaeolog. Assoc., vol. vii. p. 71. 
 \ Taylor's Pennjbsse Pilgrimage, 1230. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Cheapside, at the sign of the Spread Eagle, which was his own 
 coat of arms, and in this house the great author of " Paradise 
 Lost" was born, December 9, 1608. When the poet's fame had 
 gone forth, strangers used to come to see the house, until it was 
 destroyed by the fire of 1666. Perhaps its memory is preserved 
 in Black Spread Eagle Court, which is the name of a passage in 
 that locality. 
 
 Another Spread Eagle was a noted "porter-house" in the 
 Strand at the end of the last century : — 
 
 " And to some noted porter-house repair ; 
 The several streets or one or more can claim, 
 Alike in goodness and alike in fame. 
 The Strand her Spreading Eagle justly boasts. 
 
 Facing that street where Venus holds her reign, 
 And Pleasure's daughters drag a life of pain,* 
 There the Spread Eagle, with majestic grace. 
 Shows his broad wings and notifies the place. 
 
 There let me dine in plenty and in quiet."+ 
 The Grasshoppees on the London signboards were all de- 
 scendants of Sir Thomas Gresham's sign and crest, which is still 
 commemorated by the weather-vane on the Royal Exchange, of 
 which he was the first founder. The original sign appears to 
 have been preserved up to a very recent date. 
 
 The shop of the great Sir Thomas Gresham/' says Pennant, " stood in 
 this [Lombard] street : it is now occupied by Messrs Martin, bankers, who 
 are still in possession of the original sign of that illustrious person — the 
 Grasshopper. Were it mine, that honourable memorial of so great a pre- 
 decessor should certainly be placed in the most ostentatious situation I 
 could find." % 
 
 The ancients used the grasshopper as a fascinum, (fascination, 
 enchantment ;) for this purpose Pisistratus erected one as a 
 Ttarayjivri before the Acropolis at Athens ; hence grasshoppers, iu 
 
 * Catherine Street, in the Strand, was a disreputable thoroughfare in the last century. 
 GNiy alludes to it in his " Trivia : " — 
 
 Oh, may thy virtue guard thee through the roads 
 Of Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes ! 
 The harlots' guileful path, who nightly stand 
 Where Catherine Street descends into the Strand. 
 With empty bandbox she delights to range, 
 And feigns a distant errand from the 'Change. 
 Nay, she will oft the Quaker's hood profane, 
 And trudge demure the rounds of Drury Lane." 
 Tom Brown describes, con amove, the wickedness of that part of the town. Catherine 
 Street at present is not quite so bad as formerly, but the hundred of Drury Lane cannot 
 by any means be called the most virtuous part of London. 
 
 t Art of Living in London. Printed for William Grifl&n, at the Garrickshead, in 
 Catherine Street, in the Strand, 1768. 
 
 I Pennant's Account of Loudon, 1813, p. 618. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC, 
 
 141 
 
 all sorts of human occupations, were worn about the person to 
 bring good luck. The grasshopper sign certainly seems to have 
 been a lucky one. Charles Duncombe and Eichard Kent, gold- 
 smiths, lived at the Grasshopper in Lombard Street, (no doubt 
 Gresham's old house,) in 1677,* and throve so well under its 
 fascinum that Duncombe gathered a fortune large enough to buy 
 the Helmsley estate in Yorkshire from George Villiers, Duke of 
 Buckingham. The land is now occupied by the Earl of Fevers- 
 ham, (Duncombe^s descendant,) under the name of Duncombe 
 Park. 
 
 It is impossible to determine whether the Maidenhead was 
 set up as a compliment to the Duke of Buckingham, to Catherine 
 Parr, or to the Mercers' Company, for it is the crest of the three. 
 But at all events the Mercers' crest had the precedence as being 
 the oldest. Amongst the badges of Henry VIII. it is some- 
 times seen issuing out of the Tudor Eose : — 
 
 " This combination," Willement says, " does not appear to have been 
 an entire new fancy, but to have been composed from the rose-badge of 
 King Henry VIII., and from one previously used by this queen's family. 
 The house of Parr had before this time assumed as one of their devices a 
 maiden's head couped below the breast, vested in ermine and gold, the 
 hair of the head and the temples encircled with a wreath of red and white 
 roses ; and this badge they had derived from the family of Eos of Ken- 
 dal." 
 
 It was a sign used by some of the early printers. On the last 
 page of a little work entitled ^'Salus Corporis, Salus Animae,^^ we 
 find the following imprmt : — 
 
 " Hos cme Richardus quos Fax impressit ad unguem calcographus 
 summa sedulitate libros. 
 
 Impressum est presens opusculum londiniis in divi pauli semiterio sub 
 virginei capitis signo. Anno millesimo quin getesimo nono. Mensis vero 
 Decembris die xii." t 
 
 Thomas Petit, another early printer, also lived " at the sygne 
 of the Maydenshead in Paulis Churchyard,'^ lo41. He was 
 probably a successor of Eichard Fax. 
 
 An amusing anecdote is told of old Hobson, the Londoner, 
 with regard to this sign : — 
 
 "Maister Hobson having one of his Prentices new come out of his 
 time, and being made a free man of London, desired to set up for himself ; 
 so, taking a house not far from St Laurence Lane, furnished it with store 
 ♦ Little London Directory for 1677, the oldest list of London merchants, 
 t " Buy these books, which Richard Fax the printer has printed with the wedge, with 
 the greatest care. This little boofc was printed at London, in St Paul's Churchyard, at 
 the Maidenhead, in the year 1509, on the 12th of December." The printing with the 
 wedge was the first attempt of the art, whence the books produced in this mariner are 
 Bometimes called incunaMes. 
 
142 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 of ware, and set up the signe of tlie Maydenhead ; hard by was a very rich 
 man of the same trade, had the same signe, and reported in every place 
 where he came, that the young man had set up the same signe that he had 
 onely to get away his customers, and daily vexed the young man therewith- 
 all, who, being grieved in his mind, made it known to Maister Hobson, his 
 late Maister, who, comming to the rich man, said, *I marvell, sir,' (quoth 
 Maister Hobson,) * why you wrong my man so much as to say he seketh to 
 get away your customers/ * Marry, so he doth,' (quoth the other,) * for he 
 has set up a signe called the Maidenhead, and mine is.* * That is not so,' 
 (replied Maister Hobson,) ' for his is the widdoe's head, and no maydenhead, 
 therefore you do him great wrong.' The rich man hereupon, seeing himself 
 requited with mocks, rested satisfied, and never after that envied Maister 
 Hobson's man, but let him live quietly." * 
 
 This sign occurs occasionally as the Maid's Head, but since 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign it has doubtless frequently referred to 
 the virgin queen. 
 
 The Cross Foxes — i.^.,two foxes counter saliant — is a common 
 sign in some parts of England. It is the sign of the principal 
 inn at Oswestry in Shropshire, and of very many public-houses 
 in North Wales, and has been adopted from the armorial bear- 
 ings of Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, Bart., whose family hold 
 extensive possessions in these parts. The late baronet, too, made 
 himself very popular as a patron of agricultural improvements. 
 Old Guillim, the heraldic writer's remarks upon this coat of arms, 
 which he says belongs to the Kadrod Hard family of Wales, 
 are quaint : — 
 
 These are somewhat unlike Samson's foxes that were tied together by 
 the tails, and yet these two agree in aliquo tertio : They came into the 
 field like to enemies, but they meant nothing less than fight, and therefore 
 they pass by each other, like two crafty lawyers, which come to the Bar as 
 if they meant to fall out deadly about their clients' cause ; but when they 
 have done, and their clients' purses are well spunged, they are better friends 
 than ever they were, and laugh at those geese that will not believe them to 
 be foxes, till they (too late) find themselves foxbitten." f 
 
 The Tiger's Head was the sign of the house of Christopher 
 and Robert Barker, Queen Elizabeth's booksellers and printers, 
 in Paternoster Eow : it was borrowed from their crest ; their 
 shop exhibited the sign of the Grasshopper, in St Paul's Church- 
 yard. They came of an ancient family, being descended from 
 Sir Christopher Barker, knight, king-at-arms, in the reign of 
 Henry YIII. Barker is said to have printed the first series of 
 English, news-sheets, or, as we now call them, newspapers. The 
 
 ♦ Pleasant Conceits of old Hobson the Londoner, 1607. Hobson's answer proves the 
 truth of M sson's remark, that there were no inscriptions on the London signs to tel] 
 wiiat they represented, otherwise the maid could not have been passed oflF as a widow 
 
 i ftiiiiiim's Display of Heraldry, folio, p. 197. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 earliest of those which remain (copies are preserved among Dr 
 Birch's Historical Collections in the British Museum, No. 41 OG) 
 relate to the descent of the Spanish Armada upon the English 
 coasts ; but as they are numbered 50, 51, and 54 in the comer 
 of their upper margins, it has been not improbably concluded 
 that a similar mode of publishing news had been resorted to con- 
 siderably earlier than the date of that event, though, as far as we 
 know, none of the papers have been preserved. The title is : — 
 
 THE ENGLISH MERCURIE, published by authoritie, for the preven- 
 tion of false reports ; * ' 
 and the last number contains an account of the queen s thanks- 
 giving at St Paul's for the victory she had gained over the 
 enemies of England. It is probable that when the great alarm 
 of the Armada had subsided, no more numbers were published. 
 The colophon runs : — 
 
 "Imprinted by Christopher Barker, her highnesse's printer, July 23, 1588." 
 It must not however be concealed that doubt is entertained of 
 the genuineness of these papers. Two of them are not of the 
 time, but printed in modern type ; and no originals are known : 
 the third is in manuscript of the eighteenth century, altered and 
 interpolated with changes in old language, such only as an author 
 would make. 
 
 The punning device, or printer's emblem, of Barker was a man 
 barking a tree, representations of which may be seen on the titles 
 and last leaves of many of the old folio and quarto Bibles and 
 New Testaments issued from his press. His descendants con- 
 tinued booksellers to the royal family until January 12, 1645, 
 ^hen Robert Barker, the last of the family, died a prisoner for 
 debt in the King s Bench. His misfortunes were probably occa- 
 sioned by the embarrassments of his royal master, who for three 
 years had been at war with the Parliament and a majority of 
 his subjects. 
 
 Various other booksellers sold their books under the sign of 
 the Tiger's Head in St Paul's Churchyard : apparently they suc- 
 ceeded each other in the same house. Thus we find Tobv Cook, 
 1579-1590 ; Felix Kingston, 1599 ; and Henry SeHe, 1634. 
 
 At Nortwich and Altringham, Chester, there is a sign called 
 the Bleeding Wolf, which has not been found anywhere else, 
 its origin is difficult to explain, and the only explanation that can 
 be immediately offered for it is the crest of Hugh Lupus and 
 Richard, first and second Earls of Chester, which was a wolfs 
 
144 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 head erased ; the neck of the animal being erased may, by primi- 
 tive sign-painters, have been represented less conventionally than 
 is done now, and probably exhibited some of the torn parts, 
 whence the name of the Bleeding Wolf. As for the use of the 
 term "wolf,'' instead of "wolfs head," we have a parallel in- 
 stance in one of the gates of Chester, which, from this crest, was 
 called Wolfsgate instead of Wolfshead Gate. There is another 
 equally puzzling sign, peculiar to this county and to Lancashire — 
 namely, the Bear's Paw. Of this sign, it must be confessed that 
 no explanation can be offered ; it certainly looks heraldic, and 
 lions jambs erased are the crest of many families. 
 
 Easy enough to explain is the sign of Parta Tueri, (Cellar- 
 head, Staffordshire,) which is the motto of the Lilford family : 
 this is the only instance as yet met with of a family motto 
 standing for a sign ; though in Essex a public-house sign, repre- 
 senting a sort of Bacchic coat of arms, with the motto. In Vino 
 Veritas, may be seen. The Oakley Arms, at Maidenhead, 
 near Bray, deserves passing mention, on account of some amusing 
 verses connected with the place. As it is frequently the custom 
 with publicans to choose for their sign the name or picture of 
 some real or imaginary hero connected with the locality in which 
 \heir house stands, the following verses were written on the 
 Oakley Arms, near Bray : — 
 
 " Friend Isaac, 'tis strange you that live so near Bray 
 Should not set up the sign of the Vicar.* 
 Though it may be an odd one, you cannot but say 
 It must needs be a sign of good liquor." 
 Answer : 
 
 " Indeed, master Poet, your reason 's but poor, 
 For the Vicar would think it a sin 
 To stay, like a booby, and lounge at the door, — 
 'Twere a sign 'twas bad liquor within." 
 
 The Wentworth Arms, Kirby Mallory, Leicestershire, may also 
 be mentioned on account of its peculiar inscription, which has a 
 strange moral air about it, as if a pious Boniface drew beer and 
 uncorked wine, and wished to compromise matters on high moral 
 grounds, and limit with puritanical rigidity the government 
 regulation above his door, "to be Drunk on the Premises": — 
 
 May he who has little to spend, spend nothing in drink ; 
 May he who has more than enough, keep it for better uses.** 
 
 * The Vicar of Bray, the hero of Butler's comic poem, appears to have been a certain 
 Simon Aieyn, oh. 1688 ; he was by turns, and as the times suited, Roman Catholic and 
 Protestant, in the times of Henry VIII., EJward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 / 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 145 
 
 May he who goes in to rest never remain to riot, 
 
 And he who fears God elsewhere never forget him here." 
 
 Other heraldic animals, different from those just mentioned, 
 belong to so many various families, that it is utterly impossible 
 to say in honour of whom they were first set up : such, for in- 
 stance, is the Griffin, the armorial bearing of the Spencers, and 
 innumerable other houses. Besides being an heraldic emblem, 
 the griffin was an animal in whose existence the early naturalists 
 firmly believed. Its supposed eggs and claws were carefully 
 preserved, and are frequently mentioned in ancient inventories 
 and lists of curiosities. "They shewed me," [in a church at 
 Ratisbonne,] says Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in one of hei 
 letters, " a prodigious claw, set in gold, which they called the 
 claw of a griffin ; and I could not forbear asking the reverend 
 priest that shewed it, whether the griffin was a saint ? The ques- 
 tion almost put him beside his gravity, but he answered, * They 
 only kept it as a curiosity.''^ The supposed eggs (no doubt 
 ostrich eggs) were frequently made into drinking cups. The 
 Tradescants had one in their collection, kept in countenance by 
 an egg of a dragon, two feathers of the tail of a phoenix, and the 
 claw of a ruck, " a bird able to trusse an elephant." Sir John 
 MandeviUe gives the natural history of the griffin, in his " Eight 
 Merveylous Travels,'* chap. xxvi. From him we learn that the 
 body of this dreadful beast was larger and stronger than " 8 
 lions or 100 eagles," so that he could with ease fly off to his nest 
 with a great horse, or a couple of oxen yoked together, " for," 
 says he, " he has his talouns so large and so longe, and so gret 
 upon his feet as thowghe thei weren homes of grete oxen, or of 
 bugles or of kijgn." 
 
 In the original edition of the Spectator, No. xxxiii.,* the 
 griffin is mentioned as the sign of a house in Sheer Lane, 
 Temple Bar. The advertisement begins oddly enough : — " Lost, 
 yesterday, hy a Lady in a velvet furbelow scarf, a watch," &c. 
 The Golden Griffin was a famous tavern in Holborn, of which 
 there are trades tokens extant of the seventeenth century. Tom 
 Brown talks of a "fat squab porter at the Griffin Tavern, in 
 Fulwood's rents," which is the same house, as appears from 
 Strype : — " At the upper end of this court is a passage into the 
 Castle Tavern, a house of considerable trade, as is the Golden 
 
 * The original edition of the Spectator contained bona fide advertisements like any 
 other newspaper. 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGKBOARDS. 
 
 Grriffin Tavern, on the west side, which has a passage into Ful- 
 wood's rents," (Book iii., p. 253.) 
 
 The variously-coloured lions come under the same category of 
 heraldic animals. Amongst them the Golden Lion stands fore- 
 most. A public-house with that sign in Fulham ought not to 
 be passed unnoticed ; it is one of the most ancient houses in the 
 village, having been built in the reign of Henry VII. The 
 interior is not much altered ; the chimney-pieces are in their 
 original state, and in good preservation. Formerly there were 
 two staircases in the thick walls, but they are now blocked up. 
 Tradition says that the house once belonged to Bishop Bonner, 
 and that it has subterraneous passages communicating with the 
 episcopal palace. When the old hostelry was pulled down in 
 1836, a tobacco-pipe of ancient and foreign fashion was found 
 behind the wainscot. The stem was a crooked bamboo, and a 
 brass ornament of an Elizabethan pattern formed the bowl of the 
 pipe. This pipe Mr Crofton Croker"' tries to identify as the 
 property of Bishop Bonner, who. on the 15th June 1596, died 
 suddenly at Fulham, "while sitting in his chair and smoking 
 tobacco. If Mr Croker be right, this inn should also have been 
 honoured by the presence of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Henry 
 Condell, (Shakespeare's fellow actor,) John Norden, (author of 
 A Description of Middlesex and Hertfordshire,) Florio, the trans- 
 lator of Montaigne, and divers other notabilities. 
 
 The Blue Lion is far from uncommon, and may possibly have 
 been first put up at the marriage of James I. with Anne of Den- 
 mark. The Purple Lion occurs but once — namely, on a trades 
 token of Southampton Buildings. 
 
 Signs borrowed from Corporation arms form the last sub- 
 division of this chapter. Such, for instance, is the Three Com- 
 passes, a change in the arms of both the carpenters and 
 masons. This sign is a particular favourite in London, where 
 not less than twenty-one public-houses make a living under its 
 shadow. Perhaps this is partly owing to the compasses being a 
 masonic emblem, and a great many publicans " worthy brethren/' 
 Frequently the sign of the compasses contains between the legs 
 the following good advice : — 
 
 " Keep within compass, 
 
 And then you 'U be sure, 
 
 ♦ In 1847, Mr Crofton Croker read a paper at a meeting of the Brit. Arch. Assoc. 
 at V/arwick, " On the probability of the Golden Lion Inn at Fulham having been 
 frequented by Shakespeare about the year 1595 and 1596," in which th« possible 
 genealogy of this pipe is given. 
 
HERALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 To avoid many troubles 
 That others endure." 
 Three Compasses were a frequent sign with the French, German, 
 and Dutch printers of the sixteenth century. The Three Com- 
 passes, Grosvenor Eow, Pimlico, a well-known starting point for 
 the Pimlico omnibuses, was formerly called the Goat and 
 Compasses, for which Mr P. Cunningham suggests the following 
 origin : — 
 
 " At Cologne, in the church of S. Maria di Capitolio, is a flat stone ou 
 the floor, professing to be the ' Grabstein der Bruder und Schwester eines 
 Ehrbahren Wein und Fass Ampts, Anno 1693.' That is, as I suppose, a 
 vault belonging to the Wine Cooper's Company. The arms exhibit a 
 shield with a pair of compasses, an axe, and a dray or truck, with goats for 
 supporters. In a country like England, dealing so much at one time in 
 Rhenish wine, a more likely origin for such a sign could hardly be 
 imagined." 
 
 Others have considered the sign a corruption of a puritanical 
 phrase, " God encompasseth us." But why may not the Goat 
 have been the original sign, to which mine host added his 
 masonic emblem of the compasses, a practice yet of frequent 
 occurrence. 
 
 The Globe and Compasses seems to have originated in the 
 Joiners' arms, which are a chevron between two pairs of compasses 
 and a globe. It occurs, amongst other instances, as the sign of a 
 bookseller, in the following quaint title : — 
 
 " Sin discovered to be worse than a Toad ; sold by Robert "Walton, at the 
 Glohe and Compasses^ at the West end of Saint Paul's Church." 
 
 The Three Goatsheads, a public-house on the Wandsworth 
 Road, Lambeth, was originally the Cordwainers' (shoemakers) 
 arms, which are azure, a chevron or, between three goats' heads, 
 erased argent. Gradually the heraldic attributes have fallen 
 away, and the goats' heads now alone remain. As there were 
 rarely names under the London signs, the public unacquainted 
 with heraldry gave a vernacular to the objects represented. 
 Thus the Three Leopards' Heads is given on a token as the 
 name of a house in Bishopsgate ; yet the token represents a 
 chevron between three leopards' heads, the arms of the Weavers' 
 Company. The sign of the Leopard's Head was anciently called 
 the Lubber's Head, Thus in the second part of Henry IV., ii. 1, 
 the hostess says that Falstaff "is indited to dinner at the 
 Lubbar's Head in Lumbert Street, to Master Smooth's the silk- 
 raan." " Libbard," vulgo *4ubbar," was good old English for 
 *4eopard.'' 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIONBOARDS. 
 
 The Green Man and Still is a common sign. There is one 
 in White Cross Street, representing a forester drinking what is 
 there called "drops of life" out of a glass barrel. This is a 
 liberty taken with the Distillers' arms, which are a fess wavy in 
 chief, the sun in splendour, in base a still ; supporters two 
 Indians, with bows and arrows. These Indians were trans- 
 formed by the painters into wild men or green men, and the 
 green men into foresters ; and then it was said that the sign 
 originated from the partiality of foresters for the produce of the 
 still. The " drops of life/' of course, are a translation of 
 aqua vitce. 
 
 The Three Tuns were derived from the Vintners, or the 
 Brewers' arms. On the 9th of May 1667, the Three Tuns in 
 Seething Lane was the scene of a frightful tragedy : — 
 
 In our street," says Pepys, " at the Three Tuns Tavern, I find a great 
 hubbub ; and what was it but two brothers had fallen out, and one killed 
 the other. And who should they be but the two Fieldings. One whereof, 
 Bazill, was page to my Lady Sandwich, and he hath killed the other, him- 
 self being very drunk, and so is sent to Newgate."* 
 
 There seems to have been a kind of fatality attached to this 
 sign, for the London Gazette for September 15-18, 1679, relates a 
 murder committed at the Three Tuns, in Chandos Street, and in 
 this same house, Sally Pridden, alias Sally Salisbury, in a fit of 
 jealousy stabbed the Honourable John Finch in 1723. Sally 
 was one of the handsomest " social evils " of that day, and had 
 been nicknamed Salisbury, on account of her likeness to the 
 countess of that name. For her attempt on the life of Finch she 
 was committed to Newgate, where she died the year after, 
 " leaving behind her the character of the most notorious woman 
 that ever infested the hundreds of old Drury." f Her portrait 
 has been painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. 
 
 Sometimes the sign of the One Tun may also be seen. It 
 occurs in the following newspaper item : — 
 
 Last Thursday four highwaymen drinking at the One Tun Tavern near 
 Hungerford Market in the Strand, and falling out about dividing their 
 booty, the Drawer overheard them, sent for a constable, and secured them, 
 ?ind next day they were committed to Newgate." — Weekly Journal, Decem- 
 ber 6, 1718. 
 
 That these fellows meant mischief is evident from a subsequent 
 
 * Pepys here makes a mistake, for he tells us afterwards, July 4, when he went to 
 the Session House to hear the trial, that Basil was the murdered man. 
 
 t Caulfield's Memoirs of Remarkable Persons. A curious epitaph upon her oocurs in 
 the Weekly OracUj February 1, 1735 ; unfortunately it is too highly spiced to be intro- 
 auced here. 
 
HEBALDIC AND EMBLEMATIC. 
 
 149 
 
 article. They had a complete arsenal about them, viz., two blun- 
 derbusses, one loaded with fifteen balls, the other with seven, 
 and five pistols loaded with powder and shot. 
 
 The Golden Ctjp, from the form in which it was generally 
 represented, seems to have been derived from the Goldsmiths' 
 arms, which are quarterly azure, two leopards' heads or, (whence 
 the mint mark,) and two golden cups covered between two 
 buckles or. It was a sign much fancied by booksellers, as : 
 Abel Jeffs in the Old Bailey, 1564 ; Edward AUde, Without 
 Cripplegate, from 1587 until 1600; and John Bartlet the 
 Elder, in St Paul's Churchyard ; whilst the Tbree Cups was a 
 famous carriers' inn in Aldersgate in the seventeenth century. 
 
 The Eam and Teazel, Queenshead Street, Islington, is a part 
 of the Clothworkers' arms, which are sable, a chevron ermine be- 
 tween two habicks in chief arg., and a teasel in base oi\ The 
 crest is a ram statant or on a mount vert. 
 
 The Hammer and Crown appears from a trades token to 
 have been the sign of a shop in Gutter Lane, in the seventeenth 
 century. It was a charge from the Blacksmiths' arms : sable, a 
 chevron between three hammers crowned or. The Lion in the 
 Wood was a tavern of some note a hundred years ago in Salis- 
 bury Court, Fleet Street. It seems originally to have been the 
 Woodmongers' arms, whose crest is a lion issuing from a wood. 
 At the present day it is the sign of a public-house in the same 
 locality, namely, in Wilderness Lane, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. 
 
 To these Corporation arms we may add two belonging to 
 companies. During the South Sea mania the South Sea Arms 
 was a favourite sign; in 1718, the very year that Queen Anne 
 had established the company and granted them arms, they ap- 
 peared as the sign of a tavern near Austin Friars : they are a 
 curious heraldic compound. "Azure, a globe representing the 
 Straights of Magellan and Cape Horn, all proper. On a canton 
 the arms of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain, and in sinis- 
 ter chief two herrings salterwise arg., crowned or." 
 
 The Sol's Arms, Sol's Row, Hampstead Road, immortalised 
 by Dickens in Bleak House," derives its name from the Sol's 
 Society, who were a kind of freemasons. They used to hold 
 their meetings at the Queen of Bohemia's Head, Drury Lane, 
 but on the pulling down of that house the society was dissolved- 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SIGNS OF ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 It is in many cases impossible to draw a line of demarcation 
 between signs borrowed from the animal kingdom and those 
 taken from heraldry : we cannot now determine, for instance, 
 whether by the White Horse is meant simply an equus cahallus, 
 or the White Horse of the Saxons, and that of the House of 
 Hanover ; nor, whether the White Greyhound represented ori- 
 ginally the supporter of the arms of Henry YIT., or simply the 
 greyhound that courses " poor puss" on our meadows in the 
 hunting-season. For this reason this chapter has been placed as 
 a sequel to the heraldic signs. 
 
 As a rule, fantastically coloured animals are unquestionably of 
 heraldic origin : their number is limited to the Lion, the Boar, 
 the Hart, the Dog, the Cat, the Bear, and in a few instances the 
 Bull ; all other animals were generally represented in what was 
 meant for their natural colours. The heraldic lions have already 
 been treated of in the last chapter ; but sometimes we meet with 
 the lion as a /era naturoe, recognisable by such names as the 
 Brown Lion, the Yellow Lion, or simply the Lion. There is 
 a public-house in Philadelphia with the sign of the Lion, having 
 underneath the following lines : 
 
 " The lion roars, but do not fear, 
 Cakes and beer sold here." 
 
 Which inscription is certainly as unnecessary as that over the 
 nonformidable- looking lions under the celebrated fountain in 
 the Spanish Alhambra, O thou who beholdest these lions 
 crouching, fear not, life is wanting to enable them to exhibit 
 their fury." 
 
 Lions occur in numerous combinations with other animals and 
 objects, which in many cases seem simply the union of two signs, 
 as the Lion and Dolphin, Market Place, Leicester ; the Lion 
 AND Tun, at Congleton : the Lion and Swan in the same lo- 
 cality may owe its joint title to the name of the street in which 
 the public-house is situated, viz., Swanbank. The combination of 
 the Lion and Pheasant, Wylecop, Shrewsbury, seems rather 
 mysterious, unless the Pheasant has been substituted for the Cock, 
 just as in the Three Pheasants and Sceptre, they were sub- 
 stituted for the Three Pigeons and Sceptre. As for the 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS, 
 
 Cock and Lion, a very common sign, their meeting, if we may 
 believe ancient naturalists, is anything but agreeable to the lion. 
 
 " The lyon dreadeth the white cocke, because he breedeth a precious 
 stone called allectricium, like to the stone that bight Calcedonius. And 
 for that the Cocke beareth such a stone, the Lyon specially abhorreth 
 him."* 
 
 Some more information about this stone may be gathered from a 
 mediaeval treatise on natural history : 
 
 "Allectorius est lapis obscuro cristallo silis e vetriculo galli castrati 
 trahitur post quartu anu. Ultima eius quatitas e ad magnitudine fabe — 
 que gladiator, hns in ore penanct. ivictus ac sine siti." f 
 
 The Lion and Ball owes its origin to another mediaeval 
 notion : 
 
 " Some report that those who rob the tiger of her young use a policy to 
 detaine their damme from following them, by casting sundry looking- 
 glasses in the way, whereat she useth to long to gaze, whether it be to 
 beholde her owne beauty or because when she seeth her shape in the glasse 
 she thinketh she seeth one of her young ones, and so they escape the 
 swiftness of her pursuit." X 
 
 The looking-glass thrown to the tiger was spherical, so that 
 she could see her own image reduced as it rolled under her paw, 
 and would therefore be more likely to mistake it for her cub. 
 Lions and tigers being almost synonymous in mediaeval zoology, 
 the spherical glass w^as generally represented with both. In 
 sculpture it could only be represented by a ball, which afterwards 
 became a terrestrial globe, and the lion resting his paw upon it, 
 passed into an emblem of royalty. 
 
 In the last century an innkeeper at Goodwood put up as his 
 sign the Centurion's Lion, the figure-head of the frigate Cen- 
 turion, in which Admiral Anson made a voyage round the world 
 Under it was the following inscription : — 
 
 " Stay, Traveller, a while and view 
 
 One that has travelled more than you, 
 
 Quite round the Globe in each Degree, 
 
 Anson and I have plow'd the Sea ; 
 
 Torrid and Frigid Zones have pass'd, 
 
 And safe ashore arriv'd at last. 
 
 In Ease and Dignity appear 
 
 He — in the House of Lords, I — here." 
 ♦ J. Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, London, 1597, p. 97. 
 
 t AUectorius is a stone similar to a dark crystal, which is taken from the stomach of 
 a capon when it is four years old. Its utmost size is that of a bean. Gladi.'.iors take it 
 in their mouths in order to be invincible, and not to sufifer from thirst." — Tractatus de 
 Animalibus et Lapidibus, 4to, circa 1465-75. 
 
 X Guillim's Display of Heraldry. The same is also related in the Latin Bestiarium, 
 Harl. MSS. 4751 ; and by Albertus Magnus, Camerarius, &c. 
 
1 5 2 THE HISTOR Y OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Wlien Anson was in general disfavour about the Minorca affair, 
 the following biting reply to this inscription went the round of 
 the newspapers : — 
 
 " The Traveller's reply to the Centurion^ Lion, 
 " 0 King of Beasts, what pity 'twas to sever 
 
 A pair whose Union had been just for ever ! 
 
 So diff'rently advanced ! 'twas surely wrong, 
 
 When you 'd been fellow-travellers so long. 
 
 Had you continued with him, had he born 
 
 To see the English Lion dragg'd and torn ? 
 
 Brittannia made at every vein to bleed, 
 
 A ravenous Crew of worthless Men to feed ? 
 
 No ; Anson once had sought the Land's Relief ; 
 
 Now — Ease and Dignity have banish'd Grief. 
 
 Go, rouse him then, to save a sinking nation. 
 
 Or call him up, the partner of your station. 
 
 We often see two Monsters for a sign, 
 
 Inviting to good Brandy, Ale, or Wine." 
 
 The Tiger is of rare occurrence on signboards; there is a 
 Golden Tiger in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, and a bird-fancier 
 on Tower Dock, not far from the then famous menagerie which 
 attracted crowds to the Tower, chose the Leopard and Tiger 
 for his sign. In 1665 there was a Leopard Tavern in Chancery 
 Lane ; the same animal is still occasionally seen on public-house 
 signs. Generally speaking, the carnivorous animals are not great 
 favourites, and those named above are almost the only examples 
 that occur. As for the popularity of the Bear, it is entirely to 
 be attributed to the old vulgar pleasure of seeing him ill-treated, 
 a relic of the once common amusements of bear-baiting and whip- 
 ping. The colours in which he is represented are the Black Bear, 
 the Brown Bear, the White Bear, and in a very few instances 
 (as at Leeds) the Red Bear. 
 
 Besides bear-whipping and bear-baiting, another barbarous 
 fancy led sometimes to the choice of this animal for a sign, — 
 viz., the lamentable pun which the publican made upon the article 
 he sold, and the name of the animal. Will. Eose of Coleraine, in 
 Ireland, for instance, issued trades tokens with a bear passant, on 
 the reverse Exchange.for.a.can of Bear !), and as if the 
 pun was not ridiculous enough, there was a rose as a rebus for 
 his name. Thomas Dawson of Leeds perpetrated a similar pun 
 on his token, dated 1670; it says, — Beware. of. y^.Beare, evi- 
 dently alluding to the strength of his beer.* 
 
 * ''Boyne's and Akerman's Trades Tokens of the I7th Century," in England, Ireland, 
 and Wales. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 Bears used often to be represented with chains round their 
 neck, (as on the stone sign in Addle Street, with the date 1610.) 
 This led to the following amusing rejoinder : — It happened that 
 a pedestrian artist had run up a bill at a road-side inn which he 
 was unable to pay, whereupon the landlord, in order to settle the 
 account, commissioned him to paint a bear for his sign. The 
 painter, wanting to make a little besides, suggested that, if the 
 bear was painted with a chain round his neck, which he strongly 
 advised him to have, it would cost him half-a-guinea more, on 
 account of the gold, &c. But the host was not agreeable to this 
 extra expense ; accordingly, the sign was painted, (but in dis- 
 temper,) and the painter went his way. Not many days after it 
 began to rain, and the bear was completely washed from the 
 board. The first time the landlord met the painter, he accused 
 him in great dudgeon of having imposed upon him, for that, in 
 less than a month, the bear had gone from his signboard. " Now, 
 look here," replied the painter ; " did not I advise you to have a 
 chain put about the bear's neck ? but you would not hear of it ; 
 had that been done he could not have run away, and would still 
 be at your door." 
 
 Among the most famous Bear inns and taverns were, — the 
 Bear " at Bridgefoot," at the foot of London Bridge, on the 
 South wark side, for many centuries one of the most popular Lon- 
 don taverns j as early as the reign of Richard III. we find it the 
 resort of the aristocratic pleasure-seeker. Thus, in March 146|, 
 it was repeatedly visited by Jocky of Norfolk, the then Sir John 
 Howard, who went there to drink wine and shoot at the target, 
 at which he lost 20 pence.* It is also frequently named by the 
 writers of the seventeenth century. f Pepys mentions it April 3, 
 1667. " I hear how the king is not so well pleased of this marriage 
 between the Duke of Eichmond and Mrs Stuart, as is talked ; and 
 that he by a wile did fetch her to the Bear at the Bridgefoot, 
 where a coach was ready, and they are stole away into Kent with- 
 out the king's leave." The wine of this establishment did not 
 meet with the approbation of the fastidious searchers after claret 
 in 1691. 
 
 " Through stinks of all sorts, both the simple and compound, 
 Which through narrow alleys, our senses do confound, 
 We came to the Bear, which we now understood 
 Was the first house in Southwark built after the flood : 
 
 * Steward's Accounts of Sir John Howard. 
 
 t See Cunningham's London Past and Present, p. 41. 
 
J54 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 And has such a succession of vintners known, 
 Not more names were e'er in Welsh pedigrees shown ; 
 But claret with them was so much out of fashion, 
 That it has not been known there a whole generation." 
 
 Last Search after Claret in Soutkwarlc, 1691. 
 This old tavern was pulled down in 1761, at the removal of the 
 houses from London Bridge. " Thursday last the workmen em- 
 ployed in pulling down the Bear Tavern, at the foot of London 
 Bridge, found several pieces of gold and silver coin of Queen 
 Elizabeth, and other money, to a considerable value.'' — Public 
 Advertiser, Dec. 26, 1761. Coins, no doubt, dropped between 
 the boards by the revellers of bygone generations. 
 
 There was another famous Bear Tavern at the foot of Strand- 
 bridge ; the vicinity of the "Bear" and "Paris Gardens" had 
 evidently suggested the choice of those signs. At the Bear 
 Tavern in the Strand, the earliest meetings of the Society of Anti- 
 quaries took place, when there were as yet only three members, 
 Mr Talman, Mr Bagford, and Mr Wanley. Their first meeting 
 was on Friday, Nov. 5, 1707 ; subsequently they met at the Young 
 Devil Tavern in Fleet Street, and then at the Fountain, opposite 
 Chancery Lane. Mr Talman was the first president; Mr Wanley 
 was a savant of considerable acquirements. It was he who pur- 
 chased Bagford's MS. collection for the Harleian Library. 
 
 The White Bear at Soper's Lane End, (now Queen Street,) 
 Cheapside, was the shop in which Baptist Hicks, as a silk mercer, 
 by selling silks, velvets, lace, and plumes to the courtiers of James 
 L, amassed that fortune which led to the Peerage, and the title of 
 Viscount Campden. There was another White Bear Tavern in 
 Thames Street, of which the sign is still extant, a stone bas-reliet 
 with the date 1670, and the initials M. E. In 1252, Henry III. 
 received a white bear as a present from the king of Norway; and 
 in King Edward VI.'s time. May 29, 1549, the French ambassa- 
 dors, after they had supped with the Duke of Somerset, went 
 to the Thames and saw the bear hunted in the river. *^ Such an 
 occurrence might easily lead to the adoption of this animal as 
 a sign in that locality. The following little fact connected with 
 another White Bear Inn forcibly calls up the dark ages before 
 gas was invented. In 1656, John Wardall gave by will to the 
 Grocers' Company a tenement called " The White Bear in Wal- 
 
 * Burnet's History of the Reformation, Lib. ii., vol. ii., p. 14. It is Dossible also 
 tnat the White Bear was set up in compliment to Anne, daughter of the l^arl of War- 
 wick, queen to Richard III., who, as a difference from her father^s bear and ragged staff, 
 had adopted the White Bear as a bad£:e. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 ^55 
 
 brook," upon condition that they should yearly pay to the church- 
 wardens of St Botolph's, Billingsgate, £4 to provide a lanthom 
 with a candle, so that passengers might go with more security to 
 and from the waterside during the night. This lamp was to he 
 fixed at the north-east corner of the parish church of St Botolph, 
 from St Bartholomew's-day to Lady-day ; out of this sum £1 
 was to be paid to the sexton for taking care of the Ian thorn. 
 The annuity is now applied to a lamp lighted with gas in the 
 place prescribed by the will.* 
 
 The White Bear Inn, at the east end of Piccadilly, was for 
 more than a century one of the busiest coaching houses. In 
 this house died Luke Sullivan, engraver of some of Hogarth^s 
 works ; also Chatelain, another engraver, the last in such pen- 
 urious circumstances, that he was buried at the expense of some 
 friends in the poor ground of St James's workhouse. It was in this 
 inn that West passed the first night in London on his arrival from 
 America. The sign of the White Bear is still common ; at Spring- 
 bank, Hull, there is one called, with zoological precision, the 
 Polar Bear. This may, however, refer to the constellation. 
 
 The Bear's Head occurs in Congleton, Cheshire ; probably it 
 is a family crest, the same as the Bear's Paav, — both of which, 
 it is believed, occur only in that county and in Lancashire. The 
 Bear is also met in frequent combinations ; one of the most com- 
 mon is the Bear and Bacchus, which looks like a hieroglyphic 
 rendering of the words Beer and Wine, having the additional 
 attraction of alliteration. Since mythology does not mention 
 a Beer-God, the animal was probably chosen as a rebus for the 
 drink. In the Bear and Bummer, Mortimer Street, the rummer 
 implies the sale of liquors, in the same manner as the Puiichbowl 
 is often used. The Bear and Harrow seems to be a union of 
 two signs. In the seventeenth century it formed the house- 
 decoration of an ordinary at the entrance of Butcher Row, (now 
 Picket Street, Strand.) One night in 1692, Nat Lee, the mad 
 poet, in going home drunk from this house, feU down in the 
 enow and was stifled. 
 
 The Elephant, in the middle ages, was nearly always repre- 
 isented with the castle on his back. For instance, in the Latin 
 MS., Bestiarium Harl., 4751, a tower is strapped to him, in 
 which are seen five knights in chain-armour, with swords, battle- 
 axes, and cross-bows, their emblazoned shields hanging round the 
 
 * Timbs's Flyleaves. 
 
156 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 battlements ; and, in the description of the animal, it is said, 
 " In eomm dorsis, P[er] si et Indi ligneis turribus coUocati tarn- 
 quam de muro jaculis dimicant." The rook, in Chinese chess- 
 boards, still represents an elephant thus armed. 
 
 Cutlers in the last century frequently used the Elephant and 
 Castle as their sign, on account of it being the crest of the 
 Cutlers' Company, who had adopted it in reference to the ivory 
 used in the trade. Hence the stone bas-relief in Belle Sauvage 
 Yard, which was the sign of some now forgotten shopkeeper, who 
 had chosen it out of regard to his landlords. The houses in the 
 yard are the property of the Cutlers' Company. The Elephant 
 AND Castle public-house, Newington Butts, was formerly a 
 famous coaching inn, but, by the introduction of railways, it has 
 dwindled down to a starting-point for omnibuses. The occasion 
 of this sign being put up was the following : — Some time about 
 1714, a Mr Conyers, an apothecary in Fleet Street, and a great 
 collector of antiquities, was digging in a gravel-pit in a field near 
 the Fleet, not far from Battle Bridge, when he discovered the 
 skeleton of an elephant. A spear with a flint head, fixed to a 
 shaft of goodly length, was found near it, whence it was con- 
 jectured to have been killed by the British in a fight with the 
 Romans,* though now, since the late discoveries concerning the 
 flint implements, very difi'erent conclusions would be drawn from 
 this fact. But be this as it may, that elephant, whether post- 
 tertiary or Roman, gave its name to the public-house soon after 
 erected in that locality; and, regardless of the venerable anti- 
 quity of this origin, it is often now-a-days jocularly degraded 
 into the Pig and Tinder-box. 
 
 What is meant by the whimsical combination of the Elephant 
 AND Fish, at Sandhill, Newcastle, is hard to say, unless we as- 
 sume the fish originally to have been a dragon. Between ele- 
 phants and dragons there was supposed to be a deadly strife, 
 and their battles are recorded by Strabo, Pliny, JElianus, and 
 their mediaeval followers. The fight always ended in the death 
 of both, the dragon strangling the elephant in the windings of 
 his tail, when the elephant, falling down dead, crushed the dragon 
 by his weight. 
 
 The Elephant and Fhiar, in Bristol, may possibly have ori- 
 gmated from the representation of an elephant accompanied by a 
 
 * Bagforl, who was present at the excavations, relates this story in a letter prefixed 
 to Leland's Collectanea, p. Ixiii., 1770. See also Sir John Oldcastle. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTEIiS. 
 
 man in Eastern costume, whose flowing garment might be mis- 
 taken for the gown of a friar. That sign would have admirably 
 suited the fancy of the landlord of the Elephant and Castle, for- 
 merly in Leeds ; his name happening to be Priest, he had the 
 following inscription above his door : 
 
 " He is a priest who lives within, 
 Gives advice gratis, and administers gin." 
 
 In the seventeenth century, the Reindeer began to make its 
 appearance on the signboard, where it has kept its place to the 
 present day. At first it was called Rained Deer, as we see from 
 the newspapers of that period : — " Mr John Chapman, York car- 
 rier in Hull, at the sign of the Eained Deer." This led to the 
 answer of a sailor who had made a voyage to Lapland, and on 
 his return, being asked if he had seen any rained deer ? " No," 
 answered Jack, I have seen it rain cats, dogs, and pitchforks, 
 but I never saw it rain deer." The first instance w^e find of this 
 animal on the signboards of London, is in 1682, when there was 
 
 Right Irish Usquebaugh to be sold at the Reindeer in Tuttle Street, 
 Westminster, in greater or smaller quantities, by one from Ireland." — 
 London Gazette, Nov. 23-27, 1682. 
 
 Pepys mentions it as early as October 7, 1667, at Bishop 
 Stortford, as the sign of a tavern kept by a Mrs Elizabeth Ayns- 
 worth. Of this woman a good story is told : — Mrs A. had been 
 a noted procuress at Cambridge, for which reason she was expelled 
 the town by the University authorities. Subsequently keeping 
 the Eeindeer at Bishop Stortford, the Vice-chancellor and some 
 of the heads of colleges, on their way to London, had occasion to 
 sleep at her house, little thinking under whose roof they were. 
 She received them nobly, served the supper up in plate, and 
 brought forth the best wine ; but, when the hour of reckoning 
 came, would receive no money, " for," said she, I am too much 
 indebted to the Vice-chanceUor for expelling me from Cam- 
 bridge, which has been the means of making my fortune." For 
 all this, however, she does not seem to have mended her evil 
 courses, for, shortly after, she was implicated in the murder of 
 a Captain Wood in Essex, for which one man was executed, 
 whilst Mrs Aynsworth was only acquitted by some flaw in the 
 evidence. 
 
 Dragons, when apothecaries' signs, were not derived from 
 heraldr}', but were used to typify certain chemical actions. In 
 
1 58 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 an old German work on Alchemy * one of tlie plates represents 
 a dragon eating his own tail ; underneath are the words, — 
 
 *' Das ist gros Wunder und seltsam List, 
 
 Die hochst Artzney im Drachen ist." f 
 In mediaeval alchemy, the dragon seems to have been the em- 
 blem of Mercury, which appears from these words on the same 
 print : " Mercurius recte et chymice prsecipitatus vel sublimatus 
 in sua propria aqua resolutus et rursum coagulatus." J To which 
 are added the following rhymes : — 
 
 " Ein Dracli im Walde wohnend ist, 
 
 An Giflft demselben nichts gebrisst ; 
 
 Wenn er die Sonne sieht und das Fewr 
 
 So speusst er GifFt fleugt ungeliewr, 
 
 Kein Lebend Thier fiir ihm mag gnesn 
 
 Der Basilisc mag ihm nit gleich wesn. 
 
 Wer diesen Wurmb wol weiss zu todtn 
 
 Der kompt auss alien seinen Nothen. 
 
 Sein Farber in seinem Todt sich vermehrn ; 
 
 Auss seiner Gifft Artzney thut werden. 
 
 Sein Gi£ft verzehrt er gar und gans 
 
 Und frisst sein eign vergiften Schwantz. 
 
 Da mus er in sich selbst volbringen 
 
 Der sdelst Balsam auss ihm thut tringen, 
 
 Solch grosse Tugend wird man schawen 
 
 Welches alle Weysn sich hoch erfrawen." § 
 
 Hence the dragon became one of the " properties'' of the che- 
 mist and apothecary, was painted on his drug-pots, hung up as 
 his sign, and some dusty, stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceil- 
 ing in the laboratory had to do service for the monster, and 
 inspire the vulgar with a profound awe for the mighty man who 
 had conquered the vicious reptile. 
 
 The Salamander was another animal of the same class, and 
 also represented certain chemical actions, owing to its fabled 
 powers of resisting the fire. The notions of early naturalists 
 concerning this creature were very extraordinary. A Bestiarium 
 
 * "Lambspring, das ist ein herzlichen Teutscher Tractat von Philosophischen Steine, 
 welchen fiir Jahren ein adelicher Teutscher Philosophus, Lampert Spring geheissen mit 
 schone Figuren beschrieben hat. Frankfort am Main, 1625." 
 
 t " This is a great wonder, and very strange : the dragon contains the greatest medi- 
 cament." 
 
 X " Mercury rightly precipitated or sublimated in its own water dissolved and again 
 coagulated." 
 
 § " There is a dragon lives in the forest who has no want of poison : when he sees the 
 Bun or fire he spits venom, which flies about fearfully. No living animal can be cured 
 of it ; even the basilisk does not equal him. He who can properly kill this serpent has 
 overcome all his danger. His colours increase in death ; physic is produced from his 
 poison, which he entirely consumes, and eats his own venomous tail. This must be ac- 
 complished by him in order to produce the noblest balm. Such great virtue as will point 
 out herein that all the learned shall rejoice." 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 J59 
 
 in the Eoyal Library of Brussels, No. 10074, says that it lives 
 on pure fire, and produces a substance which is neither silk nor 
 linen, nor yet wool, of which garments are made that can only be 
 cleaned by fire ; and that if the animal itself falls into a burning 
 fire, it would at once extinguish the flames. Bossewell, besides 
 incombustibility, attributes to the salamander some other quali- 
 ties fully as extravagant. 
 
 "Among all venomenous beastes he is the mightiest of poyson and 
 venyme. For if he creepe upon a tree, he infecteth all the apples or other 
 fruit that groweth thereon with his poyson, and killeth them which eate 
 thereof. Which apples, also, if they happen to falle into any pitte of 
 water, the strength of the poyson killeth them that drinke thereof." * 
 
 This incombustibility made it a very proper sign for alchemists 
 and apothecaries, and with the last it still continues as such, at 
 least on the Continent. Why the early Venetian printers adopted 
 it as a sign is less evident. In France it was certainly a favourite 
 sign with this class of workmen ; but this was from the fact of 
 its having been the badge of Francis I., a liberal patron of the 
 arts and sciences. 
 
 The qualities attributed to the Unicorn caused this animal to 
 be used as a sign both by chemists and goldsmiths. It was be- 
 lieved that the only way to capture it was to leave a handsome 
 young virgin in one of the places where it resorted. As soon as 
 the animal had perceived her, he would come and lie quietly 
 down beside her, resting his head in her lap, and fall asleep, in 
 which state he might be surprised by the hunters who watched 
 for him. This laying his head in the lap of a virgin made the 
 first Christians choose the unicorn as the type of Christ born from 
 the Virgin Mary.t The horn, as an antidote to all poison, was 
 also believed to be emblematic of the conquering or destruction of 
 sin by the Messiah. Eeligious emblems being in great favour with 
 the early printers, some of them for this reason adopted the unicorn 
 as their sign; thus John Harrison lived at the Unicorn and 
 Bible in Paternoster Kow 1603. Again, the reputed power of 
 the horn caused the animal to be taken as a supporter for the 
 apothecaries' arms, and as a constant signboard by chemists. 
 Albertus Magnus says : — " Cornu cerastis sunt qui dicunt 
 praesenti veneno sudare et ideo ferri ad mensas nobilium, et 
 fieri inde manubria cultellorum quae infixa mensis prodant 
 
 * Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, p. CI. 
 
 t Allusions to the unicorn occur frequently in the Old Testament, and commentatora 
 mforin us that these references were tyjical of the coming Saviour. 
 
i6o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 presens venenum. Sed hoc non satis probatum est. " * What- 
 ever it was that passed for unicornis horn, (probably the horn of 
 the narwal,) it was sold at an immense price. " The nnicorp 
 whose horn is worth a city/' says Decker in his Gull's Hornbook j 
 and Andrea Eacci, a Florentine physician, relates that it had been 
 sold by the apothecaries at £24 per ounce, when the current 
 value of the same quantity of gold was only 3s. 6d. In a 
 MS. table of customs entitled, The Book of Eates in y® first 
 yeare of Queen Mary 1531,''t we find the duty paid upon " cornu 
 unicorni y® ounce 20s." An Italian author who visited England 
 in the reign of Henry YII., % speaking of the immense wealth of the 
 religious houses in this country says : — "And I have been informed 
 that, amongst other things, many of these monasteries possess uni- 
 corns' horns of an extraordinary size." Hence such a horn was fit 
 to be placed among the royal jewels, and there it appears at the 
 head of an inventory taken in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 
 and preserved in Pepys's library. § " Imprimis, a piece of unicorn's 
 horn," which, as the most valuable obiect, is named first. 
 
 This was no doubt the piece seen by the German traveller 
 Hentzner, at Windsor: "We were shown here, among other 
 things, the horn of a unicorn of above eight spans and a half in 
 length, valued at above £10,000." || Peacham places " that horne 
 of Windsor (of an unicorne very likely) " IT amongst the sights 
 worth seeing. Fuller also speaks of a unicorn's horn — " in my 
 memory shewn to people in the Tower"** — and enters on a long 
 dissertation about its virtues ; but it seems to have been lost, or 
 at least, no longer exhibited in his time. 
 
 The belief in the efficacy and value of this horn continued to 
 the close of the seventeenth century ; for the Eev. John Ward in 
 his diary, p. 172, says : — 
 
 ** Mr Hartman had a piece of unicorn's horn, which one Mr Godeski gave 
 him ; hee had itt ath some foraine prince's court. I had the piece in my 
 hand, Hee desired Dr Willis to make use of itt in curing his ague ; but 
 the Dr refusd because hee had never seen itt used. Mr Hartman told me 
 the forementioned gentleman has as much of itt as would make a cup, and 
 
 * " It is reported that the unicorn's horn sweats when it comes in the presence of 
 poison, and tliat tor this reason it is laid on the tables of the great, and made into 
 knife-handles, which, when placed on the tables, show the presence of poison. But this 
 is not sufficiently proved." — Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus, lib. xxv. 
 
 t Bib. Harl. 5953, vol. i., p. 403. 
 
 X Relation of the Island of England, published by the Camden Societ/. 
 I See Bib. Harl. 5953, vol. i., p. 407. 
 I Hentzner's Travels, p. 54. 
 
 \ Henry Peacham's Compleat Gentleman. / 
 ** Fuller's Worthies, voce Middleseot, 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 i6i 
 
 he intended to make one of itt. It approved ittself as a true one, as he 
 said by this : if one drew a circle with itt about a spider, she would not 
 move out off itt." * 
 
 The great value set upon unicorns' horn caused the goldsmitlia 
 to adopt this animal as their sign. There is one recorded in 
 Machyn's Diary: the first of May 1561, "at afternone dyd 
 Mastyr Godderyke's sune the goldsmyth go hup into hys father's 
 gyldyng house, toke a bowe-strynge, and hanged ymseylff at the 
 syne of the Unycorne in Chepesyd." In 1711 the Unicoen and 
 Dial was the sign of a watchmaker near the Strand Bridge, f 
 
 Another fabulous animal that formerly (though rarely) occurred 
 on signboards was the Cockatrice, which was the sign of a place 
 of amusement in Highbury circa 1611. The Bestiaria," or 
 ancient natural histories, give most extraordinary particulars 
 about the birth of this creature : — 
 
 " When the cock is past seven years old an egg grows in his belly, and 
 when he feels this egg, he wonders very much, and sustains the greatest 
 anxiety any animal can suffer. He seeks, privately, a warm place on a 
 dunghill or in a stable, and scratches with his feet, until he has formed a 
 hole to lay his egg in. And when the cock has dug his hole he goes ten 
 times a day to it, for all day he thinks that he is going to be delivered. 
 And the nature of the toad is such that it smells the venom which the 
 cock carries in his belly, consequently it watches him, so that the cock 
 cannot go to the hole without being seen by it. And as soon as the cock 
 leaves the place where he has to lay his egg, the toad is immediately there 
 to see if the egg has been laid ; for his nature is such, that he hatches the 
 egg if he can obtain it. And when he has hatched it, until it is time to 
 open, it produces an animal that has the head, and neck, and breast of a 
 cock, and from thence downwards, the body of a serpent." — Translation 
 from the MS. Be-stiarium, Bib. Roy. Brussels, No. 10074. 
 
 That cocks, sometimes in the middle ages, forgot themselves so 
 far as to lay eggs, appears from a lawsuit which poor chanticleer 
 had at Basle in 1474, when he was convicted, condemned, and, 
 with his egg, burned at the stake for a sorcerer, with as much pomp 
 and ceremony as if he had been a Protestant or other heretic. 
 
 The Ape was, in bygone times, the sign of an inn in Philip Lane, 
 near London wall ; all that now remains of this ancient hostelry 
 is a stone carving of a monkey squatted on its haunches, and eat- 
 ing an apple; under it the date 1670, and the initial B. The 
 
 *' It is rather peculiar that the same superstitious notions should be found in India Id 
 connexion with the horn of the rhinoceros, whom some consider as the fabled unicorn 
 divested of his romantic garb. His horn, too, was thought useful in diseases, and for 
 Ifti p\;rpose of discovering poisons." — Calme^s Dictionary of the Bible. "The fine 
 shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. Goblets made of 
 these would discover a poisonous draught that was poured mto them, by making the 
 liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet." — Thunberg's Journey to Cafraria. 
 t Daily Courant, February 2, 1711. 
 
 L 
 
l62 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 courtyard, where the lumbering coaches used to arrive and depart, 
 is now an open space, round which houses are built. The 
 Racoon is a painted sign at Dalston, but a hyaena seems to have 
 sat for the portrait ; the Hippopotamus occurs in New-England 
 Street, Brighton ; the Ibex at Chadelworth, Wantage ; the 
 Crocodile in Higham Street, Norwich ; the Camel may be met 
 with in a few instances, and at Weston Peverell, Plymouth, there 
 is the sign of the Camel's Head. Finally, there is the Kan- 
 garoo, of which, occasionally, an example may be seen, set up 
 probably by some landlord who had tried his luck in Australia. 
 The Civet is common all over Europe as a perfumer's sign, as 
 it was said to produce musk. A Dutch perfumer in the seven- 
 teenth century wrote under his sign : — 
 Dit 's in de Civet kat, gelyk gy kunt aanschouwen, 
 
 Maar komt hier binnen, hier zyn parf uimen voor mannen en vrouwen." * 
 The Hedgehog was never very common. In the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth it was the sign of William Seeres, bookseller, in 
 St Paul's Churchyard, who put it up, according to Bagford, on 
 account of its being the badge of his former master Sir Henry 
 Sydney, t Apparently this same house was concerned in the 
 following strange affair : — 
 
 By a lettere dated London, 11 May 1555, it appears that in Powles 
 Churchyearde at the sign of the Hedgehog, the good wife of the house was 
 brought to bed of a manchild, being of the age of 6 dayes and dienge the 
 7**^ daye f ollowinge ; and half an hour before it departed spake these words 
 foUowinge : (rise and pray) and so continued half an houre in thes words 
 and then cryinge departed the worlde. Hereupon the Bishope of London 
 examined the goodman of the house and other credible persones who 
 afi&rmed it to be true and will dye uppon the same.'' X 
 
 The Hedgehog is now very scarce on signboards ; at Dadling- 
 ton, near Market Bosworth, there is a Dog and Hedgehog, 
 doubtless borrowed from the well-known engraving of " A Rough 
 Customer." 
 
 Signs relating to sport or the chase are comparatively common ; 
 thus we have the Rat ^nd Ferhet at Wilson, near Ashby de la 
 Zouch ; the Three Conies, or rabbits, figure on an old trades 
 
 * "This is the Civet, as you may see ; but enter. Perfumes sold here for men and 
 women." 
 
 t The reason why the hedgehog was generally represented with apples stuck on his 
 quills, appears from the following words in Bossewell, (p. 61,) — " Heclymeth upon a vine or 
 an apple-tree and biteth off their braunches and twigges, and when they [the apples] be 
 fallen downe, he waloweth on them, and so they sticke on his prickes, and he beareth 
 them unto a hollow tree or some other hole." The early naturalists also said that if, 
 when he was so loaded, one of the apples happened to drop off, he would throw all the 
 others down in anger and return to the tree for a new loaa. 
 
 I Harl. MSS. 35C, fol. 145. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 163 
 
 tckcn of Blackman Street ; tlie Hare, on the token of John 
 I^erris in the Strand, 1666 ; and Nicholas Warren, in Alders- 
 gate.* Warren evidently made a cockney mistake, thinking that 
 hares, instead of rabbits, lived in warrens. Another Hare was 
 the sign of Philip Hause in Walbrook in 1682.t The Hare and 
 Squirrel occur together on a sign at Kuneaton; what the 
 combination means it is difficult to surmise. 
 
 Cages with climbing Squirrels and bells to them were formerly the 
 indispensable appendages of the outside of a Tinman's shop, and were, in 
 fact, the only live sign. One, we believe, still (1826) hangs out on Holborn ; 
 but they are fast vanishing with the good old modes of our ancestors." X 
 
 The Three Squirrels was the sign of an inn at Lambeth, 
 mentioned by Taylor the Water poet in 1636 ; and from a trades 
 token it appears that in the seventeenth century there was a 
 similar sign in Fleet Street. Probably it was the same house 
 which, in 167f, was occupied by Gosling the banker, "over 
 against St Dunstan's Church," where the triad of squirrels may 
 still be seen in the iron- work of the windows. Gosling's was one 
 of the leading banking establishments in the reign of Charles II. 
 Among the curiosities of this old firm is a bill for £640, 8s., 
 paid out of the secret service money for gold lace and silver lace, 
 bought by the Duchess of Cleveland for the wedding clothes of 
 the Lady Sussex and Litchfield. 
 
 The Hare and Hounds are very common ; some fifty years 
 ago it was the sign of a notorious establishment in St Giles's, one 
 of those places associated with *^the good old customs of 
 our ancestors.'^ As the few houses of this character that remain 
 are difficult of access, a description of this place may not be un- 
 interesting. 
 
 " The Hare and Hounds was to be reached by those going from the west 
 end towards the city, by going up a turning on the left hand, nearly oppo- 
 site St Giles's churchyard. The entrance to this turning or lane was ob- 
 etructed or defended by posts with cross bars, which being passed, the lane 
 itself was entered. It extended some twenty or thirty yards towards the 
 north, through two rows of the most filthy, dilapidated, and execrable 
 buildings that could be imagined ; and at the top or end of it stood the 
 citadel, of which * Stunning J oe ' was the corpulent castellan ; — I need not 
 say that it required some determination and some address to gain this strange « 
 place of rendezvous. Those who had the honour of an introduction to 
 the great man were considered safe, wherever his authority extended, and in 
 
 * London Gazette, No. 368. 
 
 t London Gazette, Sept. 18-21, 1682. I am confident the newspapers made a misprint, 
 and that the man's name was Haase, Dutch or German, for the Hare he represented on 
 his sign. 
 
 X Hone's E very-Day Book, Oct. 17, fol. 1. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 this locality it was certainly very extensive. He occasionally condes- 
 cended to act as a pilot through the navigation of the alley to persons of 
 aristocratic or wealthy pretensions, whom curiosity, or some other motive 
 best known to themselves, led to his abode. Those who were not under 
 his safe conduct frequently found it very unsafe to wander in the intricacies 
 of this region. In the salon of this temple of low debauchery were 
 assembled groups of all ' unutterable things,' all that class distinguished 
 in those days, and, I believe, in these, by the generic term * cadgers.' 
 
 Hail cadgers, who in rags array'd, 
 
 Disport and play fantastic pranks; 
 
 Each Wednesday night in full parade, 
 
 Within the domicile of Bank's. 
 A ' lady ' presided over the revels, collected largess in a platter, and, at- 
 intervals, amused the company with specimens of her vocal talent. 
 Dancing was ' kept up till a late hour,' with more vigour than elegance, 
 and many terpsichorean passages, which partook rather of the animation 
 of the * Nautch ' than the dignity of the minuet, increased the interest of 
 the performance. It may be supposed that those who assembled were not 
 the sort of people who would have patronised Father Matthew had he visited 
 St Giles's in those times. There was indeed an almost incessant com- 
 plaint of drought, which seemed to be increased by the very remedies ap- 
 plied for its cure ; and had it not been for the despotic authority with 
 which the dispenser of the good things of the establishment exercised hia 
 rule, his liberality in the dispensation would certainly have led to very 
 vigorous developments of the reprobation of man and of woman also. In 
 the lower tier, or cellars, or crypt of the edifice, beds or berths were pro- 
 vided for the company, who, packed in bins after the ' fitful fever ' of the 
 evening, slept well." * 
 
 In 1750 there was a sign of the Hare and Cats at !N"orwicli,f 
 which was clearly a travesty of the Hare and Hounds. 
 
 The Stag may in early times have been put up as a religious 
 type. As such it is of constant occurrence in the catacombs 
 and in early Christian sculptures, in allusion to Psalm xlii., 
 " Like as the hart desireth the water brook, so longeth my soul 
 after thee, 0 God!" J The Stag is still a very common sign. 
 A publican on the Fulham Road has put up the sign of the Stag, 
 and added to this on the tympanum : " Eex in regno suo non 
 habet parem/' the application of which is best known to mine 
 host himself. 
 
 The Baldfaced Stag is seen in many places : baldfaced is a 
 term applied to horses who have a white strip down the forehead 
 to the nose. At Chigwell in Essex there is a Bald Hind, and 
 
 * Rev. J. Richardson, LL.B., Recollections of the Last Half Century. See also 
 under Stunning Joe Banks in the Slang Dictionary, recently issued by the publisher 
 of this work. 
 
 t Gentleman's Magazine, March 1842. 
 
 X Ste under Rbligious Signs. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS, 165 
 
 in the High Street, Reading, a Bald Face, both evidently de- 
 rived from the last-named stag. 
 
 Various combinations also occur, as the Stag and Castle, at 
 Thornton, near Hinckly ; the Stag and Pheasant, rather com- 
 mon ; both these, doubtless, allude to the game seen in parks, or 
 in the neighbourhood of noblemen's seats ; the Stag and Oak, 
 the Gape, Warwickshire, points towards a similar origin, but the 
 Stag and Thorn at Traffick Street, Derby, seems to be a 
 union of two signs, for the Thorn appears in the same street on 
 another public-house. There is, however, a sort of tree called 
 the Buck-Thorn, which possibly may have been corrupted into 
 the Buck and Thorn, and hence the Stag and Thorn. The 
 EisiNG Deer (Brampton-en-le-Morthen, Yorkshire) and the 
 Rising Buck (Sheinton, Shropshire) have a decided deer-stalking 
 smack about them, affording us a glimpse of the cautious stag 
 rising from the heather, pricking his ears and sniffing the wind. 
 
 The Ranged Deer was the sign of the King's gunsmith in 
 the Minories, 1673.* At that period this street was full of 
 smiths : 
 
 The Mulcibers who in the Minories sweat 
 And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat, 
 Deform'd themselves, yet forge those stays of steel 
 Which arm Aurelia with a shape to kill." — Congreve. 
 
 This ranged deer was simply intended for the Reindeer, 
 which animal had then just newly come under the notice of 
 the public; their knowledge of it was still confused, and its 
 name was spelled in various ways, such as : rain-deer, rained- 
 deer, range-deer, and ranged-deer. 
 
 The Roebuck is equally common with the Stag ; the Golden 
 Buck, near St Dunstan, was the shop of R Overton, publisher 
 of " The Cries of the City of London, consisting of 74 copper- 
 prints, each figure drawn after the life, by the famous Mr Laron." 
 The Buck and Bell is a sign at Long Itchington : the bell was 
 frequently added to the signs of public-houses in honour of the 
 bell-ringers, who were in the habit of refreshing themselves there. 
 Hence we have the Bull and Bell, Briggate, Leeds; the Raven 
 AND Bell, at Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, and Newport ; the 
 Bell and Talbot, at Bridgenorth ; the Dolphin and Bell on 
 the token of John Warner, Aldersgate, 1668; the Fish and 
 Bell, (evidently the same sign,) Charles Street, Soho ; the Threb 
 
 * LoTuion Gazette, Oct. 2-6, 1673. 
 
1 66 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Swans and Peal at Walsall ; the Nelson and Peal, and many 
 others. 
 
 Among the taverns with the sign of the Eoebuck that have 
 become famous, the house in Gheapside may be mentioned as a 
 notorious place during the Whig riots in 1715. 
 
 Not only the Deer tribe themselves, but their Horns also 
 make a considerable figure on the signboard. It is probably to 
 the sign of the Horns that allusion is made in the roll of the 
 Pardoner, " Cocke LorelFs Bote — 
 
 " Here is Maryone Marchauntes at Allgate 
 Her Husbode dwells at ye siggne of ye CoJceldes Pate." 
 The Horns was a tavern of note in Fleet Street in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth : 
 
 " The xvj day of September (1557), cam owt of Spayn to the Quens 
 Cowrt in post Monser Regamus, gorgysly apparelled, with divers Spane- 
 ardes, and with grett cheynes, and their hats sett with stones and perlles, 
 and sopyd [supped], and by vij of the cloke were again on horsSbake, and 
 so thrugh Flat Strett, and at the Hornes they dronke, and at the Grat- 
 HONDE, and so thrugh Chepesyde, and so over the bryge, and so rod all 
 nyght toward Dover." — Machyn's Diary. 
 
 Sometimes the Horns are specified as the Hart's Hoens Inn, 
 Smithfield, near Pie Corner, one of the houses in the yard of 
 which Joe Miller used to play during Bartholomew Fair time, 
 when he was associated with Pinkethman at the head of a troop 
 of actors. The London Daily Post for August 24, &c., 1721, 
 contains several advertisements of his troop, and the parts played 
 by himself 
 
 What most contributed to the popularity of this sign in the 
 environs of London was the custom alluded to by Byron : 
 " And many to the steep of Highgate hie, 
 Ask ye, Boeotian shades ! the reason why, 
 'Tis to the worship of the solemn horn, 
 Grasp'd in the holy hand of mystery, 
 In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn, 
 And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till mom."* 
 Highgate was the headquarters for this swearing on the horn. 
 Hone gives the oath in the following form : — 
 
 " An old and respectable inhabitant of the village says, that 60 years 
 ago, upwards of 80 stages stopped every day at the Red Lion, and that out 
 of every 5 passengers 3 were sworn. The oath was delivered standing, 
 and ran thus : * Take notice what I now say unto you, for that is the first 
 word of your oath — mind that I You must acknowledge me to be your 
 adopted father, I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son (or daughter). 
 If you do not call me father, you forfeit a bottle of wine. If I do not call 
 * Childe Harold, canto I. Ixx. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS, 
 
 167 
 
 you son, I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling 
 through this village of Highgate, and you have no money in your pocket, 
 go call for a bottle of wine at any house you think proper to go into, and 
 book it to your father's score. If you have any friends with you you may 
 treat them as well, but if you have money of your own you must pay for 
 it yourself. For you must not say you have no money when you have, 
 neither must you convey the money out of your own pockets into your 
 friends' pockets, for I shall search you as well as them ; and if it is found 
 that you or they have money, you forfeit a bottle of wine for trying to 
 cozen and cheat your poor old ancient father. You must not eat brown 
 bread while you can get white, except you like the brown the best ; you 
 must not drink small beer while you can get strong, except you like the 
 small the best. You must not kiss the maid while you can kiss the mis- 
 tress, except you like the maid the best, but sooner than lose a good 
 chance you may kiss them both. And now, my good son, for a word or 
 two of advice : keep from all houses of ill repute, and every place of 
 public resort for bad company. Beware of false friends, for they will turn 
 to be your foes, and inveigle you into houses where you may lose your 
 money and get no redress. Keep from thieves of every denomination. 
 And now, my good son, I wish you a safe journey through Highgate and 
 this life. I charge you, my good son, that if you know any in this com- 
 pany who have not taken the oath you must cause them to take it, or 
 make each of them forfeit a bottle of wine, for if you fail to do so you will 
 forfeit a bottle of wine yourself. So now my good son, God bless you. 
 Kiss the horns or a pretty girl, if you see one here which you like best, and 
 so be free of Highgate.' " 
 
 After that, the new-made member became fully acquainted 
 with the privileges of a freeman, which consisted in : 
 
 " If at any time you are going through Highgate, and want to rest your* 
 self, and you see a pig lying in the ditch, you have liberty to kick her 
 out and take her place ; but if you see three lying together, you must only 
 kick out the middle one and lie between the other two." 
 
 These last liberties, however, are a later addition to the oath 
 introduced by a blacksmith, who kept the Coach and Horses. 
 Nearly every inn in Highgate used to keep a pair of horns for 
 this custom. In Hone's time the principal inn, the Gatehouse, 
 had stag-horns : — 
 
 The Mitre, stags'-horns. The Red-Lion, rams'- The Angel, rams' -horns. 
 The Green Dragon, do. horns. The Bull, stags'-horns. 
 
 The Red Lion and Sun, The Coopers' Arms, do. The Wrestlers, do. 
 
 bullocks'-horns. The Fox and Hounds, The Lord Nelson, do. 
 
 The Bell, stags'-horns. rams'-horns. The Duke of Wellington, 
 
 The Coach and Horses, The Flask, do. stags'-horns. 
 
 rams'-horns. The Rose and Crown, The Crowne, do. 
 
 The Castle, do. stags'-horns. The Duke's Head, do. 
 
 Hone supposes the custom to have originated in a sort of 
 graziers' club."^ Highgate being the place nearest London where 
 
 * Hone's Every Day Book, Jan. 17, vol. iL 
 
1 63 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 cattle rested on their way from the north, certain graziers were 
 accustomed to put up at the Gatehouse for the night. But as 
 they could not wholly exclude strangers who, like themselve?, 
 were travelling on business, they brought an ox to the door, and 
 those who did not choose to kiss its horns, after going through 
 the ceremony described, were not deemed fit members of their 
 society. Similar customs prevailed in other places, as at Ware, 
 at the Griffin in Hoddesdon, &c. 
 
 On the Continent the sign of the Horns was formerly equally 
 common, often accompanied with some sly allusion to what Othello 
 calls " the forked plague." Thus in the Eue Bourg Chavin, in 
 Lyons, there is now a pair of horns with the inscription ^' Sunt 
 siMiLiA TUis ; " and a Dutch shopkeeper of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury wrote under his sign of the Horns — 
 " Ik draag Hoornen dat ider ziet, 
 Maar menig draagt Hoornen en weet het niet." * 
 
 The Fox, as might be expected, is to be seen in a great many 
 places; there is one at Frandley, Cheshire, with the following 
 rhymes : — 
 
 " Behold the Fox, nea,r Frandley stocks. 
 Pray catcli him when yon can, 
 For they sell here, good ale and beer, 
 To any honest man.'* 
 
 A still more absurd inscription accompanies the sign cf the 
 Fox at Folkesworth, near Stilton, Hunts : — 
 
 *^ I . HAM . A . CUNEN . FOX 
 You . SEE . THER . HIS . 
 No . HARM . ATCHED . 
 
 To . Me . IT . IS . MY . Mrs 
 Wish . to . place . me 
 Here . to . let . you . no . 
 
 He . SELLS . GOOD . BEERE 
 
 Formerly there used to be a sign of the Three Foxes in 
 dementis Lane, Lombard Street, carved in stone, representing 
 three foxes sitting in a row. But a few years ago the house 
 came into the possession of a legal firm, who, no doubt afraid of 
 the jokes to which the sign might lead, thought it advisable to 
 do away with the carving by covering it over with plaster. 
 
 One of the most favourite combinations is the Fox and 
 Goose, represented by a fox currant, with the neck of the goose 
 in his mouth and the body cast over his back. It seems sug 
 
 * " I wear horns, which everybody sees, 
 
 But many a one wears horns ana does not know it." 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS, 
 
 169 
 
 gested by an incident in the old tale of " Reynard the Fox/' 
 and was a subject which mediaeval artists were never tired of 
 representing ; it occurs in stall carvings, as in Gloucester Cathe- 
 dral ; in the border of the Bayeux tapestry, and in endless MS. 
 illuminations. It is, or was, a coat of arms borne by the families 
 of Foxwist and Foxfeld. Derived from this sign are the Fox 
 AND Duck, (two in Sheffield,) and the Fox and Hen, of which 
 there is an example at Long Itchington. Reynard's predatory 
 habits are further illustrated by the Fox and Lamb, in Pilgrim 
 Street, Newcastle, in Allendale, &c., and the Fox and Grapes, 
 borrowed from the fable. From the same well-known source 
 also arose the sign of the Fox and Crane. But we see the 
 punishment of all Reynard's misdemeanours in the Fox and 
 Hounds, a sign of old standing, as there is one in Putney on a 
 house which professes to have been " established above three 
 hundred years." The Fox and Owl at Nottingham, seems to 
 owe its origin to a curious qui pro quo in language. A bunch of 
 ivy, or ivy tod, was generally considered the favourite haunt of an 
 owl; but a tod also signifies a fox ; and so the owl's nest, owls- 
 tod, may have led to the owl and tod, the fox and owl. The 
 Owl's Nest is still a sign at St Helen's, Lancashire. See under 
 Bird Signs. 
 
 In the sign of the Fox and Bull, at Knightsbridge, the bull 
 has been added of late years. About fifty years ago a magistrate 
 used to sit once a week at this public-house to settle the small 
 disputes of the neighbouring inhabitants. At that period Knights- 
 bridge was still in such a benighted condition that neither a 
 butcher's nor draper's shop was to be found between Hyde Park 
 Corner and Sloane Street ; and the whole locality could only 
 boast of one stationer where note-paper and newspapers could be 
 obtained. The voyage to London in those days was performed 
 in a sort of lumbering stagecoach, over an ill-paved and dimly- 
 lighted road. To this Fox Inn, by a very old wooden gate at the 
 back, the bodies of the drowned in the Serpentine used to be 
 conveyed, to the care of the Royal Humane Society, who had a 
 receiving-house here. Among the many unhappy young and fair 
 ones who were carried through that " Lasciate-ogni-speranza''' 
 gate, was Harriet Westbrook, the first wife of Shelley the poet, 
 who had drowned herself in the Serpentine upon hearing that 
 her husband had run off to Italy with Mary, the daughter of 
 William Godwin, bookseller and philosopher of Snow HiU. The 
 
170 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 ancient inn remained mucli in its Elizabethan condition till the 
 year 1799, when certain alterations cleared away the old-fashioned 
 fire-places, chimney-pieces, and dog-irons, by which had sat the 
 weather-beaten soldiers of Cromwell, the highwaymen lying in 
 ambush for the mail coaches, and the fair London ladies out on a 
 sly trip. 
 
 Some other combinations are not so easily explained, such as 
 the Fox AND Cap, Long Lane, Smithfield : but when we see the 
 bill of this shop* the mystery is explained ; it was the sign of 
 Tho. Trousdale, a capmaker, and represented a fox running, with 
 a cap painted above him, to intimate the man's business. The 
 Fox AND Crown, Nottingham and Newark, is evidently a com- 
 bination of two signs. The Fox and Knot, Snow Hill, seems 
 to be of old standing, as it has given its name to a court close 
 by. Its origin, doubtless, is exactly similar to that of the Fox 
 and Cap ; the knot or top-knot being a head-dress worn by ladies 
 in the last century. The Flying Fox at Colchester, may either 
 allude to some kind of bat or flying squirrel (1) thus denomi- 
 nated, or is a landlord's caprice. 
 
 It is certainly somewhat strange that in this sporting country 
 the sign of the Brush or the Fox's Tail should be so rare ; in 
 fact, no instance of its use is now to be found, although, beside 
 the interest attached to it in the hunting field, it had the honour 
 of being one of the badges of the Lancaster family. What is still 
 more surprising is, that the Fox's Tail should have been the 
 sign of a Parisian bookseller, Jean Euelle, in 1540 ; but what 
 prompted him to choose this sign is now rather difficult to guess. 
 
 DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
 
 Notwithstanding the ballad of the " Vicar and Moses," which 
 Bays, 
 
 At the sign of the Horse old Spintext of course 
 Each night took his pipe and his pot/* 
 
 the horse rarely or never occurs without a distinctive adjective 
 to determine its colour, action, or other attribute. All natural 
 colours of the horse, and some others, are found on the signboard 
 — black, white, bay, sorrel, (rare,) pied, spotted, red, sometimes 
 golden, and in one instance, at Grantham, a Blue Horse is met 
 
 * Bagford Bills. Bib. Harl. 6962. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 171 
 
 with. Frequently the sign of the Horse is accompanied by the 
 following hippophile advice : — 
 
 " Up hill hurry me not ; 
 
 Down hill trot me not ; 
 
 On level ground spare me not ; 
 
 And in the stable I 'm not forgot." 
 
 Many years ago, at Greenwich, there was a public-house with 
 the sign of a Horse. Behind the house was a large grass field, 
 to which referred the following notice, painted under the sign : — 
 " Good Grass for Horses. Long Tails three shillings and six- 
 pence per week." An inquisitive person passing that way, and 
 not understanding the meaning of the notice, went in and ques- 
 tioned the landlord, who informed him that a difference was made 
 for the bob-tailed horses ; " for,'^ said he, " long-tailed horses can 
 whisk off the flies, and eat at their leisure ; but bob-tails have to 
 shake their heads and run about from morning till night, and so 
 do eat much less." 
 
 The Red Horse is now almost extinct ; it occurs as the sign 
 of a house in Bond Street, in an advertisement about a spaniel 
 lost by the Duke of Grafton.* By the term red was not meant 
 vermilion ; at that time it was the accepted word for what w^e 
 now call roan. The Bay Horse is a great favourite in York- 
 shire ; in 1861 there were, in the West Hiding alone, not less 
 than seventy-seven inns, taverns, and public- houses, with such a 
 sign, besides innumerable ale-houses. One would expect the 
 Yorkshire Grey more indigenous to that county. The Dapple 
 Grey is apparently a tribute of gratitude of the publicans to the 
 " Dapplo Grey" of the nursery rhyme — 
 
 I had a little bonny nag, 
 
 His name was Dapple Grey, 
 
 And he would bring me to an ale-house 
 
 A mile out of the way." 
 
 Dappled grey, too, was the fashionable colour of horses in the 
 last century ; thus Pope's mercenary Duchess — 
 " The gods, to curse Pamela with her prayers. 
 Gave her gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares." 
 Of the White Horse innumerable instances occur, and many 
 are connected with names known in history. At the White 
 Horse, near Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the noted Villiers, Duke of 
 Buckingham, spent the last years of his life, and died. 
 
 **The Duke of Queensbury being present at his death, knowing tbe 
 ♦ Postman, February 1-3, 1711. 
 
172 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Duke to be a dissenter, and thinking lie must be a Catholic, oflFered to send 
 for a Catholic priest, to which the Dake answered, *No,' said he, Hhose 
 rascals eat God ; but if you know of any set of fellows that eat the devil, 
 I should be obliged to you if you would send for one of them ! ' " 
 
 All of a piece ! So ended 
 
 " That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim." * 
 
 At the White Horse in Kensington, Addison wrote several of his 
 Spectators. His favourite dinner, when he stayed at this house, 
 was fillet of veal and a bottle of claret. The old inn remained in 
 its original state till about forty years ago, when it was pulled 
 down, and the name changed to the Holland Arms ; but the 
 sign is still preserved in the parlour of the new establishment. 
 
 Edinburgh also has its famous White Horse ; in a close in the 
 Canongate, an inn dating from the time of Queen Mary Stuart, 
 and which Scott has introduced in one of his novels, may still be 
 seen. It was well-known to runaway couples, and hundreds have 
 been made happy or unhappy for life " at a moment's notice," in 
 its large room, in which, as well as in the White Hart in the 
 Grassmarket, these impromptu marriages were as regularly per- 
 formed as at Gretna Green. The White Hokse Cellar, Picca- 
 dilly, now a tame omnibus ofiice, was for more than a century 
 one of the bustling coaching inns for the West. Some persons 
 think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the 
 bosom of the ocean ; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the 
 mail coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up 
 the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land's- 
 End." — Hazlitt This place calls up pleasant fancies of travel- 
 ling by the mail, through merry roads, with blooming hawthorn 
 and chestnut trees, larks singing aloft, the village bells, and the 
 blacksmith's hammer tinkling in the distance ; but another White 
 Horse Inn shows the dark side of the picture — the unsafety of the 
 roads, for the White Horse, corner of Welbeck Street, Cavendish 
 Square, was long a detached public-house, where travellers cus- 
 tomarily stopped for refreshment, and to examine their firearms 
 before crossing the fields to Lisson Green.t The last White 
 Horse we shall mention was in Pope's Head Alley, the sign of 
 John Sudbury and George Humble, the first men that opened a 
 printshop in London, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. 
 Peachani, in his " Compleat Gentleman," says that Goltzius' en- 
 
 * Richardsoniawa. p. 168. 
 
 t Timbs, Curiosities of liOadon, p. 402. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. I 73 
 
 gravings were commonly to be had in Pope's Head Alley. There 
 also, in 1611, the first edition of Speed's " Great Britain" was 
 published. 
 
 At a certain place in Warwickshire a fellow started a public- 
 house near four others, with signs respectively of the Bear, the 
 Angel, the Ship, and the Three Cups. Yet quite undaunted at 
 his neighbours, he put up the White Horse as his sign, and 
 under it wrote the following spirited and prophetic rhymes : — 
 
 " My White Horse shall bite the Bear, 
 And make the Angel fly ; 
 Shall turn the Ship her bottom up, 
 And drink the Three Cups dry." 
 And so it did ; the lines pleased the people, the other houses 
 soon lost their custom, and tradition says that the fellow made a 
 considerable fortune. 
 
 The Running Horse or the Galloping Horse — perhaps 
 originally the horse of Hanover — is also very common. In the 
 London Gazette, Feb. 12-15, 1699, a horse race is advertised at 
 Lilly Hoo, in Hertford ; the advertisement concludes : " and on 
 the same day a smock worth £3 will be run for, besides other 
 encouragements for those that come in 2d. or 3d. Any woman 
 may run gratis, that enters her name at the Running Horse, 
 where articles may be seen," &c. Races by women were not un- 
 common in those days, and instances may yet occasionally be 
 heard of, particularly in the east end of London, where every 
 great match generally concludes with a race among the free and 
 easy ladies of the neighbourhood. 
 
 The combinations in which we meet with the Horse are all 
 very plain, and require no explanation. The Hoese and Groom, 
 and the Horse and Jockey, are the most prevalent. Racing, 
 from time immemorial, has been a favourite English sport. 
 Fitzstephen mentions the races in the days of Henry II., and 
 in the ballad of Syr Bevys of Hampton,* full details are given. 
 
 In somer at Whitsontide, 
 
 Whan knighten most on horseback ride, 
 
 A course let they make or a daye 
 
 Steedes and Palfraye for to assaye ; 
 
 "Which horse that best may ren. 
 
 Three miles the cours was then, 
 
 Who that might ride them shoulde 
 
 Have forty pounds of redy golde." 
 
 In the reign of Queen Elizabeth races were much in vogue, 
 
 * As quoted by Strutt in " U-liggam," «c. 
 
174 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 and betting carried to great excess. The famous George Earl 
 of Cumberland is recorded to have wasted more money than any 
 of his ancestors, chiefly by racing and tilting. In 1599, private 
 matches by gentlemen who rode their own horses were of fre- 
 quent occurrence. In the reign of James I. public races were 
 celebrated at various places, under much the same regulations as 
 now. The most celebrated were called Bellcourses. In the 
 latter part of the reign of Charles I. there were races in Hyde Park 
 as well as at Newmarket. Charles II. was very fond of this diver- 
 sion, and appointed meetings at Datchet Mead when he resided 
 at Windsor. Gradually, however, Newmarket became the prin- 
 cipal place. The king, a constant attendant, established a house 
 for his own accommodation, and entered horses in his royal name. 
 Instead of bells, he gave a silver bowl or a cup, value 100 guineas, 
 on which the exploit and pedigree of the winning horse were 
 generally engraved. William III. and Queen Anne both added 
 to the plate. George I., towards the end of his reign, discon- 
 tinued the plate and gave 100 guineas instead ; George II. made 
 several racing regulations, about the age of horses, the weight of 
 lockeys, (fee. Already, in 1768, the horses had obtained great 
 swiftness ; for Misson, in his " Travels,'' mentions one that ran 20 
 miles in 55 minutes upon uneven ground, which for those times 
 was certainly a remarkable feat. 
 
 The Bell and Hoese is an old and still frequent sign; it 
 occurs on trades tokens ; as John Harcourt at the Bell and 
 Black Hoese in Finsbury, 1668, and on various others ; whilst 
 at the present day it may be seen at many a roadside alehouse. 
 Bells were a favourite addition to the trappings of horses in the 
 middle ages. Chaucer's abbot is described : — 
 
 " When he rode men his bridle hear, 
 Gingling in a whistling wind as clere, 
 And eke as loud as doth a chapel bell." 
 
 In a MS. in the Cottonian Library * relating the journey of Mar- 
 garet of England to Scotland, there to be married to King James, 
 we find constant mention of these bells. The horse of Sir Wil- 
 liam Ikarguil, companion of Sir William Conyars, sheriff of York- 
 shire, is described as his Hors Harnays full of campanes [bells] of 
 silver and gylt." Whilst the master of the horse of the Duke of 
 Northumberland was monted apon a gentyll horse, and cam- 
 
 * Printed in Leland's Collectanea, pp. 270, 272. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 panes of silver and gylt." And a company of knights is intro- 
 duced, " some of their hors harnes was full of campanes, sum of 
 gold and sylver, and others of gold." This led to the custom of 
 giving a golden bell as the reward of a race. In Chester, such a 
 bell was run for yearly on St George's day ; it was " dedicated 
 to the kinge, being double gilt with the Kynges Armes upon it/' 
 and was carried in the procession by a man on horseback " upon 
 a septer in pompe, and before him a noise of trumpets in pompe."* 
 This custom of racing for a bell led to the adoption of the still 
 common phrase, hearing off the bell. 
 
 Names of celebrated race horses are found on signboards as 
 well as human celebrities. Such are Bay Childers at Dronfield, 
 Derby ; Flying Childers at Melton Mowbray ; Wild Dayrell, 
 Oldham ; Filho da Puta, Nottingham ; and Filho tavern, Man- 
 chester. Blink Bonny is common in Northumberland ; Flying 
 Dutchman occurs in various places ; and the Arabian Horse at 
 Aberford, in Yorkshire, may perhaps represent the great Arabian 
 Godolphin, the sire of all our famous racers. 
 
 The Horse and Tiger, at Rotherham, is said to refer to the 
 accident in a travelling menagerie which took place many years 
 ago, when the tiger broke loose and sprang upon the leaders of a 
 passing mail coach, although visitors from London generally sup^ 
 pose the " tiger " to mean the spruce groom, or horse attendant, 
 coming from the country to London in such numbers. Even that 
 poor hack, the Manage Horse, is not forgotten, as he may be 
 seen going through his paces before a public-house in Cottles 
 Lane, Bath. In one of the turnings in Cannon Street, City, there 
 is an old sign of the Horse and Dorsiter, which is simply an 
 old rendering of the more common Pack Horse, formerly the 
 usual sign of a posting inn. No doubt the Frighted Horse, 
 which occurs in many places, belongs to this class of horses, — 
 the expression " fright " being a corruption of freight. Some 
 publicans who, with their trade combine the calling of farrier, 
 set up the sign of the Horse and Farrier, — in Ireland ren- 
 dered as the Bleeding Horse. A Dutch farrier in the village 
 of Schagen, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the 
 White Horse, and wrote under it the following very philosophi- 
 cal verse : — 
 
 " In't witte Paard worden de paarden haar voeten me tyzer beslagen 
 
 * A MS. of the sixteenth century, Bib. Harl. 2150, fol. 356, gives full particulars of 
 this fete and procession. 
 
176 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Dat men de mensclien dat mee kon doen zy hoefden dan geen schoenen 
 te dragen.'** 
 
 The Horse and Stag, (Finningley, Nottinghamsliire,) and the 
 Horse and Gate, are both hunting signs ; yet the last may have 
 been suggested by the Bull and Gate. The Horse and Trum- 
 pet is a very common sign, illustrating the war horse ; the 
 Horse and Chaise (or shaze, as it is spelled) in the Broad 
 Gentry, (sanctuary,) Westminster, is named in an advertisement in 
 the Postboy, Jan. 23-25, 1711 ; whilst the Chaise and Pair is 
 still to be seen at Northill, Colchester. 
 
 The Nag's Head — which only in one instance is varied by the 
 Horse's Head, namely, at Brampton in Cumberland — is a sign 
 that has become famous in history ; it is represented on the print 
 of the entry of Queen Marie de' Medici on her visit to her daughter 
 Henriette Marie, Queen of Charles I., being the sign of a notori- 
 ous tavern opposite the Cheapside Cross. It is suspended from 
 a long square beam, at the end of which a large crown of ever- 
 greens is seen. As none of the other houses are decked with 
 greens, this apparently represents the Bush.t This tavern was 
 the fictitious scene of the consecration of the Protestant bishops 
 at the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559. It was pretended 
 by the adversaries of the Protestant faith, that a certain number 
 of ecclesiastics, in a hurry to take possession of the vacant sees, 
 assembled here j where they were to undergo the ceremony from 
 Antony Kitchen, alias Dunstane, Bishop of Llandaff, a sort of 
 occasional Nonconformist, who had taken the oath of supremacy 
 to Elizabeth ; Bonner, Bishop of London, (then confined in the 
 Tower,) hearing of it, sent his chaplain to Kitchen, threatening 
 him with excommunication in case he proceeded. On this the 
 prelgite refused to perform the ceremony ; whereupon, according 
 to Catholics, Parker and the other candidates, rather than defer 
 possession of their dioceses, determined to consecrate one another, 
 which they did, without any sort of scruple. Scorey began with 
 Parker, who instantly rose Archbishop of Canterbury. The re- 
 futation of this tale may be read in Strype's life of Archbishop 
 Parker. J 
 
 A curious anecdote is told concerning the sign of a Gelding. 
 
 * »' At the White Horse, horses are shod with iron, 
 
 Pity the sane cannot be done to men, for then they would need no shoes." 
 
 t Crowns exactly similar to this, made of box, tinsel, and coloured paper, are yearly 
 hung out by the fishmongers in Holland on the first arrival of the salt herring after the 
 summer fishery. 
 
 X Pennant's Account of London; p. 423. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTEES. 
 
 Golden Square, it appears, was originally called Gelding Square, 
 from the sign of a neighbouring inn ; but the inhabitants, indignant 
 at the vulgarity of the name, changed it to its present title. 
 
 Some publicans appear to be of opinion that the Grey Mare 
 is the best horse for their signboards ; in Lancashire, especially, 
 this sign abounds. Others put up the Mare and Foal ; but 
 they are evidently not very well acquainted with the old ballad 
 of the " Mare and Foal that went to church," for there the Mare 
 says : — 
 
 Oh ! to pray for those publicans I am very loath, 
 They fill their pots full of nothing but froth, 
 Some fill them half full, and others the whole ; 
 May the devil go with them ! — Amen, says the foal. 
 
 Derry down," &c. 
 
 Besides the Mare and Foal, there is the Cow and Calf, which 
 is very common. A still more happy m^other, the Cow and Two 
 Calves, was, in 1762, a sign near Chelsea Pond ; whilst a touching 
 picture of paternal bliss might have been seen on a sign in Isling- 
 ton in the last century, viz., the Bull and Three Calves ; that 
 animal, doubtless, was placed there in the company of his offspring, 
 to illustrate the homely old proverb, " He that bulls the cow 
 must keep the calf." The Goat and Kid was a sign at Nor* 
 wich in 1711 the Sow and Pigs is common ; and the Ewe and 
 Lamb occurs on a trades token of Hatton Garden in 1668, and 
 may still be seen in many places. A practical traveller in the 
 coaching days, staying at the Ewe and Lamb in Worcester, wrote 
 on a pane of glass in that inn the following very true remark : — 
 " If the people suck your ale no more 
 
 Than the poor Lamb, th' Ewe at the door, 
 
 You in some other place may dwell, 
 
 Or hang yourself for all you '11 sell." 
 
 The Cat and Kittens was, about 1823, a sign near East- 
 cheap ; it may have come from the publican's slang expression, 
 cat and kittens, as applied to the large and small pewter pots. In 
 the police courts it is not uncommon to hear that such and such 
 low persons have been " had up " for " cat and kitten sneaking," 
 stealing quart and pint pots. 
 
 So much for quadrupeds. Happy families of birds are equally 
 abundant; there was the SrAREOw's Nest in Drury Lane, of 
 which trades tokens are extant ; the Throstle Nest, (a not in- 
 appropriate name for a free-and-easy singing club !) is the sign of 
 
 • GentUman's Magazine, March 1842; and London Gazette, Dec. 30, 1718. 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 a public-house at Buglawton, near Congleton ; tlie Martin's Nest 
 at Thornhill Bridge, Normanton ; the Kite's Nest, (an unpro- 
 mising name for an inn, if there be anything in a name,) at 
 Stretton, in Herefordshire ; and finally, the Brood Hen, or Hen 
 AND Chickens, which latter is more common than any of the 
 former. Not improbably it originated with the sign of the 
 Pelican's Nest, to which several of the above-named nests may be 
 referred. Under the name of the " Brood Hen," it occurs on a 
 trades token of Battle Bridge, Southwark ; as the " Hen and 
 Chickens," it was also known in the seventeenth century, for there 
 are tokens of John Sell " at y® Hen and Chickens on Hammond's 
 Key ; " it is likewise mentioned in the following daily occurrence 
 of the good old times : — 
 
 "Wednesday night last, Captain Lambert was stopt by three footpads 
 near the Hen and Chickens, between Peckham and Camberwell, and robbed 
 of a sum of money and his gold watch." * 
 
 The prevalence of this sign may be accounted for by the 
 kindred love for the barleycorn in the human and gallinaceous 
 tribes. It was also used as a sign by Paulus Sessius, a book- 
 seller of Prague, in 1606, who printed some of Kepler's astrono- 
 mical works ] above his colophon, representing the hen and her 
 offspring, is the motto : " grana dat a fimo scrutans," the 
 application of which is not very obvious. 
 
 Speaking of birds' nests figuring as signs, we may mention that, 
 at the beginning of the present century, the small shops under 
 the tree at the corner of Milk Street, City, used to describe them- 
 selves " as under the Crow's Nest, Cheapside." An old-fashioned 
 snuff shop, still in existence, issued its tobacco papers in this 
 way, and the small bookshop there at present advertises itself as 
 " under the tree," although it was only very recently that the 
 crow ceased to visit and repair his nest here. 
 
 The Three Colts, in Bride Lane, 1652, is represented on a 
 trades token by three colts running ; such a sign gave its name 
 to a street in Limehouse. The Horseshoe is a favourite in 
 combination with other subjects. Aubrey, in his Miscellanies/' 
 p. 148, says : — 
 
 " It is a very common thing to nail horseshoes on the thresholds of doors, 
 which is to hinder the power of witches that enter into the house. Most 
 houses of the West End of London have the horseshoe on the threshold; 
 it should be a horseshoe that one finds." 
 Elsewher3 he says : — 
 
 Under the Porch of Staninfield Church in Suffolk, I saw a tile with a 
 • Lloyd's Evening Jan. 16-19, 1761. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 179 
 
 horseshoe upon it placed there for this purpose, though one would imagine 
 that the holy water would have been sufficient." 
 
 Concerning the same superstition Brand observes : — 
 
 " I am told there are many other similar instances. In Monmouth Street 
 (probably the part alluded to by Aubrey) many horseshoes nailed to the 
 threshold are still to be seen. In 1813 not less than 17 remained, nailed 
 against the steps of doors. The bawds of Amsterdam believed in 1687, 
 that a horseshoe which had either been found or stolen placed on the 
 hearth would bring good luck to their houses." * 
 
 The charm of the horseshoe lies in its being forked and present- 
 ing two points j thus Herrick says : — 
 
 "Hang up hoolcs and sheers^ to scare 
 
 Hence the hag that rides the mare ; 
 
 Till they be all over wet 
 
 With the mire and the sweat, 
 
 This observ'd the manes shall be 
 
 Of your horses all knot-free, "f 
 
 Any forked object, therefore, has the power to drive witches away. 
 Hence the children in Italy and Spain are generally seen with 
 a piece of forked coral (coral is particularly efficacious) hung 
 round their necks, whilst even the mules and other cattle are 
 armed with a small crescent formed by two boars' tusks, or else a 
 forked piece of wood, to avert the spells of what Macbeth calls 
 "the juggling fiends." Even the two forefingers held nut apart 
 are thought sufficient to avert the evil eye, or prevent the 
 machinations of the lord and master of the nether world. Great 
 power also lies in the pentagram and Solomon's seal, which, 
 being composed of two triangles, present not less than six forked 
 ends. Both these figures are much used by the Moors, with the 
 same object in view as the horseshoe by western nations. In 
 this country, at the present day, scarcely a stable can be seen 
 where there is not a horseshoe nailed on the door or lintel ; there 
 is one very conspicuous at the gate of Meux's brewery at the 
 corner of Tottenham Court Eoad, and conspicuous on the horse 
 trappings of this establishment the shoe in polished brass may 
 be seen ; in fact, it has become the trade-mark of the firm, the 
 same as the red triangle which distinguishes the pale ale of the 
 Burton brewers. The iron heels of workmen's boots are also 
 frequently seen fixed against the doorpost, or behind the door, of 
 houses of the lower classes. 
 
 The Horseshoe, by itself, is comparatively a rare sign. There 
 35 a Horseshoe Tavern, mentioned by Aubrey in connexion with 
 
 * Brand's Popular Superstitions. f Robert Herrick, Hesperides, p. 234, 
 
i8o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 one of those reckless deeds of bloodshed so common in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries : — 
 
 Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake 13 languages, was a captain 
 under the Erie of Essex. He had a world of cuts about his body with 
 swords and was very quarrelsome and a great ravisher. He met coming 
 late at night out of the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane with a lieutenant of 
 Colonel Rossiter, who had great jingling spurs on. Said he, the noise of 
 your spurrs doe offend me, you must come over the kennel and give me 
 satisfaction. They drew and passed at each other, and the lieutenant was 
 runne through and died in an hour or two, and it was not known who 
 killed him." * 
 
 This tavern was still in existence in 1692, as appears from the 
 deposition of one of the witnesses in the murder of Mountfort 
 the actor by Captain Hill, who, with his accomplice, Lord 
 Mohun, whilst they were laying in wait for Mrs Bracegirdle, 
 drank a bottle of canary which had been bought at the Horse- 
 shoe Tavern. 
 
 The Three Houseshoes are not uncommon ; and the single 
 shoe may be met with in many combinations, arising from the 
 old belief in its lucky influences : thus the Horse and Horse- 
 shoe was the sign of William Warden, at Dover, in the seven- 
 teenth century, as appears from his token. The Sun and Horse- 
 shoe is still a pubHc-house sign in Great Tichfield Street, and the 
 Magpie and Horseshoe may be seen carved in wood in Fetter- 
 lane; the magpie is perched within the horseshoe, a bunch of grapes 
 being suspended from it. The Horns and Horseshoe is repre- 
 sented on the token of William Grainge in Gutterlane, 1666, — a 
 horseshoe within a pair of antlers. The Lion and Horseshoe 
 appears in the following advertisement of a shooting match : — 
 " (~\^ Friday the 16th of this instant, at two in the afternoon, will be 
 
 \J a plate to be {sic) shot for, at twenty-five guineas value, in the 
 Artillerie Ground near Moorfields. No gun to exceed four feet and a half 
 in the barrel, the distance to be 200 yards, and but one shot a piece, the 
 nearest the centre to win. No person that shoots to be less than one 
 guinea, but as many more as he pleases to compleat the sum. The money 
 to be put in the hands of Mr Jones, at the Lion and Horseshoe Tavern, or 
 Mr Turog, gunsmith in the Minories. Note, that if any gentleman has a 
 mind to shoot for the whole, there is a person will shoot with him for 
 it, being left out by mistake in our last." f 
 
 The Hoop and Horseshoe on Towerhill, was formerly called 
 the Horseshoe. This, like every old tavern, has its murder to 
 record : — 
 
 *^The last week one Colonel John Scott took an occasion to kill one 
 
 * Aubrey, Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 3. 
 
 t Postman^ June 1703. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 John Battler, a hackney coachman, at the Horse Shoe Tavern on Tower 
 Hill, without any other provocation 'tis said, but refusing to carry him 
 and another gentleman pertaining to the law, from thence to Temple Bar 
 for Is. 6d. Amongst the many pranks that he hath played in other 
 countries 'tis believed this is one of the very worst. He is a very great vindi- 
 cator of the Salamanca Doctor. He is a lusty, tall man, squint eyed, thin 
 
 faced, wears a peruke sometimes and has a very h look. All good 
 
 people would do well if they can to apprehend him that he may be 
 brought to justice." * 
 
 The HoESESHOE and Ceown is named in the following hand- 
 bill, which is too characteristic to curtail : — 
 
 Daughter of a Seventh daughter. 
 Removed to the sign of the Horseshoe and Crown in Castle Street, 
 
 NEAR THE 7 DiALS IN St GiLES. 
 
 LivetJi a Gentlewoman, the Daughter of a Seventh Daughter, who far exceeds 
 all her sex, her business being very great amongst the quality, has now 
 thought fit to make herself known to the benefit of the Publick, 
 She resolves these questions following : — As to Life whether happy or 
 unhappy? the best time of it past or to come ? Servants or lodgers if 
 honest or not ? To marry the person desir'd or who they shall marry and 
 when ? A Friend if real or not ? a Woman with child or not, or ever 
 likely to have any ! A friend absent dead or alive, if alive w^hen return ? 
 Journey by Land or voyages by Sea, the Success thereof. Lawsuits, which 
 shall gain the better ? She also Interprets Dreams. These and all other 
 lawful questions w^hich for brevity sake are omitted, she fully resolves. 
 
 Her hours are from 7 in the Morning till 12, and from 1 till 8 at 
 Night, "t 
 
 These quack " gentlewomen " were as much the order of that 
 day as the broken-down clergymen who advertise medicines for 
 nervous and rheumatic complaints are in our own time. Hey wood, 
 in his play of " the Wise Woman of Hogsden/^ enumerates the 
 following occupations as their perquisites : — 
 
 " Let me see how many trades have I to live by : First, I am a wise 
 woman and a fortuneteller, and under that I deale in physick and fore- 
 Bpeaking, in palmestry and things lost. Next I undertake to cure madd 
 folks ; Then I keepe gentlewomen lodgers, to furnish such chambers as I 
 let out by the night ; Then I am provided for bringing young wenches to 
 bed ; and for a need you see I can play the matchmaker." 
 
 * Generally they proclaimed themselves the seventh daughter of 
 a seventh daughter, a relationship that is still thought to be ac- 
 companied by powers not vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. This 
 belief in the virtue of the number 7 doubtless originated from 
 the Old Testament, where that number seems in greater favour 
 than all others. The books of Moses are full of references to it ; 
 the creation of the world in 7 days, sevenfold vengeance on who- 
 
 ♦ Jivtelligtncer, May 30, 1681. j Bagford Bills. Bib. Earl. 6964 
 
l82 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 soever slayeth Cain ; Noah had to take 7 males and females of 
 every clean beast, 7 males and females of every fowl of the air, 
 for in 7 days it would begin to rain ; the ark rested in the 7 th 
 month, &c., &c. From this the middle ages borrowed their pre- 
 dilection for this number, and its cabalistic power.* 
 
 Horned cattle are just as common as horses on the signboards ; 
 the Bull, in particular, is a favourite with the nation, whether as 
 a namesake — so much so, indeed, as to have given it a popular 
 name abroad — or as the source of the favourite roast-beef, or 
 from the ancient sport of bull-baiting, it is difficult to say. From 
 Ben Jonson we gather that there was another reason which some- 
 times dictated the choice of this animal on the signboard. In the 
 "Alchymist he introduces a shopkeeper, who wishes the learned 
 Doctor to provide him with a sign. 
 
 " Face. What say you to his Constellation, Doctor, the Balance ? 
 Sub. NOf that is stale and common : 
 
 A Townsman horn in Taurus gives the Bull 
 
 Or the BulVs head : in A ries, the Ram, 
 
 A poor device." — Alchymist, a. ii. s, i. 
 
 Newton dates a letter from the Bull," at Shoreditch, Septem- 
 ber 1693; it is addressed to Locke, and a curious letter it is, 
 containing an apology for having wished Locke dead. 
 
 The Bull is generally represented in his natural colour, black, 
 white, grey, pied, " spangled " (in Yorkshire,) and only rarely red 
 and blue ; yet these two last colours may simply imply the natural 
 red, brown, and other common hues, for newspapers of the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries often contain advertisements 
 about blue dogs ; and whatever shade that was intended for, it 
 may certainly with as much justice be applied to a bull as to a 
 dog. The Chained Bull at North Allerton, Leeds, and the Bull 
 AND Chain, Langworthgate, Lincoln, doubtless refer to the old 
 cruel pastime of bull-baitings. Occasionally we meet also with a 
 Wild Bull, as at Gisburn, near Skipton. 
 
 Leigh Hunt observes : — " London has a modern look to tjie 
 inhabitants ; but persons who come from the country find as odd 
 and remote-looking things in it as the Londoners do in York and 
 Chester ; and among these are a variety of old inns with corri- 
 dors running round the yard. They are well worth a glance from 
 anybody who has a respect for old times.^' Such a one is the 
 
 * Hence we have 7 ages, 7 churches, 7 champions, 7 penitential psalms, 7 sleepers o! 
 Ephesus, 7 years' apprenticeship, 7 cardinal virtues and deadly sins, 7 make a gallows- 
 ful, boots of 7 kagues, 7 liberal arts, ana innumerable other instances. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 183 
 
 Bull's Inn in Bishopsgate Street, where formerly plays were acted 
 by Burbadge, Shakespeare's fellow-comedian, and Tarlton in good 
 Queen Bess's time amused our forefathers on summers' afternoons 
 with his quaint jokes and comic parts.* This inn is also cele- 
 brated as the London house of the famous Hobson, (Hobson's 
 choice,) the rich Cambridge carrier. Here a painted figure of 
 him was to be seen in the eighteenth century, with a hundred 
 pound bag under his arm, on which was the following inscrip- 
 tion:-— "The fruitful Mother of a Hundred More." t At the 
 Bull public-house on Towerhill, Thomas Otway, the play writer, 
 died of want at the age of 33, on the 14th of April 1685, 
 having retired to this house to escape his creditors. { 
 
 The Bull, at Ware, obtained a celebrity by its enormous bed. 
 Taylor, the Water poet, in 1636 remarked, "Ware is a great 
 thorowfare, and hath many fair innes, with very large bedding, 
 and one high and mighty Bed called the Great Bed of Ware : a 
 man may seeke all England over and not find a married couple 
 that can fill it." Nares, in his " Glossary," quotes Chauncey's, 
 Hertfordshire ; for a story of twelve married couple who, laid 
 together in the bed, each pair being so placed at the top and 
 bottom of the bed, that the head of one pair was at the feet of 
 another. Shakespeare alludes to it in " Twelfth Night," where Sir 
 Toby Belch in his drunken humour advises Aguecheek to write : 
 *' as many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper, though the sheet 
 were big enough for the Bed of Ware in England," (a. iii. s. 2.) 
 Where the " high and mighty Bed " was located, seems a mooted 
 point ; some say at the Bull, others at the Crown, and Clutter- 
 buck places it at the Saracen's Head, where there is or was a bed 
 of some twelve feet square, in an Elizabethan style of carved oak, 
 but with the date 1463 painted on the back. Tradition says that 
 it was the bed of Warwick the king-maker, and was bought at a 
 sale of furniture at Ware Park. Recently it has been sold, and 
 Charles Dickens is now said to be its possessor. 
 
 The Bull Inn at Buckland, near Dover, deserves to be men- 
 tioned for its comical caution to the customers : 
 The Bull is tame so fear him not, 
 All the while you pay your shot. 
 
 * Colliei-'s Annals, vol. iii. p. 271, and HalliwelPs Introduction to TRrlton's Jests, 
 p. 16. 
 t Spectator, No. 509. 
 
 X " He went about almost naked in the rage of hunger,** says Dr Johnson, " and find in."; 
 u gentleman in a neighbouring coffeehouse asked him for a shilling ; and Otway goinj^ 
 away bought a roll and was choked with the first mouthful." 
 
184 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 When money's gone, and credit's bad, 
 It's that which makes the Bull run mad." 
 
 The famous Old Pied Bull Inn, Islington, was pulled down 
 circa 1827, the house having existed from the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth. The parlour retained its original character to the 
 last. There was a chimney-piece containing Hope, Faith, and 
 Charity, with a border of cherubims, fruit and foliage, whilst the 
 ceiling in stucco represented the five senses. Sir Walter Ealeigh 
 is said to have been an inhabitant of this house. 
 
 *' This conjecture is somewhat strengthened by the nature of the border 
 [in a stained glass window,] which was composed of seahorses, mermaids, 
 parrots, &c., forming a most appropriate allusion to the character of Ealeigb, 
 as a great navigator, and discoverer of unknown countries ; and the bunch 
 of green leaves [two seahorses supporting a bunch of green leaves,] has 
 been generally asserted to represent the tobacco plant, of which he is said 
 to have been the first importer into this country."* 
 
 At what time the house was converted into an inn does not 
 appear. The sign of the Pied Bull in stone relief, on the front 
 towards the south, bore the date 1730, which was probably the 
 year this addition was made to the building. That it was an inn 
 in 1665, appears from the following episode of the Plague-time : 
 
 " I remember one citizen, who, having thus broken out of his house in 
 Aldersgate Street, or there about, went along the road to Islington. He 
 attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and after that at the White 
 Horse, two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused ; after 
 which he came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the same 
 sign. He asked them for lodging for one night only, pretending to be 
 going into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound, and 
 free from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much that 
 way. They told him they had no lodging, that they could spare but one 
 bed up in the garret, and that they could spare that bed but for one night, 
 some drovers being expected the next day with cattle; so if he would 
 accept of that lodging, he might have it, which he did ; so a servant was 
 sent up with a candle with him, to show him the room. He was very well 
 dressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret ; and when he 
 came to the room he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant, ' I have 
 seldom lain in such a lodging as this ; ' however, the servant assured him 
 again that they had no better. ' Well,' says he, * I must make shift ; this is 
 a dreadful time, but it is but for one night.* So he sat down upon the bed- 
 side, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him up a pint of warm ale. 
 Accordingly the servant went for the ale ; but some hurry in the house, 
 which perhaps employed her otherwise, put it out of her head, and she 
 went up no more to him. The next morning, seeing no appearance of the 
 gentleman, somebody in the house asked the servant that had showed him 
 up stairs, what was become of him. She started ; * alas,' said she, * I 
 never thought more of him ; he bade me carry him some warm ale, but I 
 * Lewis's Islington, p. 160. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS, 1 85 
 
 forgot.' Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent up to 
 gee after him, who coming into the room found him stark dead, and ahnost 
 cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw 
 fallen, his eyes open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being 
 grasped hard in one of his hands ; so that it was plain he died soon after 
 the maid left him ; and that it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, 
 she had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the bed. 
 The alarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having 
 been free from the distemper till that disaster ; which bringing the infec- 
 tion to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round about it. I 
 do not remember how many died in the house itself, but I think the maid- 
 servant who went up first with him, fell presently ill by the fright, and 
 several others ; for whereas there died but two in Islington of the plague 
 the week before, there died seventeen the week after, whereof fourteen were 
 of the plague. This was in the week from the 11th of July to the 18th."* 
 
 The Eed Bull was the sign of another of the inn-playbouses 
 in Shakespeare's time ; but, like the Fortune, mostly frequented 
 by the meaner sorts of people. It was situated in Woodbridge 
 Street,t Clerkenwell, (its site is still called Eed Bull Yard,) and is 
 supposed to have been erected in the early part of Queen Eliza- 
 beth's reign. At all events, it was one of the seventeen play- 
 houses that arose in London between that period and the reign 
 of Charles I. Edward Alleyn the actor, founder of Dulwich 
 College, says in a memorandum, Oct. 3, 1617, "went to the 
 Red Bull and received for the ' Younger Brother ' [a play], but 
 £3-6-4." Killigrew's troop of the king's players performed in 
 it until the theatre in Lincoln' s-Inn-fields opened. The place was 
 then abandoned to exhibitions of gladiators and feats of strength. 
 The names of the principal theatres at the time of the Common- 
 wealth occur in the following puritanical curse : — 
 
 That the Globe 
 
 Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice, 
 
 Had been consumed, the Phenix burnt to ashes, 
 
 The Fortune whipp'd for a blind — BlackfriarSj 
 
 He wonders how it 'scaped demolishing 
 
 I' the time of Reformation ; lastly he wished 
 
 The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear-gardens, 
 
 And there be soundly baited." + 
 
 The Bull's Head is often seen instead of the Bull ; its origin 
 may be from the butchers' arms, which are azure two axes salter- 
 wise, arg. between two roses arg. as many hulls heads couped of 
 
 * The History of the Plague, by Defoe. 
 
 t There is still a Bull's Head public-house in this street, built on the site of the house 
 of Thomas Britton, the Musical Small-Coal Man, where he gave his celebrated concerta 
 for a period of 36 years, powdered duchesses and fastidious ladies of the Court tripping 
 through his coal repository, and climbing up a ladder to assist at these famous meetings. 
 
 ; Randolph's Muses' 1 ooking-Glasa. 
 
l86 " THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the second attired or, &c. ; in Holland a carved bull's head is 
 always a leather-seller's sign. At the Bull's Head, in Clare- 
 market, the artists' club used to meet, of which Hogarth was a 
 member, and Dr Eatcliffe a constant visitor. The Bull's Head 
 was already used in signs three hundred years ago, as we may 
 see from an entry in Machyn's Diary, which does not say much 
 for the morality of the period : — 
 
 " The xij day of June (1560) dyd ryd in a care * abowt London ij men 
 and iij women ; one man, for he was the bowd and to brynge women unto 
 strangers ; and on women was the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous Strett ; 
 and a-nodur the wyff of the Bull-hed besyd London Stone, and boyth were 
 bawdes and hores and the thodur man and the woman were brodur and 
 syster and wher taken nakyd together." 
 
 As a variation, on the Bull's Head there is the Cow's Face : — 
 pi EORGE TURNIDGE, aged about 16, a short thickset Lad with a 
 Kjf httle dark brown Hair, a scar in his left cheek under his eye, 
 wears a canvass jacket lined with red and canvass Breeches, with a red cap, 
 run away from his Master the 7th instant. Whoever secures him and 
 gives Notice to Mr Henry Davis, Waxchandler at the Cow's Face in Miles 
 Lane in Canon Street, shall have a Guinea Reward, and reasonable charges." 
 — London Gazette, Jan. 13-17, 1697. 
 
 The Bull's Neck is a sign at Penny Hill, Holbeach, and the 
 Buffalo Head is common in many places. The latter was the 
 sign of one of the coffee-houses near the Exchange, during the 
 South Sea bubble, and was hung up over the head quarters of 
 a company for a grand dispensary, capital £3,000,000. The 
 rage for joint-stock companies had come to such a pitch at that 
 period, that an advertisement appeared stating : — 
 
 I IHIS DAT the 8th instant at Sam's Coffeehouse behind the Royal 
 JL Exchange, at three in the afternoon, a book will be opened, for 
 entering into a joint copartnership for carrying on a thing that will turn 
 to the advantage of those concerned." 
 
 Not less than £28,000,000 were asked for at that period to enter 
 upon various speculations. At the Buffalo Head Tavern, Charing 
 Cross, Duncan Campbell, the deaf and dumb fortune-teller, used 
 at one time to deliver his oracles. He is immortalised in the 
 Spectator, No. 474, where, in answer to the letter of a lady 
 inquiring about Duncan's address, a note is entered, That the 
 
 * This riding in a cart was a very ancient punishment, probably introduced by the 
 Normans ; in the romance of Lancelot du Lac the cart is mentioned with the following re- 
 marks : — " At that time a cart was considered so vile that nobody ever went into it, but 
 those who had lost all honour and good name ; and when a person was to be degraded, 
 he was made to ride in a cart, for a cart served at that time for the same purpose as the 
 pillory now-a-days, and each town had only one of them." In the old English laws it 
 was called the Tumbrill ; thus Edward I. in 1240 enacted a law by which millers stealing 
 corn were to be chastised by the Tumbrill— See Fabian's Chronicles, 2 Edw. I. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 187 
 
 Inspector I employ about Wonders, inquire at tlie Golden Lyon, 
 opposite the Halfmoon Tavern, Drury Lane, into '.he merit of 
 this silent sage/* * 
 
 Among the combinations in which the Bull is met with on 
 signboards, the Bull and Dog is one of the most commor», 
 derived, like the Bull and Chain, from the favourite sport of 
 bull-baiting, which amusement is described at full length and in 
 brilliant colours by Misson, in his " Travels." A comical variation 
 of this is the Bull and Bitch at Husborn Crawley, Woburn. 
 In the sign of the Bull and BuTCHER,t the bull is placed in 
 still worse company ; this was very forcibly expressed on the 
 sign of a butcher in Amsterdam, who was represented with a 
 glass of wine in his hand, standing between two calves, and 
 pledging them with the cruel words, — 
 
 " Zyt verblyt 
 Soo lang gy er zyt."i 
 
 The Bull and Magpie, which occurs at Boston, has been 
 explained as meaning the Pie, '^/vaf, and the Bull of the Bomish 
 Church ; but this looks very like a cock-and-bull story. As 
 
 some help to thicken other proofs that also demonstrate thinly 
 as lago has it, it may be asked whether this might not have 
 arisen out of the sign of the " Pied Bull," thus leading to the 
 " Pie and Bull," or the Bull and Magpie ] ^' the transition seems 
 simple and easy enough ; but should this not be considered 
 satisfactory, since we have the Cock and Bull," and the " Cock 
 and Pie," we may by a sort of rule of three manoeuvre obtain the 
 Bull and Pie or Magpie. See under Bird Signs. 
 
 The Black Bull and Looking-Glass is named in an adver- 
 tisement in the original edition of the Spectator, No. Ixviii., as 
 a house in Cornhill. It was evidently a combination of two 
 signs. 
 
 Still more puzzling is the Bull and Bedpost; but as the 
 actual use of this sign as a house decoration remains to be corro- 
 borated, we may dismiss it with the remark, that the Bedpost, in 
 all probability, was a jocular name for the stake to which the 
 
 * For the chequered life of this strange individual, see Caulfield's Memoirs of Re- 
 markable Persons, vol. ii. From the Original Weekly Journal, Sept. 13, 1718, wa 
 gather the information that, "Last week Dr Campbell, the famous dumb fortune-teller, 
 was married to a gentlewoman of considerable fortune in Shadwell." 
 
 t A curious story of Bulleyn Butchered, the sign said to have been put up in commemo 
 mtion of Henry Vlll.'s unfortunate queen, and its corrui ted form of Bull and Butcher, 
 will be found in the first division of this work. Vide Historical Signs. 
 
 X "Be happy while you live." 
 
i88 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 bull was tied when being baited, in allusion to tlie stout stick for- 
 nierly used in bed-making to smooth the clothes in their place. The 
 Bull and Swan, High Street, Stamford, may be heraldic, both 
 these animals being badges of the York family ; but the Swan 
 in all probability was the first sign, the Bull being added on 
 account of the singular custom of Bull Kunning, which yearly 
 took place, both at Tamworth and Stamford, on St John's eve. 
 The Bull in the Pound, is the Bull punished for trespass, and 
 put in the pound or pinfold ; whilst the Bull and Oak at 
 Wicker, Sheffield, (at Market Bos worth there is a house with the 
 sign of the Bull in the Oak,) may have originated from the 
 sign of "the Bull" being suspended from an oak tree, or referring to 
 an oak tree standing near the house. Bulls are often tied to trees or 
 posts in pastures, and this also may have given rise to the sign. 
 
 Visitors to the Isle of Wight will have noticed the word 
 Bugle frequently inscribed under the picture of a Bull on the 
 inn signboards there. Bugle is a provincial name in those parts 
 for a wild bull. It is an old English word, and is used by Sir 
 John Mandeville ; "homes of grete oxen, or of bugles, or of kygn." 
 It was still current in the seventeenth century, for Randle 
 Holme, 1688, classes the "Bugle, or Bubalus," amongst "the 
 savage beasts of the greater sort." The horns of this animal, 
 used as a musical instrument, gave a name to the Buglehorn. 
 It may be remarked that the term bugle doubtless came, in old 
 times, with other Gallicisms common to Sussex and Hampshire, 
 from across the Channel, where the word bugle is still preserved 
 in the verb beugler, the common French word for the lowing of 
 cattle. 
 
 The Ox is rather uncommon ; the Dueham Ox and the 
 Craven Ox, two famous breeds, are sometimes met with ; then 
 there is a Craven Ox Head, in George Street, York, and a 
 Grey Ox at Brighouse, in the West Riding. The Ox and Com- 
 passes at Poulton Swindon, in Cumberland, is evidently a jocular 
 imitation of the London sign of the Goat and Compasses. 
 
 The Cow is more common ; its favourite colours being Red, 
 Brown, White, Spotted, Spangled, &c. The Red Cow occurs 
 as a sign near Holborn Conduit, on the seventeenth century 
 trades tokens. It also gave a name to the alehouse in Anchor 
 and Hope Lane, Wapping, in which Lord Chancellor Jeffries was 
 taken prisoner, disguised as a sailor, and trying to escape to the 
 Continent after the abdication of James II. Thinking himself 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 Bafe in this neighbourhood, he was looking out of the window to 
 while the time away, when he was recognised by a clerk who 
 bore him a grudge, and at once betrayed him. An heraldic 
 origin is not necessary for this colour of the cow. 
 
 *' Cows (I mean that whole species of horned beasts) are more commonly 
 black than Red in England. 'Tis for this reason that they have a greater 
 value for Ked Cow's Milk than for Black Cow's Milk. Whereas in France 
 we esteem the Black Cow's Milk, because Red Cows are more common 
 with us." * 
 
 Speaking of the Green Walk, St James's Park, Tom Brown says : 
 " There were a cluster of senators talking of state affairs, and the 
 price of corn and cattle, and were disturbed with the noisy Milk 
 folk crying : A can of Milk, Ladies ; a can of Red Cow's Milk, 
 sirs ? t The preference for the Red Cow's milk may, however, 
 have a more remote origin, namely, from the ordinance of the 
 law contained in Numbers xix. 2, where a red heifer is enjoined 
 to be sacrificed as a purification for sin. Hence, Red Cow's 
 milk is particularly recommended in old prescriptions and 
 panacea, as, for instance, in the following receipt of a Cock 
 water for a Consumption and Cough of the Lunges : " — 
 
 " Take a running cock and pull him alive, then kill him and cutt him in 
 pieces and take out his intralles and wipe him cleane, breake the bones, then 
 put him into an ordinary still with a pottle of sack and a pottle of Red 
 Cow's Milk/' &c., &c.^ 
 
 The Ked Cow, in Bow Street, was the sign of a noted tavern, 
 (afterwards called the Red Eose,) which stood at the corner 
 of Rose Alley. It was when going home from this tavern 
 that Dryden was cudgelled by bravoes, hired by Lord Rochester, 
 for some remarks in Lord Mulgrave's Essay on Satire, in the 
 composition of • which Dryden had assisted his lordship. The 
 king offered £50, and a free pardon, but Black Will with a 
 cudgel," to whom Lord Rochester had intrusted the task of 
 thrashing the laureate, showed that there was such a thing as 
 honour amongst rogues, and did not betray him for the king's 
 £50. In all probability, however, he received a larger sum from 
 his lordship. In Dryden's old age, Pope, then a boy, came here 
 to look at the great man whose fame in after years he was to 
 
 * M. Misson's Memoirs and Observations on his Travels in England, 1719. 
 t Tom Brown's Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1703. 
 
 i From a MS., entitled "Medycine Boke"of one Samson Jones, doctor of Bett^ 
 Monmouthshire, 1650-90 ; a note on the flyleaf says, " I had this book from Mr Owen of 
 Bettws, Monmouth. He assured me he knew for a fact it was the receipt bo ke of 
 Samson Jones, a good doctor of that parish, a hundred and fifty years agone." It con- 
 tains some extraordinary prescriptions. Surely if Master Samson Jones made use of 
 tliem, the <jarth must very quickly have hidden his blunders. 
 
I90 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 equal if not to eclipse. Tliis tavern was the famous mart for 
 libels and lampoons ; one Julyan, a drunken dissipated *^ secretary 
 to the Muses/' as lie calls himself, was the chief manufacturer. 
 
 ISTear Marlborough, Wilts, there is an alehouse having the sign 
 of the Eed Cow, with the following rhyme : — 
 
 " The Red Cow 
 Gives good Milk now." 
 
 That under a Brown Cow at Oldham is still more sublime : — 
 
 " This Cow gives such Liquor, 
 *T would puzzle a Viccar (sic.) " 
 
 The Heifer is to be met with sometimes in Yorkshire, but always 
 with some local adjective, as the Craven Heifer ; the Aires- 
 dale Heifer, the Durham Heifer, &c. The Pied Calf at 
 Spalding seems to present a solitary instance of a calf on the sign- 
 board. Neither are sheep very common j the Eam was a noted 
 carrier's inn in the seventeenth century, in West Smithfield, and, 
 indeed, continued as such until the recent destruction of this old 
 cattle market. The crest of the cloth-workers was a mount 
 vert, thereon a ram statant ; so that this sign in that locality was 
 very well chosen, being in honour of the cattle-dealers on ordinary 
 occasions, and serving for the cloth- workers in the time of Bar- 
 tholomew fair, for whose benefit the fair was founded. In 16G8 
 there were two Eam's Head inns in Fenchurch Street ; one of 
 them was a carriers' inn for the Essex people. The Ram's Skin, 
 which occurs at Spalding in Lincolnshire, is another name for the 
 Fleece. The Black Tup figures on a sign near Eochdale, per- 
 haps in allusion to the black ram frail matrons used to bestride 
 in the old custom of Free Bench, thus related in Jacob's " Law 
 Dictionary — 
 
 " In the manors of East and West-Enbourne in the Co. of Berks, and 
 the manor of Torre in Devonshire, and other parts of the West of England, 
 there is a custom, that when a Copyhold Tenant dies his widow shall have 
 * Free Bench ' in all his customary lands * dum sola et casta fuerit,* but if 
 she commits incontinency she forfeits her estate. Yet nevertheless on her 
 coming into the court of the manor, riding backwards on a black ram with 
 his tail in her hand and saying the words following, the steward is bound 
 by the custom to readmit her to her free bench ; The words are these : — 
 
 Here I am 
 
 Riding upon a Black Ram 
 
 Like a w e as I am ; 
 
 And for my crincum crancum 
 
 I have lost my biurim bancum ; 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 And for my T 's game 
 
 Have done this worldly shame. 
 Therefore pray, Mr Steward, let me have my land again. 
 This is a kind of penance among jocular tenures to purge the offence." 
 
 Though, the ram is rarely, and the sheep never seen on the 
 signboard, the Lamb is not uncommon. In 1586, it was the 
 sign of Abraham Veale, (agreeably to the punning practices of the 
 time, one would have expected the Calf from him,) a bookseller 
 in St Paul's Churchyard, and in 1728 of Thomas Cox, also a 
 bookseller, under the Eoyal Exchange in Cornhill. Doubtless, 
 these signs had originally represented the Lamb with the flag of 
 the Apocalypse. The sign was used by other trades : in 1673, it 
 was the distinctive ornament of a confectioner at the lower end 
 of Gracechurch Street f and an instance of an alehouse is found 
 in the following advertisement, which at the same time affords us 
 a peep at the homely proceedings of the Admiralty in those 
 days : — 
 
 " rriHIS is to give notice to the Officers and Company of His Majesty's 
 JL Frigate Boreas, who were on Board her at the taking the Ship 
 Vrow Jacoba and Briggantyne Leon, that they will be paid their respective 
 Shares of said Prizes, on Wednesday the Eight of April next, at the sign 
 of the Lamb, in Abchurch Lane. Paying will begin at Eight o'clock of the 
 forenoon of the said Day." t 
 
 Think of that, ye clerks in Her Majesty's ofiices, eight o'clock in 
 the forenoon ! 
 
 A few combinations also occur, as the Lamb and Breeches, 
 the sign of Churches & Christie, leather-sellers and breeches- 
 makers, on London Bridge, in the last century ; this was a sign 
 like that of the Hat and Beaver, in which the living animal, 
 and the article manufactured from its skin, were juxtaposed. 
 The Lamb and Crown was a sort of colonial or emigration office 
 in Threadneedle Street, near the Southsea House in 1759 J At 
 the present day there is a Lamb and Lark at Keynsham, Bath, 
 and in Printing House Lane, Blackfriars. It is a typical repre- 
 sentation of the proverb, " Go to bed with the Lamb and rise 
 with the Larky 
 
 The Lamb and Hare figure together in Portsmouth Place^ 
 Lower Kennington Lane. The Lamb and Still is a combina 
 tion intimating the sale of distilled waters. It was the sign of a 
 house in Compton Street, in 1711, which had the honour to lodgo 
 
 ♦ LoT^n Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1673. f Idem, March 24-28, 1761. 
 
 X Public Advertiser, March 4, 1759. 
 
102 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Mr Fert, a dancing-master, and author of a work called A Dis- 
 course or Explanation of the ground of Dancing.'^* 
 
 If we except the heraldic Blue Boar, and the Sow and Pigs, 
 we shall find no other pigs on the signboard but the Pig and 
 WniSTLEjt the Little Pig at Amblecote, Stourbridge, and 
 the Hog in the Pound in Oxford Street, jocularly called the 
 gentleman in trouble. This latter was formerly a starting- 
 point for coaches, and became notorious through the crime 
 committed by its landlady, Catherine Hayes. Having formed 
 an illicit connexion, she was induced by her paramour to murder 
 her husband, after which she cut off his head, put it in a bag, 
 and threw it in the Thames. It floated ashore, and was put on 
 a pole in St Margaret's Churchyard, Westminster, in order that 
 it might be recognised; and by this primitive means the murder- 
 ess was detected. The man was hanged, and Catherine burnt 
 ^live at Tyburn in 1726. 
 
 The Goat is not very common ; there was a Goat Inn at 
 Hammersmith, taken down in 1826, and rebuilt under the name 
 of Suspension Bridge Inn ; up to that time, the sign, and the 
 woodwork from which it was suspended, used to extend across 
 the street. The Goat in Boots, on the Fulham Iload,t was in 
 old times called simply "the Goat." Besides these, there is a 
 Black Goat in Lincoln, and a Grey Goat in Penrith and Cf^r- 
 lisle, and a few others without addition of colour. 
 
 A walk through town on a fine Sunday morning will at once 
 convince anybody of the good understanding that exists between 
 the Englishmen and the canine species, Tami de I'homme " as 
 Buffon calls the dog. From every lane and alley in the lower 
 parts of the town sally forth men and youths in clean moleskins 
 and corduroys, each invariably accompanied by some yelping cur, 
 the least of whose faults is to be ugly. It is no wonder, then, 
 that the Dog should be of frequent occurrence on the signboard. 
 Pepys mentions a tavern of that name in Westminster, where, 
 about the time of the Restoration, he used occasionally to show 
 his merry face. In 1768, the author of the "Art of Living in 
 London," recommended the Dog in Holywell Street for a quiet 
 good dinner : — 
 
 " Where disencumbered of all form or show, 
 
 We to a moment might or sit or go ; 
 
 Eat what the palate recommends us hot, 
 
 Yet not considered as a useless guest." 
 * Postman, Feb. 13, 1711. t See under HujiOROUS Signs, further on. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 For some unknown reason, tlie Black Dog seems the greatest 
 favourite ; perhaps the English terrier is meant by it, a dog who 
 " once had its day," as the Scotch terrier appears to have it now. 
 In the seventeenth century, there was a Black Dog Tavern near New- 
 gate ; a house of old standing, of which trades tokens are yet extant. 
 
 Mr Akerman, in his work on Trades Tokens issued between 
 1648-1672," makes a mistake in surmising that Luke Hut- 
 ton^s "Black Dog of Newgate" had anything to do with this 
 tavern. That poem is simply against '^coney-catchers,'^ i.e., roguish 
 detectives or informers of the Jonathan Wild stamp, and even 
 worse. Such a one is impersonificated under the name of the 
 Black Dog of Newgate, because the coney-catchers used to hunt 
 people down threatening them with Newgate. This Black Dog 
 may have derived its name from the canine spectre that still 
 frightens the ignorant and fearful in our rural districts, just as 
 the terrible Dun Cow, and the Lambton Worm were the terror 
 of the people in old times. Near Lyme Eegis, Dorset, there is 
 an alehouse which has this black fiend in all his ancient ugliness 
 painted over the door. Its adoption there arose from a legend 
 that the spectral black dog used to haunt at nights the kitchen 
 fire of a neighbouring farm-house, formerly a Eoyalist mansion, 
 destroyed by Cromwell's troops. The dog would sit opposite the 
 farmer ; but one night, a little extra liquor gave the man additional 
 courage, and he struck at the dog, intending to rid himself of the 
 horrid thing. Away, however, flew the dog and the farmer after 
 him, from one room to another, until it sprang through the roof, 
 and was seen no more that night. In mending the hole, a lot of 
 money fell down, which, of course, was connected in some way or 
 other with the dog s strange visit. Near the house is a lane still 
 called Dog Lane, which is now the favourite walk of the black dog, 
 and to this genius loci the sign is dedicated. 
 
 There was another notorious Black Dog next door to the Devil 
 Tavern, the shop of Abel Boper, who printed and distributed the 
 majority of the pamphlets and ballads that paved the way for the 
 Revolution of 1688. He was the original printer of the famous 
 ballad of " Lillibulero." Whatever pleased the public, whether 
 good or bad, he was ajways ready to provide and send into the 
 world j he was also the editor of the newspaper called the Postman. 
 In the beginning of the reign of Charles II. he lived " at tho 
 Sun, over against St Dunstan s Church, in Fleet Street."* 
 
 * KingdofrCs Inlelligencer, March 30 to April C, 16G3. 
 
194 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Tokens are extant of the Pied Dog in Seething Lane, 1667, 
 a sign still frequently to be seen at the present day. 
 
 We very rarely jneet with the Blue Dog; but there is an ex- 
 ample in Grantham, and the sign occurs in a few other places. 
 
 Sometimes a peculiar breed is chosen, as the Setter Dog at 
 Eedford, Notts ; the Pointer at Peckfield, Milford Junction ; 
 the Beagle at Shute, Axminster, and the Merry Harriers, 
 common in hunting counties. Equally common is the Grey- 
 hound, particularly in the North country, where coursing has 
 long been a favourite sport. In the seventeenth century, it was 
 the sign of a fashionable tavern in London, for in a sprightly 
 ballad in the Eoxburgh collection,* a young gallant is introduced 
 who is going to forsake his evil courses and turn over a new leaf. 
 He gives a last farewell to all his doxies : 
 
 ** Farewell unto black patches. 
 And farewell powder'd locks 
 
 and remembers all those delightfully wicked places he used to 
 haunt formerly, and amongst them : 
 
 Farewell unto the Greyhound, 
 And farewell to the Bell, 
 And farewell to my landlady. 
 Whom I do love so well." 
 
 This was probably the same Greyhound mentioned by Machyn, 
 which seems to have been situated in Fleet Street, where the 
 gaudily dressed Spanish ambassador took his stirrup-cup before 
 leaving London. The same author mentions the sign elsewhere, 
 apparently in Westminster; and the little picture of manners 
 which accompanies it is rather curious : — 
 
 " The viij day of January (1557) dyd ryd in a care in Westmynster the 
 wyff of the Grayhound, and the Abbot's servand was wypyd [whipped] be- 
 cawse that he toke her owt of the car, at the care h — e, [the back of the 
 cart.] " 
 
 — another example that the course of true love never does run 
 smooth, even though it runs upon wheels. 
 
 The White Greyhound was the sign of John Harrison, in St 
 Paul's Churchyard, a bookseller who published some of Shakes- 
 peare's early works, as ^*The Eape of Lucrece," "Venus and 
 Adonis," &c. White greyhounds, or rather silver greyhounds, 
 were, until eighty years ago, the badges worn on the arm by 
 king's messengers. 
 
 * The Merry Man's Resolution, or his last farewell to his former scqualmtaiioe. Ro3C 
 Ball. iii. f. 242. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 Tlie sign of the Black Greyhound is also of frequent occur- 
 rence, and at Grantham there is a Blue Greyhound. Indeed, 
 although Lincoln was formerly famous for green, it seems also 
 to have taken a great fancy to blue, for there we find the Blub 
 Bull and the Blue Cow, the Blue Dog, the Blue Fox, (all in 
 Colsterworth,) besides the Blue Pig, the Blue Eam, in Grantham, 
 which town can also boast of the unique sign of the Blue Man. 
 
 The Talbot — old and now almost obsolete term for a large kind 
 of hunting dog — has acquired a literary celebrity from having 
 been substituted for the old sign of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, 
 whence the pilgrims started on their merry journey to Canter- 
 bury. In 1606, we find the Talbot the sign of Thomas Man, 
 bookseller in Paternoster Eow, which, however, at that time, was 
 not such a book market as now, being occupied by eminent 
 mercers, silkmen, and lacemen ; and their shops were so resorted 
 unto by the nobility and gentry in their coaches, that ofttimes 
 the street was so stopped up, that there was no passage for foot 
 passengers."* So it continued until the fire; and it was only in 
 the middle of the last century that the booksellers began to make 
 their appearance in it. 
 
 A Talbot Inn in the Strand is mentioned in the following very 
 quaint advertisement : — 
 
 " rilO BE SOLD, a fine Grey Mare, full fifteen hands high, gone after the 
 JL hounds many times, rising six years and no more ; moves as well as 
 most creatures upon earth, as good a road mare as any in 10 counties and 
 10 to that ; trots at a confounded pace; is from the country, and her owner 
 will sell her for nine guineas; if some folks had her she would fetch near 
 three times the money. I have no acquaintance, and money I want, and a 
 service in a shop to carry parcels or to be in a gentleman's service. My 
 father gave me the mare to get rid of me, and to try my fortune in Lon- 
 don, and I am just come from Shropshire, and I can be recommended, as T 
 suppose nobody takes servants without, and have a voucher for my mare. 
 Enquire for me at the Talbot Inn near the New Church at the Strand. 
 
 A. R/'t 
 
 At the foot of Burdle/s Hill, Gloucester, there is a Talbot Inn, 
 which has a sign painted with two inscriptions ; at the side where 
 the road is level, it says : — 
 
 " Before you do this hill go up, 
 Stop and drink a cheerful cup." 
 
 On the side of the hill it says : 
 
 " You 're down the hill, all danger *s past, 
 Stop and drink a cheerful glass." 
 
 ♦ Strype, B. Itt. p. t P^Uic AdvertUcr, March 1769. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 A publican at Odell has chosen the Mad Dog for a sign, 
 dently his beau ideal of a "jolly fellow," one having a great hor- 
 ror for water ; another at Pidley, Hunts, not to be behindhand 
 with the Mad Dog, has put up the Mad Cat. We have as odd 
 and apparently as unmeaning a sign in Tabernacle Walk, namely, 
 the Barking Dogs. 
 
 All the combinations of the sign of the Dog point towards 
 sports, as the Dog and Bear, which was very common in the 
 seventeenth century, when bear-baiting was in fashion, ^nd kings 
 and queens countenanced it by their presence. The Dog and 
 Duck refers to another barbarous pastime, when ducks were 
 hunted in a pond by spaniels. The pleasure consisted in seeing 
 the duck make her escape from the dog's mouth by diving. It 
 was much practised in the neighbourhood of London till the be- 
 ginning of this century, when it went out of fashion, as most of 
 the ponds were gradually built over. One of the most notorious 
 Dog and Duck Taverns stood in St George's Fields, where Beth- 
 lem Hospital now stands ; it had a long room with tables and 
 benches, and an organ at the upper end. In its last days it was 
 frequented only by thieves, prostitutes, and other low characters. 
 After a long and wicked existence it was at length put down by 
 the magistrates. In the seventeenth century it was famous for 
 springs, but already in Garrick's time its reputation was very 
 equivocal : 
 
 " St George's Fields, with taste and fashion struck, 
 Display Arcadia at the Dog and Duck, 
 And Drury Misses, here in tawdry pride, 
 Are there " Pastoras " by the fountain side ; 
 To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps, 
 With Fauns half drunk and Dryads breaking lamps." t 
 
 In an unpublished paper from the MS. collection of William 
 Hone, we have a mention of it : — 
 
 " It was a very small public-house till Hedger's mother took it, who had 
 been a barmaid to a tavern-keeper in London, who left this house to her 
 at his death. Her son Hedger then was a postboy to a yard I believe at 
 Epsom, and came to be master there. After making a good deal of money 
 he left the house to his nephew, one Miles, (though it still went in Hed- 
 ger's name,) who was to allow him £1000 per annum out of the profits. 
 
 * Organs were first introduced in taverns during the Commonwealth. When the 
 hturgy and the use of organs in Divine service were abolished, these instruments being 
 removed from churches, were set up in inns itad taverns. Hence a pamphlet of 1659 
 has these words : — " They have translated the organs out of their churches and set them 
 up in taverns, chaunting their dithy rambics and bestial Bacchanalias to the tune of 
 thoFe instruments which were wonted to assist them in the celebration of God's praises." 
 
 \ Garrick's Prologue to the Maid of the Oaks, 1774. 
 
ANIMALS AND MONSTERS. 
 
 and it was lie tliat allowed the house to acquire so bad a character that 
 the licence was taken away. I have this from one William Nelson who 
 was servant to old Mrs Hedger, and remembers the house before he had it. 
 He is now [1826] in the employ of the Lamb Street Water Works Com- 
 pany, and has been for thirty years. In particular, there never was any 
 duck hunting since he knew the Gardens. Therefore, if ever, it must 
 have been in a very early time indeed. Hedger, I am told, was the first 
 person who sold the mineral water, (whence the St George's Spa.) In 
 1787, when Hedger applied for a renewal of his licence, the magistrates of 
 Surrey refused, and the Lord Mayor came into Southwark and held a 
 court and granted the licence, in despite of the magistrates, which occa- 
 sioned a great disturbance and litigation in the law courts." 
 
 The old stone sign is still preserved, embedded in the brick 
 wall of the garden of Bethlehem Hospital, visible from the road, 
 and representing a dog squatted on his haunches, with a duck in 
 his mouth, and the date 1617. 
 
 Another famous Dog and Duck inn formerly stood on the site 
 of Hertford Street, in the now aristocratic precincts of May Fair. 
 It was an old-fashioned wooden public-house, extensively patron- 
 ised by the butchers and other rough characters during May Fair 
 time. The pond in which the cruel sport took place was situated 
 behind the house, and for the benefit of the spectators was 
 boarded round to the height of the knee, to preserve the over- 
 excited spectators from involuntary immersions. The pond w^aa 
 surrounded by a gravel walk shaded with willow trees. 
 
 The Dog and Badger, Kingswood, Gloucester, refers to the 
 now obsolete sport of badger-baiting. More genial sports, how- 
 ever, are called to mind by the Dog and Gun, Dog and Par- 
 tridge, Dog and Pheasant, all of which are very common. 
 
 " As I was going through a street of London, where I never 
 had been till then, I felt a general clamp and faintness all over 
 me, which I could not tell how to account for, till I chanced to 
 cast my eyes upwards and found that I was passing under a sign- 
 post on which the picture of a cat was hung.'' This little incident 
 of the cat-hater, told in No. 538 of the Spectator, is a proof of 
 the presence of cats on the signboard, where, indeed, they axe 
 still to be met with, but very rarely. There is a sign of the Cat 
 at Egremont, in Cumberland, a Black Cat at St Leonard's Gate, 
 Lancaster, and a Eed Cat at Birkenhead. There is also a 
 sign of the Red Cat in the Hague, Holland, and "thereby hangs a 
 tale." It was put up by a certain Bertrand, a Frenchman, who 
 had left his native country, having been mixed up in some con- 
 spiracy against Mazarin. Arrived at the Hague, he opened a 
 
198 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 cutler's shop, and put up a double sign, representing on tlie one 
 side a red cat, on the other a portrait of his Eminence Cardinal 
 Mazarin in his red gown, and with his bristling moustache ; 
 underneath he wrote aux deux mechantes hetes,'' (the two obnox- 
 ious animals. Holland, however, was at peace with France at 
 that time, and so the Burgomaster, afraid of offending the French 
 ambassador, requested Bertrand to alter his sign. Mazarin's face 
 was then painted out and another red cat put in its place. 
 Gradually as the first sign was forgotten, the name became un- 
 meaning, and was finally altered into the Red Cat, and in this 
 shape it has come down to the present day, still the sign of a 
 cutler, and a descendant of Bertrand.* 
 
 The Cat and Lion, which we meet with sometimes, as at 
 Stockport, was probably at one time the Tiger and Lion. It is 
 occasionally accompanied hy the following elegant distich : — 
 
 The lion is strong, the cat is vicious, 
 My ale is strong, and so is my liquors." 
 
 The Cat and Parrot was, in 1612, the sign of Thomas 
 Pauer, a bookseller, dwelling near the Royal Exchange. At 
 Santry, near Dublin, and in some other places, we meet with the 
 Cat and Cage, which is represented by a cat trying to pull a 
 bird out of a cage ; but its origin may be found in the Cat in 
 the Basket, a favourite sign of the booths on the Thames when 
 that river was frozen over in 17|§. The sign was a living one, 
 a basket hanging outside the booth, with a cat in it. It was 
 revived when the river was again frozen in 1789, and seems to 
 have had many imitators, for on a print t representing a view of 
 the river at Rotherithe during the frost, there is a booth with a 
 merry company within, whose sign, inscribed the Original Cat 
 IN the Cage, represents poor Tabby in a basket. This sign of 
 the Cat in the Basket, or in the Cage, doubtless originated from 
 tne cruel game, once practised by our ancestors, of shooting at a 
 cat in a basket. Brand, in his " Popular Superstitions," gives a 
 quotation, from which it appears that a similar cruel sport was 
 still practised at Kelso in 1789 ; but instead of shooting at the 
 cat, it was placed in a barrel, the bottom of which had to be 
 beaten out. The same game is stiU practised in Holland, and 
 generally, if not always, on the ice. 
 
 ♦ La Haye, par de Fonseca. 18^3. 
 
 t Crowle Pennant, vol. viiL 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 BIRDS AND FOWLS 
 
 Thomas Coryatt, a gentleman from Somerset, who travelled 
 over a great part of Europe in the reign of King James I., and 
 wrote an amusing account of his travels, gives a curious instance 
 of the prevalence of signs in Paris representing birds. Speaking 
 of the bridges over the Seine, he says one of them is the Bri^dge 
 of Birdes, formerly called the Millar's Bridge. The reason why 
 it is called the Bridge of Birdes is because all the signes belong- 
 ing unto shops on each side of the streete are signes of birdes." * 
 They never were so general in England, though certainly the 
 Cock and the Swan appear to have found more votaries than any 
 other signboard animals. The Eagle is not nearly so common ; 
 some we have mentioned in a former part as undoubtedly of 
 heraldic origin. From this source the Golden Eagle may be 
 derived ; it was the emblem of the Eastern Empire, and occurs 
 in various family arms ; but it is also a fera naturae. It was, in 
 1711, the sign of James Levi, a bookseller in the Strand, near 
 the Fountain Tavern. The Eagle and Ball, of which there 
 are two in Birmingham, was suggested by the imperial eagle 
 standing on the globe, or the spread eagle with the globe in his 
 talon. The Eagle and Serpent, or the Eagle and Snake, is 
 a mediaeval emblem of courage united to prudence. 
 
 Mythical birds also have been in great favour. The burning 
 and reviving of the Phcenix, for instance, like the salamander 
 and the dragon, typified certain transformations obtained by 
 chemistry, whence he was a very general sign with chemists, and 
 may still be seen on their drug-pots and transparent lamps. The 
 firm of Godfrey and Cooke, for instance, have adhered to it 
 ever since the opening of their establishment, a.d. 1680. Persons 
 of a highly imaginative turn will probably shudder to think of 
 the awful quantities of physic prepared by this house in those 
 184 years. The pills, if piled up like cannon-balls, would make 
 pyramids higher than those of Gizeh ; the draughts would be 
 sufiicient to cover the earth with a nauseous deluge ; and the 
 powders, if blown about by an evil wind, levelling valleys and 
 mountains, would change the whole of Europe into a medicated 
 desert. The original shop referred to by the date 1680 stood in 
 Southampton Street, and there phosphorus was first manufac- 
 tured by the predecessor of this firm, Hanckwitz, a Pole or 
 
 * Coryatt's Crudities, vol. i. p. 29. 
 
200 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Russian by birth, wlio advertised it wholesale at oOs., and 
 retail at £3 the ounce. Ambrose Godfrey was his successor. 
 
 Not only apothecaries used this emblem, but all kinds of 
 shops adopted it. In the time of James I. it was the sign of 
 one of the places where plays were acted in Drury Lane, — some- 
 times also called the Cockpit Theatre. This was destroyed by 
 the unruly apprentices during one of their saturnalia. Being re- 
 built, it was sacked a second time by the Parliamentary soldiers. 
 In Charles II/s piping times of peace Killigrew's troop of " the 
 king's servants " played in it, until they removed to the theatre 
 in Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 The character ascribed to the Pelican was fully as fabulous 
 as that of the Phoenix. From a clumsy, gluttonous, piscivorous 
 water-bird, it was transformed into a mystic emblem of Christ, 
 whom Dante calls " nostro Pellicano.*' St Hieronymus gives the 
 story of the pelican restoring its young ones destroyed by ser- 
 pents, as an illustration of the destruction of man by the old 
 serpent, and his salvation by the blood of Christ. The " Besti- 
 arium," in the Royal Library at Brussels, says : — 
 
 " Phisiologus dist del Pellican qu'il aime moult ses oiseles et quant lis 
 spnt nes et creu ils s'esbanoient en lor ni contre lor pere et le fierent de 
 lors eles en ventilant ensi come il li vont entor et tant le fierent qu'ils le 
 blechent es ex. Et lors les refiert li peres et les occit. Et la mere est de 
 tel nature que ele vient al ni al tierc jor et s'accoste sor ses oiseles mors 
 et ell oevre son coste de son bee et en espant son sane sor ses oiselea et 
 ensi les resucite de mort ; car li oiseles par nature rechoivent le sang si 
 toit come il saut de la mere et le boivent."* 
 
 In the Armory of Birds by Skelton, a similar notion is expressed : 
 
 " Than sayd the Pellycane, 
 When my Byrdts be slayne, 
 "With my Bloude I them reuyue, 
 
 Scrypture doth record 
 
 The same dyd our Lord, 
 And rose from deth to lyue." 
 
 There is still an old stone carving of the Pelican walled in the 
 front of a house in Aldermanbury, and as a sign the bird appears 
 to be a great favourite at the present day. An anecdote is told 
 of Jekyl's dissatisfaction at the prices at the Pelican Inn, Speen- 
 
 "Phisiologus tells us that the Pelican is very fond of his young ones, and when they 
 are born and begin to grow, they rebel in their nest against their parent and strike him 
 with their wings, flying about him and beat him so much till they wound him in his 
 eyes. Then the father strikes again and kills them. And the mother is of such a 
 nature that she comes back to the nest on the third day and sits down upon her dead 
 young ones, and opens her side with her bill and pours her blood over them, and so re- 
 suscitates them from death, for the young ones by their instinct receive the blood as 
 Boon as it comes out of the mother, and drink it." — Bibl. Nat. Belg. No. 10074. 
 
BIBDS AND FO WLS. 
 
 20I 
 
 ham Land, and of his writing the iollowing epigram upon the 
 same : — 
 
 *^ The Pelican at Speenhamland, 
 That stands below the hill, 
 May well be called the Pelican, 
 From his enormous bilV^ 
 
 Longfellow made a similar epigram on the Eaven Inn at 
 
 Zurich : — 
 
 " Beware of the raven of Zurich, 
 'Tis a bird of omen ill, 
 With a noisy and -unclean breast, 
 And a very, very long bilV 
 
 It is amusing to see how wit runs in the same channel. In 
 "Scrapeana, a Collection of Anecdotes, 1792," a similar anecdote 
 is fathered upon Foote. "Pray what is your name?" said 
 Foote to the Master of the Castle Inn at Salthill. " Partridge, 
 sir ! " — " Partridge ! it should be Woodcock by the length of your 
 
 But the coincidence is most amusing in the case of Longfellow. 
 It is observed by a contributor to J^otes and Queries,"^ that the 
 verses may be a plagiarism ; at anyrate they have a strange 
 family resemblance to the following, said to have been written 
 by a commercial traveller on an inside window shutter of the 
 Golden Lion, Brecon, kept by a Mr Longfellow, alias Tom 
 Longfellow : — 
 
 " Tom Longfellow's name is most justly his due, 
 Long his neck, long his hill, which is very long too ; 
 Long the time ere your horse to the stable is led. 
 Long before he 's rubbed down, and much longer till fed. 
 Long indeed may you sit in a comfortless room, 
 Till from kitchen, long dirty, your dinners shall come. 
 Long the often-told tale that your host will relate. 
 Long his face while complaining how long people eat, 
 Long may Longfellow long ere he see me again. 
 Long 'twill be ere I long for Tom Longfellow's inn." 
 
 And long, doubtless, was his face when he read the above. 
 
 The Eaven, or the Black Eaven, is still a common inn sign. 
 There is one in Bishopsgate yet in existence, of which trades 
 tokens of the seventeenth century are extant ; and on the Great 
 Western Eoad between Murrell Green and Basingstoke, the 
 Eaven Inn is still, or was not many years ago, to be seen, in 
 which Jack the painter, alias James Aitken, the man who set fire 
 to Portsmouth Dockyard, Dec. 7, 1776, was taken prisoner, 
 
 * Notts and QuerieSj No. 236, May 6, 1854, 
 
202 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 This house was built in 1653, and has preserved much of its 
 original appearance. In 1711 the Eayen or the Black Kaven 
 was the sign of S. Popping, bookseller in Paternoster Row ; and 
 about the same time John Dunton published at the Black 
 Raven, in the Poultry, the earliest printed review of literary 
 works, under the name of " Literature from the North, and News 
 from all Nations." What the work was worth we may judge 
 from D'Israeli's description of the man : " a crack-brained, scrib- 
 bling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied 
 he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he 
 executed." Notwithstanding this, his autobiography, under the 
 name of the " Life and Errors of John Dunton," is one of the most 
 curious works in existence. In Molesworth Street, Dublin, there 
 is a sign of the Three Ravens, which may be called a living 
 sign, for there are always some ravens kept on the premises. 
 The Raven was the badge of the old Scotch kings, and thus may 
 have been adopted as a kind of Jacobite symbol. To this may 
 be attributed its frequency on the signboard as well as some 
 other sable birds. The common occurrence of the Blackbird 
 and the Cock and Blackbird as signs had long puzzled us, till 
 one day turning over some old Scotch ballads we came upon one, 
 which Allan Ramsay gives as a favourite old Scotch song. We 
 shall merely quote the first two stanzas, (there are six in allj)— 
 quite sufficient, as far as the poetry is concerned : — 
 
 " Upon a fair morning for soft recreation, 
 I heard a fair lady was making her moan, 
 With sighing and sobbing, and sad lamentation. 
 Saying, my blackbird most royal is flown." 
 My thoughts they deceive me, 
 Reflections do grieve me, 
 And am o'erburthen'd with sad misery. 
 
 Yet if death should blind me, 
 As true love inclines me, 
 My blackbird I '11 seek out wherever he be. 
 '* Once in fair England my blackbird did flourish, 
 He was the chief blackbird that in it did spring^ 
 Prime ladies of honour his person did nourish, 
 Because he was the true son of a king. 
 But since that false fortune, 
 Which still is uncertain, 
 Has caused this parting between him and me, 
 His name I'll advance, 
 In Spain and in France, 
 And I'll seek out my blackbird wherever he be.** 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 203 
 
 To which dark-haired prince of the Stuart family the song 
 alludes is not known ; but there is a passage in a letter of Sir 
 John Hinton, physician to Charles II., which seems to imply that 
 the black boy was a nickname for Charles 11. 
 
 " The day before General Monk went into Scotland he dined with me ; 
 and after dinner he called me into the next room, and after some dis« 
 course, taking a lusty glass of wine, he drank a health to his bonny black 
 hoy, (as he called Your Majesty,) and whispered to me, that if ever he had 
 power, he would serve Your Majesty to the utmost of his life.'** 
 
 What lends strength to the supposition is the occurrence of 
 such a sign as the Ceow in the Oak, at Foleshill, Coventry, 
 which seems to have been a covert way of representing the royal 
 oak during the times of the Commonwealth, the disguise continu- 
 ing after there was no more need of it, similar to the Cat and 
 Wheel," and other signs dating from the same period, for no 
 other reason than because the house had become known by them. 
 In the same manner the Oak and Black Dog, (at Stretton on 
 Dunsmoor,) if not a combination of two signs, may have been 
 put up in derision of the Prince in the Eoyal Oak. The Crow 
 or the Black Crow, is also a common sign ; so are the Three 
 Blackbirds ; t then there is the Chough, at Chard in Sommer- 
 set, the Three Choughs at Yeovil ; the Three Crows, — all of 
 which belong to the same family, and seem to have the same 
 origin. 
 
 On Friday, August 27, 1770, at the Three Crows in Brook 
 Street, Holborn, the coroner sat on the body of Thomas Chat- 
 terton, and the ten jurymen returned a verdict of felo de se. One 
 cannot think of this sign and the crowner (as the vulgar still term 
 this officer) sitting on the body of poor Chatterton without calling 
 to mind the ballad of the three corbies ; but the poor suicide had 
 no " fallow doe " that 
 
 " buried him before the prime, 
 And was dead herself ere eveu-song time.'* 
 
 He was interred in the burying ground of Shoelane workhouse ; 
 at the present day Farringdon market-place occupies the spot. 
 
 The Stork now is of frequent occurrence, although it does 
 not occur among the older English signs. Coryatt thus speaks 
 of these birds : — 
 
 " There, [at Fontainebleau] I saw two or three birds that I never saw 
 
 * Letter of Memorial to King Charles II. from Sir John Hinton, physician in ordinary 
 to His Majesty, 1679. Ellis, Orig. Letters, od series, vol. iii. p. 307. 
 
 t The Three Blackbirds, Choughs, Crows, Ravens, &c., may allude to Charles, James, 
 and RuperL 
 
204 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 before; yet I have much read of admirable things of them, in Aelianu« 
 the Polyhistor, and other historians, even StorcTces^, which do much haunt 
 many cities and towns of the Netherlands, especially in the sommer. For 
 in Flushing, a towne of Zeland, I saw some of them, those men esteeming 
 themselves happy in [on] whose houses they harbour, and those most un- 
 happy whom they forsake. It is written of them that when the old one 
 is become so old that it is not able to helpe itselfe, the young one purvey- 
 eth foode for it, and sometime carryeth it about on his backe, and if it seeth 
 it so destitute of meate, that it knoweth not where to get any suste- 
 nance, it casteth out that which it hath eaten the day before, to the end to 
 feede his damme. This bird is called in Greeke ireXapyos where hence 
 Cometh the Greeke word duTiireXapyeLv which signifieth to imitate the 
 stork in cherishing our parents."* 
 
 This fabled virtue of the stork suggested the sign to many 
 Continental booksellers and printers. The Two Storks was the 
 sign of Martin Nutius of Antwerp, 1550, and his son, Philip 
 Nutius. Their colophons, which were varied continually, all 
 represent a young stork feeding an old one, sometimes carrying 
 him on his back, with the motto : " pietas homini . tutissima . 
 VIRTUS." A similar sign was used, circa 1682, by Franciscus 
 Canisius; and, in 1651, by Joan. Bapt. Verdussen, both of 
 Antwerp. The Parisian booksellers adopted it as well, for we 
 find it on the titlepages of Sebastien Nivelle, and of Sebastien 
 Cramoisy, the king's printer, of the Eue St Jacques, 1636. He 
 used a Scripture motto with it: "ho]nora patrem tuum et 
 
 MATREM TUAM UT SIS LONGAEVUS SUPER TERR AM, Ucc. XX." In 
 
 the Banks' Collection of Bills there is one of the Stork Hotel 
 at Basle, of the end of the last century. It gives the address in 
 four languages. The English stands thus : — Christophe Imhoff, 
 a the Seigne off the Storgk at Basel." 
 
 The Three Cranes was formerly a favourite London sign. 
 With the usual jocularity of our forefathers, an opportunity for 
 punning could not be passed, so instead of the three cranes, 
 which in the vintry used to lift the barrels of wine, three birds 
 were represented. The Three Cranes in Thames Street, or in 
 the vicinity, was a famous tavern as early as the reign of James 
 I. It was one of the taverns frequented by the wits in Ben 
 Jonson's time. In one of his plays he says : — 
 
 " A pox o' these pretenders to wit, your Three Cranes^ Mitre and Mer- 
 maid men ! not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard among 
 them all ! " — Bartholomew Fair, a. i. s. 1. 
 
 * Coryatt's Crudities, vol. i. p. 39. In the East the same fable is current as to 
 the paternal affection of young storks ; their name in Hebrew is chesadao, which im- 
 plies mercy or pity. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 205 
 
 On the 23d of January 166^, Pepys suffered a strong mortifi- 
 cation of the flesh in having to dine at this tavern with some 
 poor relations. The sufferings of the snobbish secretary must 
 have been intense : — 
 
 " By invitation to my uncle Fenner's and where I found his new wife, a 
 pitifulf old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt, a midwife. Here were many 
 of his and as many of her relations, sorry mean people; and after choosing 
 our gloves we all went over to the Three Cranes Taverne, and though the 
 best room of the house in such a narrow dogghole we were crammed, and 
 I believe we were near 40, that it made me loath my company and victuals 
 and a very poor dinner it was too." 
 
 Opposite this tavern people generally left their boats to shoot 
 the bridge, walking round to Billingsgate, where they would re- 
 enter them. 
 
 The Cock occurs almost as frequently on the signboard as 
 alive at the head of his family in the farm yard. It is one of 
 the oldest signs, already in use at the time of the Eomans, who 
 record that one Eros, a freeman of Licius, Africanus Cereaiis, 
 kept an inn at Narbonne at the sign of the Cock — "a gallo 
 gallinaceo." In Christian times the sign acquired a new prestige. 
 The cock is thus mentioned in " The Armory of Byrdes : " — * 
 " The Cocke dyd say 
 I use alway 
 To crow both first and last, 
 Lyke a Postle I am. 
 For I preche to Man, 
 And tell hym the nyght is past. 
 
 " I bring new tydynges 
 That the Kyng of all Kynges, 
 In tactu profudit chorus : 
 
 Then sang he mellodious 
 
 Te Gloriosus 
 Apostolorum chorus." 
 
 This bird, in the legends of the middle ages, was surrounded 
 with a mystical, religious halo : — 
 
 It was about the time of cock-crowing when our Saviour was born, — 
 the circumstance of the time of cock-crowing being so natural a figure and 
 representation of the Morning of the Resurrection ; the Night as shadowing 
 out the night of the Grave ; the third Watch being as some suppose the 
 time our Saviour will come to judgment at ; the noise of the cock awaken- 
 ing sleepy man and telling him as it were the night is far spent, and the 
 day is at hand, representing so naturally the voice of the Archangel 
 awakening the dead and calling up the righteous to everlasting day; sa 
 
 * "Armory of Byrdes, Imprynted at Londo by John Wyght dwellTpr in Poules Church 
 yarde at the sygne of the Rose." A poem of the time of Heniy VIII., attributed to 
 SkeltOQ, the poet laureate 
 
206 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 naturally does the time of cock-crowing shadow out these things, that 
 probably, some good, well meaning men might have been brought to be- 
 lieve that the very devils themselves when the cock crew and reminded 
 them of them did fear and tremble and shun the light." * 
 Ideas such as these continued a long time in the popular mind, 
 for Aubrey tells us that in his younger days people " had some 
 pious ejaculation too when the cock did crow, which put them 
 in mind of y® Trumpet at y® Eesurrection." t 
 
 One of the oldest Cock taverns in London is the Cock in 
 Tothill Street, Westminster, lately re-christened as the Cock and 
 Tabard. An ancient coat of arms, carved in stone, England 
 quartered with France, discovered in this house, is now walled 
 up in the front of the building. In the back parlour is a jolly, 
 bluff-looking man in a red coat, said to represent the driver of 
 the first mail to Oxford, which started from this tavern. Tradi- 
 tion says that the workmen employed at the building of West- 
 minster Abbey, in the reign of Henry VII., used to receive theii 
 wages at this house. It was formerly entered by steps ; the 
 building now exhibiting traces of great antiquity, and appears at 
 one time to have been a house of considerable pretensions. The 
 rafters and timber are principally of cedar wood. There is a 
 curious hiding-place on the staircase, and a massive carving of 
 Abraham about to offer his son Isaac; and another, in wood, 
 representing the Adoration of the Magi, said to have been left in 
 pledge, at some remote period, for an unpaid score. The cock 
 may have been adopted as a sign here on account of the vicinity 
 of the Abbey, of which St Peter was the patron, for in the 
 middle ages a cock crowing on the top of a pillar was often one 
 of the accessories in a picture of the apostle. This certainly was 
 a very unkind allusion for the poor saint, particularly when ac- 
 companied with such a sneering rhyme as that under the sign of 
 the Eed Cock in Amsterdam in 1682. On the one side was 
 written : — 
 
 " Doe de Haan begost te kraayen 
 Toen begost Petrus te schraayen." 
 
 On the reverse : — 
 
 " De haan die kraait niet by ongeval 
 Vraagt Petrus die't U zeggen zal. " % 
 
 * Bourne's Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1725, p. 65. 
 
 t Aubrey's Remains of Gentilisme and Judaism. — Lansdown MSS* 
 
 X On the obverse : — 
 
 " When the cock began to crow 
 St Peter began to cry." 
 
 Reverse ;— 
 
 '* The cock does not crow for nothing ; 
 Ask St Peter, he can tell you,*' 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 207 
 
 The Cock in Bow Street witnessed a disgraceful scene in the 
 reign of Charles II. : — 
 
 " Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and 
 Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, 
 and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the public, in very in- 
 decent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, 
 and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public in- 
 dignation was awakened. The crowd attempted to force the door, and be- 
 ing repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows 
 of the house. For this demeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was 
 fined £500. "What was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley 
 employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission of the king, but 
 (mark the friendship of the dissolute !) they begged the fine for themselves 
 and exacted it to the last groat."* 
 
 It was on his way home from supper at this house, December 21, 
 1670, that Sir John Coventry was attacked by several men, and 
 had his nose cut to the bone. Sir John had remonstrated in the 
 House of Commons against the improper distribution of public 
 money, and proposed to lay a tax on the theatres ; this was op- 
 posed by the Court, the players being " the king's servants and a 
 part of his pleasure;" upon which Sir John- asked ''whether 
 the king's pleasure lay among the men or among the women that 
 acted ? The assault was committed by Simon Parry, Miles 
 Reeves, 0' Brian, and Sir Thomas Sandys, instigated by the Duke 
 of Monmouth. 
 
 Pepys much praises the Cock in Suffolk Street : — 
 " 15th March 1669. — Mr Hewes and I did walke to the Cocke, at the end 
 of Suffolke Street, where I never was, a great ordinary mightily cried up, and 
 there bespoke a pullet, which, while dressing, he and I walked into St 
 James's Park, and thence back and dined very handsome with a good soup 
 and a pullet for 4s. 6d, the whole." 
 
 This first visit evidently had given great satisfaction, for, three 
 weeks after, he took Mrs P. and some friends there, and was, as 
 usual, " mighty merry, this house being famous for good meat, 
 and particularly pease porridge." 
 
 At the same period there was another celebrated Cock Tavern 
 in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar, properly called the Cock and 
 Bottle, a sign stiU of daily occurrence, which seems to be a 
 figurative rendering of liquor on draught and in bottle, cock being 
 an old English, and still provincial word for the spigot or tap in 
 a barrel, t The sign is, however, generally represented by a cock 
 standing on a bottle. The present sign of the house, still con- 
 
 ♦ Johnson's Life of Lord Dorset. 
 
 t There was formerly a kind of ale called Cock ale, but what it was is not exactly 
 )cnowA. 
 
208 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 spicuous in gilt over tlie door, is said to have been carved by 
 no less a hand than Grinling Gibbons. During the plague 
 time of 1665, the following advertisement appeared in the In- 
 telligencer : — 
 
 " rriHIS is to certify that the Master of the Coch and Bottle, commonly 
 -L called 1/he Cock alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants 
 and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to 
 return at Michaelmass next so that all persons who have any accounts or 
 farthings belonging to the said house are desired to repair thither before 
 the 8th of this instant July and they shall receive satisfaction." 
 Certainly those were dull times, and well might that fashionable 
 establishment close for the " long vacation," for the plague was 
 then coming to its highest pitch ; all the gallant customers had 
 fled town, and according to Defoe's computation, " not less than 
 10,000 houses were forsaken of the inhabitants in the city and 
 suburbs — 
 
 " There was not so much velvet stirring as would have bene a cover to a 
 little booke in octavo, or seamde a Lieftenant's Buff-doublet ; a French 
 hood would have been more wondered at in London, than the Polonyans 
 with their long-tayld Gaberdynes ; and, which was most lamentable, there 
 was never a Gilt spur to be seene all the Strand over, never a feather wag- 
 ging in all Fleet Streete, vnlesse some country Fore-horse came by, by meere 
 chaunce with a Baine-beaten Feather in his costrill ; the streete looking 
 for all the world like a Sunday morning at six o'Clocke, three hours before 
 service, and the Bells ringing all about London, as if the Coronation day 
 had beene a half a yeare long."* 
 
 But there was a good time coming after the plague and fire, 
 when troops of gay courtiers might quaff their wine and sparkling 
 ale, as happy as the " merry monarch " himself. Amongst them, 
 our friend Pepys, who informs us, that on the 23d of April 1668, 
 he went "by water to the Temple, and then to the Cock alehouse, 
 and drank and eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry. So 
 almost night, I carried Mrs Pierce home, and then Knipp and I 
 to the Temple again and took boat, it being darkish, and to 
 Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire burning at Lambeth for 
 the king's coronation day." 
 
 Exactly one hundred years later, the Cock is named with en- 
 comiums on its porter, in the "Art of Living in London but 
 it is to be hoped the porter was better than the poetry • — 
 " Nor think the Cock with these not on a par, 
 The celebrated Cock of Temple Bar, 
 Whose Porter best of all bespeaks its praise, 
 Porter that 's worthy of the Poet's lays."t 
 * Meetinj? of Gallants at an Ordinarie. London, 1604. Percy Society, 1S41. 
 Though this is a description of the state of f«ondon in 1603, it perfectly applies to the 
 plague of 16t)5. 
 
 t The /Ut of Living in Loxiilon. Toem iu 2 cantos, 1768. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 209 
 
 In William Waterproofs Monologue, the fame of a waiter of 
 this tavern is handed down to posterity in the harmonious verses 
 of the Poet Laureate. 
 
 Jackson the pugilist, who has a pompous epitaph on his grave 
 in the Brompton burial-ground, kept for some time the Cock 
 alehouse, Sutton, on the Epsom Road ; but being patronised by 
 the Prince of Wales and a great many of the leading members 
 of the " nobility and gentry," he was in a very short time enabled 
 to retire with a £10,000 fortune. Finally, some twenty years 
 ago, there was a Cock and Bottle public- house in Bristol kept by 
 a man named John England, who added to his sign the well' 
 known words : — 
 
 " England expects every man to do his duty.'* 
 
 The sign of the Three Cocks occurs in the following adver- 
 tisement : — 
 
 " A LL persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, 
 XJl- Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at 
 the Three Cocks in St John's Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to 
 him before the 25th of December 1709, are desired to fetch them away by 
 the 25th of March next, or they will be disposed off." — London Gazette, 
 Jan. 18-21,1711. 
 
 From this and innumerable other similar advertisements, it 
 appears that pawnbrokers in those days did not always rigorously 
 adhere to the Three Balls ; that is to say, they were occasionally 
 goldsmiths, and in that capacity used any sign. 
 
 It is rarely that the sign of the Cock designates any particular 
 colour. There is a Black Cock in Owen Street, Tipton ; a 
 cock of this colour was always considered something more than 
 an ordinary bird ; with the Greeks it was a grateful sacrifice to 
 Esculapius and Pluto, and in the middle ages it played a promi- 
 nent part in matters of witchcraft. The Blue Cock is a sign at 
 Leicester; but neither colour is common. At Hargrave, near 
 Bury St Edmunds, there is a Cock's Head, put up either in 
 imitation of a nag's, — bull's, — bear's, — or boar's head, or as the 
 crest of a fool's cap, which, in old times, usually terminated with 
 a cock's head. 
 
 Though some sort of religious prestige may at first have 
 prompted the choice of the cock, more profane ideas latterxy con- 
 tributed to make it popular, such as the pastimes of cock-throw- 
 ing, or " shying," and cock-fighting. To this first practice alludes 
 the sign of William Brandon, on Dowgate Hill, which was called, 
 
 O 
 
210 
 
 THE HIST0E7 OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Have at it ; Ms token representing a man about to throw a 
 Btick at a cock. This cruel game was very common in alehouses 
 in former times ; the whole sport consisting in throwing a stick 
 at an unfortunate cock tied to a stake ; if the animal was killed 
 it was the thrower's property ; if not, he forfeited the small sum 
 paid for each " shy." What a slaughter of cocks was carried on 
 in this way may be judged from the following : — 
 
 " Last Tuesday a Brewer's servant in Southwark took his walk round 
 Towerhill, Moorfield, and Lincoln's Inn Fields, and knocked down so many 
 cocks that by selling them again, he returned home twenty shillings odd 
 pence richer man than he came out." * 
 
 Medals are extant of the reign of William III., on which John 
 Bull is represented throwing sticks at the French cock : not a 
 very lofty allegory, it must be confessed ; but in those days the 
 public taste was not very refined ; thus, after the victory of Blen- 
 heim, the simile was in equal bad taste, the same idea being ex- 
 pressed by a huge lion tearing an unfortunate cock in pieces. 
 
 Cock-fighting was a favourite diversion with the Romans, and 
 we find continual traces of it during their occupation here. 
 Fitz- Stephen says, it was the sport of schoolboys in his time ; 
 but as they grew up it seems the taste adhered to them. That 
 sturdy bluebeard-king, Henry VIII., though always ready to 
 chop off the heads of his subjects, felt his heart melt at the 
 miseries of the cocks, and made edicts against cock-fights, yet 
 with the inconsistency that marked his other tastes built a cock- 
 pit unto himself at Whitehall. James I., also, was a great 
 amateur. Though habitually suppressed by various sovereigns, 
 the evil would always break out again, till it was finally abolished 
 by an Act of Parliament in the 12 & 13 Queen Victoria. In 
 Staffordshire, and other counties where this sport is still prac- 
 tised " on the sly," the Fighting Cocks is a favourite sign. 
 
 The cock occurs in innumerable combinations with all kinds 
 of heterogeneous objects, many of which seem merely selected for 
 their oddity : among the most explicable is the Cock and Bottle, 
 of which we have offered a solution, (p. 207) and which again 
 occurs in the following title : — 
 
 **JusT Published, 
 
 " A full account of the Life and Visions of Nicholas Hart who has every 
 year in his Life past, on the 5th of August, fall'n into a Deep Sleep and 
 cannot be awaked till 5 Days and Nights are expired, and then gives a sur- 
 prising Relation of what he hath seen in the other World. Taken from 
 
 • Frotestant Mercury, Feb. 14, 1700. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 21 I 
 
 Lis own moutli in September last; after lie had slept 5 days in St Bartho- 
 lomew's Hospital, the August before. By William Hill, of Lincoln's Inn. 
 The Truth of all which the said Nicholas Hart hath attested under hia 
 Hand, the 3d Day of August 1711, before several credible Witnesses, and 
 declared his Readiness to take oath of the same. He began to sleepe as 
 usual the 5th Day of this instant August 1711 at Mr Dixies at the Cock 
 and Bottle in Little Britain. Entered according to Law. Printed for J. 
 Baker, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, price 2d." * 
 
 This same book, under the title of " Life and Visions of 
 William Hart, in which are particularly described the state of 
 the Blessed Spirits in the Heavenly Canaan, and also a Descrip- 
 tion of the Condition of the Damned in a State of Punishment, 
 etc., by Will. Hill, senior of Lincoln's Inn, London/' is still sold 
 as a chapbook by the " running stationers." The Spectator did 
 not believe in Nicholas Hart, and introduced the subject to the 
 public with his usual humour in No. 191. Hart seems to have 
 tested the truth of the proverb which says, that fortune comes 
 whilst we are sleeping, for he certainly made more by sleeping 
 than many others by waking. Stow tells a similar story of one 
 William Foxley, potmaker to the mint, who slept full fourteen 
 days and fifteen nights, and when he woke up " was in all points 
 found as if he had slept but one night." 
 
 The Cock and Trumpet is a common sign, typifying those 
 ideas about the cock expressed on p. 205. This simile is con- 
 stantly used by the poets ; and most beautifully enlarged upon 
 by Shakespeare : — 
 
 " The Coch that is the Trumpet of the morn," &c. — Hamlet, a. i. sc. 1. 
 " And now the Cock, the morning's trumpeter, 
 
 Play'd hunt's up to the day-star to appear." — Drayton. 
 " All the night shrill chaunticler, 
 
 Day's Proclaiming Trumpeter, 
 
 Claps his wings and loudly cries. 
 
 Mortals, mortals, wake, arise." — Nativity Hymn.\ 
 
 The Cock and Bell, if not a simple combination of two signs, 
 may be derived from a custom formerly practised in some parts 
 of England, for boys to have cock-fights on Shrove Tuesday; 
 the party whose cock won the most battles, was held victorious 
 in the cock-pit, and gained the prize — a small silver hell sus- 
 pended to the button of the victor's hat, and worn for three suc- 
 cessive Sundays. It is an old sign, and occurs on a Birchin Lane 
 trades token between 1648 and 1672. 
 
 * Daily Courant, Aug. 9, 1711. 
 
 t Bisson's Janus, or Small Tokens for the Old Year, and Little Gifts for the NevJ 
 Year. 1674. LuttreU Ballads, vol. ii. p VO, 
 
2 I 2 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The Cock and Breeches originated in a favourite form of giU 
 gingerbread at Bartholomew Fair, although the very objectionable 
 anecdote of Joe Miller concerning such a sign is generally believed 
 to have had something to do with its origin. 
 
 The Cock and Bull is still frequently seen, but though the 
 meaning of the phrase is well understood, neither its origin, nor 
 the meaning of the two animals on the signboard, have as yet 
 been properly explained. As we have no sound theory to offer, 
 we shall abstain from entering on the subject, for fear of giving 
 an illustration of what a cock-and-bull story is, rather than clear- 
 ing up the mystery of the signboard. It occurs amongst the 
 seventeenth century trades tokens. 
 
 The Cock and Dolphin was the sign of one of the London 
 carriers' inns : — 
 
 " JAMES NEVIL'S Coach to Hampstead comes to the Cock and Dolphin 
 in (rray's Inn Lane, in and out every day." — De Laune^s Present State of 
 London, 1681. 
 
 Hatton, in 1708, placed this inn "on the east side of Gra/a 
 Inn Lane, near the middle.'' At the present day it is a public- 
 house sign in Kendal, Westmoreland. It is more likely to be a 
 combination of two signs, than to refer to the French Cock and 
 the Dolphin in the arms of the Dauphin. The same applies to 
 the Cock and Anchor in Gateshead and Dublin; the Cock 
 AND Swan, and the Cock and Crown, both in Wakefield ; and 
 the Cock and Bear at Nuneaton ; whilst the Cock and House 
 in Norwich may originally have been the cocking-house of the 
 district, — that is, the house where cock-fights were held. 
 
 Fully as general as the sign of the Cock is that of the Swan ; 
 the reason why, is perhaps truly, though coarsely, expressed 
 under an old Dutch signboard : — 
 
 De Swaan voert ieder kroeg, zoowel in dorp als stad, 
 Om dat hy altyd graag is met de bek in't nat."* 
 
 Not only is there a conformity of aesthetic symbolism in vari- 
 ous parts of Europe, observable in the constant recurrence of the 
 same objects on signboards, but even the same jokes are found. 
 Thus the Swan at Bandon, near Cork, has the following rhymes, 
 nearly akin to the Dutch epigram above, but strongly flavoured 
 with Hibernian wit : — 
 
 " This is the Swan 
 That left her pond, 
 
 ♦ The reason why so many alehouses in town and country have the sign of the swan, 
 Is because that bird is so fond of liquid." 
 
 I No English translation can convey the peculiar significance of the original. The 
 above gives only the bare sense.] 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 213 
 
 To Dip her Bill in poi-ter, 
 Why not we. 
 As well as she 
 Become regular Topers." 
 Another Milesian at Mallow, also near Cork, has it thus modi- 
 fied :— 
 
 " This is the Swan that dips her neck in Water, 
 Why not we as well as she, drink plenty of Beamish and Crawford's 
 Porter." 
 
 In London it was always a favourite sign by the river side : — 
 " *I find the Swan to be your usual sign by the River,' said I. 'Why, 
 yes,' replied George. *I don't know what a Coach or a Waggon and 
 Horses or the High-mettled Racer have to do with our River. ' * Pray, 
 now,' said I to my oracle, * do enumerate the signs of the Swan remaining 
 [this was in 1829] on the Banks of the River, between London and Batter- 
 sea Bridges.* * Why, let me see, Master, there's the Old Swan at London 
 Bridge, that 's one — there 's the Swan in Arundel Street, two, — then ours 
 here, (Hungerford Stairs,) three, — the Swan at Lambeth ; that 's down 
 though. Well, then the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been 
 turned into a Brewhouse, though that was where our people [the Water- 
 men] rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett's will ; now they row to 
 the sign of the New Swan, beyond the Physick Garden ; we '11 say that 'a 
 four, then there 's the two Swan signs at Battersea, six."* 
 
 The Swan, by London Bridge, was a very ancient house, and 
 gave a name to the Swan stairs. Trades tokens of this house 
 are extant, representing a Swan walking on Old London Bridge, 
 with the date 1657. This feat was performed by the Swan on 
 the token, to intimate that it was the Swan above the Bridge in 
 contradistinction to another tavern known as the Swan below the 
 Bridge. Pepys once dined at this house ; and though always very 
 ready to be pleased, he has not much good to say about it. 
 "27 June, 1660. Dined with my Lord and all the officers of 
 his regiment, who invited my Lord and his friends, as many as 
 he would bring to dinner, at the Swan at Dowgate, a poor house 
 and ill dressed, but very good fish and plenty." The landlady of 
 this tavern is mentioned in a curious manner in a tract printed in 
 1712, entitled " The Quack Vintners : 
 
 " May the chaste widow prosper at the Swan 
 
 Near London Bridge, where richest wines are drawn, 
 
 And win by her good humour and her trade, 
 
 Some jolly son of Bacchus to her bed." 
 Previous to 1598 there was a Swan Theatre on the Bank- 
 side, near the Globe ; so named from " a house and tenement 
 called the Swan," mentioned in a charter of Edward VI., grant- 
 
 * J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 280. 
 
214 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 ing the manor of Southwark to the City of London. It fell into 
 decay in the reign of James I., was closed in 1613, and subse- 
 quently only used for gladiatorial exhibitions. Yet, in its time, 
 it had been well frequented, for a cotemporary author says — " it 
 was the Continent of the world, because half the year a world of 
 beauties and brave spirits resorted to it.'* One of the oldest Swan 
 signs on record is that of the old printer, Wynkyn de Worde, 
 assistant, and finally successor to Caxton, who, in the beginning 
 of the sixteenth century, issued some works " emprynted at the 
 signe of the Swane in Fletestrete." 
 
 From an anecdote preserved by Aubrey, iii. 415, it appears 
 that Ben Jonson did not always " go to the Devil," but was also 
 in the habit of having his cup of sack at a Swan tavern near Char- 
 ing Cross : — 
 
 Grace by Ben Jonson extempore, before King James. 
 
 Our king and queen, the Lord God blesse. 
 
 The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse, 
 
 And God blesse every living thing 
 
 That lives and breathes and loves the King. 
 
 God blesse the Councill of Estate, 
 
 And Buckingham the fortunate. 
 
 God blesse them all and keep them safe, 
 
 And God blesse me, and God bless Ralph. 
 
 The king was mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was. Ben told 
 him 'twas the drawer at the Swanne Taverne by Charing-crosse, who drew 
 him good canarie. For this drollerie,his Ma"' gave him an hundred poundes." 
 
 Tokens of this house of the plague year are extant, representing 
 a Swan with a sprig ^in its mouth, and the inscription, "Marke 
 Rider at the Swan against the Mewes,* 1665. His Haifa 
 Penny." 
 
 The Swan at Knightsbridge had a reputation which we should 
 call " fast." It was well known to young gallants, and was the 
 terror of all such jealous husbands and fathers as the Sir David 
 Dunce who figures in Otway's " Soldier of Fortune," 1681 : — 
 
 " I have surely lost and never shall find her more. She promised me 
 strictly to stay at home till I came back again ; for ought I know, she may 
 be up three pairs of stairs in the Temple now, or it may be taking the air 
 as far as Knightsbridge with some smoothfaced rogue or another ; *tis a 
 damned house that Swan ; that Swan at Knightsbridge is a confounded 
 house ! " 
 
 * The king's stables (which stood on the site now occupied by Trafalgar Square) callod 
 the **uiews," because formerly his majesty's falcons were kept there, mue being a 
 French word for a certain kind of bird-cage or coop - whence the words ''mewed up." 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 215 
 
 Tom Brown also alludes to it ; Peter Pindar (Dr Woolcot) coiq- 
 memorates a vestry dinner there : — 
 
 " At Knightsbridge at a Tavern called the Swan, 
 
 Churchwardens, Overseers, a jolly clan, 
 
 Order'd a dinner for themselves, 
 
 A very handsome dinner," &c. 
 
 The old house was pulled down in 1788, and its name transferred 
 to a public-house in Sloane Street, which, with three other houses, 
 occupies the site of the old Swan. 
 
 The Swan tavern in Exchange Alley, Cornhill, was well known 
 among the musical world in the last century. In this house, 
 some celebrated concerts were given, at a time when there were 
 no proper concert-rooms; they commenced in 1728, under the 
 management of one Barton, formerly a dancing-master, and con- 
 tinued for twelve years, when the place was burnt down ; at the 
 rebuilding, it was christened the King's Head. 
 
 In 1825, the landlord of the Swan tavern at Stratford, near 
 London, recommended the charms of his place in the following 
 poetical strain : — 
 
 " At the Swan Tavern kept by Lound 
 
 The best accommodation's found, — 
 
 Wine, Spirits, Porter, Bottled Beer, 
 
 You '11 find in high perfection here. 
 
 If in the Garden with your lass 
 
 You feel inclin'd to take a glass, 
 
 There Tea and Cofiee of the best. 
 
 Provided is for every guest. 
 
 And females not to drive from hence^ 
 
 The charge is only fifteen pence. 
 
 Or if disposed a Pipe to smoke. 
 
 To sing a song or crack a joke, 
 
 You may repair across the Green, 
 
 Where nought is heard, though much is seen. 
 
 There laugh, and drink, and smoke away, 
 
 And but a moderate reckoning pay. 
 
 Which is a most important object 
 
 To every loyal British subject. 
 In short, 
 
 The best accommodation 's found 
 
 By those who deign to visit Lound." 
 The Black Swan, though formerly considered a vara avis in 
 terrisy may now be seen in every town and village, swinging at 
 the door of mine host, the picture painted just as fancy may have 
 suggested, long before the actual bird was brought over from 
 Australia. At the Black Swan tavern in Tower Street, the Earl 
 
2l6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 EocLester, when banished from the Court, took lodgings under' 
 the name of Alexander Bendo, his profession that of an Italian 
 quack, and there he had those comical adventures with the wait- 
 ing-maids of the Court. Hamilton says in his " Memoires de 
 Grammont," that the adventures Rochester had in this disguise 
 are by far the most amusing given in his works. Another Black 
 Swan alehouse is named in a broadside of 1704 : — 
 
 A most strange but true account of a very large sea monster that waa 
 found last Saturday in a common-shore in New Fleet Street in Spittlefields, 
 where at the Black Swan alehouse thousands of people resort to see it," &c. 
 
 This dreadful monster was simply " a dead Porpoise of a very 
 large size, it being above Four Foot in length, and Three Foot 
 about,'' and the fact of it " leaving the deep to rove up into Fresh 
 Water Bivers, and more especially to crawl up so far a common- 
 shore," prognosticated, it was thought, some dire calamities, which 
 are told in not very parliamentary language. 
 
 The Swan with Two Necks is another lusus naturce observ- 
 able on the signboard, said to owe its origin to the corruption of 
 the word nick into nech."^ This explanation, however ingenious, 
 is somewhat " sujet a caution,'^ for this reason : it is a well-known 
 and established fact that the London signs of old had no inscrip- 
 tions under them. Now, considering the small size of the nicks 
 in question, they would scarcely have been perceptible at the 
 height on which the sign was generally suspended, and even 
 if visible, would never have been sufficiently noticed or un- 
 derstood to give a name to the sign. We shall not venture to 
 propose another solution, as nothing of a sufficiently distinct 
 character occurs to us : but it is just possible that a sign of two 
 
 * These nicks were little horizontal, vertical, and diagonal notches cut in the swan's 
 bill, in order that each owner might know his own swans. In the Archceologia for 
 1812, a roll of 219 swan marks is given, together with the ordinances respecting 
 swans on the river Witham, in Lincoln, belonging to various gentlemen ; this paper 
 bears the date of June 1570. The nicking was done by swanherds, appointed by the 
 king's licence, who kept a register of all the various marks. None but freeholders were to 
 have marks, and these were to be perfectly distinct from those used by other gentlemen. 
 The Corporation of London had the right of keeping swans on the Thames for fourteen 
 leagues above and below bridge, and their flocks seem to have been very numerous, for 
 Paulus Jovius describing the approach to London in 1552, says, " This river abounds in 
 swans swimming in flocks, the sight of which, and their noise, are very agreeable to the 
 fleets that meet them in their course." Those of the company of the vintners had two 
 nicks or marks on their bill, it is said, and hence the popular explanation of the sign. This 
 nicking of swans on the river was formerly a matter of great state. The members of the 
 Corporation of London used annually to go up the Thames in the month of August, in 
 gaily decorated barges, and after tlie swans were nicked and counted, to land olf Barn 
 Elms, and there partake of a collation in the open air, ending which, history informs as, 
 they used to dance, but it would require very reliable authority to convince us that an 
 alderman could find enjoyment on the "light fantastic toe," particularly after z hearty 
 collation. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 217 
 
 swans represented swimming side by side may have given rise to 
 the " Swan with two necks," or that the symbol of two birds' 
 necks encircled by a coronet which was used by a foreign pub- 
 lisher — taken, it has been conjectured, by him frorA the arms of 
 some trade company — may have been the origin, 
 
 Machyn, in his " Diary," mentions the sign of "the Swane with 
 the ij nekes at My Ike Street end,'' in 1556, when on the 5th of 
 August, a woman living next door to that sign drowned herself in 
 Moorfields. 
 
 In 1636, the Two Necked Swan was already to be seen in 
 Berkshire, at the town of Lamburne, where Taylor the water 
 poet names it as the sign of a tavern. In later years it was a 
 famous carriers' inn in Lad Lane, Cheapside, whence, for more than 
 a century and a half, passengers and goods were despatched to 
 the North. To this inn the following couplet alludes : — 
 
 True sportsmen know nor dread nor fear, 
 Each rides, when once the saddle in, 
 As if he had a neck to spare. 
 Just like the Swan in Ladlane." 
 
 Huddersford Cajpe Hunt, 
 Notwithstanding the " double bill " suggested by the two heads, 
 it still continues a favourite inn sign. Four is rather an unusual 
 number on the signboard, but we have this quadruple alliance in 
 one solitary instance, the Four Swans, Bishopsgate, which is 
 internally one of the best remaining examples of those famous 
 galleried inns of old London. 
 
 The Swan and Bottle, Uxbridge, is a variation of the Cock 
 and Bottle ; the Swan and Bummer was a coffee-house near the 
 Exchange, during the South Sea bubble — the Rummer, a common 
 addition, being simply joined to the Swan, to intimate that wine 
 was sold ; the Swan and Salmon are combined on many signs, 
 doubtless in honour of the two ornaments of our English rivers. 
 The very name is sufficient to call up a pleasant picture. 
 
 The Swan and Hoop, Moorfields, was the birthplace of 
 Keats the poet. The Swan on the Hoop, " on the way called 
 old Fysshe Strete,'' is mentioned as early as 1413.* The same 
 combination may still be seen on London signboards. 
 
 With regard to the Swan and Sugarloaf, which occurs 
 amongst the trades tokens, and is still seen, (as in Fetter Lane, 
 for instance,) the sugarloaf was at first added by a grocer, whose 
 
 * For the origin of the sign, see under Hoop. 
 
2l8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 sign having gained popularity as a noted landmark, or from otlier 
 causes, was imitated by rivals or juniors, particularly on account 
 of its presenting tlie favourite alliteration. Combinations with 
 the sugarloaf are very common, all arising from its being the 
 grocer's sign : thus the Three Crowns and Sugarloaf, Kid- 
 derminster; Wheatsheaf and Sugarloaf, Eatcliff Highway, 
 seventeenth century, (trades token ;) Tobacco Eoll and Sugar- 
 loaf, Gray's Inn Gate, Holborn ;* the Three Coffins and 
 Sugarloaf, Fleet Street; 1720. 
 
 In the sign of the Swan and Eushes, at Leicester, the 
 rushes were merely a pictorial accessory, placed in the background 
 to bring out the white plumage of the Swan, whilst the Swan 
 and Helmet, at Northampton, no doubt originated from a helmet 
 with a Swan for crest. 
 
 In one instance, a Drake occurs as a sign, namely, on the 
 token of Will. Johnson, at " ye Drake in Bell Yard," near Temple 
 Bar, 1667. The Duck is only to be seen in company with the Dog ; 
 in one instance it accompanies a Mallard. This last animal was 
 otherwise well known to the Londoners, since in 1520, amongst 
 " the articles of good gouernace of the cite of London," it was 
 recommended to magistrates — " also ye shall enquyre, yf ony per- 
 son kepe or norrysh hoggis, oxen, kyen, or mallardis within the 
 ward in noying of ther neyhbours."t The Duck and Mallard 
 was the sign of a lock (and probably gun-) smith in East Smiths 
 field in 16734 
 
 The Pigeon was a tavern at Charing Cross in 1675.§ The 
 Three Pigeons were very common ; there still exists an inn of 
 this name at Brentford : — 
 
 It is a house of interest as being in all likelihood one of the few haunts 
 of Shakespeare now remaining ; as being indeed the sole Elizabethan tavern 
 existing in England, which in the absence of direct evidence, may fairly be 
 presumed to have been occasionally visited by him." || 
 
 It was kept at one time by Lowin, one of the original actors in 
 Shakespeare's plays, and is often named by the old dramatists : 
 
 " Thou art admirably suited for the Three Pigeons at Brentford. I swear 
 I know thee not." — The Roaring Girl. 
 
 " We will turn our courage to Braynford, westward, 
 My Bird of the Night — to the Pigeons,'* 
 
 Ben Jonson's AlchymisL 
 
 * Mercurius Publicus, Aug. 30 — Sept. 16, 1660. 
 
 \ Arnold's Customs of London. J London Gazette, October 2-6, 1G73. 
 
 g City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade, Nov. 4, 1676. 
 
 y Halliwell's Local Illustrations to the " Merry Wives of Windsor." ITolio Shakespeare. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS, 
 
 219 
 
 There, also, George Peel played some of his merry pranks. In 
 the parlour is an old painting dated 1704, representing a land- 
 lord attending to some customers seated at a table in the open 
 air, with these lines : — 
 
 " Wee are new beginners 
 And thrive wee would fain, 
 I am honest Ralph of Keading, 
 My wife Susana to name." 
 
 Bat Pidgeon, the famous hairdresser, immortalised by the Speo- 
 tator, lived at the sign of the Three Pigeons, "in the corner house of 
 St Clement's Churchyard, next to the Strand.'* There he remained 
 as late as 1740, when he cut the "boyish locks " of Pennant. 
 
 In 1663 it was the sign of a bookseller in St Paul's Church- 
 yard,* and in 1698 of John Newton, also a bookseller over against 
 Inner Temple Gate, Fleet Street. 
 
 The Dove was the sign of a coffeehouse on the riverside, be- 
 tween the two malls at Fulham. " In a room in this house, 
 Thomson wrote part of his ^ Winter.' He was in the habit of fre 
 quenting the house during the winter season, when the Thames 
 was frozen and the surrounding country covered with snow. 
 This fact is well authenticated, and many persons visit the house 
 to the present day."t The Stockdove is a sign at Eomiley, Stock- 
 port ; the Dovecote is a public-house at Laxton, Carlton- on-Trent, 
 probably on account of the pigeons constantly flying out and in ; 
 and there is a Pigeon Box at Prior's Lee, near Shiffnall. The 
 pigeon-shooting matches may have something to do with the 
 selection of this sign. 
 
 The Falcon was another of the devices used by Wynkyn de 
 Worde over his shop in Fleet Street. Falcon Court, in that locality, 
 perhaps derives its name from this house. Subsequently, Gor- 
 dobuc, the earliest English tragedy, was ^'imprynted at London, 
 in Flete Strete, at the sign of the Faucon/' no doubt Wynkyn's 
 house, by William Griffiths in 1565; and in 1612, Peacham's 
 " Garden of Heroical Devises " was published by Wa. Dight at the 
 sign of the Falcon in Shoe Lane. These booksellers, perhaps, bor- 
 rowed their device from the stationers' arms, which are, argent on 
 a chevron between three bibles, or, a falcon volant between two 
 roses, the Holy Ghost in chief ; it was also a badge of some of 
 the kings. At the Falcon inn, Stratford-on-Avon, there is still a 
 Bhovelboard on which William Shakespeare is said often to hay© 
 
 * Kingdornls Intelligencer, March 30 to April 6, 1663. 
 •[• Faulkner's Account of Fulliam, 1813, p. 359, 
 
220 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 played. Another Falcon Tavern connected with Shakespeare's 
 name used to stand on the Bankside, where he and his companion? 
 occasionally refreshed themselves after the fatigues of the perform- 
 ances at the Globe. It long continued celebrated as a coaching 
 inn for all parts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, till it was taken 
 down in 1808. The name is still preserved in the Falcon Glass- 
 house, which stands opposite its site, and in the Falcon Stairs. 
 There was another Falcon Inn in Fleet Street, bequeathed to the 
 company of cordwaineis, by a gentleman named Fisher, under 
 the obligation that they were yearly to have a sermon preached 
 in the Church of St Dunstan, in the West, on the 10th of July. 
 Formerly, on that day, sack and posset used to be drunk by those 
 concerned, in the vestry of the church, if not to the health, at 
 least to the " pious memory" of this Fisher; but that good custom 
 has long since been abandoned. 
 
 The Falcon on the Hoop is named in 1443. " In the xxj 
 yer of Kyng Harry the vj*^f," the brotherhood of the Holy Trinity 
 received " for the rent of ij yere of Wyllym Wylkyns for the 
 Sarrecyn Head v li. vj s. viij d., paynge by the yer liij s. iiij d. and 
 of the Faiicon on the Hope, for the same ij yer vi li., that is to say 
 paynge by the yer iij li." Eent, it must be confessed, seems 
 small, and landlords exceedingly accommodating in those days. 
 Six days before that period, there is an entry in the church- 
 wardens' accounts for " kervyng and peinting of the seigne of the 
 Faucon vj sh."* This mention of the sign clearly shows that it 
 was not a picture, but a carved and coloured falcon, suspended in 
 a hoop, whence the name of the sign. 
 
 The Magpie being a bird of good omen, was, on that account, 
 very often chosen ; with this another reason concurred, namely, 
 the sign of the eatable pie falling into disuse, it was transformed 
 into the Magpie, (see Cock and Pie;) and this transition was so 
 much the easier as the original name of the magpie was pie, 
 (Latin pica, French p)ie,) and only subsequently for its knowing 
 antics, did it receive the nickname of maggoty t pie, which gradu- 
 ally was abbreviated into Magpie. The full form of the epithet 
 is preserved in the nursery rhyme : — 
 
 *'Eound about, round about, 
 Maggoty Pie, 
 My father loves good ale 
 And so do 1." 
 
 '* Hone's Ancient Mysteries Described, p. 81. 
 t Maoot is in French a quaint, little figure. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS, 
 
 22 I 
 
 The Maggoty Pie was an inn in the Strand during the reign 
 of James I. : it is alluded to in Shirley's Comedy of " The Ball/' 
 a. i. sc. 1, where Freshwater, the Italianised Englishman, says : — 
 
 " I do ly at the signe of Dona Margaretta de Pia in the Strand." 
 which his man Gudgin explains to mean, " the Maggety Pie in 
 the Strand, sir." 
 
 As late as 1654, we find the name "maggoty pie" used in 
 "Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal," July 26 to 
 August 3, where the Welshman's arms are described as a fly, a 
 maggoty pie, &c.^ The Magpie and Stump represents the mag- 
 pie sitting on the stump of a tree ; it was the sign of one 
 of the Whig pothouses in the Old Bailey during the riots of 1715. 
 There is still an old house with such a sign in Cheyne Walk, 
 Chelsea. The Magpie and Pewter Platter, in Wood Street, 
 originated from a magpie standing by a dish and picking 
 out of it. The Magpie and Crown, says the author of 
 " Tavern Anecdotes," (1825,) is a ridiculous association ; but when 
 once joined is not to be separated without injury to the concern, 
 as it happened in the case of a Mr Eenton, who was originally 
 waiter at a house of this name in Aldgate, famous for its ale, 
 which was sent out in great quantities. The landlord becoming 
 rich, pride followed, and he thought of giving wing to the Mag- 
 pie, retaining only the royal attribute of the crown. The ale went 
 out for a short time, as usual, but it was not from the Magpie 
 and Crown, and the customers fancied it was not so good as 
 usual ; consequently the business fell off. The landlord died, 
 and Eenton purchased the concern, caught the Magpie, and 
 restored it to its ancient situation; the ale improved in the 
 opinion of the public, and its consumption increased so much, 
 that Eenton, at his death, left behind him property amounting 
 to £600,000, chiefly the profits of the Magpie and Crown ale. 
 This danger of altering a sign is also illustrated by another 
 example. When Joseph II., emperor of Germany, was at Maes- 
 tricht, in the Netherlands, he stayed at the Gray Ass Inn, 
 {L'Ane Gris,) in honour of which imperial visit the landlord dis- 
 carded his humble quadruped sign, and put up the Emperor's 
 
 * For the benefit of those curious in Cambrian heraldry we will give these arms in a 
 
 note : — "A fly, a maggoty pie, a gammon of bacon and a : the fly drinks before his 
 
 master; a magpie doth prate and chatter, a gammon of bacon is never good till it ba 
 hanged, and a when it is out never returns to its country, no more will a Welsh- 
 man ; otherwise, his arms are two trees verdant, a beam tressant, a ladder ramr)ant, anci 
 Taffe pendant." 
 
22 2 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Head. The customers seeing the Old Gray Ass gone, thought 
 the business had fallen into other hands, and so went to various 
 inns in the neighbourhood, and particularly to a New Gray Ass, 
 which had just then opened in the same street. The landlord 
 seeing his business falling off, through the change of his sign, yet 
 unwilling to part with his Emperor's head, after long thinking 
 and pondering, at last hit upon a clever compromise : he kept up 
 the portrait of the Emperor, but wrote under it, " At the Origi- 
 nal Gray Ass, (au veritable Ane Gris.y* 
 
 The Parrot, or Popinjay, is an old sign now almost out of 
 fashion, the Green Parrot, Swinegate, Leeds, being one of the 
 few remaining. Andrew Maunsell, a bookseller and printer, 
 resided at the Parrot in St Paul's Churchyard in 1570, and con 
 tinued to trade under this sign till 1600. Taylor, the water 
 poet, mentions the Popinjay at Ewell, in 1636. It was a very 
 appropriate sign for quacks, and one of these, at all events, had 
 candour enough to adopt it. His handbill begins in a grandi- 
 loquent style : " — 
 
 " Noble or Ignoble, you may be foretold anything that may happen to 
 your Elementary Life : as at what time you may expect prosperity ; or il 
 in Adversity the End thereof, or when you may be so happy as to enjoy 
 the Thing desired. Also young Men may foresee their Fortunes as in a 
 Glass, and pretty Maids their Husbands in this Noble, yea, Heavenlie art 
 of Astrologie. At the sign of the Parrot opposite to Ludgate Church 
 within Blackfriars* Gateway." * 
 
 The Parrot and Cage, in St Martin's Lane, Strand, adver- 
 tised in 1711 as a "just and substantial office of insurance" on 
 marriages, births, &c. This office, apparently, had chambers in 
 some bird-fancier's house, at all events to that class of the com- 
 munity the sign belonged more exclusively. In 1787, there was 
 one near the monument, the sign of a cagemaker who sold " like- 
 wise parrots and other forring birds." 
 
 The Peacock, in ancient times, was possessed of a mystic 
 character. The fabled incorruptibility of its flesh led to its 
 typifying the Resurrection ; and from this incorruptibility, doubt- 
 less, originated the first idea of swearing " by the Peacock," an 
 oath that was to be inviolably kept. Its first introduction on 
 the signboard is lost in the unrecorded wastes of time ; but the 
 oath was a common one in early times, especially on occasions of 
 military adventures. Near the Angel in Clerkenwell, there is the 
 Peacock public-house, which bears the date 1564. This was 
 
 * Bagford Bills. HarL MSS., 6931. 
 
BIRDS AND FOWLS. 
 
 223 
 
 formerly a great house of call for the mail and other coaches 
 travelling on the Great North Eoad, much the same as the Ele- 
 phant and Castle was for the southern counties. The Peacock 
 AND Feathers was a sign in Cornhill in 1711. 
 
 The Ostrich seems more common at present than in ancient 
 times. There is one on a stone-carved sign in Bread Street, pro- 
 bably the sign of a feather shop. Generally, the ostrich is repre- 
 sented with a horseshoe in his mouth, in allusion to its diges- 
 tive powers ; for this reason Cade says to Iden : — 
 
 I '11 make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a 
 great pin." — Henry VI., 2d Part, a. iv. sc. 10. 
 
 The landlord of an alehouse at Calverley, near Leeds, has 
 put his premises under the protection of Minerva's bird, the 
 Owl. At St Helens, Lancashire, there is a still more curious 
 sign, viz., the Owl's Nest, or the Owl in the Ivy Bush. A bush 
 or tod of ivy was formerly supposed to be a favourite place for 
 the owl to make its nest in. The old dramatists abound in allu- 
 sions to this : 
 
 " And, like an owle, by night to go abroad, 
 
 Roosted all day within an ivy- tod."* — Drayton, 
 ** Michael von Owle, how dost thou ? 
 In what dark barn or tod of aged ivy 
 Hast thou been hid ? — Beaumont and Fletcher y a. iv. sc. 3. 
 
 In a masque of Shirley's, entitled " The Triumph of Peace," 
 1633, one of the scenes represented a wild, woody landscape, " a 
 place fit for purse-taking," where, " in the furthest part was 
 scene an ivy-bush, out of which came an owle." Opinion, one 
 of the dramatis personce, informed the public, that this scene 
 was intended for " a wood, a broad-faced owl, an ivy-bush, and 
 other birds beside her." t 
 
 In districts where Grouse and Moorcock are found, these 
 birds frequently court the patronage of the thirsty sportsman at 
 the village alehouse door. One publican, at Upper Haslam, 
 Sheffield, invites at once the follower of Nimrod and of Walton : 
 his sign is the Grouse and Trout. 
 
 The last bird-sign which remains to be noticed, is unquestion- 
 
 * A tod is an old word for any entangled mass, but generally applied to flax and ivy. 
 
 t This comment of " Opinion " might lead to the conclusion that either there was no 
 painted scene at all, or at least that it was badly executed; yet such can scarcely have been 
 the case, for a notice occurs at the end of the masque, purporting that "the scene and 
 ornament was the act of Inigo Jones, Esq., surveyor of His Majesty's Works." This 
 play was acted by the gentlemen of the Inns-of-Court, in the presence of the king and 
 queen, at Whitehall, Feb. 3, 1G33. 
 
224 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 ably the most puzzling of all. It occurs on an old trades token oi 
 Cornhill, and is there called " The Live Vulture/' That the 
 man should have kept a live vulture at his door seems very 
 improbable. The only explanation which occurs to us, is the 
 possibility that, at some period or other, a live vulture had been 
 exhibited at this house, and that from this event its name was 
 derived.* 
 
 A curious instance of a tradesman exhibiting a living bird as 
 an attraction to his house, is supplied us in a recent letter of a 
 Paris correspondent, which gives at the same time an amusing 
 anecdote of the well-known Alexandre Dumas. The writer, 
 speaking of a magnificent new cafe which had recently been com- 
 pleted, says : — 
 
 " Writing of this newly started restaurant naturally recals the fact of 
 the disappearance of the historic pavilion of Henry IV. at St Germain-en- 
 baye, kept for many years by the Duchess of Berry's mattre d'hdtel, 
 Collinet. He was the pupil of Careme, and learnt to make sauces from 
 Richout, saucemaker to the last of the Condes, and pastry from Heliot, 
 "Ecuyer ordinaire de la bouche de Madame la Dauphine," a title I have 
 vainly searched for in the list of the queen's household. The result of this 
 combination of culinary instructions was that his "Bifsteaks cfc laBearnaisey" 
 and his woodcock pies, attracted not only all the fashionable world, but a 
 brilliant galaxy of literary celebrities to the Pavilion Henry IV." Alex- 
 andre Dumas's chateau of Monte CJiristo was close to St Germain. He 
 sent daily for his cutlets to Collinet, who let his bill run on till it amounted 
 to 25,000f. (£1000), in payment of which the distinguished cAe/ received 
 an autograph letter from the great novelist, accompanied by a live eagle. 
 Alexandre Dumas expressed his regret at not being able to pay the bill, 
 but suggested his exhibiting the eagle and the letter, which exhibition 
 would inevitably attract crowds to his hotel, and there I myself have seen 
 the eagle and read the letter." 
 
 * That vultures were exhibited as great curiosities, will be geen from our notice of thtf 
 Oeorge and Vulture. See under RuLiorous Srans. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FISHES AND INSECTS. 
 
 The Mermaid, as a sign, must have had great attractions for 
 our forefathers. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatists^ 
 notice this taste for strange fishes. The ancient chronicles teem 
 with captures of mermen, mermaids, and similar creatures. Old 
 Hollinshed gives a detailed account of a merman caught at Or- 
 ford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. He was kept alive 
 on raw meal and fish for six months, but at last " fledde secretelye 
 to the sea, and was neuer after scene nor heard off." Another 
 chronicler says, " About this time [1202] fishes of strange shapes 
 were taken, armed with helmets and shields like armed men, only 
 they were much bigger." And Gervase of Tilbury roundly 
 asserts that mermen and mermaids live in the British Ocean, 
 Even in more modern times, every now and then a mermaid (the 
 mermen seem to have been more scarce) made her appearance. 
 In an advertisement at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 we find : — 
 
 " XN Bell Yard, on Ludgate Hill, is to be seen, at any hour of the 
 JL day, a living Mermaid, from the waist upwards of a party colour^ 
 from thence downwards is very strange and wonderful. 
 
 Mulier formosa superne 
 
 Desinit in piscem." 
 
 After which follows a most promising and tempting little bit 
 of information in French: — "Son corps est de divers couleurs 
 avec beaucoup d'autres curiosites qu'on ne peut exprimer." Again, 
 in 1747 :— 
 
 *^ We hear from the north of Scotland, that some time this month a sea 
 creature, known by the name of Mermaid, which has the shape of a human 
 body from the trunk upwards, but below is wholly fish, was carried some 
 miles up the water of Devron." * 
 
 In 1824, a mermaid or merman (for the sex was discreetly left 
 in duhio) made its appearance before "an enlightened public," 
 when, as the papers inform us, " upwards of 150 distinguished 
 fashionables" went to see it. At Bartholomew Fair, in 1830, a 
 stuffed mermaid was exhibited ; but if once she had been such a 
 
 mulier formosa" as captivated the ancient mariners, she was 
 certainly much altered. t A very different specimen had been 
 exhibited in Fleet Street in 1822 ; but she disappeared all at 
 
 ♦ General Magazine, Jan. 1747. 
 
 t It was sketched by George Cruikshank ; and a wood-cut of it may be seen in Morley's 
 •♦Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair," p. 488. 
 
 P 
 
226 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 once most mysteriously, not, however, without a rumour of lief 
 being under the protection of the Lord Chancellor, which, as she 
 was a comely maiden with flaxen hair, " mulier superne et inferne,'' 
 lies within the range of possibilities. The sea-serpent has now 
 almost done away with the mermaid ; yet, as late as 1857, there 
 appeared an article in the Shipping Gazette, under the intelligence 
 of 4:th June, signed by some Scotch sailors, and describing an 
 object seen off the North British coast, " in the shape of a woman, 
 with full breast, dark complexion, comely face," and the rest. 
 
 At one time it appears to have been a very common sign, if we 
 may judge from the way in which it is mentioned by Brathwait in 
 his New Cast of Characters, (1631) : — 
 
 If she [the hostess] aspire to the conceit of a sine and device, her birch 
 pole pull'd downe, he will supply her with one, which he performes so 
 poorely as none that sees it, but would take it for a sign he was drunk 
 when he made it. A long consultation is had before they can agree what 
 sign must be reared. * A meere-mayde^ says she, ' for she will sing catches 
 to the youths of the parish.' ' A lyon,' says he, ^ for that is the onely sign 
 he can make ; and this he formes so artlessly, as it requires his expression, 
 this is a lyon. Which old EUenor Humming, his tapdame, denies, saying 
 it should have been a meere-mayde.'* 
 
 Among the most celebrated of the Mermaid taverns in London, 
 that in Bread Street stands foremost. As early as the fifteenth 
 century, it was one of the haunts of the pleasure-seeking Sir John 
 Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno 1464 : — " Paid for 
 wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Stret, for my mastyr and Syr 
 Nicholas Latimer, x d. ob." In 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh estab- 
 lished a literary club in this house, doubtless the first in England. 
 Amongst its members were Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, Cotton, &c. It is 
 frequently alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in their come- 
 dies, but best known is that quotation from a letter of Beaumont 
 to Ben Jonson : — 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble and so full of subtle flame. 
 As if that any one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
 And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown 
 Wit able enough to justify the town 
 For three days past ; wit that might warrant be 
 For the whole city to talk foolishly, 
 Till that were cancell'd ; and when that was gone, 
 We left an air behind us, which alone 
 
FISHES AND INSECTS. 
 
 227 
 
 Was able to make the two next companies 
 
 (Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise." 
 
 There was another Mermaid in Cheapside, frequented by Jasper 
 Mayne, and in the next reign by the poet laureate, John Dryden. 
 Mayne mentions it in " The City Match," (1638 :)— 
 " I had made an ordinary, 
 Perchance at the Mermaid.'* 
 
 At one time the landlord's name was Dun, which is told us in 
 a somewhat amusing anecdote : — " When Dun, that kept the 
 Meremaid Tavern in Cornhill, being himself in a room with some 
 witty gallants, one of them (which, it seems, knew liis wife) too 
 boldly cryd out in a fantastick humour, ' I '11 lay five pound 
 there's a cuckhold in this company.' * 'Tis Dun' says another.^' * 
 In 1681, there was a Mermaid in Carter Lane, which had a great 
 deal of traffic as a carriers' inn.t 
 
 The sign was also used by printers. John Eastall, for instance, 
 brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, " emprynted in the Cheape- 
 syde at the sygne of the Meremayde ; next to Poulysgate in 1527 
 and in 1576 a translation of the History of Lazarillo de Tormes, 
 dedicated to Sir Thomas Gresham, was printed by Henry Binne- 
 mann, the queen's printer, in Knight-rider Street, at the sign of 
 the Mermaid. A representation of this fabulous creature was 
 generally prefixed to his books. 
 
 Tlie Seahorse may be seen in Birmingham, York, and various 
 other places. Bossewell, in his peculiar mixture of English 
 and Latin, gives a quaint description of this animal : — . 
 
 This waterhorse of the sea is called an hyppotame, for that he is like 
 an horse in back, mayne, and neying : rostro resupinato a primis dentibus : 
 Cauda tortuosa, ungulis binis. He abideth in the waters on the day, and 
 eateth corn by night et /mnc Nilus gignit." Z 
 
 The Dolphin is another sign of very old standing. One of 
 the first instances of its use was probably the following inn : — 
 
 ** The other side of this High Street, from Bishopsgate and Houndsditch, 
 the first building is a large inn for the receipt of travellers, and is called 
 the Dolphin, of such a sign. In the year 1513, Margaret Ricroft, widow, 
 gave this house, with the gardens and appurtenances, unto William Gam, 
 R. Clye, their wives, her daughters, and to their heirs, with condition they 
 yearly do give to the warders or governors of the Greyfriars' Church, 
 within Newgate, 40 shillings, to find a student of divinity in the university 
 for ever." § 
 
 ♦ **Cofleehouse Jests," 1688, p. 128. 
 
 f Delaune's " Present State of London." 1681. 
 
 i Bossewell's •♦Works of Armourie," 1589, p. Oft. 
 
 § Stow, p. A striking InsfAnce ot the depreciation of money within the last three 
 
228 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Moser, in his Vestiges Revived/' mentions this same inn as the 
 "Dolphin, or rather, Dauphin Inn ; and says that it was adorned 
 with fleur-de-lys, cognisances, and dolphins ; and was reported to 
 have been the residence of one of the dauphins of France, pro- 
 bably Louis, the son of Philip August, who, in 1216, came to 
 England to contest the sceptre with King John.* The house 
 was still in existence at the end of the seventeenth century, when 
 it was a famous coaching inn. Perhaps it was to this tavern 
 that Pepys and his company adjourned on 27th March 1661 : — 
 
 " To the Dolphin to a dinner of Mr Harris's, where Sir William and my 
 Lady Batten and her two daughters, and other company, when a great deal 
 of mirth, and there staid till 11 o'clock at night, and in our mirth I sang 
 and sometimes fiddled, (there being a noise of fiddlers there,) and at last 
 we fell to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life, which I did 
 wonder to see myself to do. At last we made Mingo, Sir W. Batten's 
 black, and Jack, Sir W. Penn's, dance, and it was strange how the first did 
 dance with a great deal of skill." 
 
 Pepys might well wonder what a man may come to, he who had 
 been born when " lascivious dancing was considered a heinous 
 crime. Another Dolphin, well worthy of remembrance, was the 
 sign of Sam. Buckley, a bookseller in Little Brittain, at whose 
 house Steele and Addison's Spectator was published. 
 
 Ancient naturalists made a wonderful animal of the dolphin. 
 Bossewell, for instance, from whom we have just quoted, tells 
 most extraordinary stories about him ; but they are unfortunately 
 too long to quote. Londoners formerly might have seen the 
 living fish from the river banks, for old chroniclers every now 
 and then have entries to the effect that dolphins paid London a 
 visit. Thus : ^^3 Henry V. Seven dolphins came up the river 
 Thames, whereof 4 were taken." "14 Rich. IL On Christmas 
 day a dolphin was taken at London Bridge, being 10 ft. long, 
 and a monstrous grown fish." + The Dolphin and Anchor is 
 still a common sign ; and the Fish and Anchor, at North Little- 
 ton, Warwickshire, evidently implies the same emblem. Aldus 
 Manutius, the celebrated Venetian printer, was the first to use 
 the sign, adopting it from a silver medal of the Emperor Titus, 
 presented to him by Cardinal Bembo, with the motto, cinvh 
 
 centuries. At the present day, 40s. would scarcely keep an Oxford or Cambridge student 
 in cigar-lights. 
 
 * Moser makes a slight error. The heir-apparent to the throne of France did not 
 assume the title of Dauphin till 1349, when Humbert II., Dauphin of Vienne, having no 
 posterity, retired to a monastery, and sold his estates to Philip VI., King of France, oo 
 behalf of his grandson, afterwards Charles V. 
 
 t Delaune's '* Present State of London." 
 
FISHES AND INSECTS. 
 
 229 
 
 ^oahioi;. Camerarius thus (in our translation) mentions this sign 
 in his book on Symbols : — 
 
 " That the dolphin wound round the anchor was an emblem of the Em- 
 perors August and Titus, to represent that maturity in business which is 
 the medium between too great haste and slowness ; and that it was also 
 used in the last century by Aldus Manutius, that most famous printer, is 
 known to everybody. Erasmus clearly and alDundantly explains the import 
 of that golden precept. 
 
 Our emblem is taken from Alciatus, and has a different meaning. He 
 reports, namely, that * when violent winds disturb the sea, as Lucretius says, 
 and the anchor is cast by seamen, the dolphin winds herself round it, out 
 of a particular love for mankind, and directs it, as with a human intellect, 
 so that it may more safely take hold of the ground ; for dolphins have this 
 peculiar property, that they can, as it were, foretell storms. The anchor, 
 then, signifies a stay and security, whilst the dolphin is a hieroglyphic for 
 philanthropy and safety.'" — Joach. Camerarius, Symbolorum et Emhlc- 
 matum Centurice Quatuor.'* Centuria iv. p. 19; Moguntia, 1697. 
 
 This sign was afterwards adopted by William Pickering, a 
 worthy " Discipulus Aldi,^' as he styled himself ; Sir Egerton 
 Bridges made some verses upon it, amongst which occur the 
 following : — 
 
 Would you still be safely landed, 
 
 On the Aldine Anchor ride ; 
 Never yet was vessel stranded. 
 
 With the Dolphin by its side. 
 
 * ' Nor time, nor envy ever shall canker 
 The sign that is my lasting pride ; 
 Joy then to the Aldus Anchor, 
 And the Dolphin at its side. 
 " To the Dolphin as we 're drinking, 
 Life and health and joy we send ; 
 A poet once he saved from sinking. 
 And still he lives — the poet's friend." 
 
 The Dolphin and Comb was the sign of E. Eerne, a milliner 
 on London Bridge in 1722. This is an instance of one of the 
 articles sold within being added to the original sign of the house. 
 Milliners in those days used to have a much more extensive 
 variety of objects for sale than they have now, comprehending 
 almost every article required for female apparel, — and including 
 tnives, scissors, combs, pattens, patches, poking sticks, fans, bod- 
 kins, (fee. Such additions to signs were of frequent occurrence, 
 thus the Fox and Topknot, the Lamb and Breeches, the Fox and 
 Cap, and the Lamb and Inkbottle, which last figures on the 
 imprint of Thomas Eoch, Newgate Street, a bookseller who made 
 
230 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " the best ink for deeds and records," 1677. Frequently the sign 
 of the Fish is seen without any further specification ; in this case 
 it is probably meant for the Dolphin, which is the signboard-fish 
 par excellence. The Fish sign is a very common public house 
 decoration at the present day, probably for the same reason as the 
 Swan, because he is fond of liquor, — nay, to such an extent goes 
 his reputation for intemperance, that to ^' drink like a fish" is a 
 quality of no small excellence with publicans. In Carlisle, how- 
 ever, there are two signs of the Fish and Dolphin, a rather 
 puzzling combination, — unless it has reference to the dolphin's 
 chase after the shoals of small fishes. The Fish and Bell, 
 Soho, may either allude to a well-known anecdote of a certain 
 numskull, who, when he caught a fish, which he desired to keep 
 for dinner on some future grand occasion, put it back into the 
 river, with a bell round its neck, so that he should be able to know 
 its whereabouts the moment he wanted it ; or it may be the usual 
 Bell added in honour of the bell-ringers. A quaint variety of 
 this sign is the Bell and Mackerel, in the Mile-End Boad. The 
 Theee Fishes was a favourite device in the Middle Ages, cross- 
 ing or interpenetrating each other in such a manner, that the 
 head of one fish was at the tail of another. We cannot prove 
 that it had any emblematic meaning, but it may possibly represent 
 the Trinity, the fish being a common symbol for Christ, derived 
 from the Greek monogram or abbreviation, IX0T2. It occurs 
 as a sign in the following advertisement, which minutely de- 
 scribes the livery of a page in the year of the Bestoration : — 
 
 " On Saturday night last run away from the Lord Kich, Christophilus 
 Cornaro, a Turk christened; a French youth of 17 or 18 years of age, with 
 flaxen hair, little blew eyes, a mark upon his lip, and another under his 
 right eye ; of a fair complexion, one of his ears pierced, having a pearl- 
 coloured suit, trimmed with scarlet and blue ribbons, a coat of the same 
 colour with silver buttons ; his name Jacob David. Give notice to the 
 Lord, lodging at the Three Fishes in New Street, in Covent Garden, a cook- 
 shop, and good satisfaction shall be given." * 
 
 The Theee Herrings, the sign of James Moxton, a bookseller 
 in the Strand, near Yorkhouse, in 1675, is evidently but another 
 name for the Three Fishes ; at the present day it is the sign of an 
 ale-house in Bell Yard, Temple Bar. Several taverns with this 
 sign are mentioned in the French tales and plays of the 17th 
 century ; two of them seem to have been very celebrated, one in 
 the Faubourg St Marceau, the other near the Palais de Justice ; 
 
 * " Mercurius Publicus," Aug. 30 ; Sep. 6, 1660. 
 
FISHES AND INSECTS. 
 
 231 
 
 this last one seems to have been particularly famous, for it is 
 named as a rival to the celebrated Pomme de Pin. " Si je vay 
 au Palais, tous ces clercs sont alentour de moy ; Tun me mene 
 aux Trois Poissons, I'autre k la Pomme de Pin." — Comedie de la 
 Vefve, ac. iii. s. 3."^ The Fish and Quart at Leicester must be 
 passed by in silence, as the combination cannot immediately be 
 accounted for. Were it in France a solution would be easier, for in 
 French slang a " poisson," or fish, means a small measure of wine. 
 The Fish and Eels at Eoydon, in Essex ; the Fish and Kettle, 
 Southampton ; and the White Bait, Bristol, all tell their own 
 tale, and need no comment. The Salmon is seen occasionally 
 near places where it is caught. The Salmon and Ball is the 
 well-known Ball of the silkmercers in former times, added to the 
 sign of the Salmon ; whilst the Salmon and Compasses is the 
 masonic emblem that is added to the sign. Both these occur in 
 more than one instance in London. The Fishbone is rarely met 
 with as a public-house sign, though there is an example of it at 
 Netherton in Cheshire, and also amongst the seventeenth century 
 tokens of New Cheapside, Moorfields. But generally it is the sign of 
 a rag and bone shop, or, in the euphonious language of the day, i\ 
 ''miscellaneous repository,'^ or ^' bank of commerce." These shops, 
 as their title of " marine stores" implies, used to buy all the odds 
 and ends of rope, sails, seamen's old clothes, in short all the rub- 
 bish of which a ship is cleared after its return from a long voyage. 
 Bones of large fish would be often amongst the curiosities brought 
 home by the sailors, these also they bought and hung them up 
 outside their doors, and in the end these bones became their dis- 
 tinctive sign. The Sun and Whalebone at Latton, in Essex, 
 may have originated from a whalebone hanging outside the house, 
 or that the landlord had laid the foundation of his fortune as a 
 rag merchant. 
 
 Insects are of very rare occurrence. The industrious habits of 
 the bees, however, made their habitation a favourite object to im- 
 ply a similar industry in the shopkeepers. Many years ago there 
 used to be at Grantham in Lincolnshire, a signpost on which was 
 placed a Beehive in full swarm, vsdth the following lines under 
 it :— 
 
 Two wonders, Grantham, now are thine, 
 The highest spire and a living sign." 
 * If I go to the Palace of Justice, all those clerks are constantly after me ; one takes 
 me to the Three Fishes, the other to the^Pine Cone."— Comedy of the Widow, a. iii. s. 3. 
 
232 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Though the living bees were gone the following season, yet the 
 sign and inscription remained until very recently. The following 
 is a common inscription under the sign of the Beehive : — 
 
 ** Within this hive we 're all alive, 
 Good liquor makes us funny ; 
 If you are dry, step in and try 
 The flavour of our honey." 
 
 A tea-dealer at the corner of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court 
 Road, in the end of the last century, had for his sign the Walking 
 Leaf, (the Phyllium siccifolium of the naturalists,) an East Indian 
 insect, of an anything but agreeable association, when we 
 consider the remarkable vegetable appearance of this insect, 
 and the possibility that it might be dried among the tea- 
 leaves. 
 
 Although the frog cannot be considered either an insect or 
 a fish, yet we may include it in this chapter. Of frogs there 
 are some instances on the signboard ; the Three Frogs, (see 
 under Heraldic Signs,) and Froghall, formerly a public-house 
 at the south end of Frog Lane, Islington. On the front of this 
 house there was exhibited the ludicrous sign of a plough drawn 
 by frogs. There is at the present day a Froghall Inn at Wolston, 
 near Coventry ; and a public-house of that name at Layerthorpe 
 in the West Eiding, but the picture of the sign was doubtless 
 unique. The principal inn on the island of Texel is called the 
 Golden Feog, {de Goude hilcher.) We may wonder that there 
 are not more examples of this sign in Holland, for there are, 
 without doubt, as many frogs in that country as there are 
 Dutchmen ; and even unto this day it is a mooted point, which 
 of the two nations has more rig]it to the possession of the 
 country ; both, however, are of a pacific disposition, so that they 
 live on in a perfect entente ayrdiaU, 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC. 
 
 In old times, when signboards flourished, there would have 
 been many reasons for choosing these house-decorations. 1. Their 
 symbolic meaning, as the olive-tree, the fig-tree, the palm-tree. 
 2. To intimate what was sold within, as the vine, the coffee-plant, 
 (fee. 3. The use of some plants as badges. 4. The vicinity of 
 some well-known tree or road-mark, near the place where the 
 sign was displayed. 5. The desire of a landlord to have an unusual 
 sign. 
 
 The oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom is the 
 Bush ; it was a bush or bunch of ivy, box or evergreen, tied to 
 the end of a pole, such as is represented in many of the suttler's 
 tents in the pictures of Wouverman. The custom came evidently 
 from the Eomans, and with it the oft-repeated proverb, Good 
 wine needs no Bush." {Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus ; 
 in Italian, Al huon vino non hisogna frasca ; in French, a ban 
 vin point d'enseigne) Ivy was the plant commonly used : "The 
 Tavern Ivy clings about my money and kills it," says the sottish 
 slave in Massinger's " Virgin Martyr," (a. iii. s. 3.) It may have 
 been adopted as the plant sacred to Bacchus and the Bacchantes, 
 or perhaps simply because it is a hardy plant, and long continues 
 green. As late as the reign of King James I. many inns used it 
 as their only sign. Taylor, the water poet, in his perambulation 
 of ten shires around London, notes various places where there is 
 " a taverne with a bush only;" in other parts he mentions " the 
 signe of the Bush." Even at the present day "the Bush'* is a 
 very general sign for inn and public-house, whilst sometimes it 
 assumes the name of the Ivy Bush, or the Ivy Green, (two in 
 Birmingham.) In Gloucester, Warwick, and other counties, where 
 at certain fairs the ordinary booth people and tradesmen enjoy 
 the privilege of selling liquors without a licence, they hang out 
 bunches of ivy, flowers, or boughs of trees, to indicate this sale. 
 As far away as the western States of North America, at the build- 
 ing of a new village, or station, it is no uncommon thing to see a 
 bunch of hay, or a green bough, hung from above the " grocery," 
 or bar-room door, until such time as a superior decoration can be 
 provided. The bunch being fixed to a long staff was also called 
 the Alepole ; thus among the processions of odd characters that 
 came to purchase ale at the Tunnyng of Elinour Bummyng ; — 
 
234 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 ** Another brought her bedes 
 Of jet or of coale, 1 
 To offer to the A lepole" • ' 
 
 How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to 
 enlarge and encroach upon the public way, has been shown in o\u 
 Introduction, pp. 16, 17. The Bunch gradually became a garland 
 of flowers of considerable proportions, whence Chaucer, describing 
 the Sompnour, says : — 
 
 " A garlond hadde he sette -apon his hede 
 As gret as it were for an alestake." 
 
 Afterwards it became a still more elegant object, as exemplified 
 by the Nagshead in Cheapside, in the print of the entry of Marie 
 de Medici ; finally it appeared as a crown of green leaves, with a 
 little Bacchus, bestriding a tun dangling from it. Thus the sign 
 was used simultaneously with the bush. 
 
 " If these houses [ale-houses] have a boxe-bush, or an old post, it is 
 enough to show their profession. But if they be graced with a signe com- 
 pleat, it's a signe of a good custome." * 
 
 In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described : s 
 — " A flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe ! 
 doore, but especially a conceited signe and an eminent hush.^^ 
 " Tavernes are quickly set up, it is but hanging out a bush at a 
 nobleman's or an alderman's gate, and 'tis made instantly." — Shir- 
 ley's Masque of the Triumph of Peace, In a woodcut from the 
 " Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles,'' introduced in Wright's ^' Domestic ; 
 Manners," the Bush is suspended from a square board, on which 
 the sign was painted ; for in France as well as in England, sign- - 
 board and bush went together : — 
 " La taverne levee 
 
 L'enseigne et le houchon. 
 
 La dame bien peignee 
 
 Les cheveux en bouchon." + 
 — Chanson nouvelle des Tavernes et Tavernieres, Fleur des Chansons Now 
 velles, Lyon, 1586. 
 
 Whilst an English host in " Good News and Bad News," says : — 
 " I rather will take down my bush and sign than live by means 
 of riotous expense." Gradually, as signs became more costly, the 
 bunch was entirely neglected and the sign alone remained. 
 
 * " The Country Carbonadoed," by D. Lupton, 1632. Voce " Alehouse." 
 
 f " The tavern opened 
 
 With signboard and bush ; 
 The landlady's hair neatly dressed. 
 Tied up in a knot" 
 
FLO WEBS, TUBES, HERBS, ETC. 235 
 
 The Hand and Flower is a sign very frequently adopted by 
 alehouses in the vicinity of nursery grounds :— thus, there is one 
 in the High Street, Kensington, and one in the Kmg s Koad, a 
 little past Cremorne, though there the nursery ground has very 
 recently been built over. i 4.- 1 
 
 The EosE, besides being the queen of flowers, and the national 
 emblem, had yet another prestige which alone would have been 
 sufficient to make it a favourite sign in the middle ages ; this was 
 its religious import. On the monumental brass of Abbot Kirton, 
 formerly in Westminster Abbey, there was a crowned rose with 
 IM^. in its heart, and round it the words ^ 
 
 SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORUM, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM. 
 
 And in Caxton's Psalter, above a woodcut representing an angel 
 
 holding a shield with a rose on it, occur the words :— 
 
 **Per te rosa toluntur vitia, 
 Per te datur mestis leticia."t 
 
 It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some 
 allusion to the Eose of Jericho, or to the Christmas rose. 
 
 Three centuries ago roses were still very scarce, as we learn 
 from an original MS. of the time of Henry YIIL, and signed by 
 him, preserved at the Eemembrance Office, m which it says that 
 a red rose cost two shillings ; hence, roses were often amongst the 
 terms of a tenure. Sir Christopher Hatton, the handsome Lord 
 Chancellor, with the " bushy beard and shoe strings green, who 
 danced himself into Queen Elizabeth's favour, paid the Bishop 01 
 Ely for the rent of Ely House for a term of twenty-one years m 
 1576, a red rose, ten loads of hay, and £10 a-year ; but that roses 
 then were plentiful, in that garden at all events, is also evident, 
 for the Bishop and his successors had a right to gather yearly 
 twenty bushels of roses out of it. Sir John Poulteney, 21 Ed- 
 ward III., gave and confirmed by charter to Humphrey de Bohun, 
 Earl of Hereford and Essex, his tenement of Cold Harborough, 
 and appurtenances, for one rose at Midsummer ; a still more whim- 
 sical tenure was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York, 
 for which yearly a payment was to be made of a red rose at Christ- 
 mas, and a snow ball at Midsummer.J Unless the flower of the 
 Viburnum or Gueldres Eose, sometimes called a Snowball, was 
 
 ♦ Be thou, rose, queen of flowers, the cure of my diseases, 
 t Through thee, rose, sins are talien away, 
 
 Through thee, gladness is given to the sorrowin?. 
 X Bloont's "riajjinenta Anticiuitatis, or Ancient Tenures,- p. 2^ 
 
236 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 meant, the payment will have been almost impossible in those 
 days when ice-cellars were unknown. 
 
 At the present day some publicans take liberties with the old 
 sign of the Eose ; in Macclesfield, and at Preston, for instance, there 
 is the Moss Eose; on Silkstone Common, in Yorkshire, the Bunch 
 OF EosES ; on the London Eoad, Preston, the Eosebud, &c. The 
 Three Eoses was formerly a common sign ; from the way they 
 are represented, they appear to have been heraldic roses, (see our 
 illustration of the ancient Lattice.) It was the sign of Jonathan 
 Edwin, bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1673. At the Eose Gar- 
 land, Eobert Coplande, the bookseller and printer, published in 
 1534 Dame Juliana Berner's " Boke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, and 
 Fyshyng.'' This shop was in " the Flete Strete." Eose garlands 
 or chaplets were not only worn in the middle ages as head-dresses, 
 but also awarded as archery prizes. 
 
 On euery syde a Rose garlonde 
 They sbott under the lyne, 
 
 Whoso faileth of the Rose garlonde, sayth Robyn, 
 His tacky 11 he shall tyne." 
 
 Mei^ Gestes of Robin Hoode. 
 
 Copland's Eose garland, doubtless, suggested the sign of another 
 bookseller, John Wayland, who also lived in Fleet Street about 
 the year 1540 ; his sign was the Blue Garland. 
 
 The colloquial phrase. Under the Eose, is sometimes used as 
 a sign, or written under the pictorial representation of the rose ; 
 it occurs on a trade's token of Cambridge,* and may be seen 011 
 various public-houses of the present day. Numerous suppositions 
 have been made concerning its origin, some holding that it arose 
 from this flower being the emblem of Harpocrates ; others from 
 a rose painted on the ceiling, any conversations held under which 
 were not to be divulged ; whilst Gregory Nazianzen seems to 
 imply that the rose, from its close bud, had been made the 
 emblem of silence. 
 
 Utque latet rosa verna suo putamine clausa, 
 Sic OS vincla ferat, validis arcietur habenis, 
 Indicatque suis prolixa silentia labris."f 
 
 At Lullingstone Castle, in Kent, the residence of Sir Percival 
 Dyke, Bart., there is, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, 
 
 * See Boynes' Tokens issued in the seventeenth century in England, Wales, and 
 Ireland. 
 
 t Like the rose in spring, hidden in its bud, so must the mouth be closed and restrained 
 with strong reins, enforcing silence to the locjuacious rps. 
 
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC. 237 
 
 a representation of a rose nearly two feet in diameter, surrounded 
 with the following inscription : — 
 
 " Kentish true blue 
 
 Take this as a token, 
 That what is said here 
 
 Under the Kose is spoken." 
 
 The Dutch have a similar phrase. In an old Book of Inscrip- 
 tions of the seventeenth century is a device written round a rose 
 painted on the ceiling : — 
 
 " Al wat hier onder de Rocs geschied, 
 Laat dat aldaar en meld het niet." * 
 
 There is one sign of the Eose, the origin of which it is difficult 
 to ascertain, this is the Eose of Normandy, a public-house in 
 the High Street, Marylebone. It was built in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and is the oldest house in that parish. In 1659 it is de- 
 scribed as having 
 
 " Outside a square brick wall set with fruit trees, gravel walks 204 paces 
 long, 7 broad ; the circular wall 485 paces long, 6 broad ; the centre square, 
 a bowling green, 112 paces one way, 88 another — all, except the first, double 
 set with quickset hedges, full grown, and kept in excellent order, and in- 
 dented like town walls." f 
 
 The street having been raised, the entrance to the house is at pre- 
 sent some steps beneath the roadway. The original form of the 
 exterior has been preserved, and the staircases and balusters are 
 coeval with the building ; but the garden and large bowling-green 
 have dwindled into a miserable skittle-ground. 
 
 As a sign the Marygold, it is said, arose from a popular read- 
 ing of the sign of the Sun ; a very natural and plausible origin. 
 At the same time, it is just worth mentioning, that this flower 
 (originally called the Gold) seems to have been considered as an 
 emblem of Queen Mary; so, at least, it would appear from a 
 lengthy ballad of " the Marygolde," composed by her chaplain, 
 William Forrest, in which, amongst many other similar aUu- 
 fiions, the following words are found : — 
 
 She [the Queen] may be called Marygolde well, 
 Of Marie (chiefe) Christes mother deere, 
 
 That as in heaven she doth excell. 
 And golde on earth to have no peere. 
 
 So certainly she shineth cleere, 
 In grace and honour double fold, 
 
 • All that is done here, ander the Rose, 
 
 Leave it here and do not divulge it. 
 t Memoirs by Samuel Sainthill, 1659, GerU. Mag.., Ixxxiii. p. £24. 
 
238 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The like was never erst seen heere, 
 Such as this flower the Marygolde.'^ 
 
 The flower was a favourite one in the middle ages, deriving the first 
 part of its name from the Virgin Mary. No mention of the actual 
 use of the sign, however, has been met with previous to 1638, 
 when it appears on the title-pages of Francis Eglisfield, a book- 
 seller in St PauFs Churchyard. His name still occurs at the 
 same house in 1673,* when it was also the sign of "Mr Cox, 
 milliner, over against St Clement's Church in the Strand." t 
 This must have been the same house in which Eichard Blanchard 
 and Francis Child, the goldsmiths, kept their " running cashes." | 
 It is the oldest banking firm in London. Francis Child, the 
 founder, was, in the reign of Charles I., apprenticed to a gold- 
 smith, William Wheeler, whose shop stood on the same spot now 
 occupied by the bank. He married his master's daughter, and 
 thus laid the foundation of his immense fortune. Many bills and 
 other papers relating to Nell Gwynn are still preserved by this 
 firm, as well as various documents concerning the sale of Dun- 
 kerque. Alderman Blackwell, who was ruined by the shutting up of 
 the Exchequer in -the reign of Charles IL, was at one time a part- 
 ner in this house. It was here that Dry den deposited the £50 
 offered for the discovery of the bullies of the " Eose-alley cudgel 
 ambuscade.''§ The old sign of the house is still preserved by 
 Lheir successors, together with various relics of the Devil Tavern, 
 on the site of which it was built. 
 
 Only a few other flowers occur, mostly modern introductions. 
 The Daisey, Bramley, Leeds; the Tulip, Springfield, Chelms- 
 ford ; the Lilies of the Valley, Ible, near Wirksworth ; the 
 Snowdeop, near Lewes 3 Woodbine Tavern, South Shields ; and 
 the Forest Blue Bell, Mansfield. The Blue Bell is very com- 
 mon, but, inter dociores lis est, whether it signifies the little blue 
 flower, or a bell painted blue. 
 
 As a sequel to the flowers, we may name the Myrtle tree, of 
 which there are two in Bristol, and the Eosemary Branch, in 
 Camberwell, and in many other places. Bosemary was formerly an 
 emblem of Bemembrance, in the same way as the Forget-me-not 
 is now; "There's Kosemary, that's for remembrance^^' says Ophelia, 
 (Hamlet, ac. iv., s. 5,) and in Winter's Tale, Perdita says : — 
 
 ♦ London Gazette, Nov. 6, 1673. + Ihid., Oct. 20, 1673. 
 
 ; See the " Little London Directory, 1677," recently reprinted. 
 § Domestic Intelligencer j Sept, 9, 1679. 
 
FLOWERS. TREES, HERBS, ETC. 
 
 *' For you, there's Rosemary and Rue, these keep 
 Seeming and savour all the winter long, 
 Grace and remembrance be to you both." 
 
 Winter's TaUy ac. iv., s. 4. 
 
 Hence Eosemary and gloves were of old presented to those who 
 followed the funeral of a friend. 
 
 Fruit trees are much more common, particularly the Apple- 
 tree and the Peae-tree, which (owing to the favourite drinks of 
 cider and perry) are next to the Rose ; and the Oak, the most 
 frequent among vegetable signs. The Apple-tree, near Coldbatli 
 Fields prison, w^as one of the numerous public-houses which 
 Topham the strong man kept in 1745. At the Apple-tree 
 Tavern, in Charles Street, Covent Garden, four of the leading 
 London Free Masons' lodges, considering themselves neglected by 
 Sir Christopher Wren in 1716, met and chose a grandmaster, pro 
 tem.^ until they should be able to place a noble brother at the head, 
 which they did the year following, electing the Duke of Montague. 
 Sir Christopher had been chosen in 1698. The three lodges that 
 joined with the Apple-tree Lodge used to meet respectively at the 
 Goose and Gridiron, St Paul's Churchyard ; the Crown, Par- 
 ker's Lane ; and at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, West- 
 minster. The Hand and Apple was the sign, in 1782, of a shop 
 in Thames Street, where ^' syder, Barcelona, cherry brandy, to- 
 bacco," &c., were sold. It represented a hand holding an apple, 
 and was chosen on account of the cider.* To this beverage other 
 signs owe their origin : for instance, the Red-streak Tree, from the 
 apple of which the best cider is made. Tickets used formerly to 
 be in the windows of houses where cider was sold, with the words, 
 " Bright Red-streak Cyder sold here," illustrated with three merry 
 companions in cocked hats, sitting under an apple-tree drinking 
 cider, on the other side a pile of barrels, from which the landlord 
 is drawing the liquor. In Maylordsham, Hereford, this sign is 
 rendered as the " Red-streaked Tree there was a Red-streaked 
 Tree Inn in that same town in 1775.t The Apple-tree and 
 Mitre is an old painted sign, a great deal the worse for London 
 smoke, in Cursitor Street. It represents an apple-tree abundantly 
 loaded with fruit, standing iii a landscape, with some figures ; 
 above it a gilt mitre. It is evidently a combination of two signs. 
 
 The Pear-tree is as common as the Apple-tree. The Iron 
 Pear-tree at Appleshaw, Andover, Hants, and at Redenham in 
 
 * Banks's Bills in the British Museum. 
 
 t Eertford Journal, January 7, 1775, 
 
240 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the same county, may have been derived from some noted pear- 
 tree in that neighbourhood, whose hollow and broken stem waa 
 secured with plates or bands of iron. Very general, also, is the 
 Cherry-tree. It was the sign of a once famous resort in Bowl- 
 ing-green Lane, Clerkenwell, and was adopted on account of the 
 quantities of cherry-trees which grew upon its grounds, even as 
 late as thirty or forty years ago. In our younger days, this house 
 was the resort of the fast men of Clerkenwell ; its bowling-green 
 gave the name to the alley in which the house stood. Down the 
 river, at Eotherhithe, was the Cherry-garden, a famous place 
 of entertainment in the reign of the Merry Monarch. Pepys 
 went to it on June 15, 1664, and, with his usual pleasant flow 
 of animal spirits, " came home by water, singing merrily." 
 
 " Over against the parish church, [St Olave's, Southwark,] on the south 
 fcide of the street, was some time one great house, builded of stone, with 
 arched gates, which pertained to the Prior of Lewis, in Sussex, and was his 
 lodging when he came to London ; it is now a common hostelry for travel- 
 lers, and hath to sign the Walnut-tree." * 
 
 The Walnut-tree was also the sign of a tavern at the south 
 dde of St Paul's Churchyard, over against the New Vault, in 
 which place a concert is advertised in July 1718, which, from the 
 high price of the admission tickets — 5s. each — must have been 
 something out of the common.t The Walnut-tree was frequently 
 adopted by cabinetmakers, and is at the present day a not un- 
 common alehouse sign. 
 
 The Mulberry-tree was introduced at an early period, but does 
 not seem to have been used as a sign until modern times. James I., 
 in 1609, caused several shiploads of mulberry trees to be imported 
 from abroad to encourage the home manufacture of silk : these 
 were planted in a part of St James's Park ; but the climate being 
 too cold for the silk worms, it was changed into a pleasure garden, 
 where even the serious Evelyn would occasionally relax. 10th 
 May 1654 :— 
 
 My Lady Gerard treated us at the Mulberry Gardens, now ye only 
 place of refreshment about ye towne for persons of ye best quality to be 
 exceedingly cheated at ; Cromwell and his partizans having shut up and 
 seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been ye usual rendezvous for 
 ye ladys and gallants at this season." 
 
 Here Dryden went to eat mulberry tarts, and here Pepys occa- 
 sionally dined, as 5th April 1669, when he indulged in what he 
 calls an " olio," evidently an olla podrida, since it was prepared 
 
 « Stow's Survey, p. 340. t Daily Courant, July 1, 1718. 
 
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC, 
 
 241 
 
 by a Spanish cook ; and tlie dish was so " noble," and such a 
 success, that he and his friends left the rest of their dinners un- 
 touched ; and after a ride in a coach and a walk for digestion, 
 they took supper " upon what was left at noon, and very good/^ 
 
 Orange trees were one of the ornaments of St James Park in 
 the reign of Charles 11. ; and at that period and long after, were 
 mostly used as signboards of the seed-shops, and by Italian mer- 
 chants. The Oeange-thee and Two Jars was the sign of a 
 shop of the latter description in the Haymarket in 1753.* No 
 doubt, the orange tree must have obtained some popularity in the 
 reign of William III., as it is the emblem of the Orange family. 
 The orange tree is said to be originally a Chinese plant, (whence 
 they were formerly called China oranges.) They were unknown 
 to the ancients, and introduced by the Moors into Sicily in 
 the twelfth century. France possessed them in the fourteenth 
 century ; and probably much about the same period they were 
 brought to England, for we find " pome d'orring " mentioned as 
 one of the items at the coronation dinner of Henry IV. in 1399, 
 where they occur in the third course, along wdth quincys en com- 
 fyte doiicettys, and other items of a modern dessert, t But a still 
 earlier instance is mentioned in the " Book of Days," (vol. ii 
 p. 694,) viz., in 1290, when a large ship from Spain arrived at 
 Portsmouth laden with spices. On this occasion. Queen Eleanor 
 of Castile, anxious to taste again the luscious fruit that reminded 
 her of her home in sunny Spain and the days of her girlhood, 
 bought out of the cargo " a frail of figs, of raisins, and of grapes, 
 a bale of dates, 230 pomegranates, lo citrons, and 7 oranges." 
 This probably is the oldest mention of the orange being brought 
 to England. The tree is said to have been introduced into this 
 country by a member of the Carew family. Oranges are named 
 amongst the articles of diet consumed by the Lords of the Star 
 Chamber in lo09, when their price is quoted one day at iijd., 
 and another at ijd., whilst the charge for strawberries w^as vijd., 
 and on another day iiijd. % Perhaps, however, they were only used 
 
 * Banks's Bills. t Harl. MSS., 279, p. 47, a cookery book of that period. 
 
 X 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. xiiijd. xd. 
 
 k^rne of moton; maribones and beef; powdered beef; ij capons; ij geese ; v conyes ; 
 
 iiijd. xviijd. vd. xijd. vjd. xd. 
 
 j leg moton ; vj places ; vj pegions ; ij doz. larkes ; salt and sause ; butter and eggs, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 Q 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 as hors (Tceuvres, for Eandle Holme, in his instructions how to ar- 
 range a dinner, (in that omnium gatherum, " Academy of Armory,"} 
 mentions oranges and lemons as the first item of the second course. 
 At all events, they were abundant enough in 1559, for on May 
 day of that year the revellers " at the queen's plasse at West- 
 mynster shott and threw eges and orengs on a-gaynst a-nodur."'* 
 In an "Account ef several Gardens near London," in 1691, t 
 Beddington Gardens are mentioned — then in the hands of the 
 Duke of Norfolk, but belonging to the Carew family — as having 
 in it the best oranges in England. The orange and lemon trees 
 grew in the ground, " and had done so near one hundred years, 
 the house in which they were being above 200 feet long. Each 
 of the trees was about 13 feet high, and generally full of fruit, 
 producing above 10,000 oranges a year.'' Sir William Temple's 
 oranges at Sheen are also praised. It is, indeed, a pity that this 
 plant has so much gone out of fashion ; for, besides being always 
 green, it bears fruit and flowers all the year round, both appearing 
 at the same time. The flowers have a delicious smell ; the can- 
 died petals impart a very fine flavour to tea, if a few of them are 
 infused with it ; whilst the fruit may be preserved in exactly the 
 same manner as other fruit. The sign of the orange-tree stiU 
 occurs at Highgate, Birmingham; the Lemon Tree at Beacon 
 Street, Lichfield. 
 
 The Olive Tree was a common Italian warehouse sign, but 
 was occasionally used by other shops. Amongst the tokens in 
 the Beaufoy Collection, there is the " Olfa Tree, Singon Strete," 
 an example of the liberties taken with pur language on the old 
 tokens, as this stands for the Olive Tree in St John's Street. The 
 usefulness of the olive tree made it in very early times a symbol 
 of peace. In 1503 it was the sign of Henry Estienne, a book- 
 seller and printer at the end of the Rue de St Jean Beauvais, 
 otherwise Clos Bruneau, in Paris. This firm, for several genera- 
 tions, continued the leading publishers and printers in Paris. 
 Sauval, who wrote in 1650, says that in his time the olive tree, 
 carved in stone, was still to be seen in the front of the house. 
 Here Francis I., in 1539, visited Robert Estienne, grandson of 
 the founder of the firm, in his workshops ; and to give him a 
 proof of his favour, conferred upon him the title of Printer to 
 the King for Latin and Hebrew ; and presented him with those 
 
 ♦ Machyn's Diary. 
 
 ♦ ArchiBolojia, voL xii. 
 
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC. 
 
 243 
 
 beautiful letters which. Estienne proudly mentions on his title- 
 j3ages : " Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi regii, typis 
 regiisr 
 
 The YiNE, or the Bunch of Grapes, is a very natural sign at a 
 place where wine is sold. The last particularly was almost inse- 
 parable from every tavern, and was often combined with other 
 objects — 
 
 Without there hangs a noble sign. 
 Where golden grapes in image shine ; 
 To crown the bush, a little Panch- 
 Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch, 
 Sits loftily enthron'd upon 
 What 's called (in miniature) a Tun." 
 
 Compleat Vintner: London, 1720, p. 86. 
 
 The Bunch of Carrots, at Hampton Bishop, Hereford, is 
 probably meant as a joke upon the Bunch of Grapes. Bagford, 
 in a letter to his brother antiquary, Leland, ^ says : — 
 
 " I have often thought, and am now fully perswaded, that the planting 
 of vines in the adjacent parts about this city, was first of all begun by the 
 Romans, an industrious people, and famous for their skill in agriculture 
 and gardening, as may appear from their rei agrarice scriptores, as well aa 
 from Pliny and other authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, an- 
 other in Hatton Garden, {which at this time is called Vine Street,) and a 
 third in St Giles-in-the-Fields. f Many places in the country bear the 
 name of the Vineyard to this day, especially in the ancient monasteries, as 
 Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c., which were left as such by the Romans." 
 
 In Bede's time vineyards were abundant ; and still later, tithes 
 on wine were common in Gloucester, Kent, Surrey, and the 
 adjacent counties. Winchester was famous for its vineyards in 
 olden times, for Kobert of Gloucester, in summing up the various 
 commodities of the English counties, says : — 
 
 " And London ships most, and luine at Winchester." 
 
 The Isle of Ely was called Isle des Vignes, and the tithe on 
 the vines yielded as much as three or four tuns of wine to the 
 bishop. Even in Richard II.'s time, the Little Park at Windsor 
 was used as a vineyard for the home consumption ; and the vale 
 of Gloucester, according to William of Malmesbury, produced, in 
 
 * Prefixed to Collectanea, 1770, p. ixxv. ; there is also a paper on Vines in England in 
 Archaeologia, i. p. 321; and Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua, vol. vi., p. 78, et sej 
 may be consulted with advantage upon this subject. 
 
 t Curiously enough, until about 1820, a public-house, the sign of the Vine, in Dobie 
 Street, St Giles, occupied the verv site assigned to this vineyard in Domesday Book, 
 
 A.D 1070. J J 
 
244 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the twelfth century, as good a wine as many of the provinces of 
 France ; this county, in fact, produced the best wine : — 
 
 *' There is no province in England hath so many or such good vineyards 
 as this county, [Grloucester,] either for fertility or sweetness of the grape; 
 the wine whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not much inferior 
 to French in sweetness." * 
 
 From the household expenses of Eichard de Swinfield, Bishop 
 of Hereford, (1289-1290,) it appears that the white wine was at 
 that period chiefly home-grown, whilst the greater proportion of 
 red wine was imported from abroad. Even as late as the last 
 century wine was made in England : Faulkner t quotes the fol- 
 lowing memorandum from the MS. notes of Peter Collinson : — 
 
 " October 1 8, 1765. — I went to see Mr Roger's vineyards at Parson's Green 
 [at Fulham] all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe ; I 
 did not see a green, half -ripe grape in all this quantity. He does not expect 
 to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The branches and fruit are 
 remarkably large, and the wine very strong." 
 
 Grosley % mentions a vineyard at Cobham, belonging to a Mr 
 Hamilton, of about half an acre, planted with Burgundian vines; 
 but the wine it produced will cause nobody to regret that the 
 culture has been abandoned, for " it was a liquor of a darkish 
 gray color ; to the palate it was like verjuice and vinegar blended 
 together by a bad taste of the soil." This description, enough to 
 set the teeth on edge, is most likely true, and gives us the reason 
 why English wine came to be abandoned. 
 
 As the vine was set up as a sign in honour of wine, so the Hop- 
 POLE, or the Hop and Barleycorn, the Barley Mow, the Bar- 
 ley Stack, the Malt and Hops, and the Hopbine, are very 
 general tributes of honour rendered to beer. In many ale-houses 
 a bunch of hops may be seen suspended in some conspicuous 
 place. 
 
 The Pine-apple, in the end of the last and the beginning of 
 this century, was generally the emblem adopted by confectioners, 
 though not exclusively, for it was the sign of an eating-house in 
 New Street, Strand, at which Dr Johnson, on his first coming to 
 town, used to dine. 
 
 I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine- 
 apple in New Street, just by. § Several of them had travelled; they expected 
 
 * Hollinshed's Description of Britain, p. 3. 
 
 ■r Faulkner, Antiquities of Kensington. % Grosley, vol. i., p. 83. 
 
 <f He lived then in Exeter Street, at a stay-maker's. Boswell's Johnson : London, 
 181 'J, p. 4)7. 
 
FLO WEBS, ThEE3, HERBS, ETC. 
 
 to meet every day, but did not know one another's names. It used to cost 
 the rest a shillhig, for they drank wine ; but I had a cut of meat for six- 
 pence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny ; so that I was 
 quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter 
 nothing." 
 
 The pine-apple was first known at tlie discovery of America, and 
 was preserved in sugar as early as 1556. The first pine-apple was 
 brought from Santa Cruz to the West Indies, thence to the East 
 Indies and China. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing in 
 October 1716, informs her sister that she had been at a supper of 
 the King of Hanover, " where there were," says she, " what I 
 thought worth all the rest, two ripe ananas, which, to my taste, 
 are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the 
 growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came 
 there, but by enchantment." Upon inquiry she learned that they 
 had been forced in stoves or hot-houses, and is surprised we 
 do not practise in England so useful an invention." It was not 
 till the end of the last century that they were introduced into 
 English gardens, having been brought over from hot-houses in 
 Holland ; and from that time seems to date their introduction on 
 the signboard. It is still in general use with public-houses. 
 
 Of the Fig Tree there are several examples among the London 
 trades tokens, some of them, no doubt, grocers' signs, but other 
 trades may have adopted it, either in allusion to the text of every 
 man " sitting under his own fig-tree," or because the fig-tree was a 
 symbol of quiet unassuming industry ; as such, at least, Came- 
 rarius represents it : — 
 
 " Verno tempore ficus arbor speciosis floribus aut fructuum prsecocium 
 abundantia minime sese ostentat, nullamque inanem hominibus de se spem 
 injicit : in autumno autem fructus suaviss. ac quidem in illis reconditos 
 quasi flores quosdam proferre solet."* 
 
 The Almond Tree was the sign of John Webster in St Paul's 
 Churchyard, in 1663 ; and the Peach Tree occurs sometimes as 
 an ale-house sign, as, for instance, in Nottingham. Neither of 
 these signs, however, are of frequent occurrence. 
 
 Not only fruit-trees but various forest-trees are constantly met 
 with on the signboard : thus the Green Tree, which is very com- 
 mon, originally had allusion to the foresters of the " merry green- 
 wood," or was suggested by some large evergreen, or tree shelter- 
 
 * " In spring-time the fig-tree does not make any show of beautiful flowers or precocious 
 fruit to deceive manldnd with idle hope ; but in autumn it generally produces exceed- 
 ingly sweet fruit, with flowers as it were contained within i\\Qm:'—JoadumusCamerarius. 
 
 Symholorum Centuria Quatuor^' 1697, Ceutur. 1., p. 18. 
 
246 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 ing, or standing near the inn ; of this green tree the Green Seed- 
 ling in Chester is evidently a sprout. Again, in Sheffield there 
 are two signs of the Burnt Tree, which name possibly originated 
 from some tree having been damaged in a fire, and becoming a 
 well-known landmark. The Oak, the vigorous emblem of our 
 mighty state, is deservedly much used for a sign ; sometimes it is 
 called the British Oak. At Kilpeck, in Herefordshire, the fol- 
 lowing rhyme accompanies it : — 
 
 " I am an oak and not a yew, 
 So drink a cup with good John Pugh.** 
 
 Druidical recollections are called up by the Oak and Ivy, at Bil- 
 ston, Stafford ; Hearts of Oak is the material out of which, 
 according to the song, our ships and seamen are constructed, and 
 therefore well deserves the favourite place it occupies amongst 
 the signboards of the present day ; whilst the- Acorn, the fruit of 
 the British oak, is nearly as common as the other oak signs. 
 
 !N"ext to the oak the Elm seems to have had most followers. 
 From the trades tokens it appears that the Three Elms was the 
 sign of Edward Boswell in Chandos Street, in 1667 ; and also of 
 Isaac Elliotson, St John Street, ClerkenwelL Besides these there 
 was, about the same date, the One Elm, and the Elm. At pre- 
 sent we have the Nine Elms, and the Queen's Elm, Brompton, 
 which is mentioned under the name of the Queen's Tree, in the 
 parish books of 1586. This tree is said to derive its name from 
 the fact of Queen Elizabeth, when on a visit to Lord Burleigh, 
 being caught in a shower of rain, and taking shelter under the 
 branches of an elm-tree, then growing on this spot. The Seven 
 Sisters, the sign of two public-houses in Tottenham, were seven 
 elm-trees, planted in a circular form, with a walnut tree in the 
 middle ; they were upwards of 500 years old, and the local tra- 
 dition said that a martyr had been burnt on that spot. They 
 stood formerly at the entrance from the high road at Page Green, 
 Tottenham. Within the last twenty years they have been removed. 
 The Chestnut, the Sycamore, the Beech Tree, the Fir Tree, the 
 Birch Tree, and the Ash Tree, all occur in various places where 
 ale-houses are built in the shadow of such trees. The Thorn 
 Tree is peculiar to Derbyshire. The Buckthorn Tree was, in 
 1775, the sign of "William Blackwell in Covent Garden, or at 
 his garden in South Lambeth.'' He had chosen this sign because 
 he sold, amongst other herbs, '^huckthorn and elder-berries, besides 
 leeches and vipers^ What the use of the first was is well known ; 
 
FLO WEBS, TUBUS, HERBS, ETC. 
 
 247 
 
 as for the vipers, they were eaten in broth and soups, before 
 Madame Rachel's enamels were employed, by ladies who wished to 
 continue young and beautiful for ever." The Crab Teee, our 
 indigenous apple-tree, is also seen in a great many places. A 
 house in Fulham, with that name, is well known to the oarsmen 
 on the Thames. It derives its denomination from a large crab- 
 tree growing near the public-house, which gave its name to the 
 whole village. The Willow Teee is very rare ; in the seven- 
 teenth century it was the sign of a shop in the Old Exchange, 
 as appears from a trades token, but what business was carried on 
 under this gloomy sign does not appear. Fuller, in his Worthies, 
 {voce Cambridgeshire,) says of willows : — 
 
 A sad tree whereof such who have lost their love make them mourning 
 garlands ; and we know that exiles hung their harps upon such doleful 
 supporters ; the twiggs hereoff are physick to drive out the folly of children. 
 Let me add that if green ash may burn before a queen, withered willows 
 may be allowed to burn before a lady." 
 
 As an attribute of forsaken love it is of constant occurrence in 
 old plays : — 
 
 " SyllL If you forsake me, 
 Send me word, that I piay provide a willow garland 
 To wear when I drown myself." 
 
 Massinger's Maid of Honour, a. iv. s. 5, 1631. 
 
 And in the same play Sylli, who thinks himself the preferred 
 lover, says to his rival : — 
 
 " You may cry willow, willow ! " — Ihid., a. v. s. 1. 
 
 Shakespeare uses the same emblem frequently, particularly in 
 Desdemona's famous willow song. There is a quaint ballad which 
 an old Northumberland woman used to sing, but which we have 
 never seen in print : it begins as follows : — 
 
 " Young men are false, and they are so deceitful : 
 Young men are false, and they seldom will prove true ; 
 For wi' wrangling and jangling, their minds are always changing, 
 They 're always seeking for some pretty girl that 's new. 
 
 It 's all round my hat, I will wear a green willow, 
 It *s all round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day ; 
 If any one should ask you the reason why I wear it, 
 Oh ! tell them I have been slighted by my own true love.'* 
 
 Douce, in his "Illustrations to Shakespeare,^' says : — This tree might 
 have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in 
 Psalm cxxxvii. : " We hanged our harps upon the willows in tha 
 
248 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. ^ 
 
 midst thereof or else from a coincidence between the weeping 
 willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned : the 
 Agnus castus or vitex was supposed by the ancients to promote 
 chastity, " and the willow being of a much like nature," says an 
 old writer, "it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of hia 
 love must wear a willow garland.'* — Swans Speculum Mundi, 
 ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635. 
 
 The frequency of the sign of the Yew Tree is not to be attri- 
 buted to its association with the churchyard, but to its being the 
 wood from which 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 Teee is a sign generally put up in the neighbour- 
 hood of cotton factories, as at Manchester. The Palm Tree ia 
 one of the oldest symbols known : it was used as such by the 
 Assyrians, the Greeks, the Eomans, 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 natur- 
 alium Palmse attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hsec arbor non facile 
 crescat, nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nec non humore aliquo conveni- 
 ente irrigetur."* 
 
 The Cocoa Tree was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses 
 when that beverage was newly imported and very fashion- 
 able. 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'.'' t Deep play was the order of the day 
 
 * " 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 neighbouiing stream.'* 
 —J". Camerarius, Centuria," i., 1697. 
 
 f Defoe's Journey through England, p. 168. 
 
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, EIC. 
 
 249 
 
 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, tho 
 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 Chigweil, 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 j^outh, ' my estate will sell for the debt.' * No,' said 0., * I will win 
 ten thousand, you shall throw for the odd ninety.' They did, and Harvey 
 won." * 
 
 It afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. 
 This gambling seems to have been inseparable from the chocolate- 
 houses. Eoger 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 col- 
 leges of its professors, as well as his school of discipline." f 
 
 Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan 
 Franz. Kauch 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 : — 
 
 " BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen's Head Alley, at a French- 
 _L man's house, is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be 
 sold, where you may have it ready at anytime, and also unmade, at reason- 
 able rates." t 
 
 It is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate 
 on its first introduction. MJ^e. de Sevigne, 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 cen- 
 tury 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. Thh 
 
 * Horace Walpole's Letters to Mr Mann, February 6, 1780. 
 t As quoted in Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, ii. p. 326. 
 X Publick Advei'tiser, Tuesday, June 16-22, 1657. 
 
250 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Coffee House was then the popular tea and coffee-gardens of 
 the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the neighbour- 
 hood, 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, unit- 
 ing 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 Sun- 
 day-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."* This combination 
 with the hand does not seem to have any very distinct meaning, 
 and apparently arose simply from the manner of representing ob- 
 jects 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 Haetichoake, 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.' " t 
 
 * Hatton's New View of London, 1708, p. 36. t Bagford Bills. 
 
FLO WEES, TREES, HERBS, ETC. 
 
 Probably tbe 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 YIII., 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 com- 
 monly sold for a crowne a piece." * 
 
 The Cabbage is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liver- 
 pool, 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 hiU, was known by the name of Caterpillar Hail, 
 a name clearly selected in compliment to Cabbage Hall, inti- 
 mating 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.t The Three Eadishes was, in the seven- 
 teenth 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, 
 Alseen groot hovenier 
 Die ieder een moet pryzen. 
 Dit 's in de drie Radyzen.^J 
 
 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 mee te spyzen." § 
 
 The Wheatsheaf is an extremely common inn, public-house, 
 and baker s sign ; it is a charge in the arms of these three corpora- 
 
 * Evelyn's Miscellaneous Writings, p. 735. f Gent. Mag., March 1842. 
 
 X *' Christ is represented here 
 
 Alter his death and resurrection, 
 As a great gardener 
 Whom every body must praise. 
 This is at the Three Radishes.'* 
 I " 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, 
 16518. "I have heard old Adam was an honest man and a good gardener, loved lettuce 
 well, salads and cabbage reasonably well, yet no tobacco." 
 
252 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 tions, besides that of tlie 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 gate- 
 way entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carv- 
 ings 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 To- 
 bacco 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," men- 
 tions 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 " Cin- 
 thia's Revels," a play by Ben Jonson ; one of the interlocutors 
 says, — " I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BIBLICAL AND EELIGIOUS SIGNS. 
 
 The earlier signs were frequently representations of tlie 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 Eeformation the 
 Bible amongst those classes, to whom till then it had been a 
 sealed book, became in great request, and was sold in large num- 
 bers. Then the booksellers set it up for their sign ; it became 
 the popular symbol of the trade, and at the present moment in- 
 stances 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 im- 
 possible that this may have been originally intended for a mani- 
 festation 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."* 
 
 One of the last Bible signs was about twenty years ago, at a 
 public-house in Shire Lane, Temple Bar. It was an old estab- 
 lished 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 sign- 
 board, 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 hlew, which steadfaste is and clenCy 
 She weraed colours of many a diverse grene." 
 
 * New Essays and Characters, by John Stephens the younger, of Lincoln's Inn, GenW 
 liOLdon, 1631, p. 221. 
 
254 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIONBOARDSf. 
 
 It also signified piety and sincerity. Eandle Holme* says — 
 
 " This colour, hlew, doth represent the sky on a clear, sun-shining day, 
 when all clouds are exiled. Job, speaking to the busy searchers of God'a 
 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 hleWj 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 inkbotlles to the favourite 
 three Bibles, as we see from an advertisement, giving the price of 
 playing cards in 1711 : — 
 HOLD by Henry Parson, Stationer at the Three Bibles and Three Ink«. 
 BOTTLES, near St Magnus* Church, on London Bridge, the best princi- 
 pal 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." t 
 
 Combinations of the Bible with other objects were very com- 
 mon, 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 con- 
 stantly 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 west- 
 ward. 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 
 
 * Handle Holme, " Academy of Armour and Blazon," p. 52. 
 1 Postman, Feb. 1-3, 1711. 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 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 Puhlick Advertiser^ March 1, 1759 — 
 " rpO BE HAD at the Bible and Lamb, near Temple Bar, on the Strand 
 
 J[ 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. Various other 
 combinations occur, as the Bible and Key. Eowland 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 j 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 Yirgilianse. 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 predic- 
 tion 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 men- 
 tions another method by the Psalms, t 
 
 * ''Notandum quoq. eius (pavonis) carnem quod D. Augustinus quoq., lib. xxi. de 
 civitate Dei, cap. iii., et Isidorus, lib. xii., affirmant non putrescere." — Camerarius, Cen^ 
 tur., iii. 20, 1697. How to make this agree with Skelton's idea it is not very easy tf^ 
 explain — 
 
 Then sayd the Pecocke, 
 
 All ye well wot, 
 I sing not musycal, 
 For my breast is decay'd."— ^Mion's Armony of Birds. 
 t See Posbrooke's Encyclopajdia of Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 673. 
 
256 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 At tlie present day " Bible and Key " divinations are often at- 
 tempted 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 
 
 ND RUTH said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from fol* 
 
 Xjl lowing 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 notV If the question be answered in the 
 
 afiirmative 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, how^ever, 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 Eichard 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 likeli- 
 hood, a sun-dial on the front w^all 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 re- 
 presented 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 Bellj, which, in conjunction with the Dragon, 
 makes a very handsome picture in several of our streets." Al- 
 
 i. 16 : 
 
I.l.l.l .1 .1 
 
 1 .1. r. r 
 
 1=1 
 
 1 .1 .1 I ' I 
 
 HOLE TN THE WALL. 
 (" Guide for Malt- Worms." Circa 1720. ) 
 
 PLATE XI. 
 
 FLYING HORSE. 
 ("Guide for Malt- Worms." Circa 1720.) 
 
BIBLICAL AND EELIGIOUS. 
 
 tliough at the first glance this sign seems taken from the doubtful 
 books of the Old Testament, still there is nothing in the Apocry- 
 phal 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,* 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. 
 
 A very common sign of old, as well as at present, is the Adam 
 AND Eve. Our first parents w^ere constant dramatis personce in 
 the mediaeval mysteries and pageants, on which occasions, with 
 the naJivete of those times. Eve used to come on the stage exactly 
 in the same costume as she appeared to Adam before the Fall.t 
 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, 
 x\. both for light to sinners and delight to saints. By Tho. Sympson, 
 M.A., Preacher of the Word at London. Sold by Edvv. Thomas at the -4 c^am 
 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 mag 
 nificent, 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, 
 
 * For particulars of Topham, the Stronpr Man, see under Historical Signs. 
 
 t 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 thi* particulai 
 subject. 
 
 R 
 
258 THE HI8T0R Y OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 when highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and low women, be- 
 ginning to take a fancy to it, the magistrates interfered. The 
 crgan was banished, and the gardens were dug up for the founda- 
 tion 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 " Nur- 
 sery : " — 
 
 From the Gymnasium at Tottenham Court 
 on Thursday next at Twelve oWock 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 (Economy 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 
 bliucL 
 
 by Thomas Smallwood, A.M., 
 Gymnasiast of St. Giles, 
 and 
 
 Thomas Dimmock, A.M., 
 Athleta of Southwarh, 
 (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 Pro- 
 fessor 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, Boyal Ex- 
 change, 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 sar- 
 castic reflection on the mixed crowd that resort to the house, — not 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 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 extra- 
 vagances." 
 
 The Deluge was one of the standard subjects of mediaeval dra- 
 matic 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 Annet 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, 
 Been in a prospect, sitting upon trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen 
 the sun rising in a most glorious manner : moreover, a multitude of angela 
 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 Eainbow 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 Eainbow, 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 
 
 * Diary of John Evelyn, Feb. 3, 1684. f Bagford Collection, Bib. HarL, 5931. 
 
26o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 tlie Rue des Pretres, Lille, France. A Dutcli 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. " * 
 
 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 : 
 ** A E,T thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and 
 XI drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle ? Jesus an- 
 swered 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 genera- 
 tion after generation drink, and after which they always thirst 
 again. ISTot unlikely the English use of this sign dates from the 
 Puritan period, t Not always, however, had the sign any direct 
 relation to the trade of the inmate of the house which it adorned ; 
 !is, 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.'^ % Even the Dutch shopkeeper, whose imagina- 
 tion was generally so fertile in finding a religious subject appro- 
 priate 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." § 
 
 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, 
 
 * " The wood is cut in order to be burned. 
 Therefore is this Abraham's sacrifice." 
 f Jacob's Inn is mentioned by Ratton, 1708, " on the east side of Red Cross Street 
 near the middle." 
 I " Amusements for the Meridian of London," 1706. 
 
 § " Moses was found in the water. 
 Whosoever purchases his bread here shall have yeast for nought, 
 Besides a curr.uit-loaf at Easter, and a spice-cake at Christmas time." 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 261 
 
 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 
 Louse had been long famous/'* 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 beei, 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 Beazen 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 pro- 
 bably been imported by the foreign printers, for it was a favourite 
 amongst the early French and German booksellers. At the pre- 
 sent day it is a public-house sign in Eichardson Street, Bermond- 
 sey. 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 
 ^he 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. ] 4,) 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." f 
 
 The idea was no doubt borrowed from the Biblia Pauperum. 
 The Balaam's Ass, again, was one of the dramatis personce 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. J 
 
 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. 
 
 ♦ » A step to Stirbitch Fair," 1703. f Randle Holme, B. ii., ch. xviii. 
 
 X Weekly Journal, August 4, 1722. 
 
262 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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 Rohhia ware medallion sign in 
 the Rue des Dragons, with the legend " le Fort Samson^'' repre- 
 senting the strong man tearing open the lion. To a sign of Sam- 
 son at Dordrecht, in the seventeenth century, the following satiri- 
 cal 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, 
 Geloof t geen vrouw dan of zy moet zyn zonder hoofd." * 
 
 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 Goliae," and other burlesque verses. He 
 was the leader of a jovial sect called Goliardois, of which Chaucer's 
 Miller was one. He was a jangier and a goliardeis." Such a 
 person might, therefore, have been a very appropriate tutelary 
 deity for an alehouse, t 
 
 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 
 
 * " 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 hia 
 death." 
 
 t See Bibliographia Britannica, voce Golias, and Wright's History of Caricature. 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 263 
 
 Harp in Limehouse; whilst in Paris, the Eue 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 North- 
 amptonshire used this inscription : 
 
 " Absalom, hadst thou worn a perriwig, thou hadst not been hanged.'* 
 
 Which a brother peruke-maker versified, under a sign represent • 
 ing 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 Haet 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 pant- 
 eth 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." * 
 
 A.nother one at Leyden had the following rhyme : — 
 " Gelyk een hart van jagen moe lust te drinken water rein, 
 Alyso verkoopt men hier tot versterking van de maag, toebak, bier en 
 Brandewyn." f 
 
 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 " Nugse Antiquae," 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 
 
 * " Like to the hart which comes to the water brook to refresh himself, 
 So you enter my house to quencn your thirst." 
 t The first six words are literally the beginnmg of the psalm in the Dutch version,— 
 JUike 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." 
 
264 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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 in- 
 genious explanation for the sign of the Bell Savage, as derived 
 from the Queen" of Saba, which though non e 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 cite, 
 
 On of the noblest in Christiante, 
 
 Hit hotith Sabba in langage, 
 
 Thence cam Sihely 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." * 
 Elisha's Raven, represented with a chop in his mouth, is the 
 sign of a butcher in the Borough, — a curious conceit, and cer> 
 tainly his own invention; at least we do not remember any 
 other instance of the sign. This tribute is certainly very disin- 
 terested 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 Vir- 
 gin Mary, in which shape it was still occasionally seen in the seven- 
 teenth 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 lUllingsgate 
 was a famous place in Ben Jonson^s time ; it is named in "Bar- 
 tholomew Fayre " as one of the houses where there had been 
 " Great sale and utterance of wine, 
 Besides beere and ale, and ipocras fine." 
 ♦ For the true origin of this sign, see under Miscellaneous Signs. 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOVS. 
 
 265 
 
 During tlie civil war there was a Salutation Tavern in Holbom, 
 in which the following ludicrous incident happened, — if we may 
 believe the Royalist papers : — 
 
 " A hotte combat lately happened at the Salutation Taverne in Hol- 
 burne, 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 yoa 
 see that one woman can beat two or three."* 
 
 At the end of the last century there was a Salutation Tavern 
 in Tavistock Eow, called also " Mr Bunch's," which was one of 
 the elegant haunts, patronised by " the first gentleman of Europe," 
 otherwise the Prince Eegent. 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 entertain- 
 ment generally concluded with thrashing the Charlies," wrench- 
 ing off knockers, breaking down signboards, and not unfrequently 
 with being taken to the roundhouse. 
 
 The Salutation in Newgate Street, some time called the Salu- 
 tation 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 1 9, 
 173|, issued by the two stewards, Edward Cave (of the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine,) and William Bowyer, the antiquary and 
 printer : — 
 
 " Saturday, January 17, 173f. 
 
 ''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.]" 
 
 Eichardson the novelist was one of the invites. 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 !) 
 
 A Royalist paper, entitled, The Man in the Moon discovering a wo Id of irickednew 
 under the Sun," July 4, 1049. 
 
266 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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 I 
 
 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 tlie 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 efi'usion, 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 ori- 
 ginally 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 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 267 
 
 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 iim-yard 
 having double galleries supported by columns and carved pilas- 
 ters, with caryatides and other ornaments. It is more than pro- 
 bable that it had often been used as a place for dramatic enter- 
 tainments at the period when inn-yards were customarily employed 
 for such purposes. Even so late as fifty years since it was cus- 
 tomary for travellers approaching London, to remain all night at 
 the Angel Inn, Islington, rather than venture after dark to pro- 
 secute their journey along ways which were almost equally dan- 
 gerous from their bad state, and their being so greatly infested 
 with thieves.""^ 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 : — 
 
 *' rpO BE SOLD, a Black Girl, the property of J. B , eleven years of age, 
 
 L who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks 
 French perfectly well ; is of excellent temper and willing disposition. In- 
 quire of W. Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement's Church, in the 
 ^tTMid^'—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 
 
 * Cromwell's History of Clerkenwell, p. 32. 
 
268 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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 sof- 
 fits 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 Eichard 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 follow- 
 ing 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 profes- 
 sion — used to play during Bartholomew Fair time. A playbill 
 of 1722 informs the public in large letters that — 
 
 " MiLLEK is not withPiNKETHMAN, 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 Egyal Shepherdess, with a very pleasant entertainment 
 between Old Hgb 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 VAnge^ Eue de la Huchette, ap- 
 pears to have been the best hotel in Paris in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. 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 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 269 
 
 seventeenth century, thus celebrates a tavern with this sign in 
 Paris, frequented by the wits of the period : — 
 Je n'ay pas vu vostre theatre 
 Qu'aussitot je ressors de Ik, 
 Pour un Ange que j'idolatre, 
 A cause du bon vin qu'il a." * 
 
 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 gold- 
 smith in Cranbourn Alley, Hogarth's master in the art of engrav- 
 ing 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 VAnge Gardien, the sign of Pierre 
 Witte, a bookseller in the Eue St Jacques, Paris, in the seven- 
 teenth 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, t so frequent on the 
 
 * *' As soon as I had seen your theatre I left it, to go to an Angel whom I adore on ac- 
 count of his good wine." 
 
 f Even in the most remote periods of history three was considered a mystic number, 
 and regarded witii reverence. The Assyrians had their triads. In Ancient E.trypt every 
 town or district had its own triad, which it worshipped, and which was a anion of cer- 
 tain 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 some- 
 thing 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 combin- 
 ations of three are equally frequent : they have several trimustis or ti inities ; 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 
 3x7 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 observal)le 
 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, laking 3 as a unit, 3X3 muses, 3x4 principal gods, (Dii Majores,) 3x4 labours 
 of Hercules, &c. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 signboard and in heraldry. That three angels were thought to 
 possess mysterious power, is evident from the following Devon- 
 shire 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 ob- 
 jects, 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.* 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 
 Eoyal 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 
 11th day of April 1738 at Mrs Eliz. Grimstead's y' Angel and Crown, 
 * London Gazette, Nov, 8 to 11, 1680. 
 
BIBLICAL AND BELIQI0U8. 
 
 271 
 
 in y« Upper Street, about y® hour of One ; Then and there w**^ Full 
 Dishes, Good AVine and Good Humour to improve and make lasting that 
 Harmony and Friendship which have so long reigned among us. 
 
 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 attor- 
 ney from the Temple, and Elisabeth Adams. They were hanged 
 at Tyburn, January 18, 1738. 
 
 The Angel and Gloves at first sight seems a whimsical com- 
 bination, 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 shoe- 
 maker, noticed in a former chapter. It is more difficult to find a 
 rational explanation for the Angel and Stilliards. The Steel- 
 yard, 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 weigh- 
 ing the tonnage of goods imported into London.* 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 advertise- 
 ment : — 
 
 *'T17ILLIAM DEYAL, at the Angel & Stilliards, in St Ann's Lane, near 
 Y V Aldersgate, London, maketh Castle (Castille), Marble, and white Sope 
 as good as any Marseilles Sope ; Tryed and Proved and sold at very Reason- 
 able Rates." t — 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 
 J[\_ years, teeth broke before, and several scars in both his cheeks and 
 
 forehead, having absented from his Master, whosoever secures him and 
 * Cunningham's Handbook to London, p. 470. 
 
 t Soap, wax, tallow, and similar articles were part of the merchandise in which the 
 Hanse merchants doalt. 
 
 N.B. The Dinner will be on the table 
 
 peremptorily at Two. 
 Pray pay the Bearer Five Shillings, 
 
 Waller Sebhon, 
 John Booth. 
 Bourchier Burr ell. 
 James Sehhon. 
 
 Stewards. 
 
272 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 gives notice to Benjamin Maynard, at tlie Angel and Still, at Deptford, 
 Bhall have a Guinea Keward and reasonable charges." — Weekly Journal, 
 October 18, 1718. 
 
 In this case the still was simply added to intimate the sale of 
 Rpirituous liquors. 
 
 The Angel and Sun, apparently a combination of two signs, 
 is named as a shop or tavern near Strandbridge, in 1663,* 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 impos- 
 sible 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 Eng- 
 land, as might be expected. Tallemant des Reaux 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 Hue de la 
 Seine, Paris, a qaack 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 ser- 
 vice, 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."t 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 VVorde. 
 
 * KinQdovi's Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1663. 
 t Stow's Survey of London. 
 
BIBLICAL AND BELIQIOUS. 
 
 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."^ 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 mediaeval 
 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 Eadcliff 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 oc- 
 casional 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 fre- 
 quent 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 circum- 
 stance commemorated by Dodd in the " Old Bailey Eegisters." 
 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 v/ithin 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, to- 
 
 * See a woodcut of an Amiens pilgrim's token in the Journal of Brit. Arch. Assoc., 
 vol. i., Oct. 1848 ; also a detailed accouct 0/ this yenerable relic in Coryatt's Crudities 
 fol. i., p. 17r 
 
 s 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 wards the Black Fryers, were drowned at S. Mary Loch * 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 SancU Pons est Michaelis in Urbe ; 
 Multae illic aedes ; notior una tamen ; 
 Hauc cano, quae Sacri Baptistae f route notata est 
 
 Hie respondebit Bibliopola tibi ; 
 Vis impressoris nomen quoque nosse ? Joannis 
 Carcain nomen ei est. Ne pete plura, Vale." + 
 
 It was an old signboard jocularity in France to represent St John 
 the Baptist by a monkey with cambric {batiste) ruffles and wrist- 
 bands, {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 seven- 
 teenth 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 outlast van Smarten." J 
 The Samaritan Woman (la Samaritaine) is the French version 
 of our Jacob's Well, and was a common sign in Paris ; every- 
 body 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 
 
 * Name of one of the arches of old London Bridge. 
 \ " In the^town of Paris there is a bridge named St Micliael, 
 
 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" 
 X <' Like wine, fine, 
 
 Driveth away care ; 
 
 So medicine cureth pain, 
 
 And delivers us from suITering." 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 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, Ptche 
 Miraculeuse,) which, in the early part of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, 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 book- 
 seller, George Josse, in the Rue St Jacques, who had the Crown 
 OF Thorns (la Gouronne 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 amus- 
 ing :— 
 
 " They report in Paris that the Thorny Crown, wherewith Christ waa 
 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 Yicenza in Italy, it was told me that in the monas- 
 tery of the Dominican Fryers of that Citie, this Crowne was kept, which 
 Saint Lewes, King of France, bestowed upon his brother Bartholomew, 
 Bishop of Yicenza, 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."* 
 
 Crosses of various colours were probably amongst the first 
 signs put up by the newly-converted Christians, (as soon as they 
 could eJffect this with impunity,) on account of the recommenda- 
 tion of the early fathers, and for their beneficial influence. Father 
 Lactantius, who lived in the fourth century, wTites — " As Christ, 
 whilst He lived amongst men, put the devils to flight by Hia 
 
 * Coryatt's Crudities, yoI. i., p. 41. 
 
276 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 words, and restored those to tlieir 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 j thus defended no evil will hurt you." 
 St Chrysostom says the same — " Wherefore let us with earnest- 
 ness 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, ]/ou engrave it on the porches of your houses,''' &c. Hence the 
 still prevalent custom in Koman 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, how- 
 ever, was put up again at the Restoration, and figures promi- 
 nently in Canaletti's well-known view of Charing Cross, in the 
 >Torthumberland Collection. The tavern was probably pulled 
 down at the formation of Trafalgar Square. 
 
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 277 
 
 At a point on the road between D unchurch 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 cus- 
 tomers 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 '11 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 con- 
 undrum 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, waa 
 nothing strange in a time when the people, though Protestants by 
 name, were still strongly imbued with Eoman Catholic ideas. 
 John Cawoode, also a printer and publisher of St Paul's Church- 
 yard in 1558, had a still more profane sign — viz., the Holy 
 Ghost. And this even continued till the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century, for in 1602 we find this identical sign used by an- 
 other 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.* 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 stay- 
 ing at the Latin convent there, which serves as an hotel, dine all 
 together in a kind of table-dliote 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 
 
 * From his colophon we see that the Trinity on his sign was represented by a triansrle 
 with a circle at each angle, respectively containing the words PATER, FILIUS, SPIRI- 
 TUS, and, between the circles, on each of the sides of the triangle, the words NON 
 JEST, a mystical way of representing the Trinity, very common in the middle ages. 
 
^yS THE B 2 STORY OF SIGNBOARD fl. 
 
 tliat country, and were tolerably acquainted witli 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 Geth- 
 somane, we had indulged in two tumblers of a pithy white wine, 
 quite strong enough to justify our resisting the pressing invita- 
 tions of the reverend butler to take a third glass ; but the jovial 
 monk was not to be beaten, and finally convinced us with the fol- 
 lowing 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 Palmer- 
 ston'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 Hamp- 
 stead 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 Stafford- 
 shire," (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 lioly oaTc, 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. 
 
CHArTER IX 
 
 SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 At the end of the last chapter we spoke of the profane applica- 
 tion of some of the most sacred things to signboard purposes. 
 In France this was still worse than in England. That amusing 
 gossip, Tallemant des Reaux, 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 Tete Dieu,) and notwithstanding 
 all the efforts of the cur6 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 Mon detour, 
 there is actually a cafe known as the Nom de Jesus. 
 
 Boursault, a clever writer of the time of Louis XIV., whose in- 
 dignant letter about the Royal Arms we have noticed in a former 
 chapter, addressed a letter to Bizoton, one of the police magis- 
 trates, 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 Trinite, (the Trinity,) V Image 
 Notre Dame, &c. ; but particularly one, representing Christ taken 
 prisoner, with the profane motto, Au juste prix" This con- 
 tains a blasphemous pun, — juste prix at once signifying a Jixed 
 price, and "just caught." The sign was set up at a little ordinary 
 in a lane between the Rue St Honore 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 cafes 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, 
 
28o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 A curious Frencli sign is mentioned by Coryatt, whicli he saw 
 at Amiens. I lay at tlie 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, Tng 
 (piXo^sv/ag (mti l7nXa]/Qdvs6ds, that is, Forget not your good enter- 
 tainment ; and this in Latine, Hospitibus hig tuta fides."* 
 
 Saints were formerly very common on signboards, and this 
 abuse also was wittily ridiculed by the pungent satire of Artus 
 Desire, a French poet of the fifteenth century : — 
 
 " En leur logis plein de vers et de teignes, 
 Oil est log? le grand diable d'enfer, 
 Mettent de Dieu et de saints les enseignes, 
 Leurs ditz logis oh n'y a que desroys, 
 Pendre font tons sur le pave du roy 
 De grands tableaux et enseignes dorees, 
 Pour des montres qu'ils ont fort bien de quoy, 
 Et qu'il y a de tres grasses por^es. 
 L'un pour enseigne aura la TrinitSf 
 L'autre Saint Jehan, et I'autre Saint Savin, 
 L'autre Saint Maure, I'autre V Humanity 
 De Jesus Christ notre Sauveur divin, 
 De Dieu, des saintz, sont leurs crieurs de vin,f 
 Tant aux citez que villes et villages, 
 Des susditz sainctz les devotes images, 
 En prophanant leur pr^ciosite."^ 
 
 * Coryatt's Crudities, London, 1776, p. 15, reprinted from the edition of 1611. 
 
 t In those early days the sign alone of a house was not thought to give sufficient 
 publicity. Touters (crieurs) were therefore sent about town (a custom dating from the 
 Romans.) Thus in the "Crieries de Paris," (Barbazan, Fabliaux et Contes, vol. ii., p. 
 277,)— 
 
 *' D'autres cris on fait plusieurs, 
 Qui long seraient a reciter. 
 L'on crie vin nouveau et vieux, 
 Duquel Ton donne a tater." 
 These touters had their statutes and privileges granted to them by Philip Auguste in 
 1258, some of which are very curious. 
 
 X Not only had the innkeepers saints on their signboards, but the different reception- 
 rooms in their houses were also sanctified with some holy name. Artus Desire quaintly 
 inveighs against this practice in his " Loyaulte Consciencieuse des Tavernieres — 
 " Semblablement toutes leurs chambres painctes, 
 Ou il n'y a qu'ordure et ivrognise, 
 Portent les noms de benoistz sainctz et sainctes 
 
 Contre Thonneur de Dieu et son Eglise. 
 L'une s'apelle, a leur mode et devize, 
 Le Paradis et I'autre Sainct Clement. 
 Et quant quelqu'un rabaste fermement, 
 L'hostesse crie Andre, Guillot, Mornable, 
 Laisse-moy tout, et va legerement 
 En Paradis, compter de par le Diable. 
 S'on si veut chauffer, 
 Portent le faggot 
 Robin avec Margot, 
 De par Lucifer." 
 
 ("In the same manner all their painted rooms, in which there is nothing but filth and 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 28r 
 
 Many of these saints were patrons of particular trades, and were 
 constantly adopted as the signs of those that followed them 
 Thus St CmsPiN was generally a shoemaker's sign. At the pre- 
 sent 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, " Cohhlers 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 contri- 
 buted to their popularity in this country is the fact of the battle 
 of Agincourt having been fought on their day, October 25, 
 U15:— 
 
 *^ 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 Fifths iv. 3. 
 
 From Shakespeare we turn to the homely ihymes 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."* 
 
 A more spirited one about the same time was in Bergen op Zoom, 
 which is not bad satire for a Dutchman : — 
 
 drunkenness, are named after some blessed saint, contrary to the respect due to the 
 Lord and His Church. According to this custom one is called the Paradise, and another 
 St Clement. And if anybody higgles about his bill the hostess calls out, Andrew, Will, 
 Mornable, leave everything, and run quickly up to the Paradise to make out the bill, in 
 the Devil's name. And if anybody wants a fire, Bob or Maggy has to carry up a faggot 
 in the name of Lucifer.") 
 
 * " This is Saint Crispin, but my name is Kit, 
 I make boots, shoes, and slippers." 
 
282 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 " Hier in Krispyn kan min de minsch int beeste villen 
 Elk schoenen na zyn voet voor gilt terstond bestillen, 
 Doch menig beest alheir steekt in een menschevel, 
 Draagt zeep zyn breeder's huid en 't staat dat beest nog wel."* 
 
 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, 1-725," 
 
 we gather that Saint Hugh was a prince's son,+ 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,^ like another St Anthony, passed through 
 numberless adventures, compared to which those of Baron Mun- 
 chausen 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 be- 
 queathed 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 ; 
 
 ♦ " Here at the Crispin any man may for his money 
 
 Immediately obtain shoes made out of animals' skins ; 
 But many a brute in this town wears a human skin, 
 Nay, wears his own brother's skin, and the brute looks even well in it 
 
 + So were Crispin and Crispian, and bence the trade is called the "Geniie Craft." 
 
 X The gayest city in Europe three centuries aga 
 
SAINTS, MAETYBS, ETC, 
 
 2S3 
 
 The Needle and the Thimble shall not be left alone, 
 The Pinchers, the Pricking Awl, and Kubbing Stone; 
 The Awl, Steel and J acks, 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 with- 
 out 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 martyr- 
 dom 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 Bedford^ 
 shire ; in sheep-shearing festivals, also, a representation of him 
 used to be introduced ; a stripling in habiliments of wool was 
 seated on a milk-w^hite 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 sup- 
 posed 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 " hon 
 herbet.'' His legend in a MS., Bodleian, 1596, fol. 4, alludes to 
 this ; — 
 
284 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " 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 J ulian k cest matin, 
 Soit en Roumans, soit en Latin, 
 Or tu seras bien ostil^." * 
 
 In mediaeval French, L'hotel Saint Julien was synonymous with 
 good cheer. 
 
 " Sommes tuit vostre. 
 Par Saint Pierre le bon Apostre, 
 ' L'ostel aurez Saint Julien," f 
 
 says Mabile to her feigned uncle, in the fabliau of " Boivin de Pro- 
 vins 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 July an s tome'* 
 
 St Martin's character as a saint was not unlike St Julian's; 
 hence we find him frequently on the signboard. The most favour- 
 ite 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 Eose, (1514,) printer in the Bue St Jacques, Paris; and 
 Bernard Aubrey, another printer in the same street. 
 
 " Avoir I'hotel St Martin," in old French, meant exactly the 
 same as " avoir I'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." % 
 
 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 : — " Cest ainsi qu'ils eurent a ses depens Tostel Saint 
 
 * " You have said 
 
 St Julian's prayer this morning, 
 
 Either in French or in Latin, 
 
 Now you are sure to be well lodged." 
 f '* We are entirely at your service. 
 
 By S. Peter the good apostle 
 
 You shall have St Julian inn (or welcome y* 
 \ " Often good wine makes them say, 
 
 That they have the inn of St Martia." 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 Martin."* These two saints, it is believed, are no longer to be 
 found on the signboard, but another powerful patron of travellers, 
 St Christophee, may still occasionally be met with, as for in- 
 stance 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 effica- 
 cious 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, Sufi'olk ; Bibury Church, Gloucester- 
 shire j Beddington, Surrey j Croydon ; Hengrave ; West Wick- 
 ham, (fee, &c., &c. They were also very numerous on the Con- 
 tinent ; 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 languors tenetur."f 
 
 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 : — 
 
 " Cristof ori faciem die quacumque tueris 
 Illo nempe die morte mala non morieris. 
 
 millesimo ccccxx. tercio." + 
 
 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 : — 
 
 ♦ " Thus they had at his expense the inn of St Martin. 
 t •* Whosoever sees the image of St Christopher, 
 
 Shall that day not feel any sickness." 
 X ** The day that you see St Christopher's face, 
 
 That day stall you not die an evil death. 1423." 
 
286 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " 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 com- 
 mendation, 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 wbich 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 con- 
 fessed 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 com- 
 pliment 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 Home Beasts, and those that have to do with themj^ (fec^ 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 sigp 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 
 
 • Aubrey, Remains of Judaism and Gentilism. Lansdowne MSS., No. 231. 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC, 
 
 287 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land, 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 
 victoriae suae." 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 re- 
 corded 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, South wark, is also thought 
 to have existed before the Conqueror. But after the Conquest, 
 chapels w^ere 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, Sanctae Marise Yirginis gloriosa), 
 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 Snowbill. 
 Frequently this sign is abbreviated to the Geokge. There wa3 
 
288 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 an inn of this name, mentioned in 1554 as being situate oh 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 Decembet 
 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, fyi^'e, so that ther cam ijc pepuU, 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, Eichard 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 
 Xl. 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 witli 
 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 
 Bhe 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 com« 
 bi nations, as the George and Blue Boar, High Holborn, au 
 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 
 
PLATE XII. 
 
 GRINDINa OLD INTO YOUNG. 
 (From an old woodcut, circa 1720.) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 |pp- — 
 
 1 PRAY FOR ALL 1 PLEAD FOR ALL I MAINTAIN ALL 1 FIGHT FOR ALL 
 
 1 TAKE ALL 
 
 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.) 
 
SAiy^TS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 289 
 
 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/'* Unfortunately for lovers 
 of the romantic, there is no foundation for this dramatic incident. 
 
 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 
 Dumerous 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 
 tseems to be the possibility of a vulture having been exhibited at 
 this house. Vultures were still considered great curiosities as lat^ 
 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 
 vv ith 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." 
 [t 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]f 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 recrea- 
 tions. It is mentioned in the " Search after Claret " as early as 
 1691. Several coins of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and Charles 
 1. were discovered on pulling down the old house. A coat of 
 irms of Queen Elizabeth was fixed over the front door, but at the 
 
 * Memoirs of Roger Earl of Orrery, by Rev. Mr Th. Morris, (Earl of Orrery's State 
 Letters,) 1742, fol. 15. 
 t Strype, B. ii., p. 162. 
 
 T 
 
2gO THE HIS TOBY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 demolition of tlie 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. * 
 
 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 chearfuU 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 graced) 
 
 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 Vidture 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, how- 
 ever, 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 
 
 * Tot«:'3nhain High Cross. 
 
SAINTS, MAETYRS, ETC, 
 
 291 
 
 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 : ^ amongst 
 others that of the bibliomaniac, Tom Eawlinson — 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 cathe- 
 dral 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 sign- 
 board before the Reformation as the other great saints of reli- 
 gious 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 be- 
 lieved 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 D evil, — that is to say, to the sign 
 of the famous tavern of the Devil and St Dunstan, within 
 
 * The first library sold by auction in this country was that of Dr Seaman, of Warwick 
 Court, Warwick Lane, ia 1676. 
 
292 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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 re- 
 spectable 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 :— 
 
 ^' Bloodliound. 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, there- 
 fore, 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 pre- 
 served, 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, 
 Bome 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 tlie master and break his dull noddle. 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 293 
 
 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." 
 Tae 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."'^ 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, aU 
 young comely men, in white Doublets" (this was on Charles H 
 going from the Tower to Whitehall.) Ben Jonson called him the 
 king of skinkers.f 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 " Eemains," records the following epitaph on 
 tliis worthy : — 
 
 " Apollo et cohors Musarum, 
 Bacchus vini et uvarum, 
 Ceres pro pane et cervisia, 
 Adeste omnes cum tristitia. 
 Diique, Deseque, lamentate cuncti, 
 Simonis Vadloe funera defuncti, 
 Sub signo malo bene vixit, mirabile ! 
 Si ad coelum recessit gratias DiabolV'X 
 * " If your potations overnight do not agree with you, take another glass of wine in tho 
 morning, and it will cure you." 
 t Skinker, an old English word, synonymous to tapster, drawer, 
 
 " Bacchus the win him skinketh all about."— Chaucer, Marchanfs Tale, 9696, 
 X " Apollo and you, band of Muses, 
 Bacchus, god of wine and grapes, 
 Ceres, goddess of bread and beer, 
 You all must share our sorrow. 
 W^eep all ye gods and goddesses, 
 Over the bier of the defunct Simon Wadloe, 
 He lived well under an evil sign, 
 
 If he goes to heaven, 0 miracle ! thanks to the DvtUT* 
 
294 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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. JSTed Ward, in 1703, 
 highly commends the punch of this house, which he partook of 
 in "a room neat enough to entertain Yenus 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." * 
 The Devil (le Diahle) was also a celebrated tavern in Paris, 
 near the Palais de Justice. It is thus named in the " Ode a 
 tons les Cabarets :" — 
 
 Lieux sacre: oil Ton est soumis 
 
 Aux saints oracles de Themis, 
 
 Eucor que vous ayez la gloire, 
 
 De voir tout le monde genoux, 
 
 Sans le Diahle et la Tete-Noire,f 
 
 Je n'approcherais pas de vous.'* J 
 
 In the seventeenth century Paris also had its Petit Diahle, (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 Eoad, Islington. It is 
 said to have been the retreat of Claude Duval (tinde 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 ap- 
 pearance 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 
 
 ■» Ned Ward's " London Spy," 1703. 
 
 t La Tele Xioire, (the ]Moor's head,) another famous tavern in that locality, 
 X "Sacred precincts, where are delivered 
 The holy oracles of Themis, 
 Though you may boast 
 To see everybody kneel to you, 
 Were it not for the Devil and the Moor's Jiead 
 I would never come near you." 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 epistle, an example of the florid and poetical advertising in vogue 
 when Richardson wrote novels of six volumes all in letters — com- 
 positions too painfully pathetic for our matter-of-fact age : — 
 " To the Printer of the Puhliclc Advertiser. 
 
 " Sir, — Returning yesterday from a rural excursion to Hornsey, I casually 
 Btopped for a little refreshaient at an house, commonly known by the name 
 of DeviVs 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 w^hat surprised me most, was that the landlord, by a pecu- 
 liar 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 con- 
 stant reader, " H. G. 
 
 ''May 25, 1767." 
 
 At Eoyston, Herts, there is a public-house known as the 
 Devil's Head. There is no signboard, but a carved representar 
 tion 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, 
 coads, 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 Eoman, 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 per- 
 formed by a great many saints in different parts of the world. 
 Not so the feat he performed at his death, when, having been be- 
 headed, he coolly took his head under his arm, (or, according to 
 the best authorities, in his mouth,) and swam over the Shannon. 
 
296 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 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 couter * 
 
 In many instances, no doubt, before the Eeformation, 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 Ser- 
 vauntes. Imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sygne of 
 Baynt 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 Euagelyst, in Seynt Martyns parysshe, in the 
 filde besyde Charynge Crosse, in the bysshop of Norwytche 
 rentys." He was the printer of the well-known " Pronosty- 
 cacion for ever of Erra Pater ; a Jewe borne in Jewry, a doctor 
 in Astronomye and Physicke," which was continued for ages 
 after him. Bobert Wyce must have been about the first book- 
 seller and printer in this neighbourhood, as in Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign the parish contained less than one hundred people liable to 
 be rated.t 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 Yerard, 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 Ed- 
 munds ; 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 Justin, another martyr, after his head was struck off, picked it up, and, I olding 
 in his hand, conversed with the bystanders, 
 t Cunningham's London. 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 297 
 
 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 f 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, Cheap- 
 side, 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 then that, among many fair houses, there is one large inn for the re- 
 ceipt of travellers called Blossoms Inn, but corruptly Bosoms 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 Beading," 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 pic- 
 ture of old Winter." 
 
 In 1522 the Emperor Charles V. honoured Henry VIIL 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 Ix horses."* It is 
 curious, in this list of inns, to observe the proportion of beds as 
 
 * Our Harry VIII. was fully as extravagant in his retinue. When he went over to 
 meet Francis I. at the Camp du Drap d'or, he required 2400 beds, and stabling fox 
 .\iOOO horses. 
 
298 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 compared with stabling room, showing how most of the fcllowera 
 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.* 
 
 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/'t 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 InneP Another domestic of this establishment is handed 
 down to posterity in Ben Jonson's " Masque of Christmass," pre- 
 sented at Court in 1616, where the following lines occur : — 
 
 " But now comes Tom of Bosom's Inn, 
 And he presenteth Misrule." f 
 
 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 w^ay 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 
 
 * " Rutland Papers," reprinted for Camden Society, 
 t Epistle Dedicatory to " Have at you to Saffron Walden," 1596. 
 % " Misrule in a velvet cap, a sprig, a short cloak, a great yellow ruff, like a reveller ; 
 his torch bearer bearing a rope, a cheese, and a basket." The names given were the 
 real designations of the performers in private life. Kit, the cobbler of Philpot Lane ; Cis, 
 a cook s wife from Scalding Alley; Nell, a milliner from Threadneedle Street ; and Tom, 
 our drawer from Blossom's Inn. 
 
 " And he presenteth Misrule, 
 Which you may know by the very show, 
 Albeit you never ask it ; 
 For there you may see, what his ensignes bee, 
 The rope, the cheese, and the basket." 
 
SAINTS^ MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 290 
 
 ^vitll blood.* 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 a 
 charge in the Turners' arms. Flechnoe tells us, in his " Enigma- 
 tical Characters," (1658,) that the Puritans changed it into the 
 Cat and Wheel, under which name it is still to be seen on a 
 public-house at Castle Green, Bristol. In the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries the Catherine Wheel was a famous carrier's 
 inn in Southwark ; and at the present day there is still an old 
 public-house in Bishopsgate Street Without, inscribed, " Ye old 
 Catherine Wheel, 1594." t 
 
 Besides these, there were other signs expressing a religious 
 idea, such as the Heakt in Bible, which occurs under one of the 
 ]juttrell Ballads : — The Citizens' joys for the Rebuilding of 
 London, printed by P. Lillicross, for Eichard Head, at the Heart 
 IN Bible, in Little Britain, where you may have Mr Matthews, 
 his approved and universal pills for all diseases, 1667." Another 
 bookseller on London Bridge, Eliz. Smith, 1691, had the Hand 
 A.ND Bible. Biblical phrases also were employed, as for instance, 
 the Lion and Lamb, which occurs on several seventeenth cen-. 
 tury trades tokens of Snowhill, Southwark, &c., and is still much 
 in vogue. It is an emblematical representation of the Millen- 
 nium, when " the lion shall lie down by the kid.'' In the last 
 century there was a Lion and Lamb on a signboard at Sheffield, 
 with the following poetical effusion : — 
 
 " If the Lyon show'd kill the Lamb, 
 We '11 kill the Lyon — if we can ; 
 But if the Lamb show'd kill the Lyon, 
 We '11 kill the Lamb to make a Pye on.*' 
 The antithesis to this sign, namely, the Wolf and Lamb, occurs 
 occasionally, as in Charles Street, Leicester, and in a few other 
 places. In Grosvenor Street it was probably once represented by 
 a lion and a kid, but the public, not minding the text, called thti 
 sign the Lion and Goat, and that name it still bears. The Lion 
 AND Adder, Nottingham, Newark, and various other places, 01 
 the Lion and Snake, as at Bailgate, Lincoln, come from Psalm 
 
 * St Catherine was beheaded after having been placed between wheels with spikes, from 
 which she was saved by an angel descended from heaven. 
 
 t Several of the old carriers and coaching inns still remain in Bishopsgate Street, und( i 
 their old names, as the Black Bull, the Green Dragon, the Four Swans, and (until a fe^ 
 months ago) the Flowerpot, &c. 
 
300 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 xci. 13, where the godly are reminded: — "Thou shalt tread 
 upon the Lion and Adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt 
 thou trample under feet." These two signs apparently came in 
 use during the Commonwealth. They have a decided flavour of 
 the time when Scripture language formed the common speech of 
 every day life. 
 
 The Lamb and Flag is another sign common all over England, 
 representing originally the holy lamb with the nimbus and banner, 
 but now so little understood by the publicans, that on an ale- 
 house at Swindon, it is pictured with a spear, to which a red- 
 white-and-blue streamer is appended. It may also be of heraldic 
 origin, for it was the coat of arms of the Templars, and the crest 
 of the merchant tailors. The Lamb and Anchor, Milk Street, 
 Bristol, seems to be a mystical representation of hope in Christ ; 
 both these last signs date from before the Reformation. From 
 that period also dates the sign of the Bleeding Heaet, the em- 
 blematical representation of the five sorrowful mysteries of the 
 Rosary, viz., the heart of the Holy Virgin pierced with five swords. 
 There is still an ale-house of this name in Charles Street, Hatton 
 Garden, and Bleeding Heart Yard, adjoining the public-house, is 
 immortalised in "Little Dorrit." The Wounded Heart, one of the 
 signs in Norwich in 1750,"^ had the same meaning. The Heart 
 was a constant emblem of the Holy Virgin in the middle ages ; 
 thus, on the clog almanacs, all the feasts of St Mary were in- 
 dicated by a heart. It was not an uncommon sign in former 
 times. The Heart and Ball appears on a trades token as the 
 sign of a house in Little Britain, the Ball being simply some silk 
 mercer's addition; and the Golden Heart t was a sign in Green- 
 wich in 1737, next door to which Dr Johnson used to live when 
 he was newly come to town, and wrote the Parliamentary articles 
 for the Gentleman's Magazine, At present there are three public- 
 houses with this sign in Bristol, and in other places it may be 
 met with. 
 
 Heaven was a house of entertainment near Westminster Hall ; 
 the present committee rooms of the House of Commons are 
 erected on its site. Butler alludes to this house in " Hudibras," 
 p. 3:- 
 
 " False Heaven at the end of the Hall." 
 Pepys records his dining at this house in the winter of 1660, 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, March 1842. 
 
 \ It is said that this sign, put up in French somewhere as the cosur dore, was Eng 
 lished into the "queer ioor." 
 
SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 301 
 
 And witli due respect for tlie place, he put on his best fur cap for 
 the occasion. " I sent a porter to bring my best fur cap, and so I 
 returned and went to Heaven ; where Luellin and I dined." 
 
 Paradise was a messuage in the same neighbourhood, and Hell 
 AND Purgatory subterranean passages ] but in the reign of James 
 I. Hell was the sign of a low public-house frequented by lawyers' 
 clerks. Heaven and Hell are mentioned, together with a 
 third house called Purgatory, in an old grant dated the first 
 year of Henry YII.'^ The Three Kings is a sign representing 
 the three Eastern magi or kings, who came to do homage to our 
 Saviour. We find it used as early as the sixteenth century by 
 Julyan Notary, in St Paul's Churchyard, one of the earliest Lon- 
 don printers. The Three Kings was formerly a constant mer- 
 cer's sign. Bagford gives the following reason for this : — 
 
 " Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Marchantes and traded in all sortes 
 of Kich Goodes, besides those of scelckes (silks) as they do nou at this 
 day : but they brought into England fine Leninn thered (linen thread) 
 gurdeles (girdles) finenly worked from Collin + (Cologne.) Collin, the city 
 which then at that time of day florished much and afforded rayre commo- 
 detes, and these merchats that vsually traded to that citye, set vp ther 
 singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the three kinges of Collin, with the 
 Armes of that Citye, which was the Three Crouens of the former kings 
 in memorye of them, and by those singes the people knew in what wares 
 they deld in."t 
 
 There is and was until lately such a sign carved in stone in front 
 of a house in Bucklersbury, which street was once the head 
 quarters of the mercers and perfumers. The three kings stood in 
 a row, all in the same garb and position, with their sceptres 
 shouldered. The history of the Three Kings was a favourite 
 story in the middle ages. Wynkyn de Worde printed, anno 1516, 
 The Lives of the Three Kinges of CoUen.'' The same subject 
 had been printed in Paris in 1498 by Tresyrel : " La Vie des Troys 
 Roys, Balchazar, Melchior, et Gaspard." They also appeared in 
 many of the ancient plays and mysteries. In one of the Chester 
 pageants, acted by the shearmen and tailors, they are called Sir 
 Jasper of Tars ; Sir Melchior, king of Araby ; Sir Balthazer, king 
 of Saba ; they enjoy the same names and kingdoms in the " Come- 
 die de TAdoration des Trois Boys," by Marguerite de Valois. 
 
 * Note in Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. iv., p. 174. 
 
 t They were called the three kings of Cologne because they were buried in that city. 
 The Empress Helena brought their bones to Constantinople, from whence they were ro 
 moved to Milan, and thence in 1164 to Cologne, where they are still kept as sacred and 
 miracle-i« orking relics. 
 
 X Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193. 
 
302 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Their offerings are recorded in the following charm against fall- 
 ing sickness : — 
 
 Jaspar f ert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazar aurum, 
 Hsec tria qui secum portabit nomina regum 
 Solvitur a morbo, Christi pietate, caduco/* * 
 Another Latin distich has — 
 
 " Tres Reges Regi Regum tria dona firebant 
 Myrrham Homini, uncto aurum, thura dedere Deo." f 
 Melchior was usually represented as a bearded old man, Jasper 
 as a beardless youth, and Balchazar as a Moor with a large 
 beard. 
 
 This sign was as common on the Continent as in England, and 
 at the present day it may often be met with. Eustache Des- 
 champs, in the sixteenth century, thus celebrated the good cheer 
 of one of the taverns in Paris : — 
 
 Prince, par la Vierge Marie, 
 
 On est ^ la Cossonerie, 
 
 Aux Cannettes ou aux Trois Rois.** 
 
 L' Adoration des Trois Eois was, in 1674, the sign of Frangois 
 Muguet, one of the Parisian booksellers. 
 
 Not unlikely the sign of the Kings and Keys, a tavern in Fleet 
 Street, is an abbreviation of the Three Kings and Cross Keys. At 
 Weston-super-Mare, and at Chelmsforth, there is another sign which 
 owes its origin to the Three Kings, namely, the Three Queens. 
 When, in 1764, the Paving Act for St James' was put into execu- 
 tion, the sign of the Three Queens, in Clerkenwell Green, was re 
 moved at a cost of upwards of £200 ; it extended not less than seven 
 feet from the front of the house. Lloyd^s Evening Post, January 
 1 2-14, 1761, tells how two sharpers came to this ale-house and stole 
 the silver tankard in which their drink was served them. .Each 
 tavern in those days possessed a number of silver tankards, in 
 which the well-dressed customers were served with sack and canary. 
 It may be imagined that the thieves were quietly on the look-out 
 for such a prize. The same paper gives an advertisement about 
 two silver pints stolen from the Jolly Butchers at Bath ; in fact, 
 
 * " Jasper brings myiTh, Melchior frankincense, Balthazar gold. 
 He who carries these three names of the kings about with him 
 Will, through Christ's favour, be delivered of the falling sickness." 
 In the trial of the smugglers for the murder of Chater and Gralley, excisemen of Chi- 
 criester, in the last century, one of the prisoners was found with this charm in his pocket. 
 With this scrap of paper in his possession, he had considered himself quite safe from 
 detection. 
 
 I " Three kings brought three gifts to the King of Kings. 
 
 They gave myrrh t© him as man. gold as king, and frankincense as God." 
 
SAmTS, MARTYRS, ETC. 
 
 similar advertisements were of almost daily occurrence. " The 
 Praise of Yorkshire Ale," 1685, also mentions — 
 Selling of Ale, in Muggs, 
 Silver TanJcards, Black Pots, and Little Juggs." 
 One other semi-religious legend has provided a subject for 
 many a signboard, namely, the Man in the Moon. Though 
 this cannot strictly be styled a religious legend, yet it may be 
 included in this class, as the idea is said to have originated from 
 the incident given in Numbers xv. 32, et seq., " And while the 
 children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that 
 gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day," &c. Not content with 
 having him stoned for this desecration of the day, the legend 
 transferred him to the moon. It is, however, a Christian legend, 
 for the Jews had some Talmudical story about Jacob being in the 
 moon ; in fact, almost every nation, whether ancient or modern, 
 sees somebody in it. The Man in the Moon occurs on a seven- 
 teenth century token of a tavern in Cheapside, represented by a 
 half-naked man within a crescent, holding on by the horns. 
 There is still a sign of this description in Little Vine Street, 
 Regent Street, and in various other places. Generally he is re- 
 presented with a bundle of sticks, a lanthorn (which, one would 
 think, he did not want in the moon,) and frequently a dog. Thus 
 Chaucer depicts him in " Cresseide," v. 260 : — 
 *' Her gite was gray and full of spottes blacke, 
 And on her breast a chorl painted full even, 
 Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe, 
 Which for his theft might clime no ner heven." 
 Shakespeare also alludes to him : — 
 
 Steph. I was the Man in the Moon when time was. 
 " Caliban. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee ; my mistresf 
 showed me thee, thy dog and bush." — Tempest, ii., sc. 2. 
 
 Also — 
 
 " Quince. One must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and 
 say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of moonshine." — 3Iid' 
 summer NigMs Dream, iii., sc. 1. 
 
 This bunch of thorns is alluded to by Dante, " Inferno," canto 
 XX. 124, where the Man in the Moon is spoken of as Cain — 
 Ma viene omai : che gia tiene il confine 
 D' amendue gli emisperi e tocca I'onda 
 Sotto Sibilia Caino e le spine." * 
 
 ♦ *'But come now, for already hovers Cain with his bundle of thorns 
 On the confines of the two hemispheres, and touches the, 
 Wuves beneath Seville." 
 
304 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 And again in " Paradiso/' canto ii. 49, speaking of tlie moon, lie 
 asks — 
 
 " Ma detemi, che sono i segni bui 
 Di questi corpo, che laggiuso in terra 
 Fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?" * 
 And the annotators of Dante say that Cain was placed in the 
 moon with a bundle of thorns on his back, similar to those he 
 had placed on the altar when he offered to the Lord his unwel- 
 come sacrifice. This Man in the Moon, whether Cain, Jacob, or 
 the Sabbath-breaker, has been celebrated by innumerable songs. 
 Alex. Neckham (recently edited by Mr T. Wright) refers to him 
 from a very ancient ballad, and one of the oldest songs is in the 
 Harl. MSS., 2253, beginning :— 
 
 " Mon in the mone stond and streit, 
 On is bot-forke is burthen he bereth, 
 Hit is muche wonder that he na doun slyt 
 For doute lest he valle he shoddreth and skereth. 
 When the forst freseth muche chele he byd 
 The thornes beth kene is hattren to-tereth 
 N'is no wytht in the world that wot when he syt 
 Ne, bote hit bee the hegge, whot wedes he wereth." 
 For all this, his life seems to be very merry, for one of the Eox^ 
 burghe Ballads (i. £, 298) informs us that — 
 
 " Our Man in the Moon drinks Clarret, 
 With powderbeef, turnep and carret ; 
 If he doth so, why should not you 
 Drink until the sky looks blue." 
 
 From whence they obtained the information it is difficult to 
 say, but it was a well-established fact with the old tobacconists 
 that he could enjoy his pipe. Thus he is represented on some of 
 the tobacconists' papers in the Banks Collection puffing like a 
 steam-engine, and underneath the words, " Who '11 smoake with 
 y« Man in y® Moonf' If these frequent allusions in songs and 
 plays were not enough to remind the Londoners that there was 
 such a being, they could see him daily amongst the figures of old 
 St Paul's— 
 
 The Great Dial is your last monument ; where bestow some half of the 
 three score minutes to observe the sauciness of the Jacks f that are above 
 the Man in the Moon there ; the strangeness of their motion will quit your 
 labour." — Decker's GulVs Hornbook. 
 
 * But tell me, what are the dark spots 
 
 On that body, which makes them down there on earth 
 Talk of Cain and the bundle of thorns !" 
 t Paul's Jacks were the little automaton figures that struck the hours In old St Paul'f 
 Similar puppets, or figures, were also on other London churches. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 
 
 Tools and utensils, as emblems of trade, were certainly placed 
 outside houses at an early period, to inform the illiterate public 
 the particular trade or occupation carried on within. Centuries 
 ago the practice, as a general rule, fell into disuse, although a 
 few trades still adhere to it with laudable perseverance : thus a 
 broom informs us where to find a sweep ; a gilt arm wielding a 
 hammer tells us where the gold-beater lives j and a last or gilt 
 shoe where to order a pair of boots. Those houses of refreshment 
 and general resort, which sought the custom of particular trades 
 and professions, also very frequently adopted the tools and em- 
 blems of those trades as their distinguishing signs. At other 
 houses, again, signs were set up as tributes of respect to certain 
 dignities and functions. Amongst the latter, the King's Head and 
 Queen's Head stand foremost, and none were more prominent 
 types than Henry YIII. and Queen Elizabeth, even for more than 
 two centuries after their decease. Only fifty or sixty years ago, 
 there still remained a well-painted, half-length portrait of bluff 
 Harry, as a sign of the King's Head, before a public-house in 
 South wark. His personal appearance, doubtless, more than his 
 character as a king, were at the bottom of this popular favour. 
 He looked the personification of jollity and good cheer, and when 
 the evil passions, expressed by his face, were lost under the 
 clumsy brush of the sign-painter, there remained nothing but a 
 merry, ^' beery-looking '' Bacchus, eminently adapted for a public- 
 house sign. 
 
 A very respectable folio might be filled with anecdotes con- 
 nected with the various King's Head inns and taverns up and down 
 the country and in London — some connected with royalty, others 
 with remarkable persons. Thus, for instance, when the Princess 
 (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth came forth from her confinement in 
 the Tower, November 17, 1558, she went into the church of All 
 Hallows, Staining, the first church she found open, to return 
 thanks for her deliverance from prison. As soon as this pious 
 duty was performed, the princess and her attendants went to the 
 King's Head in Fenchurch Street to take some refreshment, and 
 there her Royal Highness dined on pork and peas. A monument 
 
 U 
 
3o6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 of this visit is still preserved at the above house in an engraving 
 of the princess, from a picture by Hans Holbein, hung up in the 
 coffee-room; and the dish from which she ate her dinner still 
 remains, it is said, affixed to the kitchen dresser there. There is 
 a tradition that the bells of All Hallows were rung on this occa- 
 sion with such energy, that the queen presented the ringers with 
 silken ropes. 
 
 A more painful association is connected with another King's 
 Head : — 
 
 " In a secluded part of the Oxfordshire hills, at a place called Collins 
 End, situated between Hardwicke House and Goring Heath, is a neat little 
 rustic inn, having for its sign a well-executed portrait of Charles I. There 
 is a tradition that this unfortunate monarch, while residing as a prisoner 
 at Caversham, rode one day, attended by an escort, into this part of the 
 country, and hearing that there was a bowling-green at this inn, frequented 
 by the neighbouring gentry, struck down to tlie house, and endeavoured to 
 forget his sorrows for a while in a game at bowls. This circumstance \fi 
 ulluded to in the following lines, written beneath the signboard : — 
 " Stop, traveller, stop, in yonder peaceful glade. 
 His favourite game the royal martyr play'd. 
 Here, stripped of honours, children, freedom, rank, 
 Drank from the bowl, and bowl'd for what he drank ; 
 Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown. 
 And changed his guinea ere he lost his crown.** * 
 
 The sign, which seems to be a copy from Vandyke, though much 
 faded from exposure to the weather, evidently displayed an 
 amount of artistic skill not usually met with on the signboard ; 
 but the only information the people of the house could give was, 
 that they believed it to have been painted in London. His son, 
 Charles II., is also connected in an anecdote with a King's Head 
 Tavern, in the Poultry, for it is reported that he stopped at this 
 inn on the day of his entry at the Restoration, at the request 
 of the landlady, who happened just then to be in labour, and 
 wished to salute his majesty. Mrs King, the lady so honoured, 
 was aunt to William Bowyer, " the learned printer of the 
 eighteenth century." In Ben Jonson's time there was a famous 
 King's Head Tavern in New Fish Street, " where roysters did 
 range." It is this tavern, probably, that is alluded to in tbe 
 ballad of "The Ranting Wh 's Resolution 
 
 I love a young Heir 
 "Whose fortune is fair, 
 And froUick in Fish Street dinners^ 
 
 * Notes and Querie* 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES. AND PROFESSIONS. 307 
 
 Who boldly does call, 
 
 Aud in private paies all, 
 
 These boyes are the noble beginners." * 
 
 At the King's Head, the corner of Chancery Lane, Cowley the poet 
 was born in 1618 ; it was then a grocer's shop kept by his father. 
 Subsequently it became a famous tavern, of which tokens are 
 extant. It was at this house that Titus Oates's party met, and 
 trumped up their infamous story against the Roman Catholics, 
 trying to implicate the Duke of York in the murder of Sir Ed- 
 mundbury Godfrey. In the reign of William III., it was a 
 violent Whig club. The distinction adopted by the members was 
 a green ribbon worn in the hat. When these ribbons were shown, 
 it was a sign that mischief was on foot, and that there were secret 
 meetings to be held. North gives an amusing and lively descrip- 
 tion of this club : — 
 
 " The house was double balconied in front, as may be yet seen, for the 
 clubsters to issue forth, in fresco, with hats and no perruques, pipes in their 
 mouths, merry faces and diluted throat for vocal encouragement of the 
 cauaglia below, at bonfires, on unusual and usual occasions." 
 
 Here the Pope-burning manifestations were got up, the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury being president. In opposition to this Green Eibbon 
 Club, the Tories wore in their hat a scarlet ribbon, with the 
 words. Rex et Haeredes. Ned Ward, with his usual humour, 
 describes a breakfast given in 1706 by the master of this house 
 to his customers, consisting of an ox of 415 lb., roasted whole, 
 and at the same time embraces the opportunity of praising the 
 landlord as the honestest vintner in London, at whose house the 
 best wine in England is to be drunk." This was probably Ned's 
 way of settling an old score. 
 
 Another King's Head is mentioned by Pepys, 26th March 
 166f 
 
 " Thence walked through the ducking-pond fields, but they are so altered 
 since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the old man's at the Kings- 
 head, to eat cakes and ale (his name was Pitts,) that I did not know which 
 was the ducking-pond, nor where I was." 
 
 It was a very difiPerent " ducking " in which the landlady of the 
 Queen's Head ale-house was concerned, as shown by the following 
 newspaper paragraph : — 
 
 " Last week, a woman that keeps the Queen's Head ale-house at Kingston, 
 in Surrey, was ordered by the Court to be ducked for scolding, and waa 
 
 ♦ Roxburghe Ballads, iii., fol. 25^. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 accordingly placed in the cliair and ducked in the river Thames, under 
 Kingston Bridge, in the presence of 2000 or 3000 people." — London Even- 
 ing Post, Ap. 27, 1745. 
 
 Full particulars of such an operation are given by Misson : — 
 
 " They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two strong beams, twelve or 
 fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other. The chair hangs upon a sort 
 of axle, on which it plays freely, so as to remain in the horizontal position. 
 The scold being well fastened in her chair, the two beams are then placed as 
 near to the centre as possible, across a post on the water side, and being 
 lifted up behind, the chair of course drops into the cold element. The 
 ducking is repeated according to the degree of shrewdness possessed by the 
 patient, and generally has the effect of cooling her immoderate heat, at 
 least for a time." 
 
 At the King's Head, Strutton, near Ipswich, about ten years ago, 
 there was the following inscription : — 
 
 " Good people, stop, and pray walk in, 
 Here 's foreign brandy, rum, and gin, 
 And, what is more, good purl and ale, 
 Are both sold here by old Nat Dale." 
 
 Old Nat had lived for a period of eighty years under the shadow 
 of the King's Head. 
 
 Combinations with the King's Head are not very frequent. The 
 King's Head and Lamb, an ale-house in Upper Thames Street, is 
 evidently a quartering of two signs. The Two Kings and Still, 
 sign of Henry Francis in Newmarket, 1667,* representing a still 
 between two kings crowned, holding their sceptres, may have 
 originated from the distillers' arms, the two wild men, serving as 
 supporters, being refined into two kings, the garlands on their 
 heads into crowns, and their clubs into sceptres. 
 
 That Queen Elizabeth was for more than two centuries the 
 almost unvarying type of the Queen's Head need not be wondered 
 at when we consider her well-deserved popularity. A striking 
 instance of the veneration and esteem in which she was held, 
 even through all the tribulations and changes of the Common- 
 wealth, is exhibited in the fact of the bells ringing on her birth- 
 day, as late as the reign of Charles II. : — 
 
 The Earl of Dorset coming to court, one Queen Elisabeth's birthday, 
 the king [Charles H.] asked him what the hells rung /or? which having 
 answered, the king farther asked him, ' how it came to pass that her holiday 
 was still kept, wliilst those of his father and grandfather were no more 
 thought of than William the Conqueror's V * Because/ said the frank peer 
 
 * Akermri's Trjdfis Tokens. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 309 
 
 to th3 frank king, 'she being a woman, chose men for her counsellors ; and 
 men, when they reign, usually chuse women.' " * 
 
 During the queen's lifetime, however, the sio;n-painters had to 
 mind how they represented " Queen Bess," for Sir Walter Ealeigh 
 says that portraits of the queen " made by unskilful and common 
 painters " were, by her own order, " knocked in pieces, and cast 
 into the fire."t A proclamation had been issued to that effect, 
 in the year 1563, saying that : — 
 
 " Forasmuch as thrugh the natural desire that all sorts of subjects and 
 people, both noble and mean, have to procure the portrait and picture of 
 the Queen's Majestic, great nomber of Paynters, and some Printers and 
 Gravers have allredy, and doe daily, attempt to make in divers manners 
 portraictures of hir Majestic, in paynting, graving, and pryntyng, wherein 
 is evidently shewn, that hytherto none hath sufficiently expressed the natu- 
 rall representation of hir Majesties person, favor, or grace, but for the most 
 part have also erred therein, as thereof daily complaints are made amongst 
 hir Majesties loving subjects, in so much, that for redress hereof hir 
 Majestic hath lately bene so instantly and so importunately sued by the 
 Lords of hir Consell, and others of hir nobility, in respect of the great dis- 
 order herein used, not only to be content that some special coning payntor 
 might be permitted by access to hir Majestic to take the naturall represen- 
 tation of hir Majestic, whereof she hath been allwise of hir own right dis- 
 position very unwillyng, but also to prohibit all manner of other personi 
 to draw, paynt, grave, or pourtrayit hir Majesties personage or visage for a 
 time, until by some perfect patron and example the same may be by others 
 followed. 
 
 Therfor hir Majestic, being herein as it were overcome with the con- 
 tynuall requests of so many of hir Nobility and Lords, whom she can not 
 well deny, is pleased that for thir contentations, some coning persons, mete 
 therefore, shall shortly make a pourtraict of hir person or visage, to be 
 participated to others, for satisfaction of hir loving subjects ; and furder- 
 more commandeth all manner of persons in the mean tyme to forbear from 
 payntyng, graving, printing, or making of any pourtraict of hir Majestic, 
 untill some speciall person that shall be by hir allowed, shall have first 
 fynished a pourtraicture thereof, after which finished, hir Majestic will be 
 content that all other painters, printers, or gravers that shall be known 
 men of understanding, and so thereto licensed by the hed officers of the 
 plaices where they shall dwell, (as reason it is that every person should not 
 without consideration attempt the same,) shall and maye at their pleasures 
 follow the sayd patron or first portraicture. And for that hir Majestic 
 perceiveth that a grete nomber of hir loving subjects are much greved and 
 take grete offence with the errors and deformities allredy committed by 
 Bondry persons in this behalf, she straightly chargeth all her officers and 
 ministers to see to the observation hereof, and, as soon as may be, to re- 
 form the errors allredy committed, and in the mean tyme to forbydd and 
 
 * "Richardsoniana," London, 17T6, p. 159. 
 t Preface to his " Historj of the World.'* 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 prohibit the shewing and publication of such as are apparently deformed, 
 until they may be reformed which are reformable."* 
 
 That there were signboards, however, representing her Ma- 
 jesty's "person, favour, and grace," during her lifetime, is evi- 
 dent from the fact that an ancestor of Pennant, the London topo- 
 grapher, made his fortune as a goldsmith at the sign of the 
 Queen's Head, in Smithfield, during the reign of good Queen 
 Bess. 
 
 The irascible Mr Boursault, whose bile was so often deranged 
 by signboard irregularities, took also sycophantic exception at 
 royal heads being represented in that way : 
 
 Je souffre impatiemment que le portrait du Roy, celuy de la Reine, de 
 Monseigneur et des autres Princes et Princesses, servent d'enseignes de 
 boutiques ; eux qui ne devroient faire Tornement que des plus celebres 
 galeries et des plus illustres cabinets. Monsieur d'Argenson et Vous meme, 
 Monsieur le Commissaire, n'auriez-vous pas juste raison de vous facher de 
 voir votre portrait servir d'enseigne k la Maison d'un cabaretier, ou h. la 
 boutique d'un Fripier ; et pourquoi done ne vous fachez-vous pas de ce que 
 oelui du Roy y est?"t 
 
 Of celebrated Queen's Heads we must begin with the highly re- 
 spectable inn of that name, in which, before the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, lived the canonists and professors of spiritual and eccle- 
 siastical law. It was situated in Paternoster Row, where its 
 name is still preserved in Queen's Head Alley. From this place 
 the lawyers removed to Doctors' Commons. 
 
 Nearly as ancient a building was the old Queen's Head, Lower 
 Street, Islington, at the corner of Queen's Head Lane, one of the 
 most perfect specimens of ancient domestic architecture in the 
 vicinity of London. It is said that it was built by Sir Walter 
 Ealeigh, after he had obtained ly cense for keeping ol taverns 
 and retayling of wynes throughout Englande," and that it was 
 called by him the Queen's Head in compliment to his royal mis- 
 tress. Essex is also said to have resided there, and to have 
 been visited by the queen. The same tradition is current about 
 the Lord Treasurer Burleigh. In the reign of George 11. it was 
 
 * Archseologia, ii., p. 169. In an article in "Notes and Queries," No. 150, a documenl 
 is quoted by which George Gower was appointed *'the Queen's Sargeant Paynter," and 
 Nicolas Hilliard her miniature portrait painter. No portraits of the queen painted uj 
 Gower appear, however, to be known. 
 
 t Lettre k M. Bizotin. "I cannot bear to see the portraits of the king, of the queen, of 
 tlie dauphin, and of the other princes and princesses used as signs for shops ; thejr 
 wliose portraits ought to be reserved for the most celebrated galleries and the most 
 famous collections only. Would not M. d'Argenson. and you as well, M. le Commi.i- 
 gaire, have very serious reason to be annoyed if you were to see your portrait as a sign t« 
 a public-house or to a rag-shop? Why, then, are you not annoyed in seeing the king's 
 portrait in such places?" Mr Boursault's flattery is much more evident than his lo^ic. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 31 1 
 
 used as a playhouse, and bills are still extant of plays acted there 
 that period. 
 
 It was a strong wood and plaster building, three lofty stories 
 high, projecting over each other, and forming bay windows sup- 
 ported by brackets and caryatides. Inside it was panelled with 
 wainscot, and had stuccoed ceilings, adorned with dolphins, 
 cherubims, and acorns, bordered by a wreath of flowers. The 
 porch was supported by caryatides of oak, crowned with scroll- 
 capitals.* This time-honoured structure was pulled down in 
 October 1829, and nothing of it remains in the new building 
 erected on its site but the name, the carved oak panels of the 
 parlour, and a bust of Queen Elizabeth at the top front. A 
 carved mantelpiece, (formerly in the parlour of the old house,) 
 with the history of Dian and Actaeon on it, (a favourite subject 
 with the virgin queen,) was sold for more than £60 at the sale 
 of the building materials, most of which were bought by anti- 
 quaries. 
 
 There used to be a large pewter tankard in this house, with an 
 inscription engraved on it, which is much too highly spiced to be 
 given here. It was signed John Cranch, and bore date 1796. 
 
 At the Queen's Head, Duke Court, Bow Street, the English 
 language was enriched with two new terms, though one of them 
 seems to have been still-born. This tavern was once kept by a 
 facetious individual of the name of Jupp. Two celebrated char- 
 acters, Annesley Shay and Bob Todrington — the latter a sport- 
 ing man — meeting late in the day at the above place, went to 
 the bar and asked for half a quartern each, with a little cold 
 water. In the course of the evening they drank twenty-four, 
 when Shay said to the other, " Now we '11 go." Oh no/' replied 
 his companion, " we '11 have another, and then go.'' This did 
 not satisfy the Hibernian, and they continued drinking on till 
 three in the morning, when they both agreed to go; so that 
 under the idea of going they made a long stay^ and this was the 
 origin of drinking goes; but another preferring to eke out the 
 measure his own way, used to call for a quartern at a time, and 
 these in the exercise of his humour he called stays, f 
 
 In the beginning of this century, when Marylebone consisted 
 of green fields, babbling brooks," and pleasant suburban retreats, 
 
 * There is a print of it in Gentleman's Magazine, June 1794. 
 
 t " Memoirs of J. Decastro, comedian," London, 1824. See under " Go," (as "a go of 
 jfnn," "ago of rum,") in the "Slang Dictionary," 3d edition : John Camdea Hottrap 
 Piccadilly, London. 
 
312 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 there was a small but picturesque house of public entertainment, 
 yciept the Queen's Head and Artichoke, situated in a lane 
 nearly opposite Portland Eoad, and about 500 yards from the 
 road that leads from Paddington to Finsbury^' — now Albany 
 Street. Its attractions chiefly consisted in a long skittle and 
 '^bumble puppy" ground, shadowy bowers, and abundance of 
 cream, tea, cakes, and other creature comforts. The only memo- 
 rial now remaining of the original house is an engraving in the 
 Gentlema-nJs Magazine, November 1819. The queen was Queen 
 Elizabeth, and the house was reported to have been built by one 
 of her gardeners, whence the strange combination on the sign. 
 
 Besides Crowns (see p. 101) other royal paraphernalia are 
 occasionally used as signboard decorations. The Sceptre is not 
 uncommon ; the Sceptre and Heart was the sign of Samuel 
 Grover, chirurgical instrument maker, on London Bridge, in the 
 latter end of the seventeenth century. It is engraved on his shop^ 
 bill, and represents a circle surrounded by fruit and foliage, hav- 
 ing two Cupids standing at the upper corner, and containing in 
 the centre two palm branches enclosing a sceptre surmounted by 
 a heart. Bound the whole are suspended lancets, trepans, saws, 
 &c. In all probability it is simply a quartering of two signs. 
 
 The BoYAL Hand and Globe was the loyal sign of a stationer 
 at the corner of St Martin's Lane, in 1682.* It doubtless refers 
 to the royal hand holding the golden orb, surmounted by a cross. 
 It is still the sign of an ale-house near the Soho Theatre. The 
 same orb or globe seems to be alluded to in the sign of the 
 Sword and Ball, on Holborn Bridge, in the seventeenth century. 
 What stands in the way of this explanation, however, is that on 
 the token of this house the sword is represented piercing the 
 ball ; but this may merely have been a fancy of the sign-painter, 
 who did not understand its meaning. As for the Sword and 
 Mace, the meaning is perfectly clear ; it is the sign of a public- 
 house in Coventry. 
 
 The Church is almost as abundantly represented as royalty. 
 Even long after the Beformation the Pope's Head was still very 
 common. Nash's " Anatomic of Absurdities " was printed by T. 
 Charlwood for Thomas Hacket, and was " to be sold at his shop 
 in Lumbard Street, vnder the signe of the Popes Heade, 1590.'* 
 Taylor, the Water poet, in his "Travels through London," 1636, 
 
 • Ltyndon Gazette, Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, 1682. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES. AND PROFESSIONS. 313 
 
 mentions four Pope's Head taverns ; but the most famous of all 
 was the Pope's Head tavern in Cornhill. 
 
 " I have read* of a countryman that, having lost his hj)od in Westmin- 
 ster Hall, found the same in Cornhill hanged out to be sold, which he chal- 
 lenged, but was forced to buy, or go without it, for their stall they said 
 was their market. At that time also the wine drawers at the Pope's Head 
 tavern (standing without the door in the High Street,)+ took the same man 
 by the sleeve, and said, * Sir, will you drink a pint of wine?' Whereunto 
 he answered, ' A penny spend I may,' and so drank his pint, for bread no- 
 thing did he pay, for that was allowed free.ij: This Pope's Head tavern, 
 with other houses adjoining, strongly built of stone, hath of old time been 
 all in one, pertaining to some great estate, or rather to the king, as may be 
 supposed both by the largeness thereof, and by the arms, to wit, three 
 leopards passant gardant, which were the whole arms of England before 
 the reign of Edward III., that quartered them with the arms of France 
 three flower de lys. Some say this was King J ohn's house, which might 
 be, for I find in a written copy of ^ Matthew Paris's History ' that in the 
 year 1232, Henry III. sent Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent, to Cornehill in 
 
 * In Lydgate's ballad of "London Lyckpenny," temp. Henry VI. 
 
 t This touting, or standing at the door inviting the passers by to enter, was at one time 
 a universal practice with all kind of shops, both at home and abroad. The regular phrase 
 used to be " What do ye lack 1 What do ye lack ? " The French dits and fabliaux teem 
 with allusions to this custom. In the story of "Courtois d' Arras," — a travesty of the 
 prodigal son, in a thirteenth century garb — Courtois finds the host standing at his door 
 Bhouting, Bon vin de Soissons a 6 deniers le lot." And in a mediaeval mysteiy, en- 
 titled "Li jus de S. Nicholas," the innkeeper roars out, " Ceans il fait bon diner, ceans 
 11 y a pain chaud et harengs chauds et vin d'Auxerre a plein tonneau." In "Lea trois 
 Aveugles de Compiegne," mine host thus addresses the thirsty wanderers : — 
 " Ci a bon vin fres et nouvel, 
 
 Ca d'Ancoire, 9a de Soissons 
 
 i*ain et char et vin et poissons, 
 
 Ceens fet bon despendre argent, 
 
 Ostel i a a toute gent, 
 
 Ceens fet moult bon heberger." 
 And in the "Debats et facetieuses rencontres de Gringalet et de Guillot Gorgen son 
 maistre," the servant who had taken advantage of the host's invitation, excuses himself, 
 saying, "Le tavernier a plus de tort que moy, car passant devant sa porte. et luy etant 
 assiz, (ainsi qu'ils sont ordinairement), il me cria me disant: Vous plaist-il de dejeuner 
 ceans? II y a de bon pain, de bon vin et de bonne viande." This touting at tavern 
 doors was still practised in the last century, as appears from the following passage in 
 Tom Brown : — " We were jogging forward into the city, when our Indian cast his eyes 
 upon one of his own complexion, at a certain coffee-house which has the Sun staring its 
 sign in the face, even at midnight, when the moon is queen regent of the planets, and, 
 being willing to be acquainted with his countryman, gravely inquired what province or 
 Miigdom of India he belonged to ; but the sooty dog could do nothing but grin, and show 
 his teeth, and cry, Coffee, sir, tea, will you please to ivalJc in, sir ; a fresh pot, upon 
 my word."—ToTA Brown, vol. iii., p. 17. Not only taverns but all sorts of shops kept 
 these barking advertisements at the door. The ballad of " London Lyckpenny" enume- 
 rates a quantity of them. "What do you lack?" was the stereotype phrase. The 
 "Buy, buy, what '11 you buy?" of the butchers, is one of the last remains in London of 
 this custom. At Greenwich, the practice of touting at the doors of the small coffee- 
 houses is still kept up ; and throughout the United States and Canada the custom of 
 waiting at steamboat wharves and railway termini, to catch passengers, and worry them 
 •?.ith recommendations to this or that hotel, is unpleasantly prevalent. The touters there 
 are known as hotel runners. 
 
 X " Wine one pint for a pennie, and bread to drink it was given free in every tavern.*' 
 —Note by Stow. The imperfect tense shows that this excellent custom iMid already 
 lallea into disuse in Stow's time. 
 
314 ^^^^ HISTOR Y OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 London, there to answer all matters objected against him : when he wisely 
 acquitted himself. The Pope's Head tavern hath a footway through fiom 
 Cornhill into Lumbard Street." — Stows Survey, p. 75. 
 
 Ill this tavern, in the fourth of Edward lY. (1464,) a trial of 
 skill was held between Oliver Davy, goldsmith of London, and 
 White Johnson, "Alicante Strangeour," also of London, — the 
 London goldsmiths being divided into native and "foren" work- 
 men. These last, though they might be Englishmen, were so named 
 merely as a distinction with respect to the work they produced, 
 which consisted frequently in counterfeit articles and bad gold. 
 The trial consisted in making, in four pieces of steel the size of a 
 penny, a cat's face in relief, and another cat's face engraved, a 
 naked man in relief, and another engraved, w^hich work was to 
 be performed in five weeks. Oliver Davy, the native goldsmith, 
 won the wager, as White Johnson, the foreign workman, after six 
 weeks could only produce the two "inward engraved^' objects. 
 The forfeit was a crown, and a dinner to the wardens, the um- 
 pires, and all those concerned in the wager. The works were 
 kept in Goldsmith's Hall, " to y^^ intent that they be redy iff any 
 suche controursy herafter falls, to be shewede that suche traverse 
 hathe be determynd af oretymes.^' In Pepys's time this tavern, 
 like many others of that period and later, had a painted room. 
 " 18 January 1668. — To the Pope's Head, there to see the fine- 
 painted room which Eogerson told me of, of his doing, but I do 
 not like it at all, though it be good for such a publick room." 
 Here in 1718 Quin killed his brother actor Bowen. " On 
 Thursday s'ennight at night, Mr Bowen and Mr Quin, two 
 comedians, drinking at the Pope's Head tavern in Cornhill, 
 quarrelled, drew their swords, and fought, and the former was 
 run into the guts ; he languished till Sunday last, and then died. 
 Bowen, before he expired, desired that Mr Quin might not be 
 prosecuted, because what had happened to him was his own seek- 
 ing, "t The jury brought in a vejrdict of manslaughter, and Quin 
 for the offence was burned in the hand. J The quarrel was rather 
 a foolish one, arising out of a w^ager which of the two was the 
 honester man, which had been decided in favour of Quin; inde 
 irce. This tavern seems to have continued in existence till the 
 latter part of the last century. 
 
 ♦ Will Herbert, "History of the Twelve Great Living Companies/' TOl. il p. 1P7. 
 t Weekly Journal, April 26, 1718. 
 t Jtyid., July 12, 1718. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 
 
 The emblem of another class of high dignitaries of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, the Cardinal's Hat or Cap, was at one time 
 common in England. Bagford says : " You have not meney of 
 them, they war set up by sume that had ben saruants to Tho. 
 Wolsey."* But we find the sign long before Wolsey's time, for 
 in 1459, Simon Eyre 
 
 " Gave the Tavern called the Cardinal's Hat in Lumbard Street, with a 
 tenement annexed on the East part of the tavern, and a mansion behind 
 the East tenement, together with an alley from Lumbard Street to Corn- 
 hill, with the appurtenances, all which were by him new built, towards a 
 brotherhood of our Lady in St Mary Woolnots." — Stoio, p. 77. 
 
 This tavern and another of the same name, also in Lombard 
 Street, were still extant in the seventeenth century. It was also 
 the sign of one of the Stairs on the Bankside, the name of which 
 is still preserved to that locality in Cardinal Cap's Alley. 
 
 " But at the naked stewes 
 I understands howe that 
 The sygne of the Cardinall's hat 
 That inne is now shit up." 
 
 Skelton's Whye come ye not to Courte. 
 
 These houses, by proclamation of 37, Henry VIII., were 
 " whited and painted with signes on the front for a token of the 
 said houses ; they were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of 
 Winchester, whence Pennant makes some sly remarks upon the 
 sign of the Cardinal's Cap : — 
 
 " I will not give into scandal so far as to suppose that this house was 
 peculiarly protected by any coeval member of the sacred college. Neither 
 would I by any means insinuate that the Bishops of Winchester and 
 Rochester, or the abbots of Waverley, or of St Augustine in Canterbury, 
 or of Battel, or of Hyde, or the Prior of Lewis, had there their tem- 
 porary residences for them or their trains, for the sake of these conveni- 
 ences, in that period of cruel and unnatural restriction," &c.t 
 
 The Bishop's Head was, in 1663, the sign of J. Thompson, a 
 bookseller and publisher in St Paul's Churchyard. At this 
 house, in 1708, was published Hatton's "New View of London;" 
 it was then in the occupation of Eobert Knaplock. 
 
 More general, however, was the Mitee, which was the sign of 
 several famous taverns in London in the seventeenth century. 
 There was one in Great Wood Street, Cheapside, (called on the 
 trades token of the house the Mitre and Eose,) mentioned by 
 
 » Harl. MSS. 5910, part u. 
 
 t Account of London," p. 60, 1813. 
 
3i6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Pepys as " a house of the greatest note in London."* The land- 
 lord of this house, named Proctor, died at Islington of the 
 plague in 1665, in an insolvent state, though he had been "the 
 greatest vintner for some time in London for great entertain- 
 ments." There was another Mitre near the west end of St Paul's, 
 the first music-house in London. The name of the master was 
 Robert Herbert alias Forges. Like many brother-publicans, he 
 was, besides being a lover of music, also a collector of natural 
 curiosities, as appears by his 
 
 " Catalogue of many natural rarities, with great industrie, cost, and thirty 
 years' travel into foreign countries, collected by Robert Herbert, alias 
 Forges, Gent., and sworn servant to his Majesty ; to be seen at the placo 
 called the Musick house at the Mitre, near the West End of S. Paul's 
 Church, 1664." 
 
 This collection, or at least a great part of it, was bought by Sir 
 Hans Sloane. It is conjectured that the Mitre was situated in 
 London House Yard, at the north-west end of St Paul's, on the 
 spot where, afterwards, stood the house known by the sign of the 
 Goose and Gridiron. Ned Wardt describes the appearance of 
 another music-house of the same name in Wapping, which he 
 calls the Paradise of Wapping," though more probably it was 
 in Shadwell, w-here there is still a Music House Court, which 
 seems to point to some such origin. His description of this 
 prototype of the Oxford and Alhambra music-halls is not a little 
 amusing. The music, consisting of fiddles, hautboys, and a 
 humdrum organ, he compares to the grunting of a hog added as 
 a base to a concert of caterwauling cats in the height of their 
 ecstacy. The music-room w^as richly decorated with paintings, 
 (Hornfair was one of the pictures,) carvings, and gilding; the 
 seats were like pews in a church, and the orchestra railed in like a 
 chancel. The musicians occasionally went round to collect con- 
 tributions, as they still do in the Cafes Chantants of the Champs 
 Elysees, Paris. The other rooms in the house were " furnished for 
 the entertainment of the best of companies," all painted with 
 humorous subjects. The kitchen, used at that period in many 
 taverns as a sitting room by the customers, was railed in and 
 ornamented in the same gaudy style as the rest of the houses; a 
 quantity of canary birds were suspended on the w^alls. Under- 
 ground was a tippling sanctuary painted with drunken women 
 tormenting the devil, and other somewhat quaint subjects. The 
 
 • Pepys's Memoirs, Sept. 18, 1060. 
 
 t "London Spy," 1706. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, 3 I 7 
 
 wine of the establishment was good. Here, then, we may 
 imagine our great-great-grandfathers listening to the woeful 
 tiddles scraping " Sillenger's Kound," " John, come kiss me,'' 
 Old Simon the King," or other old tunes, until flesh and blood 
 could stand it no longer, and a dance would be indulged in to 
 the music of " Green Sleeves," " Yellow Stockings," or some 
 other equally comic dance and tune ; after which everybody went 
 home, through the dirty dark streets, doubtless " highly pleased 
 with the entertainment." 
 
 Older than either of these was the Mitre in Cheap, which is 
 mentioned in the vestry books of St Michael's, Cheapside, before 
 the year 147o.* In Your Five Gallants," a comedy by Middle- 
 ton, about 1608, Goldstone prefers it to the Mermaid : — "The 
 Mitre in my mind for neat attendance, diligent boys and — push, 
 excels it [the Mermaid] far." But the most famous of the inns 
 with this name, was the Mitre in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, one 
 of Doctor Johnson's favourite haunts, " where he loved to sit up 
 late," t and where Goldsmith, and the other celebrities, and 
 minor stars that moved about the great doctor, used to meet 
 him. This house is named in the play of " Eam Alley, or Merry 
 Tricks," in 1611. It was one of those houses which, for more 
 than two centuries, was the constant resort of all the wits about 
 town ; even the name of Shakespeare throws its halo around 
 this place : — 
 
 " Mr Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street/' says Mr J. P. 
 Collier, " is in possession of a MS. full of songs and poems in the hand- 
 writing of a person of the name of Richard Jackson ; all prior to the year 
 1631, and including many unpublished poems by a variety of celebrated 
 poets. One of the most curious is a song of five-seven-lines stanzas thus 
 headed : ' Shakespeare's Rime which he made at the Mytre in Fleete Street.' 
 It begins — * From the rich Lavinian shore,' and some few of the lines 
 were published by Playford, and set as a catch. Another shorter piece is 
 called in the margin : ' Shakespeare's Rime : ' — 
 
 * Give me a Cup of rich Canary Wine, 
 Which was the Mitre's (drink) and now is mine; 
 Of which had Horace and Anacreon tasted 
 Their lives as well as lines till now had lasted.' 
 I have little doubt that the lines are genuine, as well as many other 
 Bongs." 
 
 In this same tavern Boswell supped, for the first time, with his 
 idol, and the description of the biographer s delight on that grand 
 
 * Wilkinson's "Londina Illustrata." 
 
 t Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. 1., p. 272. 
 
3 1 8 THE niSTOR Y OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 occasion has a festive air about it that cannot fail to make a 
 lively impression on his readers : — 
 
 '*He agreed to meet me in the evoning at the Mitre. I called on him, 
 and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper, and port wine, of 
 which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox high church 
 sound of the Mitre, — the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel John- 
 son — the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation and the 
 pride from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety 
 of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ever 
 experienced." 
 
 There, also, that amusing scene with the young ladies from 
 Staffordshire took place, which would make an excellent com- 
 panion picture to Leslie's " Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman." 
 
 " Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present 
 to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. 
 Come (said he) you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, 
 and we will talk over that subject, which they did; and after dinner, 
 he took one of them on his knees and fondled them for half an hour 
 together." 
 
 Hogarth, too, was an occasional visitor at this tavern. A card 
 is still extant, wherein he requested the company of Dr Arnold 
 King to dine with him at the Mitre. The written part is con- 
 tained within a circle, (representing a plate) to which a knife and 
 fork are the supporters. In the centre is drawn a pie with a 
 Mitre on the top of it, and the invitation — 
 
 7], 13. TT. [Eta beta py.] * 
 
 In this tavern the Society of Antiquaries used to meet, before 
 apartments were obtained in Somerset House. 
 
 "The Society hitherto having no house of their own, meet every Thurs- 
 day evening, about seven o'clock, at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, 
 where antiquities are produced and considered, draughts and impressions 
 thereof taken, dissertations read, and minutes of the several transactions 
 entered, and the whole economy under such admirable regulations, that 
 probably in a short time they may apply for a royal power of incor- 
 poration." f 
 
 In the bar of the Mitre Tavern in St James* Market, which 
 was kept by her aunt, (Mrs Yoss, formerly the mistress of Sir God- 
 frey Kneller,) Captain Farquhar overheard Miss Nancy Oldfield 
 read the play of " The Scornful Lady,'' and was so struck with the 
 
 * Erskine used to send somewhat similar cards of invitation when on the Bench, by 
 drawing a turtle on a card, and sending it to a friend, with the day and hour, 
 t Maitland's History of London, 1739, p. 647. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 319 
 
 proper empliasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, 
 that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage. Captain (after- 
 wards Sir John) Vanbrugh, a friend of the family, recommended 
 her to Eich, and shortly after she made her debut at Covent 
 Garden, with an allowance of fifteen shillings a week. 
 
 Though a dozen other famous Mitre Taverns might be men- 
 tioned, these are sufficient to sho^f how general a sign it was ; 
 the partiality of tavern-keepers for it is somewhat accounted for in 
 the following stanza of the " Quack Vintners," 1712 : — 
 " May Smith, whose prosperous mitre is his sign, 
 To shew the church no enemy to wine ; 
 Still draw such Christian liquor none may think, 
 Tho' e'er so pious, 'tis a sin to drink." * 
 
 The Mitre also is found in a few combinations, as the Mitre 
 AND Dove, ^. e., the Holy Ghost, in King Street, Westminster ; 
 the Mitre and Keys, in Leicester — evidently the Cross Keys, 
 which are a charge in the arms of several bishoprics ; and the 
 Mitre and Eose, which, from trades tokens, appears to have 
 been the sign of a tavern in the Strand, as well as in Wood Street, 
 Cheapside. 
 
 That the friars were also honoured on the signboard appears 
 from " Fryar Lane, on the south side of Thames Street, near 
 Dowgate. It was formerly called Greenwich Lane, but of later 
 years Fryar's Lane, from the sign of a Fryar sometime there." t 
 Probably it was a Black Friar, or Dominican Monk, for that 
 order, above all others, had the reputation of being great topers, 
 and therefore were not out of place on a signboard. There is a 
 prayer extant of the holy fathers, addressed to St Dominic ; — 
 
 Sanctus Dominicus sit nobis semper amicus 
 
 Qui canimus nostro jugiter prseconia rostro, 
 
 Be cordis venis, siccatis ante lagenis; 
 
 Ergo tuas laudes si tu nos pangere gaudes, 
 
 Tempore paschali, fac ne potu puteali 
 
 Conveniat uti ; quod si fit, undique muti 
 
 Semper erunt patres qui, non curant nisi fratres.*' X 
 
 * «The Quack Vintners, or a Satyr against Bad Wine," 1713 ; probably a pamphlet got 
 op by the London vintners against Brook and Hilliers, the famous wine merchants re 
 commended by the Spectator. 
 
 t Hatton's New View of London, 1708, p. 32. 
 
 X "Saint Dominic be always our friend, 
 Who sing thy praises daily in our pulpit, 
 
 From the veins of our hearts, after we have emptied our flagons ; 
 
 Therefore if thou rejoicest to hear us set forth thy praise, 
 
 Make that in Easter time we of spring water 
 
 Need not drink, for if that were to happen, everywhere 
 
 They will be mute monks, who do not rua about unless they be friarg.* 
 
320 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 And an old French couplet gives the following gradations of the 
 potatory capacities of the different orders, in which the Franciscans 
 only are said to beat the Dominicans : — 
 " Boire a la Capucine, 
 
 C'est boire pauvrement ; 
 
 Boire a la Celestine, 
 
 C'est boire largement ; 
 
 Boire a la Jacobine, 
 
 C'est chopine a chopine ; 
 
 Mais boire en Cordelier, 
 
 C'est vider le cellier." * 
 
 Tokens are extant of a music-house, with the sign of the 
 Black-friar, dated 1671. In Paris also, the Bacchic propensities 
 of the Black-friars made a tavern-keeper of the seventeenth century 
 choose St Dominic as the patron saint of his tavern. His 
 principal customers, who formed a sort of club, were called 
 Dominicans ; a contemporary song thus gives the rule of this 
 order : — 
 
 Nous sommes dix, tous grands buveurs ; 
 Bons ivrognes et grands fumeurs, 
 Qui ne cessant jamais de boire, 
 Et de remuer la machoire, 
 Meprisons d 'amour les faveurs." f 
 
 Nuns also figured on the signboard as the Three Nujts, which 
 was constantly used by drapers ; not exactly, as Tom Brown says, 
 *^ very dismally painted to keep up young women's antipathy to 
 popery and " single blessedness, but because the holy sisterhoods 
 were generally very expert in making lace embroidery, and other 
 fancy work — as the handkerchiefs made by the nuns of Pau, and 
 sold by our drapers, fully prove even at the present day. In the 
 seventeenth century, the Three Nuns was the sign of a well-known 
 coaching and carriers' inn in Aldgate, which gave its name to 
 Three Nuns' Court close at hand ; near this inn was the " dread- 
 ful gulf, for such it was rather than a pit," in which, during the 
 
 ♦ "To drink like a Capuchin, 
 
 Is to drink poorly ; 
 
 To drink like a Benedictine, 
 
 Is to drink deeply ; 
 
 To drink like a Dominican, 
 
 Is pot after pot ; 
 
 But to drink like a Franciscsm, 
 
 Is to drink the cellar dry." 
 f •* We are ten, all deep drinkerg, 
 
 Jolly topers, and good smokers, 
 
 Who, never giving over drinking 
 
 And eating, 
 
 ^rn th« favours of love," 
 
PLATE XI 11. 
 
 RUNNING FOOTMAN. 
 (Charles Street, Berkeley Square, circa 1790.) 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 (Banks's Collection.) 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 32 I 
 
 Plague of 1665, not less than 1114 bodies were buried in 
 a fortnight, from the 6th to the 20th of September.* Not 
 improbably this sign, after the Eeformation, was occasionally 
 metamorphosed into the Three Widows : Peter Treveris, a 
 foreigner, erected a press and continued printing until 1552 at 
 the Thkee Widows in Southwark ; he printed several books for 
 William Rastell, John Eeynor, E,. Copeland, and others in the 
 city of London. It is still the sign of a cap and bonnet shop in 
 Dublin. The Matrons, also, may have originally represented 
 Nuns ; this last hung, in the seventeenth century, at the door of 
 John Bannister, crutch and bandage maker, near the hospital, 
 (Christ's Hospital School,) Newgate Street, t 
 
 At the present day the Church is a very common ale-house 
 sign, either on account of the esteem in which good living has 
 been held by churchmen in all ages, " superbis pontificum potiore 
 coenis," or, from the proximity of a church to the ale-house in 
 question ; thus, one inn in the town would be known as the 
 " Market House," whilst another might be known as the "Church 
 Inn." It has been said the name was given that topers might 
 equivocate and say that they " frequently go to church." Be 
 this as it may, there is generally an ale-house close to every 
 church, (in Knightsbridge the chapel of the Holy Trinity is 
 jammed in between two public-houses,) whereby a good oppor- 
 tunity is offered to wash a dry sermon down. In Bristol, at the 
 beginning of the present century, it was still worse — a Methodist 
 meeting-room was immediately over a public-house, which gave 
 rise to the following epigram : — 
 
 " There 's a spirit above and a spirit below, 
 A spirit of joy and a spirit of woe — 
 Tlie spirit above is the spirit divine ; 
 But the spirit below is the spirit of wine." 
 
 Other signs connected with the church are the Chapel Bell, 
 at Suton, in Norfolk, and the Church Stile or Chuuch Gates. 
 which is very common. The origin of this last comes from an 
 old custom of drinking ale on the parish account, on certain oc- 
 casions, at the church stile. Pepys mentions this when he was 
 at Walthamstow, April 14, 1661 : — "After dinner we all went tc 
 the church stile, and there eat and drank." To this a correspon- 
 dent in the Gent, Mag. (Nov. 1852, p. 442) makes the follow- 
 ng note : — " In an old book of accounts belonging to Warrington 
 
 ♦ The Plague, by De Foe. f Beaufoy Trades Tokens. 
 
 X 
 
322 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 parish, the following minute occurs : — "Nov. 5, 1688. Paid fo? 
 drink at the church Steele, 13s. f and in 1732, "It is ordered 
 that hereafter no money be spent on ye 5th of November or any 
 other State day on the parish account, either at the church stile 
 or any other place." Though certainly the parish now does not 
 pay for any ale drunk at the church stile, the sign is evidently 
 set up in remembrance of the good old time when such things 
 were. 
 
 Belonging to the church was also the sign of the Three 
 Brushes, or Holy Water Sprinklers, which was that of an old 
 house near the White Lion prison, Southwark, in which there 
 was a room with panelled wainscoting and ceihng ornamented 
 with the royal arms of Queen Elizabeth. Probably it had been 
 the court-room at the time the White Lion Inn was a prison. 
 Amongst the Beaufoy trades tokens there is one of Rob. Thorn- 
 ton, haberdasher, next the Three Brushes in Southwark, 1667/' 
 
 Innumerable signs were borrowed from the army and navy ; 
 thus, at the present day, every uniform in the service is repre- 
 sented near barracks or in other haunts of soldiers. The Re- 
 cruiting Sergeant is generally the sign of the public-house, 
 where that worthy spreads his nets. Cross Guns, Cross 
 Lances, Cross Swords, and Cross Pistols, respectively, are 
 meant to allure artillerymen, lancers, and various cavalry men. 
 But above all the Standard, the Banner, or the Waving Flag 
 — " the glorious rag that for a thousand years has stood the 
 battle and the breeze," is of common occurrence, not only in the 
 neighbourhood of military quarters, but everywhere in towns and 
 villages. At the Standard Tavern in the Strand, Edmund Curll 
 the bookseller used to meet the mysterious Rev. Mr Smith, who 
 fjold him Pope's correspondence. 
 
 I am just going to the Lords to finish Pope/* writes Curll to this per- 
 Bon. " I desire you to send me the sheets to perfect the first fifty books, 
 and likewise the remaining three hundred books, and pray be at the 
 Standard Tavern this evening and I will pay you £20 more." 
 
 The Kettledrum is a sign at St George-in-the-East ; the 
 Drum and the Trumpet are both of frequent occurrence, and 
 the last is of old standing. One of the characters in " The Ball," 
 a play by Shirley, 1633, thus commends the beer of the Trum- 
 pet : — 
 
 " Their strong beere is better than any I 
 Ever drunke at the Trumpet." — The Ball, Act v. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 323 
 
 Possibly this was tlie Trumpet in Shire Lane, immortalised in 
 the Tatler, and one of the favourite haunts of merry gjod- 
 natured Dick Steele. Bishop Hoadley was once present at one 
 of the meetings in this tavern, when Steele rather exposed him- 
 self in his efforts to please, a double duty devolving upon him, 
 as well to celebrate the glorious memory of King William III., 
 it being the 4th of ^November — as to drink up to conversation 
 pitch his friend Addison, the phlegmatic constitution of whom 
 was hardly warmed for society by the time Steele was no longer 
 fit for it. One of the company, a red hot Whig, knelt down to 
 drink the health with all honours. This rather disconcerted the 
 bishop, which, Steele seeing, whispered to him — " Do laugh, my 
 lord, pray laugh ; it is humanity to laugh." Shortly after Steele 
 was put into a chair and sent home. Next morning he was much 
 ashamed, and sent the Bishop this distich : — 
 
 Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
 
 All faults he pardons though he none commits." 
 
 Some trades tokens are extant of houses with the sign of the 
 Trumpet in King Street, Wapping, and in the Minories. At the 
 same period there was a sign of the Teumpeter in Trump Alley, 
 probably suggested by the name of the thoroughfare. 
 
 The Buckler is a very old sign, and occurs in " Cocke Lorell's 
 Bote:"— 
 
 Here is Saunder Sadeler of Froge Street Corner, 
 With Jelyan Joly at signe of the BokelerV 
 
 More general was the sign of the Sword and Buckler, which 
 was frequently set up by haberdashers for the following reason : — 
 "And whereas, until about the twelve or thirteenth yeere of Queene 
 Elisabeth, the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was only had 
 in use, the bucklers then being only a foot broad, with a pike of four or 
 five inches long ; then they beganne to make them full half ell broad, with 
 sharpe pikes 10 or 12 inches long, wherewith they meant either to 
 breake the swordes of their enemies, if it hitte uppon the pike, or else 
 sodainely to runne within them and stabbe, and thrust thieir buckler 
 with the pike into the face, arme, and body of their adversary, but this 
 continued not long,* tvery liaher dasher then sold huclders.'"—Stows 
 Chronicle. 
 
 The great prevalence of this sign originated in the so-called 
 sword and buckler play, once so common in England. Misson, 
 
 * A proclamation of Queen Elizabeth restricted the length of the sword, rapier, and 
 such like weapons to "oue yard and half a quarter of the blade at the uttermost," and the 
 point of the buckler sioi above two inches in length, under the penalty of a "fine at the 
 Queen's pleasure, and the weapon to be forfayted, and if any such persons shall ofifend a 
 second time, then the same to 1-e banished from the place and towue of his dwellina/' 
 
3H 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 who visited this country in the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, says : — 
 
 Within these few years you should often see a sort of gladiators march- 
 ing through the streets, in their shirts to the waste, their sleeves tucked up, 
 sword in hand, and preceeded by a drum to gather spectators. They give 
 so much a head to see the fight, which was with cutting swords and a kind 
 of buckler for defence. The edge of the sword was a little blunted, and 
 the care of the prize fighters was not so much to avoid wounding one an- 
 other, as to avoid doing it dangerously ; nevertheless as they were obliged 
 to fight till some blood was shed, without which nobody would give a 
 farthing for the show, they were sometimes forced to play a little roughly. 
 The fights are become very rare within these eight or ten years."* 
 
 In the seventeenth century it was not a little rough play, which 
 is evident from those matches at which Pepys was present, and 
 which he describes at large. Jouvin, another Frenchman who 
 visited England in 1672, gives a detailed account of these diver- 
 tisements, which, at that period, at all events, were anything but 
 play ; and Maitland was right when he designated them as " a 
 barbarous performance, by those whom necessity (occasioned by a 
 scandalous laziness and indolence) induces to expose themselves 
 to be horribly mangled for a little money, while the bloodily- 
 minded spectators satiate themselves with human gore to the 
 great reproach of religion.^' 
 
 In the Spectator^ No. 436, there is an amusing essay on those 
 " Hockley-in-the-Hole Gladiators,^' and in No. 449 a letter ap- 
 pears, in which the deceits of the champions are shown : — 
 
 I overheard two masters of the science agreeing to quarrel on the next 
 opportunity. This was to happen in the company of a set of the fraternity 
 of the basket hilts who were to meet that evening. When this was settled, 
 one asked the other: ^ Will you give cuts or receive?' The other an- 
 swered, * Receive.' It was replied, *Are you a passionate man?' 'No, 
 provided you cut no more, nor no deeper than we agree.' " 
 
 A few other instances of the Sword occur on signs, as the 
 Sword and Ckoss, a sort of emblem of the Church militant, or 
 perhaps an inversion of the Cross Swords : this was a sign 
 ''next door to the Savoy Gate in 17 11.^' The Swordblade, a 
 coffee-house in Birchen Lane in 1718, and the Sword and 
 Dagger, a combination of arms that evokes the phantom of many 
 a desperate duel amongst the ruffling gallants of the reign of 
 James I. This sign of ill omen was, in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, in St Catherine Lane, Tower, as appears from the traded 
 tokens issued there. 
 
 * Misson's Travels, p. 307. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 325 
 
 The Dagger was once common in London — 
 
 " My lawyer's clerk I lighted on last night 
 In Holborn at the Dagger,^' 
 
 bays Captain Face, in Ben Jonson's Alcliynnst/' and various 
 trades tokens testify the prevalence of the sign. Probably this arose 
 from its being a charge in the city arms, which was supposed to 
 represent the dagger Sir William Walworth used in slaying Wat 
 Tyler. This at least was asserted in the inscription below the 
 niche in which Sir William's statue was erected in Fishmonger's 
 Hall :— 
 
 " Brave Walworth knyght Lord Mayor yt slew 
 Rebellious Tyler in his alarm es — 
 The king therefore did give in lieu 
 The Dagger to the Cytyes armes." 
 
 Stow says that this is erroneous, as, when in the 4 Richard II. 
 a new seal was made for the city, " the armes of this city were 
 not altered, but remayne as afore ; to witte, argent, a playne cross 
 gules a sword of Saint Paul in the first quarter and no dagger 
 of William Walworth as is fabuled."* The Dagger and 
 Pie was in the seventeenth century the sign of a celebrated pie- 
 shop in Cheapside, the Pie being added to the original sign ; 
 but from the trades tokens of this house we see that this was 
 represented by a rebus of a dagger with a magpie on the point. 
 Dagger-pies are frequently mentioned in the plays of that period ; 
 for instance, in Decker's " Satyro-Mastrix : " — " I'll not take thy 
 word for a dagger-pie;" and in Prynne's " Histrio-Mastrix," 
 " and please you, let them be dagger-pies." The London 
 apprentices appear to have been good customers to this house. 
 Whenever, for example, old Hobson, the merry haberdasher, went 
 abroad, " his prentices wold ether bee at the Taverne filling their 
 heds with wine or at the Dagger in Cheapside cramming their 
 bellies with minced pyes."t And in Hey wood's comedy of 
 If you Know not me you Know Nobody," the worthy citizen 
 bitterly inveighs against the temptations held out to apprentices 
 by the dainties of this house : — 
 
 "Ten pounds a morning ! Here is the fruit 
 Of Dctgger-pies and Ale-house guzzling." — Act i. sc. i., 1606. 
 A rather curious sign was that of the Red M and Dagger. 
 The letter M was the initial of Mrs Milner's name, who, at this 
 
 * Stow's Chromcle, Thorn's edition, p. 83. 
 
 t Merry Jests of old Hobson the Londoner. 1611 
 
326 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 sign in Pope's Head Alley, " over against the Eoyal Exchange in 
 Cornhill," sold the " Grand Kestorative/' which cured consump- 
 tion, stone, dropsy, and all evils flesh is heir to. The sign occurs 
 among the Bagford bills ; there is a similar one amongst the 
 Banks bills, the Pistol and C, the sign of John Crook, a razor- 
 maker at the Great Turnstile, Holborn, circa 1787 : the bill 
 represents a renaissance scutcheon with a pistol, above it a C, 
 and surgical instruments disseminated on the field. 
 
 Though we have the authority of Cicero that cedant arma togce, 
 yet booksellers, who flourish by the arts of peace, choose the Hel- 
 met for their sign. Humphrey Joy, a bookseller and printer in St 
 Paul's Churchyard in 15o0, and another, celebrated in the reigns 
 of Henry YIIL, Edward YL, and Queen Mary, Eowland Hall by 
 name, had both a Helmet for their sign. This Hall changed his 
 sign more frequently than is generally the custom ; thus, besides 
 the Helmet, he is known to have traded at the signs of the 
 Cradle, in Lombard Street; the Half Eagle and Key, in 
 Gutter Lane ; and the Three Arrows, in Golden Lane, near 
 Cripplegate. There is still a stone carving of the helmet fixed in 
 the front of a house in London Wall, with the date 1668 and the 
 initials H. M. Ned Ward mentions the Helmet in Bishopsgate ; 
 he says at the battles without bloodshed of the Trainbands in 
 Moorfields, the gallant warriors wssh 
 
 " For beer from the Helmet in Bishopsgate. 
 And why from the Helmet ? Because that sign 
 Makes the liquor as welcome t' a soldier as wine." 
 
 Trades tokens are extant of the Blue Helmet in Tower Street 
 From the same source Ave learn that there was, in the seventeenth 
 century, a sign of the Plate, i.e., the Breastplate, in Upper Shad- 
 well ; and a Handgun in Shadwell. This weapon was a sort of 
 musket of early times, fired in the hand without a rest ; "gunners 
 with handguns or half-hakes" are named by Stow in his enumera- 
 tion of the troops marching in the city watch on St John's night. 
 
 A few other old weapons remain to be mentioned, as the 
 Aerow, once a great favourite when this weapon made the 
 English name terrible whenever our troops took the field. In tho 
 last century there was a beer-house at Knockholt, in Kent, the 
 sign an Arrow, with the following poetical effusion beneath : — 
 " Charles Collins liveth here, 
 
 Sells rum, brandy, gin, and beer ; 
 I make this board a little wider, 
 To let you know I sell good cyder." 
 
PIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 327 
 
 Tlie Cross-bullets, a name puzzling at first sight, was a sign 
 in Thames Street in the seventeenth century, representing two 
 bar-shot crossed, which the trades token elucidates by the equally 
 puzzling legend, " at the Grose bvlets ; " this was an instrument 
 of destruction formerly used in naval engagements, and for that 
 reason set up in the neighbourhood of the shipping. 
 
 If we may believe a jocular article on a quack handbill in the 
 Spectator, No. 444, there was a Cannon-ball in Drury Lane ; 
 for he mentions that — 
 
 In Russell Court, over against the Canonball, at the Surgeons' Arms, 
 in Drury Lane, is lately come from his travels a surgeon who has prac- 
 tised surgery and physic both by sea and land these twenty-four years. 
 He (by the blessing) cures the Yellow Jaundice, Green sickness, Scurvey, 
 Dropsy, Surfeits, Long sea voyages, Campaigns, and women's mis- 
 carriages, lyings in, etc., as some people that has been lamed these thirty 
 years can testify ; in short he cureth all diseases incident on man, women, 
 or children." 
 
 Undoubtedly this bill had been slightly touched up in passing 
 through the hands of the Spectator, who, like the mythological 
 king, " quodcungue tetigit inaurat,^' for it is rather " too good to 
 be true." 
 
 The Halbert and Ceown was, in 1791, the sign of Paul 
 Savigne, a cutler in St Martin's Churchyard j whilst the Spear 
 in Hand is at the present day the sign of a public-house at 
 Norwich, being undoubtedly a popular version of some family 
 crest. 
 
 In Jews' Eow, or Eoyal Hospital Eow, Chelsea, there is a 
 sign which greatly mystifies the maimed old heroes of the Penin- 
 sula and Waterloo, and many others besides ; this is the Snoav- 
 SHOES. It is the sign of a house of old standing, and was set up 
 during the excitement of the American war of independence, 
 when snow-shoes formed part of the equipment of the troops sent 
 out to fight the battles of King George against Mr Washington 
 and his rebels." 
 
 One of the low public-houses that stood on the outskirts of 
 London, towards Hyde Park Corner, at the end of the last cen- 
 tury, was called the Triumphal Car. There wero a great many 
 other houses of the same description in that neigh"lx)urhood, viz., 
 the Hercules Pillars, the Eed Lion, the Swan, the Golden Lion, 
 the Horse-shoe, the Eunning Horse, the Barleymow, the White 
 Horse, and the Half-moon, which two last have given names to 
 two streets in Piccadilly. The sign of the Triumphal Car was 
 
328 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 in all probability bestowed upon the bouse in honour of th« 
 soldiers who used to visit it. 
 
 ** These public-houses, about the middle of last century, were much 
 visited on Sundays, but those contiguous to Hyde Park were chiefly 
 resorted to by soldiers, particularly on review days, when there were long 
 wooden seats fixed in the street before the houses for the accommodation 
 of six or seven barbers, who were employed on field days in powdering 
 those youths who were not adroit enough to dress each other's hair. Yet 
 it was not unusual for twenty or thirty of the older soldiers to bestride a 
 form in the open air, where each combed, soaped, powdered, and tied 
 the hair of his comrade, and afterwards underwent the same operation 
 himself." ^ 
 
 The grenadiers of Frederick the Great managed those things 
 still better, for twenty or thirty of them used to sit in a circle, 
 each dressing, plaiting, and powdering the pigtail of the man 
 before him, so that all hands were employed at the same time, 
 and none was lost in waiting. There is still a Triumphant 
 Chariot public-house in Pembroke Mews, Chelsea, a house of 
 more than fifty years' standing. 
 
 The Bombay Grab in High Street, Bow, belongs to military 
 signs, as " Grab," or " Crab," is a slang expression for a foot 
 soldier ; perhaps the landlord at one time may have been in the 
 Bombay army. 
 
 Objects relating to the navy, or rather to shipping, are still 
 more common in this seafaring nation of ours than the attri- 
 butes or emblems of any other trade or profession. Ned Ward 
 describes Deptford in 1703 as every house being distinguished 
 by either the sign of the Ship, the Anchor, the Three Mariners, 
 Boatswain and Call, or something relating to the sea. 
 
 For as I suppose [says he] if they should hang up any other, the salt- 
 water novices would be as much puzzled to know what the figure repre- 
 sented as the Irishman was, when he called the Globe the Golden Cab- 
 bage, and the Unicorn the White Horse with a barber's pole in his 
 forehead." f 
 
 There is scarcely a town in the kingdom that has not a 
 Ship inn, tavern, or public-house. Tokens exist of " the Ship 
 without Templebar, 1649," probably the inn granted in 1571 to 
 Sir Christopher Hatton, along with some lands in Yorkshire and 
 Dorsetshire, and the wardship of a minor. % William Faithorne 
 
 * J. T. Smith's Antiquarian Ramble in the Slieets of London, edited by Cliatlt* 
 Mackay, 1846. 
 
 t Nicolas's Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, p. 7. 
 : Ned Ward's Frolic to Horn Fair, 1703. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES. AND PROFESSIONS. 329 
 
 tlie engraver (ob. 1691) seems to have occupied the same house 
 afterwards, for Walpole informs us that — 
 
 *' Faithorne now set up in a new shop at the sign of the Ship, next to 
 the Drake, opposite to the Palsgrave Head, without Temple Bar, where he 
 not only followed his art, but sold Italian, Dutch, and English prints, and 
 worked for booksellers." * 
 
 This sign of the Ship, next to the Dralce, seems to have 
 constituted a sort of a pun or a rebus on Admiral Drake, as 
 observed by Mr Akerman. Among the trades tokens there was 
 ^^Will Jonson at y« Drake, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, 1667/' 
 The Drake stood next to the Ship, It was doubtless a reous, and 
 alluded to the Admiral, who was very popular in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, the mint-mark of the martlet on her coins 
 being termed by the vulgar a Drake. The situation of this sign 
 near the Ship was appropriate enough. In the seventeenth 
 century there was a sign of the Ship at Leeuwarden, in Fries- 
 land, (Netherlands,) with the following inscription : — 
 ** Die in de ly, my vaart voorby 
 Zal hebben een Ryxdaalder en 't gelach vry." + 
 
 At the Ship tavern in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr Thomas 
 Amps, on Tuesday the 14th of February 1654, a plot against 
 Cromwell was discovered. CarlyleJ forcibly pictures the con- 
 spirators as eleven truculent, rather threadbare persons, sitting 
 over small drink there on that Tuesday night, considering how 
 the Protector might be assassinated. Poor broken Eoyalist men, 
 payless old captains, and such like, with their steeple hats worn 
 very brown, and jackboots slit, projecting there what they could 
 not execute. The poor knaves were found guilty, but not worth 
 hanging, and got off wdth being sent to the Tower for a while to 
 ponder over their wickedness. 
 
 Names of famous men-of-war are often found on the sign- 
 board, in seaports ; either in honour of some brilliant feat per- 
 formed by them, or simply in compliment to the crew, in the 
 hopes of obtaining their liberal patronage. Thus the Albion, 
 the Saucy Ajax, the Ciece, and Arethusa, with innumerable 
 others, may be met with in the vicinity of Plymouth, Ports- 
 mouth, and other seaports. The naming of signboards in this 
 way was an old custom ; as two examples among the London 
 trades tokens very sufficiently prove. Thus, for instance, The 
 
 * Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, p. 132. 
 
 t Whoever outsails me under the lee, 
 Shall have a dollar and drink scot-free,'* 
 X Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. 
 
330 
 
 THE HISTORY 01 SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Speaker's Fhigate, the sign of a sliop in Shadwell in the seven- 
 teenth century. The frigate had been named after Sir Richard 
 Stainer, speaker in the House of Commons in the time of the Com- 
 monwealth, who had done good service under command of 
 Admiral Blake, in some of the naval engagements with the 
 Spaniards. In 1 652, this ship was sent to ^' Argier in Turkey,^' 
 (Algiers,) under command of Captain Thorowgood, with the sum 
 of X30,000 to redeem English captives from slavery. Upon 
 this occasion the Puritan newspapers made the following punning 
 prayer : — 
 
 " A prosperous gale attend his motion ; and a Christian vote and bless- 
 ing be present, in all their debates and consultations, for doubtless, 'tis a 
 sacrifice pleasing both to God and man, and plainly denotes unto the people 
 of England, that our magistrates had rather bring home exiles, than make 
 more." * 
 
 After the Kestoration the name of this ship was changed into the 
 EoYAL Charles, (which also occurs as a sign,) that ill-fated ship 
 taken by the Dutch in 1667, when, under Admiral de Euyter, 
 they made their descent on Chatham and Sheerness, and burnt a 
 part of our fleet. The Koyal Charles was one of the ships they 
 took away. Its stern is still kept as a trophy in Rotterdam. 
 
 Ships occur in various conditions, as the Full Ship, Hull ; 
 Ship in Dock, Dartmouth ; and the Snip on Launch, in every 
 ship-building locality. The Ship in Full Sail was the sign of 
 the first shop of Murray the publisher, in Fleet Street — pro- 
 bably in opposition to Longman, who had the Ship at Anchor, 
 The Ship in Distress is a touching appeal to the good-natured 
 wayfarer to assist in keeping the pump going. At Brighton, there 
 was such a sign in the last century, on which the poet had 
 assisted the painter to invoke the sympathy of the thirsty 
 public : — 
 
 " With sorrows I am compass'd round, 
 Pray lend a hand, my ship 's aground.'* 
 
 The Ship is to be met with in innumerable combinations : the 
 Ship and Pilot Boat, Narrow Quay, Bristol; the Ship and 
 Anchor is not uncommon, and in one place, at Chipping Norton, 
 it is quaintly corrupted into the Sheep and Anchor ;t the Ship 
 and Whale, in compliment to the Greenland Fishery, occurs at 
 
 ♦ Jntdligencer, Jan. 27— Feb. 4, 1652. 
 
 T Unless it be another version of the Lamb and Anchor, see p. 300. Ship and Sheep, 
 however, were formerly used promiscuously. Thus there is a token of William Eye "at 
 the Sheep," in Rye, 1652, representing a ship, whilst Decker, in Ilistrio-maslrix, 160^ 
 says, " and this shipskm cap shall be put off." 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 33 1 
 
 Soutli Shields, and the Snip and Notchblock is a sailor's coffee- 
 house in the Ratcliff Highway. All these explain themselves ; 
 most of the other combinations seem to result from the quarter- 
 ing of two signs, as the Ship and Bell, Horn Dean, Hants ; the 
 Ship and Fox, " next door but one to the Five Bells tavern, 
 near the Maypole in the Strand,'^ in 1711 j the Ship and Star 
 on a trades token of Cornhill, may be the north star by which 
 ancient mariners used to navigate; the Ship and rtAiNr>ow is 
 common to many places j the Ship and Shovel, Tooley Street ; 
 said to be a deterioration of the Sir Cloudesley Shovel, but more 
 likely alluding to the shovels used in taking out ballast, coal, corn, 
 (when in bulk) and various other cargoes ; the Ship and Plocjgh, 
 Hull ; the Ship and Blue Coat Boy, Walworth Road, although 
 susceptible of explanations, are doubtless only but quarterings. 
 The Ship and Castle, though of common occurrence, seemed 
 to puzzle the public already in the seventeenth century : — 
 " What resemblance the Ship and the Castle may bear 
 To ships floating on clouds, or to castles in air, 
 We know not ; but this we are sure of, 'tis plain 
 Their clarets are perfectly Leger-de-Main." 
 
 Search after Claret, 1691, canto I. 
 If not a combination of two signs, it may have some reference to 
 our national defences. It was a sign in Cornhill as early as 
 1716, when, on November 9, the newspapers conveyed the fol- 
 lowing information to the metropolis : — 
 
 " We are informed that this day a fowl was roasted in a wonderful sun- 
 kitchen on the top of the Ship and Castle tavern, Cornhill, in view of many 
 gentlemen. The artist performer, who is a gentleman newly come from 
 France, proposes to roast and boil meat, bake bread, prepare tea and coffee, 
 and all kitchenwork done without common fire ; some particular thing to 
 be seen every day that the sun shines out brightly. 'Twas observable that 
 when the fowl was dressed, it had the same taste and smell as if done by 
 a common fire. The machine is composed of about a hundred small look- 
 ing or convex-glasses." 
 
 The scheme, seemingly, did not succeed in dethroning "old king 
 coal," for if we had to depend on the sun for our cookery, it is 
 to be feared we would often have cold cheer. 
 
 Amongst aU these ships, of course, Jack tar could not be forgot. 
 The Ship Feiends occur in Sunderland ; the Three Mariners 
 is an old sign, of which there are examples among the trades 
 tokens, and which is still to be seen on two or three public- 
 houses in London. There was formerly a tavern kno^n by this 
 si^Cn in VauxhalL 
 
 o 
 
332 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 **0n repairing it in 1752, in it was found a remarkably high- elbowed 
 chair covered with purple cloth, and ornamented with gilt nails. An old 
 fisherman told Mr Buckmaster that he had heard his grandfather say, that 
 King Charles II. disguised, used on his water tours with his ladies to fre« 
 quent the above tavern to play at chess, &c., and that the chair found, was 
 the same as the king sat in. The chair was repaired and kept as a curiosity 
 by the late John Dawson, Esq., but by neglect was, at the pulling down of 
 his old dwelling at Vauxhall in 1777, destroyed. Mr Buckmaster sat in 
 the chair many times, but his feet would not touch the ground. King 
 Charles was very tall. No tavern of this name is known to exist now ir\ 
 Lambeth, but there is one of the sign of the Three Merry Boys,* pro 
 bably a corruption of the above name." f 
 
 In other places we meet with the Three Jolly Sailors ; at 
 Castleford there used to be one representing the jolly sailors 
 *^with a sheet in the wind," and under it the following profes- 
 sional invitation : — 
 
 *^ Coil up your ropes and anchor here, 
 Till better weather does appear." 
 
 In North Street, Hull, there is a sign of Jack on a Cruise, 
 not on board H.M. ship, but "out on'' what the lands folk call 
 " a spree ; " the cruises, however, are generally confined to rather 
 low latitudes. The Boatswain appears to have been a public- 
 house in Wapping in the reign of Charles II., for Wycherly in 
 the " Plain Dealer," 1676, makes Jerry Blackaire say : — " I should 
 soon be picking up all our own mortgaged apostle spoons, bowls, 
 and beakers, out of most of the ale-houses betwixt Hercules 
 Pillars and the Boatswain in Wapping." The Boatswain's Call 
 is a public-house sign in Frederick Street, Portsea, whose invita- 
 tion the sailors, no doubt, accept with much more pleasure than 
 the boatswain's call of " all hands on deck " on a frosty winter 
 morning. It was the name of a patriotic sea song during one of 
 the wars with France. Red, White, and Blue, and its syno- 
 nyme, the Three Admirals, both occur in more than one in- 
 stance in Liverpool. 
 
 The Anchor was, perhaps, set up rather as an emblem than as 
 referring to its use in shipping. It is frequently represented in 
 the catacombs, typifying the words of St Paul, who calls hope 
 ''the anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." St Ambrose 
 says, '4t is this which keeps the Christian from being carried 
 away by the storm of life." Other early writers use it as a sym- 
 bol of true faith, and one of them has this beautiful idea : — 
 
 * still in existence in Upper Fore Street, Lambeth, 
 t Thomas Allen's History of Lambeth, 1827, p. 3G7. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, 333 
 
 " As an anchor cast into the sand will keep the ship in safety, even so 
 hope, eveT amidst poverty and tribulation, remains firm, and is sufficient 
 to sustait, the soul ; though, in the eyes of the world, it may seem but a 
 weak and ■rail support." * 
 
 It was a favourite sign with the early printers, probably in imita- 
 tion of Aldus, t Thus Thomas Vautrollier, a scholar and printer 
 from Paris and Eouen, who came to England about the begin- 
 ning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and established his printing-office 
 in Blackfriars, had an anchor for his sign, with the motto, '^Anchor a 
 SpeV' At West Bromwich there is an ale-house having the sign 
 si the Anchor with the following inscription : — 
 0 sweet ale, how sweet art thou. 
 Thy chearing streams new life impart, 
 Esteemed by all extremely good. 
 To quench our thirst and do us good.'' 
 Sometimes a female figure in flowing garments is represented 
 holding the anchor, in which case it is called the Hope anp 
 Anchor. The Blue Anchor was painted of that colour as a 
 difference " from other anchors ; it is a common sign ; it was the 
 trade emblem of Henry Herringman, of the " New Exchange," the 
 principal London bookseller and publisher in the reign of King 
 Charles II., the friend of Davenant, Dryden, and Cowley. The 
 Blue Anchor and Ball was the sign of a mercer's shop neai 
 the Conduit in Cheapside in 1707, the ball being the usual addi- 
 , tion to intimate the sale of silks. Other distinctions are the 
 Sheet Anchor, at Whitmore, in Staffordshire; the Foul Anchor, 
 a sign of two public-houses at Wisbeach, implying, no doubt, that 
 the lotus-eaters, who anchor in that harbour, get so entangled in the 
 luxurious weeds of pleasure, that it becomes impossible for them 
 to leave ; the Baffled Anchor, Swan's Quay, North Shields ; and 
 the EoPE AND Anchor, which is very common, the anchor being 
 generally represented with a piece of cable twined round the stem. 
 
 A few combinations also occur : the Anchor and Can, at 
 Boss, and at Putson, Hereford, which seems to allude to the 
 Anchor as a measure j the Anchor and Shuttle, Luttendenfoot, 
 Warley, Manchester, the shuttle being added in compliment to 
 the weavers ; the Anchor and Castle, a quartering of two signs 
 in Tooley Street, &c. 
 
 Sometimes instead of the ship, some peculiar vessel is chosen, 
 as, for instance, the Sloop, or the Leigh Hoy, a sort of smack, 
 which occurs amongst the trades tokens as a sign near St Cathe* 
 
 * See Louisa Twining's Symbols of Christian Art. t See r. 228. 
 
334 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 rine's Docks, and is still to be seen in Church Street, Mile 
 End; the Coble, a sort of fishing-boat, common in Northum- 
 berland ; the TiLTBOAT, Sommers Quay, Thames Street, in the 
 XVIIth. century, and still at Billingsgate. This last was an open 
 passengerboat for Greenwich, Woolwich, Gravesend, and other places 
 down the river. It took twelve hours to perform the voyage to 
 Gravesend, and much more if the wind was contrary, and the boat had 
 not arrived before the tide turned. The tiltboats were superseded 
 by steamers in 1815. The Dark House, Billingsgate, was their 
 starting-place, and passengers would probably patronise the tavern 
 with this name in the immediate neighbourhood, as they go now 
 for a glass of ale and a sandwich to the Railway, or Steamboat 
 Inn, during the quarter of an hour preceding departure. 
 
 The Fishing Smack was a public-house formerly standing near 
 St Nicholas Church, Liverpool. The sign represented a man 
 standing in a cart loaded with fish, and holding in his right hand 
 what the artist intended to represent as a salmon. Underneath 
 were the following lines : — 
 
 This salmon has got a tail, 
 It 's very like a whale ; 
 It 's a fish that 's very merry ; 
 They say it 's catch'd at Derry ; 
 It 's a fish that 's got a heart, 
 It 's catch'd and put in Dugdale's cart." 
 
 This truly classic production of the Muse of the Mersey con- 
 tinued for several years to adorn the host's door, until a change 
 in the occupant of the house induced a corresponding change of 
 the sign, and the following lines took the place of the preced- 
 ing :— 
 
 " The cart and salmon has stray'd away, 
 And left the fishing-boat to stay, 
 When boisterous winds do drive you back, 
 Come in and drink at the Fishing-Smack." * 
 
 The Old Baege was a sign in Bucklersbury : " When Wal- 
 brooke did lye open, barges were row^ed out of the Thames, or 
 towed up so farre ; and therefore the place has ever since been 
 called the Old Barge, of such a sign hanging out over the gate 
 thereof." t The Old Barge, or the Old Boat, is still frequently 
 seen as a sign on the banks of some of the canals through which 
 boats and barges are towed. 
 
 The Boat, an isolated tavern in the open fields, at the back of 
 
 * Hone's Every Day Book, vol. ii. 
 
 t Stowe's Survey of London. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 335 
 
 the Foundling Hospital, was the head-quarters of the rioters and 
 incendiaries, who, excited by the injudicious zeal of Lord George 
 Gordon, set London in a blaze during the ^' No Popery " riots in 
 1780. 
 
 Next Boat by Paul's, in Upper Thames Street, may be seen 
 on the trades token of an ale-house, evidently kept by a water- 
 man, who used to ply with his boat near St Paul's. The token 
 of this house represents a boat containing three men, over it the 
 legend, " Next Boat^ " Next Oars " was the cry of the water- 
 men waiting for a fare. Tom Brown in his walk round London, 
 says, " I steered him down Blackfryars towards the Thames 
 side till coming near the stairs, up started such a noisy mul- 
 titude of grizly old Tritons, hollowing and hooting out Next 
 Oars and scullers, &c. And with that I bawled out as loud as a 
 speaking trumpet, 'Next Oars,^ and away ran Captain Caron, 
 and hollowed to his man Ben to bring the boat near.'' " Next 
 Boat," was also the sign of a public-house of note adjoining 
 Holland's Leaguer in Blackfriars, where Holland Street is now. 
 
 The Law is very badly represented — the Judge's Head seems 
 to be the only sign in honour of this branch of the Common- 
 wealth. It was the sign of Charles King, a bookseller in West- 
 minster Hall in 1718,* and may be readily accounted for in that 
 locahty. It was also the first sign of Jacob Tonson, the well- 
 known bookseller and secretary of the Kit-Kat Club, when he lived 
 near Inner Temple gate. Fleet Street. In 1697 when he removed 
 to Gray's Inn gate, he adopted the Shakespeare's Head, under 
 which he became famous. After 1712, he took a shop in the 
 Strand, opposite Catherine Street, but without altering his sign, 
 and there he died in March 1736 possessed of a splendid fortune. 
 This was that famous Tonson who published the works of the 
 most celebrated authors and poets of the day. Dry den was one 
 of them. Liberality in those days was a word not to be found 
 in the dictionary of a publisher, as Dryden often experienced ; 
 in one of his ill tempers, when Tonson had been putting on the 
 screw rather too much, the incensed poet began a satire upok 
 him : — 
 
 " With leering look, bullfac'd, and freckled fair, 
 With two left legs, with Judas-colour'd hair, 
 And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air." 
 
 These three lines he sent as a sample of his savoir /aire to the pub- 
 
 * Daily Coura^U, Dec. 17, 1718. 
 
336 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 lisher, with tlie gentle addition : " Tell the dog tliat lie who wrote 
 this can write more." Tonson did not wish to see mere, however, 
 and Dryden obtained what he desired. About the year 1720, Jacob 
 Tonson left the business to his nephew, Jacob Tonson, jun., son of 
 his brother Eichard, who, through the patronage of the Duke of 
 Newcastle, became stationer, bookbinder, and printer to the Public 
 Board, and this lucrative appointment was enjoyed by the Tonson 
 family, or their assignees, till the month of January 1800. 
 
 Lot Goodal, Beadle of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in 1680, had, 
 like other celebrities, taken his own goodly person for the sign 
 of his house in Eupert Street, as appears from his advertise- 
 ment, in which, like a true Dogberry, the public are informed 
 that he had taken a silver watch with a studded case "in custody.'^ 
 The Brown Bill was another constable's sign : — 
 " Which is the constable's house 
 At the sign of the Brown Bill ? 
 
 Blurty Master Constable or the 
 Spaniard' s Nightwalh Tho. Middleton. 1602. 
 
 This brown bill was a kind of battle-axe, or hatchet affixed to a 
 long staff, used by constables. The name was transferred from 
 the weapon to the men who carried it : — 
 
 Const. Come, my hrown hills, we '11 roar, 
 
 Bounce loud at the tavern door." — Ihid, 
 
 They were also called Billmen : — 
 " To us hillmen relate, 
 Why you stagger so late, 
 And how you came drunk so soon.'* 
 
 John Lilly s Endymion, 1591. 
 
 Lawyers are only commemorated in the complimentary sign of 
 the Good Lawyer,* and in the Eolls, a tavern kept by Ealph 
 Massie, in Chancery Lane, in the reign of Charles 11. In vari- 
 ous parts of the house, and particularly in the great room up 
 stairs, the coats of arms of the Carew family spoke of its former 
 possessors. Further back still, we have it as a timber tenement 
 belonging to the knights of St John of Jerusalem, by whom it 
 was sold to Cardinal Wolsey, who for a time inhabited it, before 
 he had reached the summit of his pride and fame. Behind this 
 building was the house and garden of Sir Walter Ealeigh. But 
 all these remnants of bygone glory were swept away in 1760, 
 when the house was rebuilt, and the name changed into the 
 
 ♦ See uader Humorous Siqiis. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 337 
 
 Gkown Ai:r) Eolls. The name of Eolls, it is needless to ob- 
 serve, was adopted from the neighbouring Eolls House, where 
 the rolls and records of Chancery have been kept since the reign 
 of Eichard III. 
 
 The liberal arts are as badly represented on the signboard as the 
 Bar. The Poet's Head was a sign in St James's Street in the 
 seventeenth century ; who the poet was it is impossible to say now ; 
 perhaps it was Dryden, since the trades tokens represent a head 
 crowned with bays. The same sign had been used during the 
 Commonwealth by Taylor the Water poet, but in his case the 
 poet was Taylor himself, (see p. 48.) The Five Inkhorns, we 
 gather from the trades tokens, was the sign of Walter Haddon, 
 in Grub Street, a very appropriate trade emblem in that scrib- 
 bling locality. There was also a house with this sign in Petti- 
 coat Lane, opposite which Strype's mother lived j letters of his 
 are extant addressed : — 
 
 ^y/&^<f ^^ej/ei^ f^ty^, lai^c/oca 
 
 Petticoat Lane in that time was the great manufacturing place 
 for inkhoms. The Hand and Pen was a scrivener s sign, which 
 was adopted by Peter Bales, Queen Elizabeth's celebrated pen- 
 man. Hollinshed says * that 
 
 " He writ within the Compasse of a Penie in Latine, the Lord's Prayer, the 
 Creed, the Ten Command ements, a praise to God, a Prayer for the Queene, 
 his posie, his name, the daie of the month the yeare of our Lord, and the 
 reigne of the Queene. And on the seuenteenth of August next following, 
 at Hampton Court, he presented the same to the Queenes maiestie in the 
 head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall, and presented therewith 
 an excellent spectacle, by him devised, for the easier reading thereof ; 
 wherewith her maiestie read all that was written therein with great admira- 
 tion, and commended the same to the Lords of the Councill and the am- 
 bassadors, and did weare the same manie times vpon her finger." 
 Bale was employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, and afterwards 
 kept a writing school at the upper end of the Old Bailey. In 
 1595, when nearly fifty years old, he had a trial of skill with one 
 Daniel Johnson, by which he was the winner of a golden pen, of 
 
 • HolUnshed'8 Chroniclei, iv., p. 330. 
 
 Y 
 
338 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 a value of £20, wliich, in the pride of his victory, he set up as 
 his sign. Upon this occasion, John Davis made the following 
 epigram in his Scourge of Folly — 
 
 " The Hand and Golden Pen, Clophonion 
 
 Sets on his sign, to shew, 0 proud, poor soul, 
 
 Both where he wonnes, and how the same he won, 
 
 From writers fair, though he writ ever foul ; 
 
 But by that Hand, that Pen so borne has been, 
 
 From Place to Place, that for the last half Yeare, 
 
 It scarce a sen'night at a place is seen. 
 
 That Hand so plies the Pen, though ne*er the neare, 
 
 For when Men seek it, elsewhere it is sent, 
 
 Or there shut up, as for the Plague or Rent, 
 
 Without which stay, it never still could stand, 
 
 Because the Pen is for a Running Hand.*' * 
 The sign of the Hand and Pen was also used by the Fleet 
 Street marriage-mongers, to denote " marriages performed with- 
 out imposition.'' 
 
 Music-shops always adhered to the primitive custom of using 
 the instruments they sold as their signs ; for instance, the Harp 
 AND Hautboy, the sign of John Walsh, "servant to his Majesty," 
 in Catherine Street in the Strand, in 1700.+ Other music-shops 
 had the French Hoen and Violin ; the Violin, Hautboy, 
 and German Flute ; the Hautboy and Two Flutes ; all 
 these instruments in the woodcut above the sliopbill, which was 
 a copy of the sign, are placed perpendicularly beside each other, 
 without any attempt at grouping. The Hautboy was one of the 
 most constant music-shop signs ; it was formerly a favourite street 
 instrument, and might be heard at the Christmas " waits," and 
 on occasions of popular rejoicing. Waits even are said to have 
 derived their name from it, that, according to one authority, 
 being the old English name of the hautboy. J This, however, we 
 believe to be a mistake. The Waits were " watches " — guefSy who 
 went round at certain hours of the night with music, to let it be 
 known they were on the look-out, and make people feel secure. 
 
 Novello, the well-known music publisher, still adheres to the 
 old tradition, and carries on business in the Poultry under the 
 
 * The whole history of this calligraphic contest, written by Bale himself, is preserved 
 amongst the Harl. MSS., No. 675. 
 
 f "Twelve Sonatas in two parts ; the first part solos for a violin, a bass violin, viol and 
 harpsichord; the second Preludes, Almands, Corants, Sarabands and Jigs, with the 
 Spanish Folly. Dedicated to the Electress of Brandenburgh by Archangel© Corelli ; 
 being his fifth and last opera, etc. Price 8 shillings, or each part single 5 shillings."— 
 London Gazette August 26-29, 1700. The use of the word opora here is somewiia^i 
 peculiar. 
 
 J Uawkins's History of ^lusic, vol. ii., p. 107. 
 
DIGKITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 339 
 
 sign of the Golden Crotchet. Somewhat similar was the Sol 
 La, or the Merry Song {le chant Gaillard) of Guyot or Guy 
 Marehant, a bookseller and printer in Paris circa 1490. His colo- 
 phon here represents the two notes sol la, surmounting two con- 
 joined hands, in evident allusion to the words of the Pange Lin- 
 gua " Sola Fides." At the side are represented two merry 
 cobblers, a class of mechanics, who, from time immemorial, 
 have been noted above all others for merriment, and a habit of 
 singing whilst at their work. It is a curious fact, that on the 
 title-page of one of the books printed by Marehant, the "Epistola 
 de Insulis de novo repertis," his chant Gaillard is translated into 
 " Campo Gaillardo,'' which seems to lead to the inference that 
 this work had been printed by some one who had heard of Mar- 
 chant's sign, but had never seen it, and merely adopted his name 
 as being well known in the literary world, — a fraud frequently 
 complained of by the old printers. 
 
 The French Horn was once a very common sign, and is still of 
 frequent occurrence ; thus, there is a French Horn and Kosb 
 in Wood Street, Cheapside ; a French Horn and Half-moon 
 at Wandsworth ; and a French Horn and Queen's Head in 
 Smithfield. This last house was, for many years, kept by Peter 
 Crawley, a noted member of the P. K., and there John Leech the 
 artist, and a friend, used to study low life and boxiana under the 
 tutelage of Black Sam. Finally, in the seventeenth century, there 
 was a Horn and Three Tuns in Leadenhall Street. The 
 trades tokens represent it as a French horn; but a drinking horn 
 would certainly have been a more useful instrument in the com- 
 pany of three tuns. It was evidently a corruption of the Bottle- 
 makers' arms, which were argent on a chevron sable, three bugle- 
 horns of the first between three leather-bottles of the second. 
 These leather-bottles might easily be mistaken for tuns, and the 
 bugle-horn be modernised into a musical instrument. 
 
 This frequency of the Horn rather jars with the unpleasant 
 signification that instrument had in seventeenth century slang. 
 Among the Roxburghe Ballads (ii. 138) there is one entitled 
 * *^ The Extravagant Youth, or an Emblem of Prodigality," with a 
 woodcut representing a youth jumping into the mouth of a large 
 horn. On one side stands the father, seemingly in distress ; on 
 the other is a mad-house, with the sign of The Fool, two of tho 
 inmates looking out from behind the bars. The extravagant, 
 youth, after expatiating on his mad career, says : — 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " But now all my glory is clearly decay 'd, 
 And into the horn myself have betray'd. 
 
 All comforts now from us are flown, 
 My father in Bedlam makes his moan, 
 And I in the counter a prisoner thrown, 
 This Horn is a figure by which it is known." 
 
 The Bugle Hoen is fully as common ; it occurs on a trades 
 token of 1G67 as the sign of a house in Aldersgate Street, and is 
 still to be seen on many inns by the roadside, where the mail 
 coach, in the good old coaching time, used to announce its arrival 
 by a cheerful tune from the guard's horn. Sometimes the Horn 
 was used in a different sense. It was the sign and badge of the 
 cattle doctor and village gelder, and came to be exhibited as 
 such either from its use in drenching animals, or from the fact 
 of such an instrument being blown by the doctor, to give notice 
 to the villagers of his approach. At Messingham, Lincoln, the 
 Horn Inn, a century ago, was kept by such a personage. Further 
 on, at p. 369, this professional is mentioned in connexion with 
 Tom of Bedlam. 
 
 The Harp, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was 
 the sign of a bird-fancier, over against Somerset House in the 
 Strand;"* and is still used as the sign of many public-houses, 
 generally denoting an Irish origin. The Jew's Harp (an instru- 
 ment formerly called jeu trompe, JeVs trump, i.e.^ toy trumpet) 
 was in former times the sign of a house with bowery tea-gardens 
 and thickly-foliated snuggeries," in what was once Marylebone 
 Park, near the top of Portland Place, but removed on the laying 
 out of Kegent's Park. Mr Onslow the Speaker used to go there 
 in plain attire, and sitting in the chimney-corner, join in the 
 humours of the customers, until, being recognised by the land- 
 lord one day, as he was riding in his golden coach to the House 
 in state, he found, on going in the evening for his quiet pipe 
 and glass, that his incognito was betrayed. This broke the 
 charm, and like the fairies in the legend, he never more returned 
 after that day. At the end of the last century there was another 
 Jew's Harp Tavern [and Tea-gardens] in Islington. It consisted 
 of a large upper room, ascended by a staircase on the outside for 
 the accommodation of the company on ball nights, and in thic 
 room large parties dined. Facing the south front of the premises 
 was a large semicircular enclosure, with boxes for tea and ale 
 
 * London Gazette, December 30 to January 2, 1700. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES. AND PROFESSIONS. 34 1 
 
 drinkers, guarded by deal-board soldiers, between every box, 
 painted in proper colours. In the centre of this opening were 
 tables and seats placed for the smokers ; a trap-ball ground was 
 on the eastern side of the house, whilst the western side served 
 for a tennis court; there were also public and private skittle- 
 grounds. We find a clue to this rather odd sign in Ben 
 Jonson's play of the "Devil is an Ass,'' Act i., scene 1, from 
 which it appears that it w^as formerly a custom to keep a 
 fool in a tavern, who, for the edification of the customers, 
 used to play on a / ew's harp, sitting on a joint-stool. 
 
 One of the signs originally used exclusively by apothecaries 
 was the Moetar and Pestle, their well-known implements 
 for pounding drugs. Among the celebrities who sold medicines 
 under this emblem was the noted John Moore, " author of the 
 celebrated Worm Powder," to whom Pope addressed some stanzas 
 beginning : — 
 
 " How much, egregious Moore, are we 
 Deceived by shows and forms ; 
 Whate'er we think, whate'er we see, 
 All human kind are worms." 
 
 His shop was in St Lawrence Poultney Lane. Every week 
 the newspapers contained advertisements proving, by the most 
 w^onderful cures, the eflScacy of his powders. 
 
 In the sixteenth century a publican in Paris adopted the sign 
 of the Pestle, on account of his living in the Eue de la 
 Mortellerie, (Mortar Street.) His house was in high repute 
 amongst the gallants of the period, which procured him a visit 
 from Master Villon, who thus describes it : — 
 *^ S'en vint en une hotellerie, 
 Rue de la Mortellerie. 
 Ou pend I'enseigne du Pestel, 
 A bon logis et bon hostel." * 
 
 Villon, FrancJies Replies. 
 The Apothecary leads us to the Barber, or rather Barber- 
 Surgeon, and the Barber's Pole, which dates from the time 
 when barbers practised phlebotomy : the patient undergoing this 
 
 * " He came to an inn, 
 
 III the Rue de la Mortellerie, 
 Where the sign of the Pestle hangs out, 
 A-t which place there is good entertainment to be had." 
 This poet-swindler, Villon, used to go about with a few friends, who robbed and 
 cheated landlords, and obtained good dinners without paying for them, whence he 
 called them Repues Franches." Too frequently he got off safe, but occasionally he 
 would get a caning in the bargain to assist his digestion. These predatory dinners he 
 has related in an epopee which has come down to us. 
 
342 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 operation had to grasp the pole in order to make the blood 
 flow more freely. This use of the pole is illustrated in more 
 than one illuminated MS. As the pole was of course liable 
 to be stained with blood, it was painted red; when not in 
 use, barbers were in the habit of suspending it outside the 
 door with the white linen swathing-bands twisted round it ; 
 this, in latter times, gave rise to the pole being painted red 
 and white, or black and white, or even with red, white, and blue 
 lines winding round it. It was stated by Lord Thurlow in 
 the House of Peers, July 17, 1797, when he opposed the Sur- 
 geon's Incorporation Bill, that, " by a statute still in force, the 
 barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers 
 were to have theirs blue and white striped, with no other appen- 
 dage, but the surgeons [which were the same in other respects] 
 were to have a gallipot and a red flag in addition, to denote 
 the particular nature of their vocation." 
 
 Besides the well-known brass soap-basins appended to the 
 pole, the barbers in former times used to have other and more 
 repulsive signs of their profession : — 
 
 ** His pole with pewter* basons hung, 
 Black, rotten teeth in order strung, 
 Rang'd cups that in the window stood, 
 Lined with red rags to look like blood, 
 Did well his threefold trade explain, 
 Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein." 
 
 In Constantinople, where the barber still acts as surgeon and 
 dentist, the teeth drawn by him are worked in ornamental 
 patterns intermixed with blue beads, and hung as trophies in 
 the window. Some of our London dentists even yet follow this 
 disgusting custom, for in no less a thoroughfare than Sloane 
 Street there is a certain chemist-dentist who exhibits in his 
 window a whole bottleful of decayed teeth. Instead of cups 
 ^' lined with red rags to look like blood," the genuine article 
 was formerly exhibited in the windows ; but this was already 
 prohibited at an early period, since the Liber Albus" enjoins 
 "that no barber be so bold or so daring as to put blood in 
 their vnndows openly or in view of folks ; but let them have it 
 
 * It is to be observed that these soap-basins are now always of brass, and also that 
 on the continent their place is taken by a shallow brass basin to contain hot water- 
 Don Quixote's helmet of Mambrino, held under the chin of the person to be shaved, 
 with a hollow space in the rim to fit the neck, and a cavity into which the soap Is 
 deposited duriug the operation. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 343 
 
 carried privily unto the Thames, under pain of paying two 
 shillings unto the use of the Sheriffs." 
 
 As " a little learning is dangerous," the barber of the olden 
 times generally contrived to make himself more or less ridicu- 
 lous. Steele says : — " The particularity of this man [Don 
 Saltero, see p. 95] put me into a deep thought whence it should 
 proceed that of all the lower orders barbers should go further 
 in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men. Watermen 
 brawl, cobblers sing : but why must a barber be for ever a poli- 
 tician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician*?" This 
 love of music was at all times an idiosyncrasy of the knights 
 of the brass basin. Morley, in his Plain and Easie Introduc- 
 tion to Practicall Musicke," says: — "It should seem you came 
 lately from a barber's shop, where you heard Gregory Walker 
 or a Corranta plaide in the new proportions." Henry Bold, in 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century,, speaks of ancient 
 tunes "still sung to Barbers' citterns, viz., the "Lady's FaU;" 
 "John come kiss me now "Green Sleeves and Pudding Pies 
 " The Punk's Delight," &c. And Tom Brown, in his " Amuse- 
 ments for the Meridian of London/' remarks : — 
 
 " In a Barber's shop I saw a Beau so overladen with wig that there was 
 no difference between his head and the wooden one that stood in the 
 window. The fop it seems was newly come to his Estate, though not to 
 the years of Discretion, and was singing the Song : * Happy the child 
 whose father is gone to the Devil ; * and the Barber was all the while 
 keeping time on his Cittern, for, you know, a Cittern and a Barber is as 
 natural as milk to a calf, or the bears to be attended by a Bagpiper." 
 
 The cittern is also mentioned by Ned Ward : — " I would sooner 
 hear an old barber sing ' Whittington's Bells ' upon a cittern." 
 
 But enough of their musical parts ; as for their learning no 
 examples are wanting : Partridge, the classical scholar, in Fielding's 
 "Tom Jones Vossius' barber, who used to comb his hair in 
 iambics and Smollett's Hugh Strap, are excellent specimens. 
 This last one was sketched from life ; his real name was Hugh 
 Hughson ; he died in the parish of St Martin s-in-the-Field, at 
 the advanced age of eighty-five, having kept a barber-shop in that 
 locality upwards of forty years. His shop was hung round with 
 
 ♦ Vossius, " De Poematum Cantu et viribus Rythmi," Oxford, 1673, p. 62. Isaac 
 Vossius was an eccentric Dutchman, who died a canon of Windsor in 16S9. In the 
 above treatise on rhythm he says : — " I remember that more than once I have fallen into 
 the hands of men of this sort who could imitate any measure of song in combing the 
 hair, so as sometimes to express very intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c., 
 from whence there arose to me no small delight." 
 
344 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGN^BOARDS, 
 
 Latin quotations, and lie would frequently point out to hia cus- 
 tomers the several scenes in " Roderick Eandom" pertaining to 
 himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor's inven- 
 tive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting at the barber- 
 shop in Newcastle, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their 
 arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced 
 from Strap's friends, were all facts. He is said to have left 
 behind him an interleaved copy of " Roderick Random," showing 
 how far we are indebted to the creative fancy of Doctor Smollett, 
 and to what extent the incidents recorded were founded upon 
 fact. 
 
 Not many years ago there was a hairdresser in the Rue 
 Racine, who, probably on account of his proximity to the uni- 
 versities of the College de France and the Sorbonne, had this in- 
 scription on his window : " rdxusra %a\ civdoo,^' " I shear 
 quickly and am silent." This classical hairdresser was evidently 
 acquainted with the answers given by Anaxagoras to a barber 
 who asked him, " How do you wish to have your beard shaved 1 ' 
 and who received the laconic answer, " without talking." The 
 shutters and windows of our Parisian worthy were covered with 
 inscriptions in foreign languages, the number of which was only 
 surpassed by the Bible shop in Brompton, during the time of 
 the International Exhibition in 1862. 
 
 An eccentric barber opened a shop under the walls of the 
 King's Bench Prison ; the windows being broken when he en- 
 tered the house, he mended them with paper, on which appeared. 
 Shave for a penny," with the usual invitation to customers ; 
 whilst on his door was scrawled the following rhymes : — 
 
 Here lives Jemmie Wright, 
 
 Shaves almost as well as any man in England, 
 
 Almost — not quite.'* 
 
 Foote, who delighted in anything eccentric, saw this inscription, 
 and hoping to extract some wit from the author, whom he justly 
 concluded to be an odd character, he pulled off his hat, and 
 thrusting his head through a paper pane into the shop, called 
 out, " Is Jimmy Wright at home ? " The barber immediately 
 forced his own head through another pane into the street, and 
 replied : " No, sir, he has just popt out." 
 
 Numerous more or less witty barbers' inscriptions are recorded ; 
 one of the best is that attributed to Dean Swift, penned by him 
 for a barber, who at the same time kept a public house : — 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 345 
 
 ** Rove not from pole to pole^ but step in here, 
 Where nought excels the shaving but the beer." 
 
 A variation often met is : — 
 
 Rove not from pole to pole, but here turn in, 
 Where nought excels the shaving but the gin." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott in his Fortunes of Nigel/' vol. ii., as a 
 motto to chap, iv., gives the following version : — 
 
 " Rove not from pole to pole — the man lives here, 
 Whose razor *s only equall'd by his beer ; 
 And where, in either sense, the Cockney-put, 
 May, if he pleases, get confounded cut." 
 
 ^he amalgamation of the two trades has led to some other 
 rhymes and jokes. A barber-publican in Dudley has the follow- 
 ing harlar ovi^ joke : — 
 
 " What do you think 
 I '11 shave you for nothing and give you some drink ? " 
 
 The point of this joke lies in the punctuation, which the illiterate 
 shavers coming to the shop are sure to treat with supreme con- 
 tempt ; but a barber in Eatcliffe Highway, circa 1825, had the 
 following hona fide invitation : — 
 
 " Hair cut with despatch, 
 Shave well in a minute. 
 And a glass in the bar — gain 
 With a thimbleful in it.* 
 
 * Note— Of gin and bitters, all for a penny |d. 
 
 Come in, Jolly Tars, and be scraped across the lime." 
 
 Another common inscription is the following : — "I tell U there is 
 
 no shaving to X L ^s (name of the barber.) The Parisian 
 
 barbers are much on a par with their English colleagues in bril- 
 liancy of wit and inventive power : Ici on rajeunit/'t used to 
 be a frequent inscription with them ; others have : — 
 
 " La nature donne barbe et cheveux, 
 Et moi je les coupe tous les deux." 
 
 or — 
 
 " A toutes les figures dediant mes rasoirs, 
 Je nargue la critique des fideles mirroirs.":J: 
 
 t "People made younger here," alluding to the youthful appearance of a mm without 
 a beard. 
 
 ; ** Nature gives beard and hair, 
 And I cut them both." 
 
 or — 
 
 " I devote my razors to all faces. 
 And can stand the test of the truest looking-glasses." 
 
346 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Tools belonging to various handicrafts are common public- 
 house signs at the present day. The Axe is a very old sign ; it 
 was a well-known carriers' inn in Aldermanbury in the seventeenth 
 century, and was one of the places visited in 1634 by that thirsty 
 tourist, Drunken Barnaby. From this inn, the first regular lina 
 of stage waggons from London to Liverpool was established to- 
 wards the middle of the seventeenth century. There were con- 
 stantly some of them on the road, for they left every Monday 
 and Thursday, and it took them ten days in summer, and as 
 many as twelve in winter to perform the journey. 
 
 In 1642 there appeared "A Petition from the Towne and 
 County of Leicester unto the King's most excellent Majestie,'* 
 which was " printed for William Gay, and to be sold at his shop 
 in Hosier Lane, at the signe of the Axe, July 29, 1642.^' When 
 we consider that "the King's most excellent Majestic," was 
 Charles L, we may come to the conclusion that there is some- 
 thing in a sign, as well as in a name ; it was certainly an omin- 
 ous and bad sign for the king. The Cross Axes is a sign at 
 Preston, Bolton, &c. The axe is also found combined with vari- 
 ous other carpenter's tools, as the Axe and Saw, Carlton, New- 
 market ; AxE AND Compasses in many places ; Axe and Clea- 
 ver, in Boston, Yorkshire. Another sign, complimentary to the 
 same class of workmen, was the Two Sawyers, which, at the 
 end of the last century, was to be seen near the garden wall of 
 the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth ; not unlikely, this was the 
 same house, of which trades tokens are extant from the time of 
 Charles IL, when it was kept by John Eaines, and its locality is 
 described as the " New Plantation, Narrow Wall, Lambeth." 
 
 Signs referring to iron in its various states are very common 
 on public-houses, as the smith is generally a good customer to 
 them. Iron seems to have a dipsetic effect even in the bowels of 
 the earth, if we may judge from the quantity of Miners' Arms in 
 Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and the black country, in which 
 latitudes teetotalism evidently has made but little progress ; the 
 Davy Lamp is another sign intended to court the custom of 
 miners, but being almost exclusively for workmen in coal pits, it 
 only occurs in Northumberland. The Forge, or the Three 
 Forges, is common in the Midland iron districts. The Cinder- 
 oven occurs in Norwich. The Anvil, the Anvil and Black« 
 SMITH, the Anvil and Hammer, the Smith and Smithy, <kc.y 
 aj'e all conmion about Sheffield. So are Hammers, combined 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 347 
 
 with various instruments, as Pincers, Vice, Stithy, (kc. The 
 Two Smiths was a sign in the Minories in 1655 ; the trades 
 tokens of the house represent two men working at the anvil. 
 Hobnails is a sign in Dudley, that town having been famous 
 for the manufacture of nails of every description^ even as early 
 as the time of Henry VIII., for the nails used in building the 
 hall at Hampton Court came from there, and the original ac- 
 counts preserved in the Public Eecord Office state that there 
 was "Payde to Raynalde Warde, of Dudley, for 7350 of dubby 11 
 tenpenny nayles inglys at lis. the 1000." 
 
 The Bag op Nails was once a very common sign ; there is 
 one still remaining in Arabella Eow, Pimlico. "About fifty 
 years ago, the original sign might have been seen at the front of 
 the house, which was a satyr of the woods, and a group of jolly 
 dogs, ycleped Bacchanals. But the satyr having been painted 
 with cloven feet, and painted black, it was by the common 
 people called the Devil, while the Bacchanalians were transmuted 
 by a comical process into a Bag of Nails." This was, how- 
 ever, only an old slang name for the house, for, in the trial of 
 CatHn, Patterson, and others, for conspiracy, one of the wit- 
 nesses describing the place where the conspirators used to meet, 
 says : " He went into a public-house, the sign of the Devil and 
 Bag of Nails, for so that gentry called it amongst themselves, 
 (though it was the Blackmoor's Head and Woolpack,) by 
 Buckingham Qate."+ 
 
 A bona fide representation of a bag of nails was also used as a 
 sign, as may be seen on the trades token of Henry Hurdam in 
 Tuttle (Tothill) Street, Westminster, 1663, where the bag of nails 
 is combined with a hammer crowned. And as it would be diffi- 
 cult to guess what the bag contained, and nobody cares to buy 
 " a pig in a poke," the nails were sometimes represented protrud- 
 ing through it, as on the token of Samuel Hincks of White- 
 chapel, 1669. A somewhat similar sign is expressed in Rouen, 
 Eue des Bons Enfans ; it is carved in stone, and represents a 
 bag with smith's tools protruding out of it. 
 
 Bakers and millers also are represented by a variety of signs. 
 Beginning at the Bushel, a sign on the Bankside in the seven- 
 teenth century, and the Shovel and Sieve, the sign of a brush 
 and turnery warehouse among the Bagford Bills, we next 
 
 * Tavern Anecdotes, 1825. 
 t Remarkable Trials, vol. u., p. 14. 1765. 
 
348 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 accompany the com to the mill, where we meet the Dusty 
 Miller, a favourite sign in some parts of Yorkshire and Lan- 
 cashire. A reminiscence of childhood may have suggested the 
 epithet in this sign, for there is the well known nursery rhyme, 
 " Millery, Millery, Dusty poll, 
 How many sacks have you stole ? " 
 
 The Millstone may be seen at Stockport and Macclesfield. 
 
 The Windmill itself is a very old sign. It was a tavern in 
 Lothbury, Old Jewry, frequented by fast men in the reigns of 
 Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Wellbred, in " Every Man in 
 his Humour," (a play by Ben Jonson,) dates his letter to Edward 
 Knowell from this house : — 
 
 Why, Ned, I beseech thee, hast thou forsworn all thy friends in the 
 Old Jewry, or doest thou think us all Jews that inhabit there," &c. 
 
 It is named amongst the list of inns "viewed" previous to the 
 visit of Charles V. in 1522. 
 
 " Hugh Clapton, Mercer, mayor, in 1492, dwelt in this house and kept 
 his Mayoralty there ; it is now a tavern, and has to sign a Windmill. And 
 thus much for this house, sometime a Jew's synagogue [in 1262,] since a 
 house of friars, [fratres depenitentia Jesu orde Sacca, 1275,] then a noble- 
 man's house, [Robert Fitz Walter, 1305,] after that a merchant's house, 
 wherein Mayoralties have been kept, and now a wine taverne." — Stow, 
 
 The Peel, i. e., the wooden shovel with a long handle used by 
 bakers to place bread in the oven, was the sign of John Alder, in 
 Leadenhall Street, 1668. Next comes the basket or Panyer, 
 to bring bread round, which gave its name to a passage out of 
 Paternoster Eow — called of such a sign Panyer Alley."* This is 
 the highest spot in the City of London, as we are informed from 
 an inscription under a stone figure of a boy sitting on a pannier, 
 eating a very questionable bunch of grapes : 
 
 " When you have sought the City round, 
 Yet still this is the highest ground. 
 Aug. 26, 1688." 
 
 The Pannier was not an uncommon trade emblem. The Baker and 
 Basket is the sign of a public-house in Leman Street, and another 
 in Worship Street. The claims to superior usefulness of the Baker 
 AND Brewer are held forth triumphantly to the advantage of the 
 latter in some signs of this name. One, in Wash Lane, Birmingham, 
 gives a pictorial representation of it ; the baker's hand is resting on 
 what is usually called the Staff of Life," — namely, a loaf of very 
 
 * stow, p. 128. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 349 
 
 respectable dimensions ; tlie brewer exhibits " with artful pride/' 
 a foaming tankard, when the following dialogue ensues : — 
 
 The Baker says, I 've the Staff of Life, 
 
 And you 're a silly elf ; 
 The Brewer replied, with artful pride, 
 
 Why, this is life itself.^' 
 
 The Two Brewers, or the Two Jolly Brewers, used to be 
 very common, but is now gradually becoming obsolete. It 
 represented two brewers' men carrying a barrel of beer slung 
 between them on a pole ; it was also frequently called the Two 
 Draymen. In the bar of the Queen's Head Tavern, Great 
 Queen Street, is preserved a carved wooden sign, which formerly 
 hung before this house, representing two men standing near a 
 large tun. The Dray and Horses, meaning of course the 
 brewer's dray, has now in some instances superseded the Two 
 Jolly Brewers. The Still, the chief implement in the manu- 
 facture of spirits, is very appropriate before the houses where 
 the produce of the still is sold : frequently it is combined with 
 other objects. 
 
 The Boy and Barrel, to be seen in Dagger Lane, London, 
 and in many country places, is all that remains of the little 
 Bacchus on a tun, formerly in almost every ale-house 
 
 " A little Punch- 
 Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch, 
 Sits loftily enthron'd upon 
 What *s called (in Miniature) a Tun." 
 
 Compleat Vintner. London, 1720, p. 86. 
 
 The Boy and Cup at Norwich, in 1750, was a variation of 
 this sign. Other brewers and distillers' measures also are ex- 
 hibited, as the Baeeel; thePoETEE Butt, (three in Bath ;) the 
 Brandy Casks, (three in Bristol ;) the Bum Puncheon, at Bos- 
 ton, Lincoln, and such like. Promises of fair dealing are held 
 out in the sign of the Full Measure, (four in Hull;) the 
 Golden Measure, Lowgate, Hull; and the Foaming Tankard; 
 or, an appeal is made to public joviality by such a sign as the 
 Paeting Pot, at Stamford, Lincoln. 
 
 Shoemakers generally follow the advice of the proverb, ne stitor 
 ultra crepidam, and confine themselves to the sign of the Last, 
 which, for variety's sake, they paint red, blue, gold, &c. But 
 since " cobblers and tinkers are the best ale drinkers,^' many ale- 
 houses have adopted this sign also. A Crispin who keeps an 
 
350 THE HISTORY OF SIGJSTBOABDS. 
 
 ale-house near Liscard, Chester, has shown himself " true to the 
 last J ' by putting under his sign of a Wooden Shoe or Last : — 
 " All day long I have sought good beer, 
 And, at the last, I have found it here.'* 
 
 The Shears was originally a tailor's sign, though like most 
 other trade emblems it had become common in the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 " Snip, snap, quoth the tailor's shears ; 
 Alas, poor Louse, beware thy ears." 
 
 This elegant little verse is quoted by Randle Holme, and seems 
 to have been thought such a good joke, that a canny Scotchman, 
 buried in Paisley Abbey, had a pictorial representation of it on 
 his headstone. Charles Mackie, who wrote the history of that 
 Abbey, says it is an obliterated cross ; more probably, however, 
 it is a Jleur de luce: this would also agree with the Scottish 
 pronunciation of the name of the insect, which is exactly the 
 same as the last part of that heraldic charge. 
 
 The Hand and Sheaes, in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, played an 
 important part at the opening of Bartholomew Fair. It was 
 customary to make the proclamation for opening the fair late in 
 the afternoon of August 23d, but the showmen and traders 
 opened their booths early in the morning : — 
 
 " Lawful objections being made to this, a riotous assembly met the night 
 before the day of the Mayor's Proclamation at ^-.he public-house within 
 Cloth Fair, in which the Court of Piepoudre was held,* the Hand and 
 Shears — now transformed into a tall brick gin-palace — and at midnight 
 sallied forth, bearing along, in later years, the effigy of a woman to repre- 
 sent Lady Holland, (who must have been instigator, and it would seem, first 
 leader of the mob,) and the mob — knocking at doors, ringing bells, clamour- 
 ing and rioting, some five thousand strong, during three hours of the mid- 
 dle of the night — proclaimed for itself, in its own way, that Bartholomew 
 Fair was open. The first irregular proclamation was for many years made 
 by a company of tailors, who met the night before the legal proclamation 
 at the Hand and Shears, elected a chairman, and as the clock struck twelve 
 went out into Cloth Fair, each with a pair of shears in his hand. The chair- 
 man then proclaimed the Fair to the expectant mob, who all sped on their 
 errand of riot, to arouse with the news of it the sleepers in the neighbour- 
 hood of Smithfield." f 
 
 The Three Ce-owned N'eedles looks also like a tailor's sign, 
 and from the evidence of a trades token of 1669 we know that 
 it was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate. Hatton thinks that a 
 similar sign may have given its name to Threadneedle Street, 
 
 * The court before which persons aggrieved in the Fair might have a " speedy relief." 
 t H. Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, p. 237. See also Hone's Every-day Book, 
 Se| t. 6, vol. u 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 35 I 
 
 (Three Needle Street.) Three Crowned Needles was a charge in 
 the needle-makers' company's arms. It is a curious fact that all 
 the needles used in England up to the time of Queen Elizabeth 
 were of foreign make ; those sold in Cheapside in the reign of 
 Queen Mary were made by a Spanish negro, who carried the 
 secret of their manufacture with him to the grave. In 1566 they 
 were manufactured under the direction of a German, Elias 
 Grause, and after that time only it seems that we had learned 
 how to make them. 
 
 Among agricultural signs^ the Plough leads the van, some- 
 times accompanied by the legend " Speed the Plough." Of two 
 inscriptions on the sign of the Plough that have come under our 
 observation, both contain sound advice. That of the Plough at 
 Filey might well be remembered by afternoon" farmers: it 
 says : — 
 
 He who by the Plough would thrive, 
 Himself must either hold or drive ; " 
 
 whilst on the Plough Inn, Alnwick^ the following is cut in 
 Btone : — 
 
 " That which your father old 
 Hath purchased and left you to possess, 
 
 Do you dearly hold 
 To shew your worthiness. 1717.'^ 
 
 In the inventory of church goods made at Holbeach, in Lin- 
 coln, at the time of the Eeformation : — 
 Wm. Davy bought the sygne whereon the plowghe did stond for xvj<*. 
 
 This probably refers to the signs or badges exhibited by the 
 religious guilds in the middle ages over the altars and as decora- 
 tions in their churches, which were in some measure of the nature 
 of other signs, in pointing out certain fraternities or trades, be- 
 sides possessing a secondary and religious meaning. 
 
 The Plough and Horses is a sign at Branston, Lincoln. 
 The Plough and Haerow is very common. Two doors west 
 from the Harrow Inn lived Isaac Walton, about 1624, carrying 
 on the business of " milliner and sempster," or what we should 
 now call a linen-draper. He afterwards resided at a house in 
 Chancery Lane, until he left London, for fear of having his 
 morals corrupted — as he himself asserted. Goldsmith's tailor, 
 who lived at the sign of the Harrow, has gained immortality by 
 the bad taste of poor Goldy. On one occasion — 
 
 " Goldsmith strutted about, bragging of his di-ess, and, I believe, was 
 
352 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Reriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impreiS' 
 sions. * Come, come,' said Garrick, * talk no more of that, you are perhaps 
 the worst — eh, eh/ Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, 
 when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, * Nay, you will always look 
 like a gentleman, but I am talking of being wdl or ill drest.^ * Well, let 
 me tell you,' said Goldsmith, * when my tailor brought home my bloom- 
 coloured coat, he said, " Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When any- 
 body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention, John Filhyf 
 at the Harrow in Water Lane." ^ Johnson. * Why, sir, that was because 
 he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and then 
 they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so 
 absurd a colour.' " * 
 
 Near Bagshot there is a public-house called the Jolly Farmer, 
 a corruption of the Golden Farmer, a nickname obtained by one 
 of the former possessors on account of his wealth, and his custom 
 of paying his rent always in guineas, which — so says the legend 
 — he obtained as a footpad on Bagshot Heath. That some such 
 thing happened is evident from the Weekly Journal^ March 29, 
 1718, where allusion is made to " Bagshot Heath, near the Gib- 
 bet where the Golden Farmer hanged in chains." The use of 
 this word Jolly, on the signboard, formerly so common in our 
 " Merry England," is now gradually dying away. Whatever be 
 the opinion of our workmen upon the subject of national good 
 humour, they no longer desire to be advertised as Jolly; it is 
 vulgar, and they prefer Arms like their betters — hence those 
 heraldic anomalies of the Graziers' Arms, the Farmers' Arms, 
 the Chaff-Cutters' Arms, the Puddlers' Arms, the Paviors' 
 Arms, and so forth. 
 
 The Shepherd and Shepherdess is one of those signs re- 
 minding us of — 
 
 " The tea-cup days of hoop and hood 
 And when the patch was worn." 
 
 calling up pictures of rouged shepherdesses with jaunty straw 
 hats on the top of powdered hair a foot high, short quilted 
 petticoats and high-heeled boots, courted in madrigals by shep- 
 herds dressed in the height of the elegance of the New Exchange 
 gallants, with ribboned crooks and flowered-satin waistcoats. It 
 was the sign of a pleasure resort in the City Road, Islington, 
 much frequented in the eighteenth century for amusement, and 
 by invalids for the pure, healthy, country air of Islington, which 
 was then a charming village, more rural in the midst of its mea- 
 
 • Bosweirs Life of Johnson, vol. ii., p. 63. 
 
VLATK XIV. 
 
 SIR KOGER DE COVERLKY. 
 (Banka's Collection, irso.) 
 
 ASS PLAYING ON THE HARP. 
 (Chartres Cathedral, circa 1420.) 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 353 
 
 dows and rivulets tliari Richmond is now. Cakes, cream, and fur- 
 niity were its great attractions : — 
 
 ** Ta the Shepherd and Shepherdess then they go 
 To tea with their wives for a constant rule, 
 And next cross the road to the Fountain al&C^ 
 And there they sit so pleasant and cool, 
 And see in and out 
 The folks walk about, 
 And gentlemen angling in Peerless Pool."* 
 
 More business-like is the sign of the Shepherd and Dog ; he, 
 too, wears j(9a^c/i^5, but not on his face; so with the Shepherd and 
 Crook, and the Crook and Shears. All these may be found in 
 most villages, and refer to the inferior farm-labourer, to whom the 
 care of the flock is intrusted, and not the elegant Cory don or Alexis. 
 
 The merry, thirsty time of haymaking is commemorated in 
 the usual signs of a Load of Hay and the Cross Scythes. 
 There is a Load of Hay tavern on Haverstock Hill, a favourite 
 place for Sunday afternoon excursionists in the summer time. 
 Many years ago the eccentricity of Da vies the landlord was one 
 of the attractions of the place. Lately the house has been re-built, 
 and it is now only a suburban gin-palace. The Mattock and 
 Spade, and the Spade and Becket, refer to field labour ; the 
 first is very general, the second less so j but an example occurs at 
 Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. The Peat Spade, Longstock, Hants, 
 tells its own tale. The Dairy Maid w^as in great favour with 
 the London cheesemongers of the seventeenth century. Aker- 
 man gives a trades token of such a sign in Catherine Street, in 
 1653, which is an amusing specimen of the liberties the token 
 engravers took with the king's English, the country Phillis being 
 transformed into a " Deary Made'' The Dutch in the seven- 
 teenth century used the sign for a rather heterogenous trade : it 
 seems that the process of sucking or inhaling the tobacco smoke 
 carried back their ideas to tender years of innocence and milk 
 diet, and so the Dairy Maid became the sign, par excellence, of 
 tobacco shops. Even at the present day that idea is not quite 
 forgotten ; tobacco boxes or other smoking implements are 
 sometimes seen amongst that nation, with the words, " Troost 
 for Zuigelingen," " consolation for sucklings." The inscriptions 
 under these signs were occasionally very curious : — 
 
 * Foi-merly a dangerous pond in Old Street Road, in which a number of jveopla were 
 drowned, wlier¥3e it obtained its name of perilous Pond. In 1713 it was walled in by 
 one Kemp, who on that occasion altered its name into Peerless Pool, by a similar process 
 as the Poatus d^ei^os, inhospitable, was called €v^€lvos, hospitable, by the Greeks. 
 
 Z 
 
354 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " Toebak that edel kruyt soveel daarvan getuygen 
 Al die lang zyn gespeent beginnez weer te zuygen." * 
 On the GouDSCHE Melkmeid in Amsterdam : — 
 " Goede Waar en goed bescheid 
 Krygt gy hier in de Goudsche Melkmeid 
 Puyk van Yerinas en Virginia Tabac 
 Kunt gy hier rooken op uw gemak." f 
 Another had : — 
 
 *'Teckere Neusen, eele baasen, 
 Die by 't klinken van de glaasen 
 Tob het smooken zyt bereyt ; 
 Zoekje't beste van den acker 
 Puyk verynis ? komt dan wacker 
 By de walsse melUk-meid." X 
 Harvest- HOME, the pleasant time of congratulation and feafst- 
 ing, must be an alluring sign for the villagers, calling up recol- 
 lections of all the festivities yearly celebrated on that grand 
 occasion, when — 
 
 " the harvest treasures all 
 Are gather'd in beyond the rage of storms, 
 Sure to the swain." — Thomson. 
 One of the misfortunes of the " nimium fortunati sua si bona 
 norint " is pictured in the Caet Overthrown, which is a pub- 
 lic-house sign at Lower Edmonton ; though how it came to be 
 such is difficult to guess. On Highgate Hill there is an old 
 roadside inn, the Fox and Crown, which displays on its front a 
 fine gilt coat of arms with, the following inscription under 
 neath : — 
 
 6th July 1837. 
 This Coat op Arms is a Grant 
 FROM Queen Victoria, for Ser- 
 vices RENDERED TO HeR MaJESTY 
 
 WHEN IN Danger Travelling 
 DOWN THIS Hill. 
 
 » "Tobacco is a noble weed, as many can testify. 
 
 Numbers of people who were long since weaned begin to suck again.'' 
 f " Here at the Milkmaid of Gouda 
 
 You will receive good articles and civil treatment, 
 Here you may smoke at your ease 
 Tip-top Varinas and Virginia tobacco." 
 X ** Dainty noses, noble masters, 
 
 Who, by the jingling of the glasses, 
 Are prepared for a 'smoke ;' 
 If you look for the finest grovrth, 
 The best Varinas ? Come then ac ono-* 
 To the Walloon Milkmaid," &c. 
 
DIGKITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, 355 
 
 Tlie carriage conveying Her Majesty was proceeding down the 
 hill without a skid on the wheel, when something started the 
 horses, and the occurrence above narrated took place. The late 
 landlord died in distressed circumstances, and he stoutly asserted 
 to the last, that although he made repeated applications to the 
 Government for recompense, he having imperilled his own life to 
 save that of Her Majesty, all he ever received for his pains was 
 permission to display the royal arms on his house front. 
 
 The Woodman is another very common sign, invariably repre- 
 senting the same woodman copied from Barker's picture, and evi- 
 dently suggested by Cowper's charming description of a winter's 
 morning in the Task." The Drover's Call is still seen on many 
 roadsides, though the profession that gave rise to it is well-nigh 
 extinct; the herds of steaming, fierce-looking oxen, formerl}'- 
 driven from all parts of the kingdom, along the main roads lead- 
 ing to London, there to be devoured, being now nearly all sent 
 here by rail. A yet older practice produced the sign of the 
 String OF Horses, which may still be seen on many a highroad 
 in the North, and dates from times before mail coaches and stage 
 waggons existed, when all the goods-traffic inland had to be per- 
 formed by strings of packhorses, who carried large baskets, 
 hampers, and bales slung across their backs, and slowly^ though 
 far from surely, wound their way over miles and miles of unin- 
 habited tracts, moors, and fens, which lay between the small 
 towns and straggling villages. 
 
 Many signs still recall those bygone days : the Old Coach and 
 Six may yet be seen in some places. There is one, for instance, 
 in Westminster, but it is no longer a "sign of the times," for alas ! — 
 
 ** No more the coaches shall I see 
 Come trundling from the yard, 
 Nor hear the horn blown cheerily 
 By brandy-bibbing guard." 
 
 The names of the coaches were often adopted by inns on the 
 road ; for instance, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Defiance, 
 the Balloon, the Tally-Ho, the Bang-up, the Express, &c., 
 &c. ; but alas ! the modern railroad has swept away the signs as 
 well as the coaches. 
 
 In London, there are not less than fifty-two public-houses known 
 as the Coach and Horses, exclusive of beer-houses, cofi'ee-houses, 
 and similar establishments. Stow says, in his " Summary of English 
 Chronicles," that in 1555, Walter Eipon made a coach for the 
 
356 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Earl of Eutland, " wliicli was the first tliat was ever used in Eng- 
 land/' But in his larger Chronicle he says : — 
 
 In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's 
 coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. 
 After a while divers great ladies, with as great jalousy of the queen's dis- 
 pleasure, made them coaches, and rid up and down the country in them, 
 to the great admiration of all the beholders, but then by little they grew 
 usual among the nobility and others of sort, and within twenty years be- 
 came a great trade of coachmaking." 
 
 Taylor the Water poet, who, as a waterman of course, bore a 
 grudge to coaches, said, " It is a doubtful question whether the 
 devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared 
 at the same time." How common they became in a short time 
 appears from all the satirists of that period ; not only the nobility, 
 but even the citizens coald no longer do without them, after 
 fthey were once introduced. Not forty years after their first 
 .appearance Pierce Pennyless, speaking of merchants' wives, says : 
 She will not go unto the field to coure on the green grasse, but 
 she must have a coach for her convoy." * No wonder, then, that, 
 according to the " Coach and Sedan," a pamphlet of 1636, there 
 were then in London, the suburbs, and four miles' compass with- 
 out, coaches to the number of 6000 and odd. These were nearly 
 all private carriages, for the hackney coaches were only established 
 in 1625 by one Captain Bailey. Their first stand was at the 
 Maypole in the Strand. They numbered about twenty, and were 
 attached to the principal inns. In 1636, the number of hackney 
 coaches was confined to 50 ; in 1652, to 200 ; in 1654, to 300 ; 
 in 1662, to 400 ; in 1694, to 700 ; in 1710, to 800 ; in 1771, 
 to 1000 ; in 1802, to 1100 ; but in 1833 all limitation of number 
 ceased. Besides cabs of various kinds, there are now above a 
 thousand omnibusses regularly employed in the Metropolis, and 
 the commissioners of stamps are authorised to license all such 
 carriages without limitation as to number; the proprietor paying 
 the duty of £5 for the licence, and 10s. per week during its con- 
 tinuance. What a difference just two centuries ago, when by 
 proclamation of the Merry Monarch : " — 
 
 " The excessive number of hackney coaches [about 400] and coach horses 
 in London, are found to be a common nuisance to the public damage of 
 our people, by reason of their rude and disorderly standing, and passing to 
 and fro, in and about our cities and suburbs; the streets and highways 
 being thereof pestered and much impassable, the pavement broken up, and 
 the common passages obstructed and made dangerous." Hence ordere are 
 
 * Vierce Pennyless, Supplication to ttie Devil, 1593. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 
 
 357 
 
 given, that *' henceforth none shall stand in the street, but only within their 
 coach-houses, stables, and yards." 
 
 At the Coach and Horses, Bartholomew Close, some vestiges of 
 the ancient buildings of St Bartholomew's Hospital and Convent 
 still remain^ — viz., a clustered column in the beer cellar, walls of 
 immense thickness, and an early English window in the taproom, 
 &c. This building occupies the site of the north cloister.* An- 
 other Coach and Horses, in Bay Street, Clerkenwell, is also built 
 on classic ground, for it occupies the site of the once famous 
 Hockley-in-the-Hole of bear-baiting memory. A comical ale- 
 house keeper in Oswestry has travestied the sign of the Coach 
 and Horses into the Coach and Dogs. 
 
 The Wheel, an object sometimes seen on signboards, may 
 have been derived from the Catherine Wheel, (the name of a 
 favourite old coaching inn in Bishopsgate Street,) or from the 
 wheel of fortune ; the Saddle and the Spur are both very general 
 on roadside inns, owing to the ancient mode of travelling on 
 horseback ; the Whip occurs in Briggate, Leeds. 
 
 In Norwich there was (and we believe is still) a curious com- 
 bination, the Whip and Egg, which existed in that locality as 
 early as the year 1750,t and which is enumerated in London, under 
 the name of the Whip and Eggshell, amongst the taverns in 
 the black letter ballad of " London's Ordinarie, or Everie Man in 
 his Humour,^' whilst a still earlier mention occurs in Mothei 
 Bunch's Merriment, (1 604,) when the transformation of pigs into 
 fowds, whereby one of the gulls was so " sweetly deceyved," is 
 laid at the Whip and Eggshell. It has been explained as a cor- 
 ruption of the Whip and Nag, but the combination of these two 
 would be so obvious that a corruption would scarcely be possible. 
 In " Great Britain's Wonder, or London's Admiration," a ballad 
 on the frost of 1685, when the Thames w^as frozen over, and a 
 fair held upon it, the following lines occur : — 
 
 " In this same street, before the Temple made,+ 
 There seems to be a brisk and lively trade, 
 When ev'rj^ booth hath such a cunning sign 
 As seldom hath been seen in former time ; 
 
 The Flying P pot is one of the same, 
 
 The Whip and Eggshell, and the Broom by name.'* 
 The Whip and Egg, therefore, figured on the ice, and may have 
 bee*! brought together from the whipping of eggs, in making egg- 
 
 ♦ Tliose remains are enerraved in Archer's Vestiges of Old London. 
 
 t Gentleman's Magazine, March 1842. 
 
 t A row of booths on the ice opposite the Temple, 
 
358 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 punch, egg-flip, and similar beverages, nrncli drank on tlie ice in 
 Holland ; and as there were always crowds of Dutchmen on the 
 ice, whenever the river was frozen over, they may have introduced 
 their favourite drink as well as their Dutch whirlings, whimsies, 
 and flying boats, and the sign have been invented in order to indi- 
 cate the sale of those liquors. 
 
 The Three Jolly Butchers used to be seen in the neighbour- 
 hood of markets and shambles, either in allusion to the three 
 merry north-country butchers, who killed nine highwaymen, 
 according to the ballad, or simply that favourite combination of 
 three which is of such frequent recurrence. The Cleaver seems 
 also to be in compliment to this profession, as well as the Mar- 
 rowbones AND Cleaver. This last is a sign in Fetter Lane, origi- 
 nating from a custom, now rapidly dying away, of the butcher boys 
 serenading newly married couples with these professional instru- 
 ments. Formerly, the band would consist of four cleavers, each 
 of a different tone, or, if complete, of eight, and by beating their 
 marrowbones skilfully against these, they obtained a sort of 
 music somewhat after the fashion of indifferent bell-ringing. 
 When well performed, however, and heard from a proper distance, 
 it was not altogether unpleasant. A largesse of half-a-crown or 
 a crown was generally expected for this delicate attention. The 
 butchers of Clare market had the reputation of being the best 
 performers. The last public appearance of this popular music was 
 at the marriage of the Prince of Wales, whea small bands of them 
 perambulated the town, playing " God Save the Queen." This 
 music was once so common that Tom Killigrew called it the 
 national instrument of England. In 1759 a burlesque Ode on 
 St Cecilia's day, written by Bonnell Thornton, was performed at 
 Ftanelagh. Amongst the instruments employed in this there 
 was a band of marrowbones and cleavers, whose endeavours were 
 admitted by the cognoscenti to have been "a complete success." 
 
 As the use of coaches gave rise to the sign of the Coach and 
 Horses, so the Sedan produced some signs, as the Sedan Chair, 
 Broad Quay, Bristol ; North Searle, Newark ; the Two Chair- 
 men, &c., Warwick Street, Cockspur Street, and other parts of 
 London ; and the Three Chairs in the seventeenth century, a 
 famous tavern in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden. The Sedan, 
 says Bandle Holme, "is a thing in which sick and crazy persons are 
 carried abroad, which is borne up by the staves by two lusty men." * 
 
 * Randle Holme, book iii., ch. viii., p 346. 
 
DIGNITIES, TBADES, AND PB0FE8SI0NS. 359 
 
 The first sedan chair used in England was one that the Duke of 
 Buckingham had received as a gift from Charles L, when Prince 
 of Wales, on his return from that romantic Jean-de-Paris " ex- 
 pedition to Spain.* The use of it got the Duke into trouble, 
 and he was accused of degrading Englishmen into slaves and 
 beasts of burden." Lysons, in his " Magna Britannia," gives 
 another origin for them j speaking of Duncombe at Battlesden, in 
 Bedfordshire, he says : — 
 
 It was to one of this family, Sir Saunders Duncombe, a gentleman pen- 
 sioner to King James and Charles I., that we are indebted for the accom- 
 modation of the sedans or close chairs, the use of which was first introduced 
 by him in this country in the year 1634, when he procured a patent which 
 vested in him and his heirs the sole right of carrying persons up and down 
 in them for a certain time." 
 
 Sir Saunders hereupon got forty or fifty sedans made, and sent 
 them about town, but differences soon arose between the chair- 
 men and the coachmen. Pamphlets were written,t ballads were 
 sung on the occasion, and the public sided with one or the other, 
 according to individual taste. A ballad in favour of the sedan 
 said :— 
 
 " I love sedans, cause they do plod 
 
 And amble everywhere, 
 Which prancers are with leather shod, 
 
 And neere disturb the care. 
 Heigh downe, dery, dery, downe, 
 "With the hackney coaches downe, 
 
 Their jumpings make 
 
 The pavement shake, 
 Their noyse doth mad the towne." % 
 
 De Foe, in 1702, says, "We are carried to these places [coffee- 
 houses] in chairs, which are here very cheap — a guinea a week, 
 or a shilling per hour — and your chairmen serve you for porters 
 to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice." The chair- 
 men of the aristocracy wore gaudy liveries and plumed hats, and 
 their chairs were richly gilt and painted, and provided with velvet 
 cushions. They used to be kept in the halls of their large 
 mansions. As for the chairmen, we may infer from Gay's 
 Trivia that they were an insolent set of fellows : — 
 
 * Dr Johnson's explanation that they received their name from the to\m of Sedan, 
 whence they were introduced into England, is evidently a mistake— for the French copied 
 them from us. See Tallemant des Reaux, Contes et Historiettes," vol. vii., p. 102. 
 
 t Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for Place and Precedence. 4to, 1636. 
 
 X Roxburgh.; Ballads, vol. i.,fol. 546, entitled "The Coaches Overthrow, ora joviall Ex- 
 altation of divers tradesmen and others for the suppression of troublesome Ilackaev 
 Coaches." 
 
36o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGXBOARDS. 
 
 ** Let not the chairman with assuming stride 
 Press near the wall and rudely thrust thy side, 
 The laws have set him bounds ; his servile feet 
 Should ne'er encroach where posts defend the street. 
 Yet, who the footman's arrogance can quell, 
 Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall Mall, 
 When in long rank a train of torches flame, 
 To light the midnight visits of the dame." 
 
 The trumpet-like instruments in which these torches were ex- 
 tinguished, when arrived at their place of destination, are still 
 seen attached to the area railingf of most of the houses in Gros- 
 venor and St James' Squares, and various other parts of the town 
 fashionably inhabited at that period. 
 
 Another creature of this class, now as completely extinct ag 
 the Plesiosaurus and the Megatherion, or any other monster of 
 the pre- Adamite world, was the Eunning Footman. We can- 
 not say that there is not a *^ sign" of him left, for there is one in 
 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, representing a man in gaudy 
 attire, running, with a long cane in his hand — ^under it, " I am 
 THE ONLY Running Footman." This was a class of servants 
 used by rich families in former days to run before the carriage, 
 to clear the way, bear torches at night, pay turnpikes, and serving 
 also in a great measure for pomp. Generally their livery was 
 very rich, being somewhat of the Jockey dress, with a silk sash 
 round the waist; sometimes, instead of breeches, they wore a 
 sort of silk petticoat with a deep gold fringe. They carried long 
 sticks with silver heads, which have now descended to their suc- 
 cessors the footmen. The Duke of Queensberry was one of the 
 last noblemen who kept running footmen. A good story is told 
 of him in connexion with one of these servants. Whenever his 
 grace wanted to engage one it was his custom to make him put 
 on his livery, and run up and down Piccadilly, whilst he, from his 
 balcony, watched their paces ; and so it happened on a time, that 
 after one of those fellows had gone through all his evolutions and 
 presented himself under the balcony, the Duke said : "That will 
 do ; you will suit me very well." " And so your livery does me," 
 was the answer, and oflf the fellow went running like a deer and 
 was never heard of afterwards. Another feat on record, some- 
 what more to the credit of the fraternity, was that one of them 
 ran for a wager to Windsor against the Duke of Marlborough in 
 a phaeton with four horses, and lost only by a short distance ; but 
 it cost the poor fellow his life, for he died very soon after. Most 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 36 1 
 
 of these running footmen were Irish, hence Decker* says — " Tho 
 Devil's footeman was very nimble of his heeles, for no wild Irish- 
 man could outrunne him," and Brathwaite remarks : — 
 
 " For see those thin-breech'd Irish lackies run."t 
 St Patrick's day was generally given to them as a holiday, which 
 they invariably celebrated by purging themselves. In various 
 country places the sign of the Eunning Footman has been cor- 
 rupted into the Eunning Man. 
 
 Another " domestic'' sign is the Trusty Servant at Minstead, 
 Hants : — 
 
 A trusty servant's portrait would you see, 
 This emblematic figure well survey ; 
 The porker's snout not nice in diet shows, 
 The padlock shut, no secret he '11 disclose. 
 Patient the ass his master's rage will bear, 
 Swiftness in errand the stag's feet declare. 
 Loaden his left hand apt to labour saith, 
 The vest his neatness : open hand his faith. 
 Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm, 
 Himself and master he '11 protect from harm." 
 
 The origin of this sign is a picture on the wall of one of the 
 rooms, near the kitchen of Winchester College, where it is accom- 
 panied by the above verses in English and Latin. 
 
 Further, there is the Stave-Porter, Dockhead, London ; the 
 Ticket-Porter, near London Bridge ; the Porter's Lodge, Lei- 
 cester; and the Porter AND Gentleman in three dififerent places 
 in London. 
 
 The Huntsman is common in the hunting districts. To the 
 hunt, also, we must refer such signs as — Hark to Bounty, Staid- 
 burn, Clitheroe ; Hark up to Nudger, Dobcross, Manchester ; 
 Hark the Lasher, near Castleton, Derby; Hark up to Glory, 
 Rochdale, and the Chase Inn in Leamington. In Cambridge 
 there are two signs of the Birdbolt, an implement formerly used 
 to shoot birds ; consequently it must be a sign of some antiquity. 
 En Nightingale Lane, East Smithfield, there is an Experienced 
 Fowler, who, no doubt, well knows the value of a bird in the 
 hand," and at Oldham and Eochdale there is an equally satirical 
 sign, that of the Trap. The Angler is common enough in the 
 neighbourhood of trout streams and other fishing resorts fre- 
 quented by the disciples of Isaak Walton. 
 
 Many professions are only represented by one or two objects 
 
 ♦ Decker's English Villanies, 1632. 
 
 t BraJiwaite's Strapado for the Diuell, 1615. Notes in Percy Society pditioa* 
 
362 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 reJating to them. The Tallow Chandler, very common among 
 the trades tokens, was always represented by a man dipping 
 candles. To that trade also seems to belong the Bowls and 
 Candle Poles, which occurs in the following rambling advertise- 
 ment : — 
 
 OTOLEN, 
 Lost, or Mislaid, 
 
 A Promissory Note for one hundred and twenty Pounds, signed by John 
 Smallvvood and indorsed by John Addams. Whoever will bring the same 
 note to the House known by the Bowls and Candlepoles in Duke Street, 
 in the Park, Southwark, shall receive five Guineas Reward ; and if offered 
 to be paid away or any Writ to be taken out for payment of the said Note, 
 pray stop it and the party, and you shall have the same Reward. 
 
 The House is in Tenements, and some part thereof being a Pawn- 
 broker's, was broke open and several things of value missing. Note, This 
 mischief arrises from a country Butcher, who did strike and kick an old 
 Gentleman at London Bridge, about three quarters of a year ago. And all 
 persons who did see the said Assault and will speak the truth, (for Christ's 
 sake,) are desired to send their Names and Place of Abode to the Bowls 
 and Candlepoles and the favour shall be thankfully acknowledged."* 
 
 The Scales is a common sign referring to various trades : one 
 of the engraved bill-heads in the Bagford Collection gives the 
 Hand and Scales — viz., a hand holding a pair of scales ; this 
 antiquated mode of representing a hand issuing from the clouds 
 to perform some action, has given name to a great many signs 
 — all combinations of the hand with some other object. The 
 Spinning Wheel was formerly much more common than now ; 
 there is still a public-house with this sign at Hamsterley near 
 Darlington. The AYoolsack was originally a wool-merchant's 
 sign ; it is often accompanied by the Black Boy. Machyn men- 
 tions this sign in 1555 : "The xx day of July was cared to the 
 Toure in the morning erlee iiij men ; on was the goodman of 
 the Yolsake with-owt Algatt.'' It seems to have been one of the 
 leading taverns in Ben Jonson's time, who often alludes to it in 
 his plays ; like the Dagger, it was famous for its pies. 
 " And see how the factors and prentices play there 
 False with their masters, and geld many a full pack, 
 To spend it in pies at the Dagger and the W oolpack^ i 
 The Devil is an Ass, act i., sc. 1. 
 ** Her Grace would have you eat no more Woolsack pies nor Dagger f ur- 
 metj/* ~ Alchymist, act v., sc. 2. 
 
 In the year 1682, the Woolsack Tavern in Newgate Market 
 attracted great attention, owing to a wonderful phenomenon 
 
 * Newspaper cutting of the year 1762, probably from the London Rerjizter. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, 363 
 
 there exhibited, and set forth in the following handbill from the 
 Sloane Collection. No. 958 : — 
 
 "AT THE SIGN of the Woolpack in Newgate Street, is to be seen a strange 
 and wonderful thing, which is, an elm-board, being touch'd with a 
 hot iron, doth express itself, as if it was a nian dying, with grones and 
 trembling, to the great admiration of all the hearers. It hie been pre- 
 sented before the King and his nobles, and hath given them great satis 
 faction. Vivat Rex'* 
 
 Such a curiosity could not fail to prove an object of immense 
 attraction with our wonder-loving ancestors, particularly after the 
 house had been visited by his Majesty, and thus acquired additional 
 respectability. Very soon, however, numerous London taverns 
 claimed public attention for similar wonders. It was as if the 
 wood used in their construction had been cut from the myrtle- 
 tree which conversed with ^Eneas near the river Hebrus, (*^^neid," 
 lib. iii. 19,) or from the "fiera selvaggia" Dante saw in the second 
 circle of Hades, where he 
 
 " sentia da ogni parte tragger guai 
 E non vedea persona che 1 facesse."* 
 
 Inferno, canto xiii. 
 
 The mantel-piece at the Bowman Tavern, Drury Lane, ex- 
 pressed its aversion of a red hot poker as unequivocally as the 
 elm-board at the Woolsack, and the dresser at the Queen's Arms 
 in St Martin's Lane was evidently a " chip of the same block." 
 Indeed, boards were cauterised and groaned all over London. 
 
 The Block was a hatter's sign, or as that trade was sometimes 
 called, Bever-cutter, the block being the mould on which the hat 
 is formed. Beatrix, in "Much Ado about Nothing,'^ says : "He 
 wears his faith, but as the fashion of his hat it ever changes with 
 the next block." And Decker, in the " Gull's Hornbook : " 
 
 John, in Paul's Churchyard, shall fit his head for an excellent 
 block." The word was also often used as a synonym for "hat." 
 
 The Postboy was the sign of a fishmonger's shop in Sherborne 
 Lane, where in 1759 Green-native Colchester oysters were sold 
 at 3s. 3d. a barrel, and exceeding fine " Pyfleet oysters" at 4s. 3d. 
 a barrel. The Up and Down Post used to be, in the good old 
 coaching times, a thriving inn on the now deserted highway be- 
 tween Birmingham and Coventry. The picture represented an 
 erect and a prostrate pillar, which after all was only a rebus or a 
 misunderstanding. In former times, before the mail-coaches were 
 instituted, the equestrian letter-carriers of the up and down mail 
 
 • " — heard groaus from every side, but saw nobody who uttered them." 
 
364 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 used to meet at this house, exchange their bags and each return 
 whence they came, thus effecting a considerable saving of time 
 and trouble. Even washerwomen have been exalted to the sign- 
 board, for in Norwich there was the sign of the Three Washer- 
 women in 1750. And one of the implements of their trade, the 
 Golden Maid, (better known as " the Dolly,") may still be seen 
 at a turner s shop in Dudley. 
 
 A few others remain, which cannot, strictly speaking, be called 
 professions, yet are they — or at least they were — means of making 
 a living, as the Three Morris-dancers, once a very common 
 sign, but now, like the custom that gave rise to it, almost ex- 
 tinct. There is one still left, however, at Scarisbrook, Lanca- 
 shire, and in a few villages a remnant of the dance is also kept 
 up on certain occasions. They were called Morris, or Moors, 
 from the Spanish Morisco, Black faces were required for the 
 dance : — 
 
 " Nam faciem plerumque inficiunt f uligine et peregrinum vestium cul- 
 turn assumunt, qui ludicris talibus indulgent ut Mauriesse videantur, aut 
 e longius remota patria credantur advolasse atque insolens recreationia 
 genus advenisse." * 
 
 There is a painted glass window at Betley, in Staffordshire, on 
 which the characters performing the dance in the early part of 
 the sixteenth century are represented ; to these afterwards others 
 were added. The earliest performers appear to have been called 
 Kobin Hood and Little John, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the May 
 queen, the fool, the piper, and the plain rank and file of dancers 
 variously dressed. To these afterwards were added a dragon, a 
 hobby-horse, and other quaint types. Among the characters re- 
 presented on the painted window are also a franklein, a churl, or 
 peasant, and a nobleman. The hobby-horsem an occupies the middle 
 of the window, and is said to represent a Moorish king : he has 
 two swords thrust into his cheeks, which seem to represent a 
 feat of dexterity performed by Indian and Egyptian jugglers of 
 throwing a somersault with two swords balanced on each side of 
 the cheek. The horse (merely a frame covered with long trap- 
 pings, and only showing the neck and limbs of a horse, in which 
 the man capered about) held a ladle in his mouth for collecting 
 money. 
 
 The fool was one of the features of the pageant, and on him 
 
 • Junius' Etymolo^ria : " For those that take part in these games, besmear thefr faces 
 with "joot and adopt outlandisli garments, so that they may look like IMoors, or as if tiiey 
 had come from distant countries, and thence had introduced this quaint amusement." 
 
DWNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, 365 
 
 rested a great deal of the duties to amuse the public, particularly 
 when tlie hobby-horse was not present .; hence Ben Jonson ; — 
 
 '* But see the Hobby-Horse is forgot, 
 Fool, it must be your lot 
 To supply your wont with faces 
 And some other buffoon graces. 
 You know how. * 
 
 On May-day, which in those merry days was the merriest of all 
 the year, they came out in full force, and, along with the milk- 
 maids dancing with piles of plate on their heads, contributed not 
 a little to give the streets and thoroughfares a merry aspect. The 
 May-dance of the sweeps is perhaps the last stage of decom- 
 position" of this amusement of our forefathers ; their sooty com- 
 plexions, their clowns, their Lord and Lady and Jack in the 
 Green, may be all that remain of the morris-dance, the fool, the 
 Lord and Lady, the hobby-horse, and the rest. 
 
 In treating of games, we may advert to a rendering of the 
 Flying Horse, overlooked on a former occasion. Besides its 
 mythological and heraldic origin, there was another reason which 
 sometimes prompted the choice of this sign. It was the name 
 of a popular amusement, which consisted in a swing, the seat 
 of which formed a wooden horse. This the flying equestrian 
 mounted, and as he was swinging to and fro he had to take with 
 a sword the ring off a quintain. If he succeeded, his adroitness 
 was no doubt rewarded either with a number of swings gratis, 
 or a quotum of beer. Such a Flying Horse served for a sign to 
 an ale-house of that denomination in Moorfields, in the time of 
 Queen Anne. Swings, round-abouts, and such-like amusements, 
 were in those days the usual appendages of suburban ale-houses, 
 and to a certain extent have even come down to our time. 
 
 Oil and colour-shops generally, and some public-houses — 
 mostly near theatres — adopt the sign of the Harlequin. One 
 of the most noted amongst the latter was kept in the beginning 
 of this century in Drury Lane, by the eccentric Kichardson, the 
 Bhowman, or, rather, the Prince of Showmen," as he called 
 himself. In this tavern he saved some money, which enabled 
 him to fit up a travelling theatre, by which he realised so much, 
 that when he died in 1836, he left £20,000. It used to be one 
 of his boasts that he had brought out Edmund Kean, and several 
 >ther eminent actors. He desired in his will to be buried at 
 Marlow, in Bucks, (where he was born in the workhouse,) in the 
 
366 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 same grave with the Spotted Boy," a natural phenomenon 
 which had been one of his. luckiest hits, and brought him a con- 
 siderable amount of money. 
 
 It is curious to observe how the same simple thing has made 
 mankind laugh for nearly thirty centuries, and that is a black 
 face. In our age a large proportion of the public seem to find 
 inexhaustible pleasure in pseudo-negroes, their songs and antics. 
 The Greeks on their stage had a young satyr, dressed in goat 
 or tiger-skin, with a short stick in his hand, a white hat on his 
 headj his hair cut short, and a brown mask. This satyr per- 
 formed some antics, and was the prototype of the harlequin. 
 The Romans adopted a somewhat similar character under the 
 name of planipes, because he did not wear the tragic cothurna ; 
 he also wore a variegated dress, for Apuleius, in his " Apology," 
 speaks of the " mimus centunculus." From the Eomans it de- 
 scended to the Italians, and as early as the sixteenth century we 
 find the whole troop complete, playing in Spain, namely. Harle- 
 quin, Pantaloon, Pagliacico, the Doctor, (fee. At a masked ball 
 at the court of Charles IX., in 1572, the king represented Brig- 
 hella ; the Cardinal of Lorraine, Pantaloon ; Catherine de 
 Medici, Columbine ; and the Duke of Anjou, (afterwards 
 Eenry III.,) Harlequin. At that time, or shortly after, the 
 troop of the Gelosi played the Italian pieces in Paris, in which 
 these characters were introduced. 
 
 For the sign of the Green Man there is a twofold explana- 
 tion, lo. That it represents the green, wild, or wood men of the 
 shows and pageants, such as described by Machyn in his Diary 
 on Lord Mayor's Day, October 29, 1553 : — Then cam ij grett 
 wodyn with ij grett clubes all in grene and with skwybes 
 [squibs] bornyng .... with gret herds and ryd here and ij 
 targets a-pon their bake." This green in which they were 
 dressed consisted of green leaves. When Queen Elizabeth was 
 at Kenilworth Castle, in 1575, " on the x of Julee met her in 
 the Forest as she came from hunting one clad like a savage 
 man all in ivie,"* who made a very neat speech to the queen, 
 in which he was kindly assisted by the echo. Besides wielding 
 sticks with crackers in pageants, these green men sometimes 
 fought with each other, attacked castles and dragons, and were 
 altogether a very favourite popular character with the public. 
 One of their duties seems to have been to clear the way for 
 
 * NichoU's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., p. 494. 
 
DIOmTIES, TRADES, AND PEOFESJ^'IONS. 367 
 
 processions. In one of the Harleian MSS., entitled " Tlio 
 mauer of the showe, that is, if God spare life and health, shall 
 be seen by all the behoulders upon St Georges Day next, being 
 the 23 of Aprill, 1610/' we see amongst the requirements : — 
 
 " It. ij men in greene leaves set with work upon their other habet with 
 black heare & black beards very owgly to behould, and garlands upon 
 their heads with great clubs in their hands with fireworks to scatter abroad 
 to maintaine way for the rest of the show."* 
 
 This interpretation is also given as the origin of the Green 
 Man by Bagford : — 
 
 " They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou* at thes day we in ye 
 signe call them Green Men, couered with grene boues: and are used for 
 singes by stillers of strong watters and if I mistake not are y© sopourters 
 of y« king of Dean marks armes at thes day ; and I am abpt to beleve that 
 ye Daynes learned us hear in England the use of those tosticatein lickers 
 [intoxicating] as well as ye breweing of Aele and a fit emblem for those 
 that use that intosticating licker which berefts them of their sennes." f 
 
 The Wild Man, therefore, on a sign at Quarry Hill, Lady- 
 bridge, Leeds, is the same as the Green Man. 
 
 2^. The second version of this sign is, that it is intended for 
 a forester, and in that garb the Green Man is now invariably 
 represented ; even as far back as the seventeenth century, it is 
 evident from the trades tokens that the Green Man was 
 generally a forester, and, in many cases, Eobin Hood himself, 
 which may be inferred from the small figure frequently intro- 
 duced beside him, and meant for Little John. The baUads 
 always described Eobin and his merry men as dressed in green, 
 " Lincoln green." When Eobin meets the page who brings him 
 presents from Queen Katherine : — 
 
 ** Robin took his mantle from his backe, 
 
 It was of the Lincoln greene 
 
 And sent that by this lovely page 
 
 For a present unto the queene. " J 
 
 And in the same ballad, when he is going to court, " he clothed 
 his men in Lincolne greene^^ &c. Drayton, in his Polyolbion," 
 says : — 
 
 " An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood 
 Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good, 
 All clad in Lincoln green which caps of red and blue," 
 Sometimes it is called Kendal green : — 
 
 " All the woods 
 Are full of outlaws, that in Kendal grem 
 
 * Harl. MSS., No. 2150, fol. 356. 
 t Hart. MSS., No. 5900. ^ j Roxburghe BaUads, vol. i.. f. 374. 
 
368 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Follow the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon." 
 
 Richard, Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, (i.e., Robin Hoc 
 
 It was, in fact, the ordinary dress of foresters and woodmen, 
 and is so still in Germany. 
 
 " All in a woodman's jacket he was clad, 
 Of Lincoln Green, belayed with silver lace." 
 
 Spenser's Faery Queene. 
 One of the most noted Green Man taverns was that on 
 Stroud Green, Islington, formerly the residence of Sir Th. 
 Stapleton, of Gray's Court, Bart., whose initials, with those of 
 his wife, and the date 1609, were to be seen on the fagade. It 
 was one of the suburban retreats frequented by the fashion in 
 the days of Charles I., when it had been converted into a tavern. 
 A century ago the sign bore the following inscription : — 
 " Ye are wellcome all 
 To Stapleton Hall." 
 
 A club used to meet annually at this place, styling themselves 
 the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation of Stroud Green. * 
 At Dulwich, in the reign of George II., there w^as another Green 
 Man, a place of amusement for the Londoners during the sum- 
 mer season ; it is enumerated, with other similar resorts, in the 
 following stanza : — 
 
 " That Vauxhall and Ruckholt and Ranelagh too. 
 And Hoxton and Sadlers both Old and New, 
 My Lord Cobham's Head and the Dulwich Green Man 
 May make as much pastime as ever they can.f 
 
 Derry Down,'' &c. 
 Musich in Good Time, a new Ballad, 1745. 
 
 The Merry Andrew was a card-maker's sign ; in the Banks 
 Collection there is a shopbill of the time of Queen Anne, of 
 Edward Hall, card-maker to her Majesty at the Merry Andrew, 
 in Piccadilly. The playing-cards at that time used to have cer- 
 tain heads on the wrapper, according to which they were de- 
 nominated. Merry Andrew was one of them. Other sorts had 
 the Great Mogul, Henry VII., Henry VIII., and the Duke of 
 Savoy, (Prince Eugene ; ) second-class cards had the Queen of 
 Hungary, the Spaniard, the beau, and the Merry Andrew. The 
 
 * Lewis's History of Islington, p. 281. 
 
 t Rucholt was a reputed mansion of Queen Elizabeth, at Leyton, in Essex. Beinif 
 opened to the public in 1742, it became a fashionable summer drive during a couple of 
 seasons : public breakfasts, weekly concerts, and occasional oratorios were numbered 
 amongst its attractions. The house was pulled down in 1745. Old and New Sadler's 
 Wells relates to the well-known place in Islington, at that period a mu>ic house. 
 Loid Cobliam's Head has been noticed oa p. 07. 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 369 
 
 original Merry Andrew is said to have been a certain Doctor 
 Andrew Borde, born at Pevensey in the fifteenth century, and 
 educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, but who 
 obtained his doctor's degree at Montpellier. His writings 
 abound with witticisms, which are reported also to have per- 
 vaded his speech. He is said to have frequented fairs, markets, 
 and other *^ busy haunts of men," haranguing the people in 
 order to increase his practice in physic. He had many followers 
 and imitators, whence it came that those who affected the same 
 language and gestures were called Merry Andrews. Notwith- 
 standing all this mirth and animal spirits, he professed himself a 
 Carthusian, lived in celibacy, drank water three days in the week, 
 wore a hair shirt, and nightly hung his shroud at the foot of his 
 bed. He is said to have been physician to King Henry VIII., 
 and member of the College of Physicians in London. He died 
 a prisoner in the Fleet in 1549. More celebrated than his works 
 on physic are his " Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham," 
 and the " Merry History of the Miller of Abingdon." 
 
 Lower down still in the sphere of callings and professions the 
 signs will take us. At Oswald Wistle, Accrington, we meet with 
 the Tinker's Budget. The budget is the tinker's bag of instru- 
 ments ; we see the word thus used in Kandle Holme:* — "A 
 Tinker with his budget on his back, having always in his mouth 
 this merry cry : — * Have you any work for a Tinker?'" And 
 Shakespeare, in the " Winter's Tale : — 
 
 " If tinkers may have leave to Hve 
 And bear the sowskin budget,^* 
 
 This inn, then, is certainly very modest in its pretensions ; but 
 we shall descend lower still. Even " poor Tom's flock of wild 
 geese," otherwise Tom of Bedlam, we have now to introduce. 
 We find him at Balsall, Warwick, and no doubt it was formerly 
 not an uncommon sign, smce he was such a favourite in ballads ; 
 the Merry Tom, at Kirkcumbeck, Cumberland, evidently refers 
 to the same individual. Notwithstanding all the fantastic ballads 
 that went under Tom's name, he was but a sorry rogue. Handle 
 Holme t says : — 
 
 The Sow gekler and Tom of Bedlam are both wandering knaves alike, 
 and such as are seldom or never out of their way, having their home in 
 any place. The first is described as carrying a long staff, with a head like 
 
 * Book iii., ch, iii., p. 181. f Book iii., ch. iii., p. 181. 
 
 2 A 
 
370 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 a spear or a half pike, and a horn hung by his side from a broad leather 
 belt or girdle cross his shoulders. Tom of Bedlam is in the same garb, 
 with a long stafip, and a Cow or Ox Horn by his side, but his cloathing is 
 more fantastic or ridiculous, for being a mad man he is madly decked and 
 dressed all over with Rubins, Feathers, cuttings of cloth and what not ; 
 to make him seem a madman or one distracted, when he is no other but a 
 dissembling knave.'* 
 
 "The Canting Academy," 1674, gives tliem a similar attire 
 and character : — 
 
 " Abram-men, otherwise called Tom of Bedlams ; they are very strangely 
 and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it 
 may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down a long stick, with 
 ribands streaming and the like ; yet for all their seeming madness they 
 have wit enough to steal as they go." * 
 
 Aubrey says : — 
 
 " Before the Civil Warre, I remember Tom o' Bedlams went about a 
 begging. They had been such as had been in Bedlam and there recovered 
 and come to some degree of soberness, and when they were licensed to goe 
 out they had on their left arme an armilia of tinne (printed) about three 
 inches breadth, which was sodered on. " f 
 
 This permission, if ever it was granted, was retracted after the 
 Restoration, for in the year 1675 the London Gazette contained 
 in several numbers the following advertisement : — 
 
 **"ITTHER,EAS several Vagrant Persons do wander about the city of Lon- 
 I V don and countries, pretending themselves to be Lunaticks under 
 cure in the Hospitall of Bethlem, commonly called Bedlam, with brass 
 plates upon their arms and inscriptions thereon. These are to give notice 
 that there is no such liberty given to any Patients kept in the Hospital 
 for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put upon 
 any Lunatick during their being there or when discharged thence. And 
 that the same is a false presence to colour their wandering and begging 
 and deceive the people to the dishonour of the Government of that 
 Hospital.'' 
 
 Not only men but also women of a roving disposition, adopted 
 poor Tom's horn, and went wandering, begging, and pilfering 
 under the name of Bess of Bedlam, which is still seen as a sign 
 in Oak Street, Norwich. Bess was an old companion of poor 
 Tom, for in the play of King Lear, Tom sings a snatch of a song 
 with the words, " Come over the bourn, Bessy, to me," and in the 
 
 * Canting Academy, second edition, 1674, as quoted in Malcolm's ''Manners and 
 Customs," vol. i., p. c22. 
 t Lansdowne Mb., No. 231 " Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme." 
 
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS. 37 1 
 
 jollities of Plougli Monday the fool and Bessy are two of the 
 principal personages.* 
 
 A third class of beggars called Mumpers, is also found on the 
 signboard under the name of the Three Mumpers. 
 
 Thus, after having gone through all ranks of society, from the 
 palace to the cottage, and from the sceptre to Tom's staff with a 
 fox- tail, we now come to the great leveller DeatJi, who also was 
 represented on the signboard. There were the Three Death's- 
 heads in Wapping, of which house trades tokens are extant ; 
 probably it was an apothecary's, though it was a ghastly sign for 
 his customers. Undertakers were also strictly professional in 
 their choice. In the eighteenth century there were the Four 
 Coffins over against Somerset House,t and another in Fleet 
 Street, the sign of Stephen Eoome,;}: whose son was the unfortu- 
 nate author whom Pope has "gibbeted" in the Dunciad, as 
 afflicted with a "funereal frown." Savage, one of Pope's literary 
 sicarii, calls Roome ^'a perfect town-author," § and has drawn his 
 portrait in " An Author to be let, by Iscariot Hackney :" — 
 
 '*Had it not been more laudable for Mr Roome, the son of an under- 
 taker, to have borne a link and a mourning staff, in the long procession of 
 a funeral— or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms according 
 to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the 
 Jovial Crew or Merry Beggars into a wicked imitation of the Beggars' 
 Opera ?" 
 
 Another undertaker, James Maddox, clerk and coffin-maker of 
 St Olave's, had for a sign the Sugar-loaf and three Coffins. 
 The addition of the sugar-loaf has, of course, nothing to do with 
 his profession, for when death calls, the sweets of life are past. 
 It was simply the sign of a former tenant, suspended in front or 
 fixed in the wall of the house. Although the undertakers of the 
 present day do not display signs as of old, they advertise their 
 calling quite as effectually. The men who in their handbills 
 solicit us to try their " economic funerals,'^ or to test one of their 
 
 three guinea respectable interments, — one trial only asked,'' are 
 
 * There is a very unfavourable parallel between the Ladies and Besses of Bedlam in the 
 Muse's Recreation, 1656, entitled :— " Upon the naked Bedlams and spotted Beasts w e 
 Bee in Covent Garden," beginning: — 
 
 "When Besse ! she ne're was half so va nly clad, 
 Besse ne're was half so naked, half so mad ; 
 Again, this raves with lust, for love Besse ranted, 
 Then Besse's skin is tanned — this is painted." 
 t Advertisement in the original edition of the Spectator, No. clxxxvl. 
 X City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade. November 4, 1G75. 
 § London Gaz^Ute, May 30-June 3, 1681, where he gives a most dismaJ catalojrae of 
 what he could do. 
 
372 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 commercial with the rest of the age, although we might wish that 
 they would force themselves a little less upon our attention. One 
 undertaker recently hit upon what he deemed a brilliant method 
 of advertising his cheap funerals. He selected some good names 
 from the " Court Guide," and sent out hundreds of telegrams an- 
 nouncing the low prices at which a "body" could be interred. Some 
 reached their destination just as the lady or gentleman " body ^' 
 was sitting down to dinner, others as the parties " were dress- 
 ing, or in the act of leaving home ; but although the scheme 
 failed, the name of the undertaker and his prices were firmly 
 fixed in people's memories, and he received, instead of orders, 
 numerous cautions not to telegraph in that way again. 
 
 An undertaker in Islington, some years ago, exhibited in his 
 vv^indow some pleasing artistic efforts of his children, which must 
 have greatly comforted the father. ^' Master A., aged 12 years," 
 had produced a grinning skeleton, garnished with worms and 
 cross-bones; and "Miss B., aged 10," had painted in colours a 
 section of a vault, with coffin heads, skulls, and sexton's tools, 
 neatly arranged right and left. The drawings were Iramed and 
 glazed, and parental pride had placed them in the best spot in 
 the windows. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 Instead of carved or painted signs hung above the doors, many 
 shop and tavern keepers preferred to designate their houses after 
 some external feature, such as the colour of the building — thus 
 we find the Eed house, the White house, the Blue house, the 
 Dark house, &c. Others painted their door-posts a particular 
 colour, whence the origin of the well-known Blue Posts. In 
 still older times painted posts or poles in front of the houses seem 
 occasionally to have served as signs ; to some such distinction, at 
 least Caxton's Bed Poles, as mentioned in one of his advertise- 
 ments, seems to refer : — 
 
 M it please ong man gpfn'tuel or temporel to lige our pjes 
 of tbio or i\}xz cotnemoraci'o'j3 of salisburi use, emprgnteli after tfje 
 form of ti^fe present letre i»l)i'c|}e ben tael ant< trulg correct, late 
 })gm come to JillEestmonestet into i\jz almonestrge at tt}z Beed 
 Pale, anti l)e 0})al j)atie ti)em gooli anti c|)epe : 
 
 Supplfco stet cetiula/' 
 Even in the seventeenth century such a distinction was still occa- 
 sionally used, as the Gheen Pales in Peter Street, Westminster ;* 
 — and Stukeleyt speaks of Mr Brown's garden at the Green 
 Poles, where an urn was dug up lined with lead and filled with 
 earth and bones. In Etheredge's play *^ She Would if she Could," 
 the Black Posts in James Street are named, (Act i., sc. 1, 1703 ;) 
 whilst the newspapers in the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury contain advertisements stating that the mineral water from 
 liampstead Wells might be obtained, at the rate of 3d. a flask, 
 from the lessee of the wells, who lived at the Black Posts in 
 King Street, near Guildhall. 
 
 Gaeden-iiouses, or Summer-houses, attached to a building, 
 were also used to designate shops and residences, as appears from 
 a trades token "at the garden-house in Blackfriars," and also 
 from a newspaper advertisement of 1679, where the garden- 
 house in King Street, St Giles, is mentioned. Frequent allu- 
 sions to these garden-houses are found in the old plays ; they 
 appear to have been similar in all intents and purposes to the 
 
 * London Gazette, August 28 to Sept. 1, 167a 
 t " Itinerarium Curiosum," 1776, p. 14. 
 
374 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 peiites maisons of tlie profligate Frencli nobility in the times of 
 the Eegence. Stubbe, in bis " Anatomy of Abuses/' severely at- 
 tacks them : — 
 
 " In the suburbes of the citie they have gardens either paled or walled 
 round about very high, with their barbers and bowers fit for the purpose ; 
 and lest they might be espied in those open places, they have their banquet- 
 ing houses, with galleries, turrets, and what not, therein sumptuously 
 erected, wherein they may, and doubtless do, many of them, play the filthy 
 persons." 
 
 The young Rake in Shakespeare's spurious play of the " Lon- 
 don Prodigal," (1604,) says to the lady : — 
 
 Now, God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or a garden- 
 house where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours 
 to command in all sweet service." 
 
 And Corisca in Massinger's " Bondsman," (Act i., sc. 3) : — 
 
 And if need be I have a couch and banqueting-house in my orchard, 
 where many a man of honour has not scorned to spend an afternoon." 
 
 He also alludes to it in the " City Madam." A remnant of this 
 custom is still to be traced in a few country towns, (Sunderland 
 for instance,) where the middle classes have little gardens, in the 
 outskirts of the town, with bowers and wooden summer-houses 
 for tea-drinkirigs. In Holland they still flourish ; the family 
 usually take tea in them, whilst paterfamilias placidly smokes 
 his pipe and listens to the croaking of the frogs and the lowing 
 of the cows in the flat meadows beyond. 
 
 The Well and Bqcket is a sign in Shoreditch, not badly 
 chosen, as it intimates an inexhaustible supply ; it is of very old 
 standing in London, for it is mentioned in the " Paston Letters '' 
 in the year 1472.* 
 
 " I pray God send you all your desires and me my mewed goss-hawk in 
 haste, or, rather than fail, a soar-hawk; there is a grocer dwelling right over 
 against the Well with Two Buckets, a little from St Helen's Church, hath 
 ever hawks to sell." 
 
 The anxiety about the bird, expressed in this letter, is most 
 amusing : — " I ask no more good of you for all the services that 
 I shall do you, while the world standeth, but a goss-hawk," is 
 the commencement of the letter, which concludes : — 
 
 Now, think on me, good lord, for if I have not an hawk I shall wax fat 
 for default of labour, and dead for default of company by my troth." 
 
 In old times the ale-house windows were generally open, so 
 that the company within might enjoy the fresh air, and see all 
 
 ^ Letter of John Paston to Sir John Paston, Sept. 21, 1472, 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 375 
 
 tliat was going on in the street ; but, as tlie scenes within were 
 not always fit to be seen by the " profanum vulgus " that passed 
 by, a trellis was put up in the open window. This trellis, or 
 lattice, was generally painted red, to the intent, it has been 
 jocularly suggested, that it might harmonise with the rich hue 
 of the customers' noses ; which effect, at all events, was obtained 
 by the choice of this colour. Thus Pistol says : — 
 
 He called me even now by word through a red lattice, and I could see 
 no part of his face from the window." 
 
 The same idea is expressed in the " Last Will and Testament of 
 Lawrence Lucifer," 1604 : — 
 
 " Watched sometimes ten hours together in an ale-house, ever and anon 
 peeping forth and sampling thy nose with the red lattice.'* 
 
 So common was this fixture, that no ale-house was without it : — 
 " A whole street is in some places but a continuous ale-house, not a shop 
 to be seen between red lattice and red lattice," — Decker's English Villanies 
 Seven Times Pressed to Death. 
 
 At last it became synonymous with ale-house : — 
 
 "As well known by my wit as an ale-house by a red lattice.*'* 
 
 " Trusty Kachel was drinking burnt brandy with a couple of tinder-box 
 cryers at the next red lattice." f 
 
 The lattices continued in use until the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, and after they disappeared from the window^s were 
 adopted as signs, and as such they continue to the present day. 
 The Green Lattice occurs on a trades token of Cock Lane, and 
 still figures at the door of an ale-house in Billingsgate, whilst not 
 many years ago there was one, in Brownlow Street, Holborn, 
 which had been corrupted into the Green Lettuce. 
 
 When balconies were newly introduced, they were also used 
 in the place of signs. Lord Arundel was the inventor of them, 
 and Covent Garden the first place where they became general. 
 ^' Every house here has one of 'em,'' says Eichard Broome, in 
 1659. Trades tokens *^of the Bellconey," in Bedford Street, 
 are still extant, and also tokens of " John Williams, the king's 
 cbairman, at y^ lower end of St Martin's Lane, at Balconey. 
 1667." The first house that adopted a balcony was situated at 
 the corner of Chandos Street, " which country people were wont 
 much to gaze on soon, however, they became so common that 
 further distinctions had to be added, as the Ieon Balcony, 
 
 * Marston's Antonio and Mellida, 1633. 
 t Tom Brown's Works, vol. iii., p. 243. 
 
376 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 (St James' Street, 1699,) the Blue and Gilt Balcony, (Fatton 
 Street, 1673.) Lamps have also, for two or three centuries, fre- 
 quently done duty as signs, and continue still to act as beacons 
 to those who want the assistance of the doctor, the chemist, or 
 the sweep. Ale and coffee-houses, too, are frequently decorated 
 with gorgeous lamps : this was already the custom in Tom 
 Brown's time : — 
 
 "Every coffee-house is illuminated both without and within doors; 
 without by a fine Glass Lanthorn, and within by a woman so light and 
 splendid you may see through her without the help of a Perspective." * 
 
 The Moorfield quacks had always lamps at their doors at night, 
 with round glasses, having the same colours as the balls in their 
 signs, and this custom has been handed down to our day by the 
 chemists, who still have circular, red, green, and yellow bull's-eye 
 glasses in their lamps. 
 
 In Paris, in the sixteenth century, the pastry-cooks used at 
 nights to place a kind of lamp in their windows, which acted as 
 magic lanterns. They were made of transparent paper, covered 
 with rudely-painted figures of men and animals. Eegnier men- 
 tions them in his eleventh satire : — 
 
 " Ressemblait transparent une lanterns vive, 
 Dont quelques patissiers amusent les enfants, 
 Oil des oysons bridez, guenuches, elefans, 
 Chiens, chats, lievres, renards, et mainte estrange beste 
 Courent Tune apres Tautrc^f 
 
 A Dutch grocer, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign 
 of the Burning Lamp, and wrote under it the following dis- 
 tich : — 
 
 " Myn lampje brant uyt den Orienten, 
 Ik verkoop oly, vygen en krenten.":): 
 
 The Brass Knocker in the Great Gardens, Bristol, is another 
 sign taken from the exterior of the house ; also the Flower-pot, 
 which was very common in old London : one of the last remain- 
 ing stood at the corner of Bishopsgate and Leadenhall Streets. 
 It dated from an early period, and was, in the heyday of its 
 fame, a celebrated coaching inn. The introduction of railroads, 
 however, gave it a death-blow ; for some time it continued to 
 
 * Tom Brown's Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1706. 
 
 t " It represented a burning lamp, such as some pastry-cooks have to amuse the child, 
 ren, on which geese, monkeys, elephants, dogs, cats, hares, foxes, and many strange 
 ftnimals are to be seen running after each other." 
 
 1 " My lamp is kept burning by the produce of the East 
 Oil, figs, and currants sold here." 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 377 
 
 languisli as a starting-point for omnibuses, and was finally 
 demolished to make room for merchants offices in 18G3. Trades 
 tokens of this inn are extant in the Beaufoy collection. Mr Burn, 
 the compiler of the catalogue of this collection, suggests that 
 the Flower-pot was originally the vase of lilies, always repre- 
 sented in the ' old pictures of the Salutation or Annunciation ; 
 according to his theory the Angel and the Virgin were omitted 
 at the Reformation, and nothing but the vase left. This, how- 
 ever, seems somewhat improbable. There is no apparent reason 
 why it should not have been a real flower-pot, or rather vase, 
 which our ancestors frequently had on the top of the pent-houses 
 above their shops. In order to distinguish them from ordinary 
 flower-pots, some painted theirs blue, thus the sign of the Blue 
 Flowee-pot, as appears from the advertisement of Cornelius a 
 Tilborgh, who styles himself sworn chirurgeon in ordinary to 
 King Charles II., to our late sovereign King William, as also 
 to her present majesty Queen Anne.'' This worthy lived in 
 Great Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn Bow, and besides the Blue 
 Flower-pot at his front door, his customers might recognise the 
 house, by " a light at night over the door," and a Blue Ball at 
 the back-door. The Two Blue Flower-pots used to be a sign 
 in Dean Street, Soho ; and the Two Flowee-pots and Sun 
 Dial in Parker's Lane, near Drury Lane, {London Gazette, Sept. 
 16-19, 1700.) 
 
 Innumerable objects from the interior of the house were like- 
 wise adopted as signs, such as furniture of all kinds, and domestic 
 utensils. The upholsterers, for instance, generally selected pieces 
 of furniture. At the end of the last century The Eoyal Bed 
 was a great favourite, as may be seen from engravings on several 
 of the shop bills in the Banks collection ; the bed in olden times 
 was a very important article in a household, and was always 
 particularly named in the will. Upholsterers in those days were 
 also frequently called bed-joiners. Next we have the Board or 
 Table, still a great favourite in the north — in Durham alone at 
 least sixty public-houses with that sign could be named. 
 
 The mention of the Table afibrds an opportunity for particu- 
 larising those good things which usually grace the festive board. 
 First of all there is the Salt Horn, (at Bradford and Leeds,) 
 which formerly at dinner marked the line of demarcation ; for 
 whether a guest was to be placed above or below the salt was a 
 matter of etiquette strictly to be attended to. In Dudley we 
 
378 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 find a very substantial and tempting Eound of Beep, witli the 
 following rhymes : — 
 
 " If you are hungry or a-dry, 
 
 Or your stomach out of order, 
 There 's sure relief at the Round of Beef, 
 For both these two disorders." 
 
 The roast beef of old England is further represented by The 
 PtiBS OF Beef, in Wensum Street, Norwich. The Flank op 
 Beef at Spalding, the much less tempting Cow Eoast at 
 Hampstead, besides a couple of unpretending Beef-steaks .in 
 Bath. Our bill of fare also contains plenty of mutton, sometimes 
 rehausse with a poetic sauce, as one that was at Hackney in the 
 last century, The Shouldek of Mutton and Cat, having the 
 following rhymes : — 
 
 Pray Puss, don't tear, 
 
 For the Mutton is so dear; 
 
 Pray Puss, don't claw, 
 
 For the Mutton yet is raw.'* 
 
 The sign is still there, but the verses are gone. This suggested 
 to another innkeeper on the common at Horsham, the sign of the 
 Dog and Bacon. An epicurean publican at Yapton, Arundel, 
 has a more gastronomic combination, viz. : — the Shoulder op 
 Mutton and Cucumbers. It was at the Shoulder of Mutton 
 in Brecknock that Mrs Siddons, England's greatest tragic actress, 
 was born, July 14, 1755. "Fancy," writes an enthusiastic bio- 
 grapher, "the English Melpomene behind the bar of such a 
 place!" Legs of Mutton on the signboard do not appear to be so 
 common as Shoulders. But by far the finest of all the dishes re- 
 presented on the signboard was the Boar's Head, in Eastcheap, for 
 the character of the famous inn patronised by Jack Falstajff makes 
 the association of an excellent dish much more natural than any 
 heraldic origin. The first mention of this inn occurs in the testa- 
 ment of William Warden, in the reign of Richard II., who gave 
 " all that tenement called the Boar's Head in Eastcheap," to a 
 college of priests, or chaplains, founded by Sir W. Walworth, the 
 Lord Mayor, in the adjoining church of St Michael, Crooked 
 Lane. The presence of " Prince Hal " in this house was no 
 invention of Shakespeare ; history records his pranks, how one 
 night, with his two brothers, John and Thomas, he made such a 
 riot that they had to be taken before the magistrate. No wonder, 
 ihen, at the proud inscription on the sign, which still existed in 
 Maitiand's time : — " This is the chief tavern in London,^' At one 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 379 
 
 time the portal was decorated with carved oak figures of FiJstaft 
 and Prince Henry; and in 1834 the former was in the possession 
 of a brazier of Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop 
 he then occupied since the great fire. The last great Shakes- 
 pearian dinner-party at the Boar's Head took place about 1784, 
 on which occasion Wilberforce and Pitt were present, and though 
 there were many professed wits, Pitt was the most amusing of 
 the company. 
 
 On the removal of a mound of rubbish at Whitechapel, brought 
 there after the great fire, a carved boxwood bas-relief boar's head 
 was found, set in a circular frame formed by two boars' tusks, 
 mounted and united with silver. An inscription to the following 
 effect was pricked in the back : — Wm. Brooke, Landlord of the 
 Bore's Hedde, Estchepe, 1566." This object, formerly in the 
 possession of Mr Stamford, the celebrated publisher, was sold at 
 Christie and Manson's, on January 27, 1855, and was bought by 
 Mr HalliweU.* 
 
 The original inn having been destroyed by the fire, was rebuilt 
 and continued in existence until 1831, v/hen it was finally demo- 
 lished to make way for the streets leading to new London Bridge. 
 Its site was between Small Alley and St MichaeFs Lane. The 
 ancient sign, carved in stone, Avith the initials I. T. and the date 
 1668, is now preserved in the City of London Library, Guild- 
 hall. 
 
 In the month of May 1718, one James Austin, "inventor of 
 the Persian ink powder," desiring to give his customers a sub- 
 stantial proof of his gratitude, invited them to the Boar's Head 
 to partake of an immense plum-pudding. This pudding weighed 
 1000 lbs.; a baked pudding of 1 foot square, and the best piece 
 of an ox roasted : the principal dish was put in the copper on 
 Monday, May 12, at the Hed Lion Inn, by the Mint in South- 
 wark, and had to boil fourteen days. From there it was to be 
 brought to the Swan Tavern, in Fish Street Hill, accompanied 
 by a band of music playing — "What lumps of pudding my 
 mother gave me;" one of the instruments was a drum in pro- 
 portion to the pudding, being 18 feet 2 inches in length, and 4 
 feet diameter, which was drawn by " a device fixt on six asses." 
 Finally the monstrous pudding was to be divided in St George's 
 Fields, but apparently its smell was too much for the gluttony 
 
 * There is a drawing of this very curious relic in a number of the Illustrated London 
 News^ published shortly after the sale. 
 
38o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 of the Londoners ; the escort was routed, the pudding taken and 
 devoured, and the whole ceremony brought to an end, before Mr 
 Austin had a chance to regale his customers. 
 
 Puddings seem to have been the forte of this Austin. Twelve 
 or thirteen years before this last pudding, he had baked one for 
 a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near Rotherhithe, by 
 enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a sack of lime : it was 
 taken up after about two hours and a half, and eaten with great 
 relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat overdone. The 
 bet was for more than .£100. Austin was also noted for his 
 fireworks. 
 
 The back windows of the Boar's Head looked out upon the 
 bujial-ground of St Michael's Church,* and there rested all that 
 was mortal of one of the waiters of this tavern. His tomb, in 
 Purbeck stone, had the following epitaph : — 
 
 Here lieth the bodye of Robert Preston, late Drawer at the Boar's 
 Head Tavern, Great Eastcheap, who departed this Life, March 16, Anno 
 Domini, 1730, aged 27 years." 
 
 *' Bacchus, to give the topeing world surprize, 
 Produc'd one sober son, and here he lies. 
 Tho' nurs'd among full Hogsheads, he defy'd 
 The charm of wine and ev'ry vice beside. 
 O Reader, if to Justice thou 'rt inclin'd, 
 Keep Honest Preston daily in thy Mind. 
 He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots, 
 Had sundry virtues that outweighed his fauts (sic) 
 You that on Bacchus have the like dependance, 
 Pray, copy Bob, in measure and attendance." f 
 
 Amongst other Boar's Head Inns, we may notice one in South- 
 wark, the property of Sir John Falstolf of Caistor Castle, Nor- 
 folk, w^ho died in 1460, and whose name Shakespeare adopted 
 in the play. Then there was another one without Aldgate, as 
 appears from the following curious document : — 
 
 "At St James's the v daye of September, an. 1557. 
 " A letter to the Lord Mayor of London, to give order forthwith that 
 some of his officers do forthwith repaire to the Boreshed w^^^^*' Aldgate, 
 where the Lordes are enformed a lewde Playe, called *A Sacke full of 
 Newse,' shall be plaied this daye, the Playeres whereof he is willed to ap- 
 prehende and to comitt to safe warde, untill he shall heare further from 
 hence, and to take their Playsbook from them, and to send the same 
 hither. 
 
 *'At West' the vj daye of Sep. 1557." t 
 
 * Also demolished to make room for the B(reet6 leading to London Bridge, 
 t Lansdowne MSS. No. 889, art. 73. 
 t Ilarleian MSS No. 2f.C. 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 381 
 
 At tlie beginning of this century there was a noted tavern in 
 Bond Street, called THE Beawn's Head, and the general opinion 
 was, that at one time it had a brawn or boar's head for its 
 sign ; this, however, was a mistake ; the house was named after 
 the head of a noted cook whose name was Theophilus Brawn, 
 formerly landlord of Rummer Tavern in Great Queen Street, and 
 the article (as the letters the were usually supposed to be) was 
 simply an abbreviation of the man's magnificent Christian name. 
 
 All these gastronomic signs, doubtless, originated in the old 
 custom of landlords selling eatables : — 
 
 " You brave-minded and most joviall Sardanapalitans," saith Taylor the 
 Water poet, addressing the country tavern-keepers, have power and prero- 
 gative {cum privilegio) to receive, lodge, feast, and feed, both man and 
 beast. You have the happinesse to Boyle, Eoast, Broyle, and Bake, Fish, 
 Flesh, and Foule, whilst we in London have scarce the command of a Gull, 
 n widgeon, or a woodcock.'^ 
 
 In a little volume of 1685, entitled "The Praise of Yorkshire 
 ale," we are told that Bacchus held a parliament in the Sun, be- 
 hind the Exchange in York, to consider the adulteration of wdne, 
 the various drinking vessels, and other matters sold in ale- 
 houses, as : — 
 
 " Papers of sugar, with such like knacks, 
 Biskets, Luke olives, Anchoves, Caveare, 
 Neats' tongues, Westphalia Hambs, and 
 Such hke cheat. Crabs, Lobsters, Collar Beef, 
 Cold puddings, oysters, and such like stuff." 
 
 Hence, then, the once common sign of the Three Neats' Tongues, 
 one of which still exists in Spitalfields ; another one in the 
 eighteeenth century was very appropriately situated in Bull and 
 Mouth Street.* The Ham is the usual porkman's sign, though 
 at Walmyth, in Yorkshire, there is a public-house sign of the 
 Ham and Fiekin. The Ceab and Lobster Inn occurs at 
 Ventnor ; the Lobster is a sign on trades tokens of a shop in 
 Bearbinder (now St Swithin's) Lane, and also near the Maypole 
 in the Strand ; the Crawfish at Thursford Guist, in Norfolk, 
 and the Butt and Oyster at Chelmondiston, Ipswich. Those 
 eatables, all more or less salt, were sold as incitements to drink, 
 and went by the cant term of shoeing horns, gloves, or pullers-on. 
 They are often alluded to by ancient authors : — 
 
 Then, sir, comes me up a service of shoeing -horns of all sorts, salt cakes, 
 red herrings, anchoves, and gammon of bacon, and abundance of such puU 
 hrs-on,^' — Bishop Hall's Mundus alter et idem. 
 
 * Bagford Bills, Harleiao MSS. 
 
382 THE HISTOR Y OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The Pie was a sign in very early times, and gave its name to 
 Pie Corner, " a place so called from such a sign, sometimes a fair 
 inn for receipt of travellers." — Stow, p. 139. One of the most 
 famous inns with that sign was the Pie in Aldgate. 
 
 One ask'd a friend where Captain Shark did lye, 
 AVhy, sir, quoth he, at Aldgate at the Pye. 
 Away, quoth th' other, he lies not there, I know 't. 
 No, sayes the other, then he lies in 's throat." 
 
 Wits' Recreation^ p. 185, vol. ii. 
 
 De Foe, in his History of the Plague/' tells of " a dreadful set 
 of fellows " who used to revel and roar nightly in that inn during 
 the time the plague was at its height, but within a fortnight 
 all of them were buried. The Cock, and Pie was once common. 
 At an inn in Ipswich there used to be a rude representation of a 
 cock perched on a pie, which was discovered whilst the house 
 was undergoing some repairs. It was also, about the middle of ' 
 last century, the sign of a house famed for conviviality, which 
 stood on the site of the present Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, 
 and was the resort of the fancy of those days. A row of fine 
 elms connected this house with another, noted for the manu- 
 facture of Bath buns and Tunbridge water-cakes, the latter a 
 dainty now almost obsolete, but which then was so famous, 
 that it was one of the London cries, being sold by a man on 
 horseback. With regard to the origin of the sign Cock and 
 Pie, both the ancient Catholic oath, to swear by Code and Pie, 
 (by God and the Pie, or Eoman Catholic service book,) and the 
 fable of the magpie (Old English pie, or pye) and the peacocks, 
 have each been duly considered by us ; but the sign is prob- 
 ably only an abbreviation of the Peacock and Pie, In ancient 
 times the peacock was a favourite dish, and was introduced 
 on the table in a pie; the head, with gilt beak, being ele- 
 vated above the crust, and the beautiful feathers of the t?il 
 expanded. As a dainty dish, then, it may have been put up, like 
 the other good things of this world, just mentioned, as a trap to 
 hungry or epicurean passers-by ; at last the dish went out of 
 fashion, the name even became a mystery, and was rendered by 
 the sign-painters, according to their own understanding, by a 
 Cock and Magpie, which is still very common. There is a 
 public-house with such a sign in Drury Lane, which was already 
 m existence more than two centuries ago, when the rest of Drury 
 Lane was still occupied by farms and gardens, and the mansions 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE, 383 
 
 of the Drury family. Hither the youths and maidens of the 
 metropolis, who, on May-day, danced round the Maypole in the 
 Strand, were accustomed to resort for cakes and ale, and other 
 refreshments. This ale-house gave its name to the Cock and 
 Pye Fields, between Drury Lane and St Giles' Hospital. At 
 Chatsworth, the original name was mutilated by a provincialism 
 into the Cock and Pynot, (Derbyshire, for Magpie.) In this 
 ale-house, still existing, the Eevolution of 1688 was plotted, be- 
 tween Thomas Osborne Earl of Danby, William Cavendish 
 Earl of Devonshire, and Mr John d'Arcy. They met by appoint- 
 ment on a heath adjoining the house, but a shower of rain com- 
 ing on, they adjourned to the inn. The room is still shown in 
 which the conspirators met. In Hone's Table Book " there is 
 a woodcut of the inn, showing the wooden construction across 
 the road, by which the signs in villages were generally suspended. 
 
 Lastly, we may mention the Pickled Egg, in Clerkenwell. As 
 the origin of this sign, it is said that Charles II. here once par- 
 took of the dish, which so flattered the landlord, that he adopted 
 it as his sign, and so it has remained till this day. It has given 
 its name to a lane called Pickled Egg Walk, in which there was 
 a notorious cocking-house, frequently mentioned in advertise- 
 ments circa 1775. 
 
 We may very appropriately terminate the gastronomic signs 
 with the Cheshire Cheese, which is still very common ; there 
 is a famous tavern of this name in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, 
 and numerous public-houses in the country have adopted it as 
 their signs. And as we began with the Salt Horn we will end 
 with the Mustard-pot, which was the sign of a mustard shop in 
 Holland, in the seventeenth century, with these rhymes : — 
 
 Ik lever uyt 
 
 Een zeldzaam kruyt 
 
 Daar zyn der weinig in de stad 
 
 Of ik heb ze by de neus gehad." * 
 This reminds us of a rather indelicate sign of a mustard shop, 
 formerly in the Eue du Chatel, at Beauvais, but now in the 
 Musee d'Antiquites of that town, representing a fool stirring 
 mustard in a barrel with a large stick, whilst a taU grinning 
 
 * This loses much by translation : — 
 "I contain 
 A curious kind of condiment — 
 There are not many people in this town 
 Which I have not had by the nose." 
 This is a pun in Dutch, on the sensation produced in the nose by mustard, the exprev 
 Bioa meaning, at the same time, "to take in.*' 
 
384 
 
 TRE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 monkey stands just opposite, assisting him in a way we need not 
 describe. 
 
 Drinkables are not frequent as signs, if we except such as the 
 Ehenish Wine House, and the Canary House ; two taverns of 
 Old London, named after the wines they sold. Barley Broth, 
 Bee's-wing, and Yorkshire Stingo, are at present all three com- 
 mon : the first applies either to whisky or beer ; the second is 
 the delicate crimson film left in bottles by old port wine, and 
 Yorkshire stingo is the well-known name of a kind of ale. From 
 a house with this name in the New Road, the first pair of Lon- 
 don omnibuses were started, July 4, 1829, running to the Bank 
 and back : they were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, 
 all inside ; the fare was one shilling, or sixpence for half the dis- 
 tance, together with the luxury of a newspaper. A Mr J. Shilli- 
 beer was the owner of these carriages, and the first conductors 
 were the two sons of a British naval officer. 
 
 Drinking vessels are veiy appropriate ale-house signs. Among^ 
 the oldest certainly ranks the Black Jack, common even in the 
 present day, although the vessel that it represented is long since 
 fallen into disuse : it was a leather bottle, sometimes lined with 
 silver or other metal, and perhaps took its name from a part of 
 the soldiers' armour. Sometimes it was ornamented with little 
 silver bells to ring peales of drunkeness," in which case it was 
 called a gyngle boy." * This primitive bottle has been celebrated 
 in one of the Roxburghe Ballads, (vol. iii., fol. 433 :) — 
 
 " God above that made all things, 
 The heaven, and earth, and all therein. 
 The ships that on the sea do swim 
 For to keepe the enemies out that none come in, 
 And let them all do what they can, 
 It is for the use and pains of man ; 
 And I wish in heaven his soul may dwell. 
 Who first devized the leather bottle." 
 
 Its various good qualities are next explained, and finally :— ' 
 
 " Then when this bottle doth grow old, 
 And will no longer good liquor hold, 
 Out of its side you may take a clout, 
 Will mend your shoes when they are worn out, 
 Else take it and hang it upon a pin, 
 It will serve to put odd trifles in, 
 As hinges, awls, and candle ends, 
 For young beginners must have such things.*' 
 
 Decker's English Yillanies SeveD Times Pressed to Death. , 
 
3?LATE XV. 
 
 THE PUMP. 
 (Harleiau Collection, 1710.) 
 
 CROWN AND PATTEN. 
 (Bauks's Collection 1790.) 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 385 
 
 There is another ballad in the same collection, (vol. i., fol. 107,) 
 entitled Time's Alteration, or the Old Man's Eehearsal,'' which 
 speaks of the black jack in the following terms : — 
 " Black jacks to euery man 
 
 Were filled with wine and Beere, 
 
 No pewter Pot nor Canne 
 
 In those days did appeare : 
 
 We took not such delight 
 In cups of silver fine ; 
 No pewter Pot nor Canne 
 In those days did appeare; 
 
 None under the degree of a knight 
 In Plate drunk Beere or Wine." 
 
 But we may glean more full and complete particulars from Hey- 
 wood's " Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and 
 Anatomized," 1635, where we get a detailed inventory of all the 
 various drinking vessels of the day : — 
 
 Of drinking Cups divers and sundry sorts we have ; some of elme, 
 some of box, some of maple, some of holly, etc. Mazers, broad mouthed 
 dishes, naggins, whiskins, piggins, creuzes, alebowles, wassel bowles, court 
 dishes, tankards, kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. 
 Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the 
 shepheards and harvest people of the countrey : small jacks wee have in 
 many alehouses of the citie and suburbs lipt with silver : blackjacks and 
 bombards at the Court ; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they 
 reported at their return into their countrey that the Englishmen used to 
 drinke out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of homes of 
 beastes, of cockernuts,* of goords, of eggs of estriches ; others made of 
 the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and 
 shining like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every taverne can afi'ord 
 you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers ; and 
 private householders in the citie, when they make a feaste to entertain 
 their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flaggons, tankards, beere 
 cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over, 
 some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities." 
 
 That they were of ancient use and high in price appears from an 
 entry in the expenses of John, King of France, when prisoner in 
 England after the battle of Poictiers, 1359-60 : — 
 "Pour deux bouteilles de cuir achetees a Londres pour Monseigneur 
 Philippe 9?, 8d.'' 
 
 Though these vessels are now completely superseded by pewter 
 and glass, yet their memory still lives on the signboard, and 
 
 • Cocoa-nuts. Tlie word is still pronounced in that manner \)j the lower 'Tiasies. 
 
 2B 
 
386 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 tlie Leather Bottle is anything but an uncommon ale-liouse 
 emblem at the present day. There is one still to be seen, 
 carved in wood, suspended in front of an old ale-house at the 
 corner of Charles Street, Hatton Garden. In Germany, also, the 
 leather bottle was once in use ; drinking vessels of various ma- 
 terials, in the shape of a boot, are common in that country, 
 usually with this inscription : — 
 
 " Wer sein Stiefel nit drinken kan, 
 Der ist fiihrwahr kein Teutscher Man." 
 
 The Black-jack Tavern, in Clare Market, still in existence, ac- 
 quired some celebrity from being the favourite haunt of Joe 
 Miller, the reputed author of the famous Jest Book. The house 
 was also for a long time known by the cant name of the Jump, 
 which it had received from the fact of Jack Sheppard one day 
 escaping the clutches of Jonathan Wild's emissaries by jumping 
 from a window into the street, and so making his escape. From 
 the Leather Bottle to the Golden Bottle is not so great a step 
 as would appear at first sight, the golden bottle being simply the 
 leather bottle gilt, as may be seen above the door of Messrs 
 Hoare the bankers, in Fleet Street, a firm established for cen- 
 turies under the same sign, although not always occupjdng the 
 same premises. In the "Little London Directory for 1677" we 
 find : — " James Hore at the Golden Bottle in Cheapside," one 
 Df the goldsmiths that kept "running cashes." In 1693 we find 
 Mr Eichard Hoare, a goldsmith, " at the Golden Bottle" in 
 Cheapside, but in 1718 the house in Cheapside seems to have 
 had a second occupant : — 
 
 " T\ROPT or taken from a Ladies' side on Tuesday, the 25'^ of March, 
 \j coming from the Spanish ambassadour*s at St James' Square, a gold 
 watch and chain, with a seal to it, a pendulum* on the outside ; Windmill 
 the maker. Whoever brings it to Mr Madding, Goldsmith at the Goldm 
 Bottle, the upper end of Cheapside, or to J onathan Wilde, over against the 
 BvJce of Grafton's Head in the Old Bailey, shall have 8 Guineas and no 
 questions asked." — Daily Courant, April 5, 1718. 
 
 That the Golden Can was also an old sign may be concluded 
 from a mention in the nursery rhyme — 
 
 Little Brown Betty lived at the Golden Can^ 
 
 Where she brewed good ale for gentlemen. 
 
 And gentlemen came every day, 
 
 Till little brown Betty she hopt away." 
 
 Where the fact of little brown Betty brewing good ale points to 
 
 * A face or dial-plat', sometimes also called ^^endulum dial. 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 387 
 
 a very old custom, when ale-wives flourished, and Eleanor 
 Ramying and her gossips brewed their own ale. The Golden 
 Can is still to be seen on two public-houses in Norwich. The 
 GuiLDED Cup in Houndsditch is mentioned in a quaint little 
 pamphlet on the virtues of Warme Beere," 1641. 
 
 The Flask was the sign of an old-established tavern in Ebury 
 Square, Pimlico. In the last century there were two famous 
 Flask taverns in Hampstead ; the one called the Lower Flash 
 was an inn at the foot of the hill, and is mentioned in . the 
 following advertisement, printed on the cover of the original 
 edition of the Spectator ^ No. 428 : — 
 
 " rpHIS IS TO GIVE NOTICE that Hampstead Fair is to be kept upon the 
 X Lower Flash Tavern Walk, on Friday, the first of August, and holds 
 for four days." 
 
 The Upper Flask was a place of public entertainment near 
 the summit of Hampstead Hill, and is now a private residence. 
 Here Richardson sends his Clarissa : — " The Hampstead coach, 
 when the dear fugitive came to it, had but two passengers in it, 
 but she made the fellow go off directly, paying for the vacant 
 places. The two passengers directing the coachman to set them 
 down at the Upper Flash, she bid them set her down there 
 also." The well-known Kit-Kat Club used to meet at this 
 tavern in the summer months ; and here, after it became a 
 private abode, George Steevens, the celebrated critic and anti- 
 quary, lived and died. 
 
 Besides these, more homely vessels occur as publicans' signs 
 at the present day, which it requires no stretch of imagination 
 to understand the meaning of, as the Pitcher and Glass, the 
 Brown Jug, the Jug and Glass, the Bottle and Glass, the 
 Foaming Quart, &c. At Newark the Bottle is accompanied 
 by the following inscription : — 
 
 " From this Bottle I am sure 
 You '11 get a glass both good and pure, 
 In opposition to a many, 
 I 'm striving hard to get a penny.*' 
 
 The Pewter Pot, an old sign, is thus alluded to by Eandle 
 Holme."* 
 
 ** This should be looked upon by all good artists to be the most ignoble 
 and dishonourable bearing ; but as the custom takes away the sense of dis- 
 Uke, so the frequent use takes away the dishonour, which is seen by those 
 
 * Book ill,, p. 294. 
 
388 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 multifcudeQ that have it for their cognizance, in so much that it is painted 
 over their doors by the wajoide." * 
 
 The Pewter Pot^ in Leadenhall Street, was a famous carriers' 
 and coaching inn in 1681. There are also the Six Cans, in 
 High Holborn, (a sign evidently suggested by the Theee Tuns ; ] 
 and, in the same locality, the Six Cans and Punchbowl. 
 This last object, the Punch.^owl, was introduced on the sign- 
 board at the end of the seventeenth century, when punch became 
 the fashionable drink ; in one instance, at Penalney Kea, near 
 Truro, we have the Punchbowl and Ladle, but most gener- 
 ally it is found in combination with other very heterogeneous 
 objects. The reason of this is that punch, like music, had a sort 
 of political prestige, and was the Whig drink, whilst the Tories 
 adhered to sack, claret, and canary, connected in their memory 
 with bygone things and times. Hence it followed that the 
 punchbowl was added as a kind of party-badge to many of the 
 Whig tavern signs, and hence such combinations as the following, 
 all of which still survive at the present day : — 
 
 The Crown and Punchbowl, Somersham, St Ives. 
 
 The Magpie and Punchbowl, Bishopsgate Within. 
 
 The PiOSE AND Punchbowl, Eedman's Eow, Stepney, and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The Ship and Punchbowl, Wapping. 
 
 The Eed Lion and Punchbowl, St John's Street, ClerkenwelL 
 
 The Union Flag and Punchbowl, High Street, Wapping. 
 
 The Dog and Punchbowl, Lymm, Warrington, Cheshire. 
 
 The Halfmoon and Punchbowl, Buckle Street, Whitechapel. 
 
 The Parrot and Punchbowl, Aldringham, Suffolk. 
 
 The Fox AND Punchbowl, Old Windsor, (perhaps meant for 
 the great statesman, who was not disinclined to the beverage.) 
 
 The Two Pots is the sign of a public-house at Boxworth, St 
 Ives, accompanied by the following verses, which are enough to 
 set the teeth of a Boeotian on edge : how then must they shock the 
 refined ears of the Cambridge dons 1 — 
 
 ** Rest, traveller, rest; lo, Cooper's hand 
 Obedient brings two pots at thy command ; 
 Rest, traveller, rest; and banish thoughts of care, 
 Drink to thy friends and recommend them here." 
 
 * What would old Handle Holme have said, had he seen the elegant (!) brcast- 
 Tiins displayed in the shop-windows of one of the principal West End jewellers, forming 
 the tasteful device of a tobacco-pipe on a quart pot ; another with a rebus for : You 
 are an art[a heart]ful card;" and a third with : "0 my eye !" and similar distinoui 
 ornaments. 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 389 
 
 Another Two Pots, at Leatherhead, can boast a most venerable 
 antiquity, for it is believed to be the very ale-house where the 
 notorious Eleanor Kumying tunned her " noppy ale," and made 
 
 " thereof fast sale 
 To travellers, to tinkers, 
 To sweaters, to swinkers, 
 And all good ale-drinkers." 
 
 There was, at the end of the last century, a painted sign still 
 remaining, which, under a coating of summer's dust and winter's 
 sludge, faintly showed two pots of beer placed in the same 
 position as they are on the title-page of the original edition of 
 Skelton's poem. 
 
 The sign of the Two Pots again gave rise to that of the 
 Three Pots, at Horseway Bridge, Chatteris, in the same county, 
 and at Burbage, near Hinckley. 
 
 The EtJMMER, another drinking vessel, is also common : there 
 is one in Old Fish Street, and there are three Hummer public- 
 houses in Bristol alone. A tavern of that name was kept by 
 Samuel Prior, uncle of Matthew Prior the poet. Uncle Sam 
 took his nephew as an apprentice to learn the business, and 
 be his successor. Prior alludes to this uncle and his little pro- 
 fessional tricks in the following lines : — 
 
 My uncle, rest his soul, when livin"^, 
 
 Might have contrived me ways of thriving ; 
 
 Taught me with cider to replenish 
 
 My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish ; 
 
 So, when for Hock I drew pricked white Wine, 
 
 Swear 't had the flavour and was right wine." 
 
 To his stay in this tavern also alludes the bitter Whig satire in 
 " State Poems," (ii., p. 355,) beginning — 
 
 A vintner's boy the wretch was first preferred 
 To wait at vice's gates and pimp for bread ; 
 To hold the candle, and sometimes the door, 
 Let in the drunkard, and let out the w 
 
 In 1709 there was another Kummer tavern "over against Bow 
 Lane, in Cheapside," where " the surprizing Mr Higgins, the 
 posture master, that lately performed at the Queen's Theatre 
 Koyal in the Haymarket," was to be seen every evening at six ; 
 admission 18d. and Is. 
 
 This sign was also common in Holland two centuries ago ; at 
 that time there was one in Amsterdam with this inscription : — 
 
390 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 ** Als gy dees Roemer ziet, gy kunt ze pryzen of laken, 
 Maarkomt in, proeft zyn nat, dat zal u beeter smaaken." * 
 
 And another one at the Hague had this same idea, but added 
 
 a caution to it on a double-sided signboard : — 
 
 Does Roemer die gy ziet en kan u niet vermaken, 
 Komt in en proeft het nat het zal u beter smaken 
 Maar siet eens wat hier achter staat.*' 
 
 On the other side : — 
 
 " Betaal eerst, eer je henen gaat 
 Of anders hoed of mantel laat.f 
 
 A near relative of the Eummer was the Bumper, a tavern 
 in St James' Street, Covent Garden, kept by Estcourt the v 
 actor. His drawer was " his old servant Trusty Anthony, who 
 has so often adorned both the theatres in England and Ireland j 
 and as he is a person altogether unknown in the Wine Trade, 
 it cannot be doubted but that he will deliver the wine in the 
 same natural purity as he receives it from the said merchants," 
 (Brooke & Hillier.) — Estcourt's advertisements on the last page 
 of the original Edition of the Spectator, cclx., 1711. To this 
 occupation of Estcourt, Parnell alludes in the beginning of his 
 poems : — 
 
 " Gay Bacchus liking Estcourt's wine, 
 A noble meal bespoke us ; 
 And for the guests that were to dine 
 Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus." 
 This same Estcourt was sometime provedore of the Beefsteak 
 Club. 
 
 Finally, we may conclude this notice of drinking vessels on 
 the signboard with the Tankard, which is still of frequent 
 occurrence. There is a public-house at Ipswich with this sign, 
 which was formerly part of the house of Sir Anthony Wing 
 field, one of the legal executors of Henry VIII. 
 
 The hanap or tankard was generally of silver, and was for 
 merly one of the most valuable properties of an ale-house, for 
 in the Act 13 Edw. I., it says that *4f a tavern-keeper keep his 
 house open after curfew he shall be put on his surety the first 
 
 * " When you see this Rummer you may praise or blame it, 
 
 But come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better.'* 
 t " This Rummer which you see here cannot give you much pleasure. 
 Come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better, 
 But first, see what is written on the other side." 
 On the other side : — 
 
 " Pay before you go away, 
 Otherwise you will have to leave your bat or your cloak.* 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 time by the hanap of the tavern, or by some other good pledgo 
 therem found.'^* Silver tankards were more or less common in 
 all the London taverns. In some houses they were reserved for 
 the more distinguished visitors ; in others, as at the Bull's Head 
 in Leadenhall Street, "every poor mechanic drank in plate." 
 They were of different sizes, and experienced topers well knew 
 for which name to call when ordering a tankard proportionate to 
 their thirst. From a curious old tippler's handbook, published 
 in the reign of Queen Anne or George the First, entitled, " A 
 Vade Mecum for Maltworms," we gather that the names of the 
 tankards at the Sweet Apple, in Sweet Apple Yard, were " the 
 Lamb,'' " the Lion," " the Peacock," (in honour of the brewer,) 
 " Sacheverell," (in memory of the notorious divine of St Andrew's, 
 Holborn,) and " Nan Elton." The same work also relates a curi- 
 ous instance of enthusiasm in a publican. His house, the Eaven, 
 in Fetter Lane, was famous for 
 
 " Massy tankards f orm'd of silver plate, 
 
 That walk throughout his noted house in state ; 
 
 Ever since Eaglesfield in Anna's reign, 
 
 To compliment each fortunate campaign, 
 
 Made one be hammer'd out for every town was ta'en.*' 
 
 We may suppose each tankard named after a victory — the greatei 
 the victory, the greater the tankard ; and can imagine the gra- 
 tifjdng display of loyalty in emptying those tankards to the per- 
 dition of " Popery and wooden shoes." 
 
 Besides the tankard for drinking beer or wine, there was also 
 the Water Tankard. In Ben Jonson's comedy of " Every 
 Man in his Humour," 1598, Cob, the water-carrier of the Old 
 Jewry, says: — I dwell, sir, at the sign of the Water Tankard, 
 hard by the Green Lattice, I have paid scot and lot there many 
 time this eighteen years." These water-tankards were used for 
 carrjdng water from the conduits to the houses, and were there- 
 fore a professional sign of the water-carriers. The measures held 
 about three gallons, and were shaped like a truncated cone, with 
 an iron handle and hoops like a pail, and were closed with a cork, 
 bung, or stopple. In Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata," there 
 is an engraviiig of Westcheap as it appeared in the year 1585, 
 copied from a drawing of the period, in which the Little Conduit 
 is seen with a quantity of water-tankards ranged round it 
 
 Amongst the other articles of furniture which are represented 
 
 • Liber Albus, Book iii., Part ii. 
 
392 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 on the signboard we must first of all notice that useful article 
 the Looking Glass, which was the favourite sign of the book- 
 sellers on London Bridge. Thus, one of John Bunyan's works, 
 " The Saints' Triumph, or the Glory of Saints with Jesus Christ 
 discovered in a Divine Ejaculation by J. B.," was printed by J. 
 Millet for J. Blare, at the Looking Glass on London Bridge, in 
 1688. The French booksellers also used it : for instance, Nicholas 
 Despreaux, or Dupr6, a bookseller of the seventeenth century, 
 who lived near the church of St Etienne du Mont, at Paris. 
 Its origin was this : — Speculum, a looking-glass, was in the 
 middle ages a common name for a certain class of books. We 
 find, as early as 1332, a work entitled " Speculum Historiale in 
 consuetudine Parisiensi;" then there is the Grand Speculum 
 Historiale," the great historical work of Yincent of Beauvais, 
 one of the most celebrated books of the Middle Ages ; " Specu- 
 lum Humanae Salvationis " Speculum Humanse Vitae " Specu- 
 lum Yitae Christse," " a boke that is clepid the Myrrour of the 
 blessed lyflfe of our Lorde J'hu cryste the " Mirrour of Magis- 
 trates;" "Le miroir de Fame pecheresse,'* and innumerable other 
 Speculums. These Speculums were amongst the first books that 
 were printed ; many of the early booksellers adopted the Bible 
 as their sign, whilst others chose the Speculum, which they trans- 
 lated and made more fit for the signboard under the name of the 
 Looking Glass. 
 
 A curious fact is connected with this so common title of the 
 Speculum for early religious books. When the first pioneers 
 in the art of printing were pondering over their new inven- 
 tion, during the transition period from block-printing to printing 
 with detached letters, Guttenberg, in 1436, entered into an 
 agreement with John Eiffe, Anthony Heilman, and Andrew 
 Dreizehn, in which speculation the three associates were to fur- 
 nish the necessary funds, whilst Guttenberg was to pay them 
 one half of any profits, the other half being for himself. After 
 a certain time the association broke up, differences arose about 
 the liquidation, and a lawsuit was the consequence. The docu- 
 ments of this lawsuit are still in existence ; from them it appears 
 that they kept their invention a secret, and called themselves 
 
 Spiegelmachers^^ (makers of looking-glasses,) which looking- 
 glasses, according to the evidence of witnesses, had found a 
 very ready sale amongst the pilgrims who at that period con- 
 gregated at Aix-la-Chapelle on the occasion of some relig^'oua 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 393 
 
 festival But as apparently no extra number of mirrors were 
 sold on ttat occasion, and there does not appear to have been 
 any new invention in the art of making them, it is evident 
 that the looking-glasses sold were the Speculum books, which 
 undoubtedly would be readily purchased by the pilgrims to 
 the holy shrine. This opinion is still more corroborated by 
 the mention made in the evidence of a Press, which could 
 scarcely be used in the manufacture of looking-glasses. It is 
 therefore most probable that, as the art of printing was at this 
 period still in its infancy, and the printed works were sold rather 
 as an imitation or facsimile'"' of the written manuscripts, this art 
 was still kept a secret ; by so doing, its early practitioners were 
 not only safe from competition, but also from the attacks and 
 opposition by which the new invention would have been assailed 
 by all those connected with the business of transcribing and 
 illuminating, t 
 
 Other pieces of furniture are the Cabinet, a common up- 
 holsterer's sign in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; the 
 Three Ckickets, or little stools, which we gather from a trades 
 token of the seventeenth century, was in Crooked Lane; and 
 the Cradle, a peculiar sign, occurs in Taylor's "Carrier's Cos- 
 mography," 1637, where he gives a rather curious insight into 
 the postal arrangements of that time : — 
 
 " Those that will send any letter to Edinbourgh, that so they may be 
 conveyed to and fro to any parts of the kingdome of Scotland, the poste 
 doth lodge at the signe of the hings armes or the Cradle at the upper end 
 of Cheapside, from whence every Monday any that have occasion 
 may send." 
 
 Generally, however, it did not designate so respectable a busi- 
 ness; the " Compleat Vintner," 1720, explains the secret arcana 
 of that sign : — 
 
 " The pregnant Madam drawn aside, 
 By promise to be made a bride, 
 If near her time and in distress 
 For some obscure convenient place, 
 Let her but take the pains to waddle 
 About till she observes a Cradle 
 
 * Even after the art got to be known, it continued to be still called vyriting. Thus, 
 
 Gaspar Hedion (Paral. ad Chron. Conradi) calls it < ' novo scriftendi genere reperto,-* 
 and Fulgosus (Lib. viii., Diet. & Fact. Memor.) says that Guttenberg could "uno die 
 imprimendo plura scribere quam udo anno calamis." 
 
 t See the whole of the documents of this law-suit in Count Leon de Laborde'c 
 I3cbuts de rimprimerie I. Strasbourg. 
 
394 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 With the foot hanging towards the door. 
 And there she may be made secure 
 From all the parish plagues and terrors, 
 That wait on poor weak woman's errors. 
 But if the head hang tow'rds the house, 
 As very often we see it does, 
 Avaunt, for she's a cautious bawd 
 Whose business only lies abroad." 
 
 From the last interpretation of this sign to the Colt in the 
 Cradle (see under Humorous Signs) is but a step. 
 
 The Trunk was the sign of Caleb Swinock, a bookseller in 
 St Paul's Churchyard in 1684, for which it is difficult to find 
 any rational explanation ; almost equally incomprehensible is the 
 sign of the Green Bellows, {le soufflet vert,) which was that of 
 Johan StoU and Peter Cesaris, booksellers and printers in the 
 Rue St Jacques, Paris, in 1473.* This sign was also to be 
 seen in other towns of France, as in Abbeville, where a stone 
 bas-relief sign of the seventeenth century, with the inscription 
 
 le vert soufflet^^ remains at the present day in the front of a 
 house in the Eue des Jacobins. It may have been adopted in 
 allusion to the occult sciences and alchemy, green being the 
 emblematical colour of Hope. 
 
 The Golden Candlestick was the sign of a Marriage Insu- 
 rance office in Newgate Street, in 1711, a time when there was 
 a mania for insurance offices of every description ; the Three 
 Candlesticks occurs on a trades token of the Old Bailey in 
 1649. A publican in Tamworth, Staffordshire, has taken the 
 Coffee-pot for a sign, probably on the strength of the deriva- 
 tion of " lucus a non lucendo," because he sells no coffee ; the 
 Royal Coffee-mill was the more appropriate sign of Paul 
 Greenwood, in Clothfair, for he was a seller of " Coffee-powder, 
 Then there is the Sugar-loaf, a common grocer's sign of former 
 times, the selection of which showed great disinterestedness on 
 their part, the article being that on which the least profit was 
 made. Campbell said, in 1757 : — 
 
 " There is indeed one article which they [the Grocers] must sell to 
 their loss, sugars. A custom has prevailed (but why ?) amongst the Gro- 
 cers, to sell sugar for the prime cost, and are out of pocket by the sale, 
 
 * This De Cesaris family seemed to have a predilection for puzzling signboards. 
 When Peter de Cesaris, a bookseller and printer in the Rue St Jacques, circa 1480. had 
 for a sign the Swan and Soldier, (/« cygnt et soldat,) in the absence of his colopnon, 
 we can only suppose that it was a representation of the legend of the Knight of the 
 Bwan, i.e., a knight in a boat drawn by a swan. The steel armour of the knight mighl 
 tasily have bestowed upon him the title of *• the soldier." 
 
 t London Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1679 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE 
 
 395 
 
 with paper, packthread, and their labour in breaking and weighing it out. 
 The expense of some shops in London, for the article of paper and pack- 
 thread for sugars, amounts to £60 or £70 per annum ; but this they lay 
 upon the other articles. The customer had much better allow him a 
 profit upon his sugars, than pay extravagant prices for tea and other 
 comodities." 
 
 At present, we understand, loaf-sugar is not sold exactly at 
 cost price, but moist sugar is, whence many grocers refuse to sell 
 that article to strangers unless something else be bought at the 
 same time. At No. 44 Fenchurch Street, a very old established 
 grocery firm still carries on business under the sign of the Theee 
 SuGAK Loaves. The house presents much the same appearance it 
 had in the last century, with the gilt sugar-loaves above the 
 doorway, and is one of the few places of business in London 
 conducted in the ancient style. The small old-fashioned win- 
 dow panes, the complete absence of all show and decoration, 
 the cleanliness of the interior, and the quiet order of the assist- 
 ants in their long white aprons, betoken the respectable old tea- 
 warehouse, and impress the passer-by with a complete conviction 
 as to the genuineness of its articles. That the sugar-loaf was 
 not always exclusively a grocer's sign, nor the Three Balls a 
 pawnbroker's, appears from the following advertisement in the 
 Postman^ February 3-6, 1711 : — 
 
 " mHOMAS SETH at the Sugarloaf in Fore Street, Pawnbroker, is going 
 X to leave his house, and to leave off the said business : all persons 
 concerned are desired to fetch away their Goods on or before the fourth 
 of March next, else they will be disposed off and sold.'* 
 
 Here is another curious advertisement : — 
 
 A TANNY MORE [tawny Moor] with short bushy hair, very well 
 
 shaped, in a grey livery lined with yellow, about 17 or 18 years 
 of age, with' a silver collar about his necTc with these directions : — * Captain 
 George Hastings' Boy, Brigadier in the King's Horse guards.' Whosoever 
 brings him to the Sugarloaf in the Pall Mall shall have forty shillings 
 Reward." — London Gazette, March 23, 1685. 
 
 The Sugar-loaf is also a public-house sign, though not a very 
 appropriate one. The Blue Bowl, suggestive of punch-making, 
 occurs on three public-houses in Bristol ; but much more signi- 
 ficant for a resort of thirsty souls is that of the Theee Funnels, 
 {les Trois Untonnoirs,) which in the time of Louis XI Y. was the 
 sign of a tavern in Paris, mostly patronised by the University 
 people. An equally expressive sign, the Sieve, was used by 
 John Johnson, in Aldermansbury, 1669, and " Eichard Harris in 
 Trinity Minories." 
 
396 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 We now arrive at kitchen utensils : foremost amongst these ranka 
 the Gridieon-, which was very common in the sixteenth century, 
 a,nd may perhaps have been a jocular rendering of the Portcullis, 
 The Frying Pan is still a constant ironmonger's sign — thus in 
 Highcross Street, Leicester, there is a gigantic gilt specimen with 
 the inscription " the Family Fry Pan." There are trades tokens 
 of John Vere, at y® Frying Pan in Islington, Mealman," which, 
 considered in connexion with pancakes, one can understand ; but 
 it certainly looks out of place at the door of Samuel Wadsell, 
 bookseller at the Golden Frying Pan, in Leadenhall Street, 
 
 1680. The Copper Pot (le Pot de Cuivre) at Dijon, in France, 
 was the sign of one of the oldest inns in that country. It was 
 opened in 1250 and continued till the middle of the seventeenth 
 century. The society of the Mere Folle held their meetings at 
 this house. 
 
 The Pewter Platter occurs both in France and in England ; 
 it was famous as a carriers' inn in St John Street, Clerkenwell, in 
 
 1681. At this inn CurlFs translators, in pay, were lodged, and 
 had to sleep three in a bed, and there " he and they were for ever 
 at work to deceive the publicL"* In mediaeval Paris it was a 
 common sign, and gave its name to several streets. Two of the 
 inns victimised by that incorrigible scamp Villon, bore this 
 sign : — 
 
 Le cas advint au Plat d'etain 
 
 Empres saint Pierre-des- Arsis." f — Repues Franches. 
 Probably it was a very early sign for eating-houses. 
 
 The Pump is a common ale-house sign, and occurs as such on 
 a token of Tooley Street, with the following lines :— 
 The Pump runs cleer 
 Wh. Ale and Beer." 
 
 which, as Mr Burn (Beaufoy Tokens) observes, may be a travesty 
 of a verse in Histrio-Mastrix, 1610 : — 
 
 Yet a verse may run cleare, 
 
 That is tapt out of Beere." 
 
 Another token belonging to Chick Lane, West Smithfield, repre- 
 sents a hand grasping the handle of a pump ; and a publican in 
 Old Swinford, who combines engineering with his trade, has a 
 similar sign with the words, " Hands to the Pump. *' In the 
 
 * Loyd's Evening Post, Jan 9-12, 1767. 
 f <' It happened a*-, the Pewter Platter, 
 Near Saint Pierre des Arsis." 
 
THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. 
 
 397 
 
 reign of Charles I. there was a public-house, the Blue Pump, in 
 Blackfriars, near the famous Hollands Leaguer. It represented 
 a man, evidently a sailor, pumping with all his might, and the 
 legend ran : — Poor Tom's last refuge/'* With the pump we 
 may place the Bucket, which was the sign of a shop in Alders- 
 gate Street, of which there are trades tokens extant, and the Tub, 
 the name of a tavern in Jermyn Street, in the reign of Charles 
 II., as appears from a letter sent, (not written, for she could not 
 write,) by Nell Gwynn, from Windsor in 1684, to her milliner 
 and factotum, addressed To Madam Jennings, over against the 
 Tub tavern in Jermyn Street, London." Another utensil, the 
 Dust-pan, is common with hardware shops. There is one in 
 Islington, at a shop next to the house in which Charles Lamb 
 lived; at night it is illuminated, and hence called the Illuminated 
 Dust-pan. Lastly, there is the Hour-glass, a colossal specimen 
 carved in wood, in Upper Thames Street, near All Hallows 
 Church, and the Golden Jae, which was the sign of a china 
 shop, as we see in the Country Journal, or Craftsman, for April 
 25, 1730, where Anne Cibber acquaints the public that she is 
 removed from Charles Street to the Golden Jar in Tavistock 
 Street, carrying on two trades which now are rarely associated in 
 London, viz., " AU sorts of chinaware, and the best teas, coffees, 
 chocolate,'^ &c. Now-a-days the jars, painted red and green, are 
 the usual oilman's sign, representing those vessels in which oil 
 is kept in Eastern countries, and in which Ali Baba's forty thieves 
 came to such an untimely end. i'ormeriy oil used to be imported 
 in this country in similar jars, hence their adoption as trade 
 emblems. 
 
 We may close this chapter, not inappropriately with the Key, 
 a sign once largely used, not only by locksmiths, as at present, 
 but by all manners of shops ; thus there was a celebrated tavern, 
 at the corner of Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, circa 1690, and 
 
 * Whether it would be just to conclude from this that sailors in that time went by the 
 generic name of Tom instead of Jack, we leave to the reader to judge. That Tom Avas 
 in former times a more common name than now, (owing, it is said, to the respect at one 
 time paid to the great saint Thomas a-Becket,) appears from the many words to which 
 it is an affix, and from many imaginary names, as : — Tomtit, Tomcat, Tomfoolery, Tom- 
 boy, Tommyshop, Tommy, (slang for bread,) double Tom, (a sort of plough,) Tom the 
 Piper, (in the morris dance,) Tom Tiddler, Tom of Bedlam, Tom of Westminster, (a 
 bell,) Tom and Jerry, Tom Telltruth, Tom Hickathrift, Tom, (the knave of Trumps,) 
 Whipping Tom, an itinerant flogger of wandering maids, Tom Tapster, ♦* Tib's rush ioi 
 Tom's forefingers," (all's well that ends well.) 
 
 •* Then every wanton may dance at her will, 
 Both Tomkin with Tomlin and Jenkin with Gill." 
 
 Tusser's PlowmarCs Fasting Day. 
 
398 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 many others that could be mentioned. The Golden Key is 
 named in an old advertisement, speaking of some sports and 
 pastimes which many English gentlemen are now attempting to 
 revive : — 
 
 " T> ICHARD FENNEY, Esquire of Alaxton in Leicestershire, about a 
 f orthnight since, lost a lanner from that place ; she has neither Bells 
 nor Yarvels ; she is a white Hawk, and her long feathers and sarcels are 
 both in the blood. If any one give tidings thereof to Mr Lambert at the 
 Golden Key, in Fleet Street, they shall have 40 shillings for their pains." 
 > — Mercurius PuhlicuSy August 30 to September 6, 1660. 
 
 The Lock and Key is a sign of a public-house in West Smith* 
 field, and was, during the Commonwealth, that of a house in the 
 parish of St Dunstan, belonging to Praise God Barebones, citizen 
 and leather-seller of London. There is a MS. in the British 
 Museum,* containing a petition of Barebones against Elisabeth 
 and James Spight, the latter an infant under age, offered to the 
 court of judicature for determination of differences touching 
 houses burned or demolished by the fire of 1666. From that 
 paper it appears that Elisabeth Spight paid £40 a year for the 
 tent of the Lock and Key. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DKESS ; PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL. 
 
 Of this class only a few signs are to be found ; one of the most 
 common is the Hat, the usual hatter's sign, although it may also 
 be found before taverns and public-houses, in which case, how- 
 ever, it is probable that it was the previous sign of the house, 
 which the publican on entering left unaltered ; or it may have 
 been used to suggest " a house of call ' ■ to the trade. The age of 
 each individual hat-sign may sometimes be gathered frcm its 
 shape ; thus there is one in Whitechapel, made out of tin, repre- 
 senting the cocked hat worn at the end of the last century ; it is 
 evidently a relic of that time. The continental hatters using 
 this sign, occasionally indulged in a little humour. A hatter at 
 Ghent in the sixteenth century added to it this distich : — 
 *^ Onder den Hoedt 
 Schuylt quaedt & goet."* 
 
 And a Dutch hatter made a still more unpleasant allusion to the 
 brains of his customers : — 
 
 " Hier maakt men sterke hoeden om de hersens in te sluyten 
 Opdat het los verstand daar niet mag vliegen buyten." f 
 
 Dr Franklin used to tell an amusing story of a journeyman 
 hatter, his companion when young, who on commencing business 
 for himself, was anxious to get a handsome signboard, with a 
 proper inscription. This he composed himself as follows : — 
 
 JOHN THOMPSON, HATTER, 
 Makes and Sells Hats 
 FOR Ready Money. 
 
 Above the inscription was the ordinary figure of a hat. But he 
 thought he would submit the composition to his friends for 
 amendment. The first he showed it to thought the word "hatter" 
 tautologous, because followed by the words " makes hats,'' which 
 showed he was a hatter ; it was struck out. The next observed 
 that the word "makes" might as well be omitted, because hia 
 
 * "The hat 
 
 Covers evil and good." 
 t *♦ strong hats made here to enclose the head, 
 
 In order that the soft (loose) brains may be kept together." 
 
400 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 customers would not care who made the hats; if good, and to their 
 mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck that out 
 also. A third said he thought that the words " for ready money " 
 were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit 
 — every one who purchased expected to pay. These, too, were 
 parted with, and the inscription then stood, "John Thompson sells 
 Hats." ''Sells Hats !" says his next friend ; "why, who expects 
 you to give them away"^ What, then, is the use of the word?'* 
 It was struck out, and HATS was all that remained attached to 
 the name John Thompson. Even this inscription, brief as it was, 
 was reduced ultimately to " John Thompson,'* with the figure of 
 the hat above it. 
 
 The Hat and Frathers was almost equally common in those 
 days, when no full-fledged gallant could be deemed complete 
 without his fluttering ribbons and plume. The puritanical Philip 
 Stubbe in his " Anatomie of Abuses," lo85, is very hard upon 
 this fashion : — 
 
 " Another sort, (as phantasticall as the rest,) are content with no kind of 
 hat, without a great bunch of feathers of divers and sondrie colours, peak- 
 ing on top of their heades, not unlike (I dare not saie) cockes combes, but 
 as Sternes of Pride and ensignes of vanitie and these fluttering sailes and 
 feathered flagges of defiaunce to virtue, (for so they are,) are so advanced 
 in Ailgnia [Anglia] that euery child has the in his Hatte or Cappe. Many 
 get good living by deying and selling of them, and not a fewe proue them- 
 selues more than fooles in wearyng of them." 
 
 Decker calls the "swell" of his day "our feathered ostrich," and 
 in his comedy of the " Sun's Darlkig he mentions " some alder- 
 man's son wondrous giddy and light-headed, one that blew his 
 patrimony away in feathers and tobacco." There is one sign of 
 the Hat and Feathers still in existence, a publican's, at Grant- 
 chester, in Cambridgeshire. 
 
 Another old hatter's sign is the Hat and Beaver, which at 
 present may be seen at the door of a publican's in Leicester. 
 Shopbills of this once common sign occur amongst the Banks 
 Collection, representing a beaver seated on the edge of a stream, 
 with a hat above him. The relation between the two is evident, 
 and about as gratifying to the beaver as it was to the widow of 
 the hanged man to hear the gallows named. The beaver hats 
 worn in England at the time of Edward III., and long after, 
 were made in Flanders and Picardy. From the Privy Purse 
 expenses of Henry VIII. we see that the king paid in 1532 : — 
 
DRESS— PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL, 40 1 
 
 Item, the xxiij day [of October] for a hath and plume for the King in 
 Boleyn, xv shillings." 
 
 "On 27 May mdlv. (ij of Queen Mary) Sir William Cecil 
 [afterwards Lord Burghley] being then at Callice [Calais] bought 
 [as appears from his MS. Diary] three hats for his children at 
 xxd each." 
 
 The Protestant refugees, however, from Flanders and France^ 
 introduced the manufacture of these hats into England when they 
 settled in Norwich; by a statute 5 and 6 Edw. VI., the manufac- 
 ture of felt and thrummed hats was confined to Norwich and 
 the corporate and market towns in that county.* As for the 
 shapes of the hats worn at that period we must again refer to 
 Stubbe's satirical account : — 
 
 " Some tymes they use them sharpe on the crowne, pearking up like the 
 speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yarde above the crowne 
 of their heades, some more, some lesse, as pleases the fantasies of their in- 
 constant mindes ; othersome be flat and broad in the crowne like the bat- 
 tlements of a house. Another sort have round crownes, sometymes with 
 one kinde of bande, sometymes w4th another, now blacke, now whyte, now 
 russet, now red, now green, now yellowe, now this, now that, never con- 
 tent, with one colour or fashion two dales to an ende."t 
 
 Felt hats for a long time were exclusively worn by the aristo- 
 cracy. Stow tells us that " about the beginning of Henry VIII. 
 began the making of Spanish feltes in England, by Spaniardes 
 and Dutchmen, before which time, and long since the English 
 used to ride, and goe winter and sommer in knitcapps, cloth 
 hoods, and the best sort in silk throm'd Hatts." These caps were 
 enforced by a statute of 13th Queen Elizabeth, which gives, at 
 the same time, a curious picture of the fashions of that 
 period : — 
 
 "If any person above six yeares of age, (except maidens^ ladies, gentle- 
 women, nobles, knights, gentlemen of twenty marks by year in lands, and 
 their heirs, and such as have borne office of worship,) have not worn upon 
 the Sundays and Holidays, (except it be in the time of his travell out of tlie 
 citie, towne, or hamlet, where he dwelleth,) uppon his head one cap of 
 wool knit, thicked, and dressed in England, and onely dressed and finished 
 by some of the trade of cappers, shall be fined 3s. 4d. for each day's trans- 
 gression." 
 
 These caps, termed statute caps, are frequently alluded to by &e 
 dramatists and authors of that period. Rosalind, for instance, in 
 " Love's Labour Lost," taunts her lover with the words : Well, 
 better wits have worn plain statute caps." The act was repealed 
 
 * J. S. Burn, History of Foreijrn Refugees, p. 267. 
 t Stubbe's Anatomie of Abuses, v. 21. 
 
 2 C 
 
402 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 in the year 1597. The sign of the Cap and Stocking, stili in 
 Leicester, commemorates the once-flourishing trade of that town 
 in those articles. The quantity of workmen who found occupa- 
 tions in the manufacture of the above-named "statute caps,*' 
 (which came chiefly from Leicestershire and the surrounding dis- 
 tricts,) was one of the principal reasons why it was so often pro- 
 tected by parliamentary statutes. Fuller enumerates not less 
 than fifteen callings, "besides other exercises,'* all employed in 
 the trade of capmaking, beginning with the woolcarder, and end- 
 ing with the bandmaker. The Hat and Star, which occurs on 
 the bill of Master Bates in St Paul's Churchyard, who sold all 
 sorts of fine "caines, whippes, spurres,"* &c., if not a simple 
 quartering of two signs, possibly originated in the clasp orna- 
 ment of precious stones, formerly worn in the hat. The Leghorn 
 Hat, at the end of the last century, was generally a turner's sign, 
 because the members of that trade sold straw hats imported from 
 Leghorn. In St John Street, Clerkenwell, there was an old 
 established public-house, and place of resort, called the Three 
 Hats. It is mentioned by Bickerstafi* in his comedy of " The 
 Hypocrite," where Mawworm thus alludes to it : — 
 
 " Till I went after him, [Dr Cantwell,] I was little better than the devil , 
 my conscience was tanned with sin, like a piece of neat's leather, and had 
 no more feeling than the sole of my shoe ; always a roving after fantastical 
 delights ; I used to go every Sunday evening to the Three Hats at Isling- 
 ton ; it's a public-house . . . mayhap your Ladyship may know it. I waa 
 a great lover of skittles, too, but now I cannot bear them." 
 
 At this house the earliest prototypes of Astley used to perform 
 in 17 58. There was Thomas, an Irishman, surnamed Tartar j then 
 came Johnson, Sampson, Price, and Cunningham. The great Dr 
 Johnson went here to see his namesake. 
 
 ^' Such a man, sir, said he, should be encouraged ; for his performance 
 show the extent of human powers in one instance, and thus tend to raise 
 our opinion of the faculties of man. He shows what may be obtained by 
 persevering application ; so that every man may hope, by giving as much 
 application, although, perhaps, he may never ride three horses at a time, 
 or dance upon a wire, yet he may be equally expert in whatever profession 
 he has chosen to pursue." 
 
 Royalty also visited the place : " Yesterday his Royal Highness 
 the Duke of York was at the Three Hats, Islington, to see the 
 extraordinary feats of horsemanship exhibited there. There were 
 near five hundred spectators." t Sampson's wife was the fiist 
 female equestrian. 
 
 * Bagford Bills, f British Chronicle, July 17, 1766. 
 
DRESS— PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL. 
 
 Horsemanship 
 
 At Mr Dinghy's, the Three HatSy Islington, 
 
 ** 1\TR SAMPSON begs leave to inform the public, that besides the usual 
 xVX feats which he exhibits, Mrs Sampson, to diversify the entertainment, 
 and prove that the fair sex are by no means inferior to the male, either i:\ 
 Courage or Agility, will, this and every Evening during the Summer, per- 
 form various exercises in the same art, in which she hopes to acquit herself 
 to the universal approbation of those Ladies and Gentlemen whose curiosity 
 may induce them to honour her attempt with their company." * 
 
 The Three Hats occurs amongst the trades tokens of the seven- 
 teenth century. There is one of the Three Hats and Nag's 
 Head in Southwark. In the seventeenth century the sign of the 
 Three Hats at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, was accompanied by the 
 following stanza : — 
 
 " Dit is in de drie Hoeden 
 Our *t hoof d te behoeden, 
 Voor wind en koud. 
 Tromp was stout, 
 Voer der staten kroon, 
 Hier maakt men hoeden schoon." f 
 
 The Locks of Hair was the very appropriate sign of John 
 Allen, a hairdresser on London Bridge in the last century, who 
 sold " all sorts of hair, Curled or Uncurled ; Bags, Roses, Cauls, 
 Ribbons, Weaving Silk, Sewing Cards, and Blocks. With all Goods 
 made use of by Peruke makers, at the lowest prices." % The 
 locks of hair were represented curled and tied. This sign appears 
 to have been not unusual with the hairdressers of a former age. 
 In 1649, there was one in St Dunstan's-in-the-East, who had the 
 Lock and Shears ; which are represented on his trades token 
 by a lock of hair between a pair of shears, intimating that the 
 unlovely lovelocks" were curtailed by him. What he would 
 require the tokens for in his profession (they were used as farthings) 
 it is difficult to guess, as apparently no such small change was 
 needed. This sign was in accordance with the spirit of the 
 times ; short hair was the unmistakable mark of the godly puritan, 
 iust as the straggling love-lock hanging over the shoulder denoted 
 
 ♦ Fuhlick A dvertiser, July 1767. 
 
 t " This is in the Three Hats, 
 
 Which are worn on the head, 
 
 To keep it from cold and wind. 
 
 Tromp was a brave man 
 
 Who supported the crown of the states 
 
 Hats cleaned her© '* 
 t Shopbill, quoted in Thomson's Chronicles of London Bridge, vol. ii., p. 277. 
 
404 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the cavalier. For this reason, Decker advises the young cavalier 
 Gull:— ^ 
 
 " Thy hair, whose length before the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair 
 of scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three-house wifely 
 spinsters of Destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life. Oh, no ! long 
 hair is the only net that women spread abroad to entrap man in, and why 
 should not men be as far above women in that comodity as they go far be- 
 yond them in others." * 
 
 The Peeiwig was another common hairdresser's sign. Even this 
 had to submit to the favourite blue colour, for amongst the Banks 
 bills there is one of John Thompson, in Brewer Street, Golden 
 Square, who lived at the Blue Peruke and Star. The star 
 evidently was the original sign, to which the wig had been added 
 on account of the profession of the occupant of the house. 
 
 The White Peruke, in Maiden Lane, was the sign of the 
 barber, at whose lodgings Voltaire lived when on a visit to Lon- 
 don ; some of his letters to Swift are dated from that place. A 
 white periwig was a highly fashionable object : — " Now, I think 
 he looks very humorous and agreeable ; I vow, in a white periwig 
 he might do mischief ; could he but talk and take snuff, there 's 
 never a fop in town wou'd go beyond him.'' — Gibher^s Double 
 Gallant, 1707. So Shadwell, in The Humorist," 1671, describes 
 Brisk, one of the dramatis pei^sonoe, as " a fellow that never wore a 
 noble and polite garniture, or a white periwig ^ Well might the 
 barbers give the peruke the honour of this signboard, for the 
 profits on that article must have been enormous. In Charles II. 's 
 time, for instance, a fine peruke cost as much as £50 ; and hence 
 the great respect Gibber paid to the one he wore in the character 
 (^f Sir Fopling Flutter, which was brought on the stage in a sedan, 
 and put on before the public. As the glory of Miltiades pre- 
 vented Epaminondas from sleeping, so the beauty of this periwig 
 disturbed the slumbers of Mr (afterwards Colonel) Brett, who in 
 the end bought it from Cibber.t The thieves as well as the 
 beaux knew the value of those wigs, and practised all manner of 
 tricks to obtain them. Sometimes a boy, carried in a basket on 
 the shoulders of a man, would snatch the " curly honour " off the 
 head of the unsuspecting beau ; % at other times they would cut 
 lioles in the leather backs of the coaches,§ whilst the high way- j 
 men were sure to include the periwig with the rest of the booty] 
 captured on the road. Though this article is now shorn of its] 
 
 * Decker's Gull's Hornbook. t Cibber's Apology, p. 303. I 
 
 X Gay's Trivia, book iii. | Weddy Journal, March 30, 1717. ] 
 
DRESS— PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL, 405 
 
 honours, there is still a publican at Great Eedisham, Suffolk, who 
 carries on his trade under the sign of the Wig. 
 
 The French have a sign quite as absurd as our Blue Peruke 
 — viz., The Golden Beard, {la harhe d'or,) which is carved in 
 stone in the Kue des Bourdonnais, Paris, and also in the Marche 
 aux Herbes, Amiens : both these signs date from the eighteenth 
 century, but their origin is much older, as appears from the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 " The Duke of Lorraine, after the Battle of Nancy, wherein he killed 
 Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, went in procession to visit the body, 
 clothed in deep mourning, with a golden beard fixed on, that reached down 
 to his waist, (after the manner of the old heroes that were knighted for 
 their prowess, who, on a signal victory over an enemy, were honoured with 
 such a beard.)" — Richardsoniana, London, 1776, p. 47. 
 
 The Anodyne Necklace was as notorious in the eighteentli 
 century, as Hollo way's Pills and Eowland's Macassar Oil are in 
 our day. Advertisements concerning it w^ere continually appear- 
 ing in the papers : — 
 
 " rpHE Anodyne Necklace for children's teeth, women in labour, and dis' 
 X tempers of the head; price 5s. Kecommended by Dr Chamberlain. 
 Sold up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, without 
 Temple Bar ; at the Spanish Lady at the Royal Exchange, next Thread- 
 needle Street ; at the Indian Handkeechief, facing the New Stairs io 
 Wapping," &c.* 
 
 To attract attention, there was frequently some book of not very 
 delicate character, advertised as " given away gratis " at this 
 house. But as this kind of literature was sure to find a great many 
 readers — more especially when the book could be had for no- 
 thing — a restriction was sometimes added that this curious book 
 will not be given away to any boys or girls, or any paultry per- 
 son." Such a pamphlet, for instance, was : — 
 
 " rpHE RABBIT-AFFAIR made clear in a full account of the whole 
 X rnatter, with the pictures engraved of the pretended rabbit-breeder 
 herself, Mary Tofts, and of the rabbits, and of the persons who attended 
 her during her pretended deliveries, showing who were and who were not 
 deceived by her. 'Tis given gratis nowhere, but only up one pair of stairs 
 at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, recommended by Dr Chamberlain," 
 &c. — Daily Courant^ Jan. 11, 1726. 
 
 This alluded to one of the most impudent frauds ever com- 
 mitted. A certain profligate woman, Mary Tofts by name, a 
 native of Godalming, in Surrey, pretended to give birth to rab- 
 bits. The first delivery was a family of seventeen ; she actually 
 
 * Weekly Journals Jan. 4, 1718. 
 
4o6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 found people who believed her, and gave their attention to thia 
 phenomenon. Amongst them were Sir Richard Manningham, 
 Dr St Andre, surgeon and anatomist to his Majesty, Dr Mow- 
 bray, &c. By these gentlemen she was brought to Lacy's Bagnio, 
 and the case was watched with intense interest ; yet she suc- 
 ceeded in baffling and deluding their attention. At last the 
 fraud came out by one of her accomplices informing upon her. 
 Prints, books, and ballads were published upon the subject, Dr 
 St Andre coming in for an extra share of ridicule ; but whether 
 the woman was in any way punished, is not on record. The 
 last information respecting her was in the Weekly Miscellany, 
 April 19, 1740 : — "The celebrated rabbit- woman, of Godalmin', 
 in Surrey, was committed to Guilford gaol for receiving stolen 
 goods." She died in January 1763. 
 
 The Pearl of Venice is named in an advertisement of a 
 watch lost, " made at Paris, not so broad as a shilling, in a case 
 of black leather with gold nails."* It was the sign of "Mr 
 Leroy, in St James' Street, Covent Garding." The pearls of 
 Venice were celebrated : — 
 
 " Is your pearl orient, sir ? 
 Corv. Venice loas never owner of the like.'" 
 
 — Ben Jonson, The Fox, a. i., b. i. 
 At the same time that city was celebrated for its mock jewellery 
 and glass imitations. 
 
 From the Bagford shopbills, it appears that the Blue Bod- 
 dice was, in Queen Anne's reign, a milliner's shop in the Long 
 Walk, near Christchurch Hospital. At the same period another 
 member of the same fraternity (there were men-milliners in those 
 days) had the Hood and Scarf, articles of female apparel j this 
 shop was in Cornhill, "over against Wills' Coffee-house." t At 
 the present time there is in the N'orth a public-house called the 
 Blue Stoops ; this also seems to refer to an ancient garment, 
 worn in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and named by 
 Ben Jonson — " Alchymist,'' a. iv., s. ii. — Your Spanish stoop 
 is the best garment." 
 
 The Bonny Cravat, at Woodchurch, Tenterden, to judge 
 from the adjective, seems rather to have been suggested by the 
 old song of " Jenny, come tie my bonny cravat," than by the 
 introduction of the cravat as an article of dress. The fashion is 
 
 * Mercurius PuUicus, Jan. 8 to 15, 1662. 
 
 t London Gazette, March 12 to 16, 1673 This was not the famous Will's Coffee-house, 
 which was situated in Bow Street, Covent Garden. 
 
DRESS--PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL. 
 
 407 
 
 eaid to have been brouglit over from Germany, in the seventeenth 
 century, by some of the young French nobility, who had served 
 the emperor in the wars against the Turks, and had copied this 
 garment from the Groats, whence the name. 
 
 The Doublet, formerly the Harrow and Doublet,* is still 
 the sign of an iron warehouse in Upper Thames Street ; it bears 
 the date 1720, and the letters T. C., the initials of one of the 
 Crowley family, to whom this warehouse has belonged time out 
 of mind." It is made of cast and painted iron, and is said to 
 represent the leather doublet in which the founder of the firm 
 came to London as a day-labourer. The doublet was a kind of 
 vestment which originated from the gambason or pourpoint worn 
 under the armour ; sleeves were added when it was worn without 
 armour, and so it became a universal garment. 
 
 There are trades tokens extant of the Child- coat, in White- 
 cross Street, probably a shop where children's apparel was sold. 
 Handle Holme, in his heraldic Om^iium Gatlievum, b. iii., ch. i., p. 
 18, gives a representation of a child's coat, which is very similar 
 to the " Knickerbocker" suit of the present day, with a short kilt 
 added to it. He adds the following explanation : — A boy's 
 coat is the last coat used for boys, after which they are put into 
 breeches. If it has hanging sleeves, they would term it a child's 
 coat." In the same manner as the child's coat, the Minister's 
 Gown figured at the door of the shop where this article was 
 sold. There is a shopbill of such a one in Booksellers' Row, 
 St Paul's Churchyard, among the Bagford bills. 
 
 The Tabard was the well-known inn in Southwark whence 
 Chaucer and the other pilgrims started on their way to Canter- 
 bury. Mr Edmund Oilier has recently contributed a very inter- 
 esting paper on this old inn to All the Year Round, and several 
 paragraphs have appeared in other journals upon the same sub- 
 ject. A very few words, therefore, will be sufficient for the pre- 
 sent purpose. Originally, it was the property of the Abbot of 
 Hyde, near Winchester, who had his town residence within the 
 inn-yard. The earliest record relating to this property is in 33d 
 Edw. I., (1304,) when the Abbot and convent of Hyde purchased 
 of William of Lategareshall two houses in Southwark, held by 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury at the annual rent of 5s. l^d., 
 and suit to his court in Southwark, and Id. a year for a pur- 
 presture of one foot wide on the king's highway ; £4 per anuum 
 
 * BanKs Bills. 
 
408 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 to John de Tymberliutts, and 3s. to the Prior and convent of St 
 2>Iary Overie, in Southwark ; value clear, 4:0s. 
 
 It is a fact on record that Henry Bayley, the hosteller of the 
 Tabard, was one of the burgesses who represented the borough 
 of Southwark in the Parliament held in Westminster in the 50th 
 Edw. III., (1376 ;) and he was again returned to the Parliament 
 held at Gloucester in the 2d Richard II., in 1378 * The tavern 
 itself is named, at the very period when Chaucer's poem is supposed 
 to have been written, in one of the rolls of Parliament, where, 5th 
 Eichard II., (1381,) in a list of malefactors who had partici- 
 pated in the rebellion of Jack Cade, occurs the name of " Joh'es 
 Brewersman, manens apud le Tabbard, London." Stow thus 
 notices the old inn : — 
 
 " From thence to London, on the same side, be many fair inns for receipt 
 of travellers, by their signs — the Spurre, Christopher, Bull, Queen's 
 Head, Tabarde, George, Hart, King's Head, &c. Amongst the which tlie 
 most ancient is the Tabard ; so called of the sign, which, as we now term it, 
 is a jacket or sleeveless coat, whole before, open on both sides, with a square 
 collar, winged at the shoulders, a stately garment of old time, commonly 
 worn of noblemen and others, both at home and abroad in the wars, but 
 then, (to wit, in the wars,) their arms embroidered or otherwise depict upon 
 them, that any man by his coat of arms might be known from others ; but 
 now these tabardes are only worn by the heralds, and be called their coate 
 of armes in service." — Stow, p. 154. 
 
 Formerly there stood in the road, in front of the Tabard, a 
 beam laid crosswise upon two uprights, upon which was the 
 following inscription : — " This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey 
 Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to 
 Canterbury, anno 1583." Over this the sign was hung, but that 
 disappeared with the rest of them in 1766. The writing of this 
 inscription seemed ancient, yet Tyrwhitt is of opinion that it was 
 not older than the seventeenth century, since Speght, who de- 
 scribes the Tabard in his edition of Chaucer 1602, does not 
 mention it. Perhaps it was put up after the fire of 1676, when 
 the Tabard changed its name into the Talbot. 
 
 At the present day the inn is known by the name of the 
 Talbot ; and although the building is by no means the same that 
 sheltered Chaucer and his merry pilgrims, yet it is full of tradi- 
 tionary lore concerning them. In the centre of the gallery there 
 was a picture, said to be by Blake, and well painted, representing 
 the Canterbury Pilgrimage, almost invisible from dirt, age, and 
 smoke. Behind this picture was a door opening into a lofty pas- 
 
 * G. A. Corner, on the Inns of Southwark. 
 
DRESS— PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL. 409 
 
 sage, with rooms on either side, one of which, on the right hand, 
 was still designated as the Pilgrims' Boom. The house was re- 
 paired in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from that period, 
 probably, dated the fireplace, carved oak panels, and other parts 
 spared by the fire of 1676, which were still to be seen in the be- 
 ginning of this century. 
 
 As leather breeches were much used for riding in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries, the occupations of breeches-maker 
 and glover were frequently combined ; hence the sign of the 
 Breeches and Glove on old London Bridge, the shop of 
 "Walter Watkins, Breeches-maker, Leather-seller, and Glover." 
 But what made a Cornish pufolican of the present day, (at Camel- 
 ford,) choose the sign of the Cotton Breeches, is more than we 
 can pretend to explain. 
 
 Stockings or Legs are of constant occurrence in the seven- 
 teenth century trades tokens, as the signs of hosiers — frequently 
 real, not painted, stockings were suspended at the door. 
 " On hosier's poles depending stockings ty'd, 
 Flag with the slacken'd gale from side to side." — Gay's Trivia, 
 
 Boots and shoes occur in greater variety and abundance than 
 any other article of dress. The Boot is a very common inn sign, 
 either owing to the thirsty reputation of cobblers, or from the pre- 
 mises where they are found having been at one time occupied by 
 shoemakers. The Boot and Slipper may be seen at Smethwick, 
 near Birmingham ; the Golden Slipper at Goodrange, in West 
 Riding; the Hand and Slippers was a sign in Long Lane, 
 Smithfield, in 1750. The Shoe and Slap occurs in the follow- 
 ing handbill : — 
 I T MR CROOME'S, at the sign of the Shoe and Slap, near the Hospital 
 XI. Gate, in West Smithfield, is to be seen 
 
 The Wonder op Nature, 
 A Girl above Sixteen Years of Age, born in Cheshire, and not above 
 Eighteen inches long, having shed her Teeth seven several Times, and not 
 a perfect Bone in any Part of her, only the Head, yet she hath all her 
 senses to Admiration, and Discourses, Reads very well, Sings, Whistles, and 
 all very pleasant to hear. 
 
 " Sept. 4, 1667. ' God save the King/ " 
 
 A slap was a kind of " ladies shoe, with a loose sole/' * the origin, 
 probably, of the present word slipper. Another kind of shoe is 
 also mentioned in an advertisement — the Laced Shoe in Chan- 
 cery Lane.t " Laced shoes," says Randle Holme, " have the over 
 
 * Randle Holme, b. iii., ch. i., p. 14, f London Gazette, July 31 to Auj. 4, 1679. 
 
4IO THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 leathers and edges of tlie shoe laced in orderly courses with 
 narrow galloon lace of any colour this places the use of 
 laced boots much earlier than we would have been apt to imagine. 
 The Clog is often used as a shoemaker's sign in Lancashire and 
 the midland counties, and also in those parts of London where 
 that article is worn. The Five Clogs was, in 1718, the sign of 
 William Wright, a quack, who lived over against Prescott Street, 
 Goodman's Fields.* Perhaps he occupied apartments at a clog- 
 maker's. Even the primitive Wooden Shoe (sabot) of France 
 has figured as a tavern sign in that country. In a farce of the 
 fo^irteenth century, entitled, " Pernet qui va au Vin," the husband 
 names the following taverns : — 
 
 Au Sabot ou k la Lanterne 
 
 J'ai mis en oubli la taverne.'* 
 
 Eonsard addressed some of his verses to the hostess of this 
 tavern, which was situated in the Faubourg St Marcel : — 
 
 Je ne suis point, ma guerriere Cassandre, 
 
 Ni Mirmidon, ni Dolope soudard." 
 " Tl n'y a personne," says Furretiere in his Roman Bourgeois, " qui ne se 
 figure qu'on parle d'une Pentasilee ou d'une Talestris ; cepandant cette 
 guerriere Cassandre n'etait reellement qu'une grand e hallebreda qui tenit 
 le cabaret du Sabot dans le faubourg Saint Marcel."t 
 
 This sign has given its name to a street in Paris. 
 
 The Patten, the quaint little contrivance in which our great- 
 grandmothers tripped through the winter's sludge, was the sign 
 of a toy-shop in the Haymarket, " over against Great Suffolk 
 Street, and by Pall Mall ; " J at the present day it is still ex- 
 tant as a fishmonger's shop in Whitecross Street, near the prison. 
 
 The very common sign of the Star and Garter refers to 
 the insignia of the Order of the Garter. Anciently it was 
 simply called the Garter, and thus it is designated by Shake- 
 speare in his " Merry Wives of Windsor." Charles L added the 
 star to the insignia, and his example was followed on the sign- 
 board. At that time the Garter was treated with a great deal 
 more respect than at present, for Sandford, Lancaster Herald 
 in 1686, complained that several coffee-houses had the sign of the 
 
 * Weekly Journal, Jan. 4, 1718. 
 
 t " I am, my warlike Cassandra, 
 
 Neither a Myrmidon nor a Dolopian warrior." 
 "Everybody that reads those lines," says Furretiere in his Roman Bourgeois, "will 
 certainly imagine that he alludes to some Pentasilea or Talestris; yet this warlike 
 r^assandra was after all neither more nor Jess than a tall manly looking wench who kepi 
 the Wooden Shoe (Sabot) public-house in the faubourg Saint MarceL" 
 X Bagford Bills, 
 
DRESS— PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL. 41 1 
 
 Garter with coffee-pots, &c., painted inside, which he considered 
 downright desecration ; hence, order was given to those offenders, 
 " to amend the same, or else they should be pulled down/' 
 
 The Garter Inn at Windsor, where Falstaff lived in such grand 
 style, " as an emperor in his expense," was not a creation of 
 Shakespeare's fancy, but did really exist, and most probably on 
 the same site at present occupied by the Star and Garter.* The 
 first Star and Garter at Eichmond was built in 173|., on what 
 was then a portion of the waste of Petersham Common ; it was 
 rented at 40s. a year. A drawing by Hearne, of the compara- 
 tively insignificant tenement then raised, is still preserved at the 
 hotel. 
 
 It was also the sign of a famous ordinary in Pall Mall. Here 
 the Duke of Ormond, in the reign of Queen Anne, gave a dinner 
 to a few friends, and was charged £21, 6s. 8d. for the two 
 courses, each of four dishes, without any wine or dessert, which, 
 considering the value of money in those days, was certainly a 
 considerable sum. In this house, in 1765, Lord Byron, the 
 poet's grandfather, killed Mr Chaworth in an irregular duel, the 
 result of a dispute whether Mr Chaworth, who preserved his 
 game, or Lord Byron, who did not, had more game on his estate. 
 About the same time there was another Star and Garter tavern 
 at the end of Burton Street, near the famous Five Fields in 
 Chelsea, " a place where robbers lie in wait,"t the site now oc- 
 cupied by Eaton Square and Belgrave Square. At this tavern, 
 Johnson the equestrian rode in July 1762, for the gratification 
 of the Cherokee king, when on a visit in this country. The 
 newspapers of the day describe the feats he performed : — He 
 rides three horses, and when in full speed, tosses his cap and 
 catches it several times ; he stands with both feet on the horse 
 whilst it goes three times round the green in full speed," and 
 similar " astounding " acts, which would now be thought very 
 little of. 
 
 The Glove is, in France, the common sign of the glove-makers ; 
 generally it is a colossal representation of a glove in tin painted 
 red. This article of dress has had more honour conferred upon 
 it than any other ; anciently it was given, by way of delivery or 
 investiture, in sales and conveyances of lands and goods ; it was 
 worn by magistrates on certain occasions, presented to them on 
 others ; it was the challenge and sacred pledge of a duel ; the 
 
 * See J. 0. HaUiwell's folio b£;akespeare, vol. ii., p. 468. f The Tatl-TT. 
 
412 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 rural bridegroom in the time of Queen Elizabeth wore gloves on 
 his hat as a sign of good husbandry ; noblemen wore their ladies' 
 gloves in front of their hats ; in some parts of England it used 
 to be the custom to hang a pair of white gloves on the pew of 
 unmarried villagers, who had died in the flower of their youth ; 
 it is used in marriage by proxy, and is connected with innumer- 
 able other customs and ceremonies. 
 
 The Fan, the Crowned Fan, the Two Fans, &c., were the 
 ordinary signs of milliners who sold fans. 
 
 The Pincushion is the sign of a public-house at Wyberton, 
 Boston, but why chosen it is difficult to say; and the Purse occurs 
 amongst the trades tokens of W. Smithfield, with the date 1669. 
 This last object was also the sign of one of the taverns visited at 
 Barnet by Drunken Barnaby, where he had the misfortune with 
 the bears. 
 
 The Ring was the sign of one of the booksellers in Little 
 Britain, in the reign of Queen Anne ; and the Golden Ring 
 was, in 1723, the sign of G. Coniers on Ludgate Hill, who pub- 
 lished a black letter edition of " The Merry Tales of the Mad Men 
 of Gotam.'^ An old tradition that Guttenberg received the first 
 idea of printing from the seal of his ring impressed in wax, may 
 have led those booksellers to adopt that object for their sign. 
 " Respicit archetypes auri vestigia lustrans, 
 Et secum tacitus talia verba refert : 
 Quam belle pandit certas haec orbita voces, 
 Monstrat et exactis apta reperta libris."* 
 
 A red or a bipartite Umbeella or Parasol is the invariable 
 sign of the umbrella- maker. This now indispensable article wa3 
 brought into fashion by Hanway the philanthropist, towards the 
 end of the eighteenth century. Before his time, a cloak was the 
 only protection against a shower. Pepys writes in his Diary, 
 " This day in the afternoon, stepping with the Duke of York in- 
 to St James' Park, it rained, and I was forced to lend the duke 
 my cloak, which he wore through the park." On another 
 occasion Pepys was out with no less than four ladies, " and it 
 rained all the way, it troubled us ; but, however, my cloak kept 
 us all dry." Pepys sheltering the four ladies under his cloak 
 of charity would make a very pretty picture. In the reign 
 of Queen Anne, good housewives defied the winter's shower, 
 
 * " He looked intently at the seal, observing the impression left by the gold, and spoke 
 these words to himself, ' How beautifully and distinctly does this impression render the 
 words,' and he proved his useful discovery in exact books." 
 
DRESS^PLA IN AND ORNAMENTAL. 4 1 3 
 
 " underneath th' umbrella's oily shed/' * but Hanway was the 
 first who, braving laughter and sarcasm, accustomed the Lon- 
 doners to the sight of a man carrying that useful contrivance. 
 John Pugh, who wrote Hanway's life, says : — 
 
 " When it rained, a small parapluie defended bis face and wig ; thus he 
 was always prepared to enter into any company without impropriety or the 
 appearance of negligence. And he was the first man who ventured to walk 
 the streets of London with an umbrella over his head ; after carrying one 
 near thirty years he saw them come into general use." 
 
 There is a small umbrella shop in Old Street, Shoreditch, 
 called the Umbrella Hospital ; two placards are in the window, 
 one setting forth the analogy between a human being and an 
 umbrella, the second giving a list of the prices charged for curing 
 the several ills an umbrella is heir to, thus : — 
 
 Restoking a broken rib, . 
 Restoring a spine, 
 Inserting a new spine, . 
 Resuscitating the muscularia, . 
 A new membranous attachment. 
 Restoring a shattered constitution, 
 Setting a dislocated neck, 
 Restoring a broken neck, 
 A NEW set of nerves, 
 A NEW rib, 
 A NEW muscle, . 
 A NEW motive power, 
 A crenated attachment. 
 Restoring the muscular power. 
 Fixing on a new head, . 
 Supplying a new head, . 
 
 s. d. 
 
 0 6 
 
 0 6 
 
 1 0 
 
 0 6 
 
 2 6 
 
 1 0 
 0 6 
 
 0 9 
 
 1 0 
 0 6 
 0 3 
 0 6 
 
 0 6 
 
 1 6 
 
 0 3 
 
 1 0 
 
 • Gay'6 Tnvui, book i., p. ZO* 
 
CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 Foremost in this division stands the Globe, — " the great Globe 
 itself," a trade emblem common to publicans, outfitters, and 
 others, who rely upon cosmopolitan customers. One of the 
 theatres, where Shakespeare used to perform, was called The 
 Globe, from its sign representing Atlas supporting the world. 
 It was accompanied by the motto, Totus Mundus agit His- 
 trionem; upon which Ben Jonson made the following epigram:— 
 " If but stage actors all the world displays, 
 Where shall we find spectators to their plays ? " 
 
 To which Shakespeare is said to have returned this answer : — 
 Little or much of what we see we do, 
 We are all actors and spectators too." 
 
 The house stood on the Bankside, Southwark, and was burnt 
 down in June 1613, having been set on fire during one of the 
 plays by a piece of wadding fired from a cannon falling on the 
 thatched roof. It was rebuilt, but finally taken down in 1644 
 to make room for dwelling-houses. 
 
 One of the most fiimous Globe taverns stood, till the begin- 
 ning of this century, in Fleet Street. It had been one of the 
 favourite haunts of Oliver Goldsmith, who, it appears, was never 
 tired of hearing a certain " tun of a man" sing " Nottingham 
 Ale." Goldsmith's face was so well known here that a wealthy 
 pork-butcher, another habitue of the house, used to drink to 
 him in the familiar words, " Come, Noll, old boy, here 's my ser- 
 vice to you." Several actors, also, " used" the house, — amongst 
 others, the centenarian Macklin, Tom King, and Dunstall. Many 
 amusing anecdotes concerning the place have been preserved in 
 the Fruits of Experience," a delightful book of city gossip, 
 written in his eightieth year by Joseph Brasbridge, a silversmith 
 in Fleet Street. Brasbridge was a constant visitor at this tavern. 
 
 At Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, there is a Globe public- 
 house, in which a tessellated pavement, part of a Eoman villa, 
 may be seen. The publican informs passers-by of this by the 
 following inscription on his signboard : — 
 
 " This is the ancient manor-house, and in it you may see 
 The Romans work a great curiositee. 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY, 415 
 
 And tlie absence of tlie apostrophe certainly makes it so. Finally, 
 John Partridge, the almanac-making shoemaker, so amusingly 
 ridiculed in the Tatler, lived at the Globe in Salisbury Street. 
 From the pursuits of that great man, we may surmise his globe 
 to have been a celestial one. 
 
 Sometimes the Globe was gilt, " for a difference." Thus the 
 Golden Globe was the sign of William Herbert, printseller, and 
 editor of Joseph Ames's well-known work on " Typographical 
 Antiquities." This shop was under the Piazza on London Bridge, 
 where he continued till 1758, when the house was taken down. 
 
 Of all the signs which may be termed " Geographical," those 
 referring to our own island are, of course, the most common in 
 this country. Britannia is very general. Hone, in his " Every- 
 day Book," mentions a public-house in the country where London 
 porter was sold, and the figure of Britannia was represented in a 
 lanfjuishing, reclining posture, with the motto, 
 
 " PRAY, SUP-PORTER." 
 
 Tlie first inhabitants are commemorated by the sign of the 
 Ancient Briton ; but this is not one of the " Caerulei Britanni," 
 though true blue for all that, but refers simply to a true patriot in 
 the best sense of the word. Thus Boswell uses the expression in 
 one of his letters to Dr Johnson : — 
 
 *' I trust tliat you will be liberal enough to make allowance for my dif- 
 fering from you on two points, [the Middlesex election and the American 
 war,] -vJ^en my general principles of government are according to your own 
 lieart, and when, at a crisis of doubtful event, I stand forth with honest 
 ^eal as an ancient Sind faithful Briton," 
 
 That this is the meaning attached to the word is evident from 
 other signs of the same family, as True Briton, Generous 
 Briton, &c., all common signatures to political letters in the 
 new.spapers of the Junius period. The modern John Bull, and 
 the still later Old English Gentleman, descend from the same 
 stock, and are all equally common. 
 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland was, in 1673, the sign of 
 John Thornton, in the Minories, hydrographer to the Hon. East 
 India Company. As he also sold maps, he had probably a map 
 of the United Kingdom as his sign. Formerly signs representing 
 buildings or localities in London were common, though generally 
 they bore very little resemblance to the places intended. Among 
 the trades tokens we find the Exchange, a tavern in the Poultry 
 in 1651 ; the East India House, in Leadenhall Street, like 
 
4i6 
 
 THE HISTOKY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 most of tliis description of signs, prompted by the vicinity of 
 the building represented ; Charing Cross, the sign of a shop in 
 that locality where they sold canaries in 1699, and also a sign 
 at Norwich in 1750; The Old Prison, in Whitechapel — this 
 Old Prison was intended for King's Cross; Camden House, 
 in Maiden Lane, 1668, — this must have been in honour of Bap- 
 tist Hicks, the opulent mercer, at the White Bear, in Cheapside, 
 who died as Viscount Camden in 1628. He built Hicks Hall on 
 Clerkenwell Green, and presented it to the county magistrates as 
 their session-house. 
 
 Further, there was the Temple, the sign of Mr Buck, book- 
 seller, near the Inner Temple Gate, in Fleet Street, in 1700; and 
 at the same period, Hyde Park, a shop or tavern in Gray's Inn 
 Lane. A public-house in Bridge Eow, Chelsea, mentioned before 
 1750, and still in existence, bears the name of the Chelsea 
 Waterworks. The Waterworks, after which it was named, 
 were constructed circa 1724 ; a canal was dug from the Thames, 
 near Eanelagh, to Pimlico, where an engine was placed for the 
 purpose of raising the water into pipes, which conveyed it to 
 Chelsea, Westminster, and various parts of western London. The 
 reservoirs in Hyde and Green Park were supplied by pipes from 
 the Chelsea Waterworks, which, in 1767, yielded daily 1740 tons. 
 
 The Lancashire Witch, a sign of an exhibition of shell-work 
 and petrifactions in Shoreditch, 1754, was doubtless named after 
 our old friend. Mother Shipton, born near the Petrifying W^.U at 
 Knaresborough. 
 
 Even on the Continent we meet with a London sign, — viz., at 
 Verona, where, in 1825, the Tower of London was one of the 
 inns which recommended itself to English travellers in the fol- 
 lowing grand circular : — 
 
 " Circulatory. — The old inn of London's Tower, placed among the more 
 agreeable situation of Verona's Course, belonging at Sir Theodosius Zi- 
 gnoni, restored by the decorum most indulgent to good things, of life's 
 eases, which ^re favoured from every art at same inn, with all object 
 that is concern^, conveniency of stage-coaches, proper horses, and good 
 foragers, and coach-house ; do ofifers at innkeeper the constant hope to be 
 honoured from a great concourse, where politeness, good genius of meats 
 to delight of nations, round table, [table d'hote,] coffee-house, hackney- 
 coach, men servant of place, swiftness of service, and moderacion of prices, 
 shall arrive to accomplish in him all satisfaction, and at Sir's who will do 
 the favour honouring him a very assur'd kindness." 
 
 York figures more frequently on the signboard than any other 
 place in England. From the trades tokens we see that the City 
 
THREE PIGEONS 
 (Banks's Collection.) 
 
 I7NIC0RX. 
 (A bookseller's at Cologne, 1680.) 
 
OEOORAPEY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 4^7 
 
 OF York was a sign in Middle Eow, Holborn, in tlie seventeenth 
 century. The Yoek Minster is one of the few cathedrals ever 
 seen represented out of its own city, probably for no other reason 
 than because it stands in the capital of the county from whence 
 the Yorkshire stingo comes. York, however, seems to have been 
 a right merry city, second only to the city of London, for one of 
 the oldest Roxburghe ballads, dated 1584, says : — 
 
 Yorke, Yorke, for my monie, of all the cities that ever I see, 
 For mery pastime and companie, except the cittie of London." 
 
 The Castle being such a general sign, many traders adopted 
 some particular castle. Dover Castle, or Walmer Castle, is 
 amongst the most frequent. The first is mentioned in the fol- 
 lowing amusing advertisement : — 
 
 " For Female Satisfaction. 
 " TTTHEREAS the mystery of Freemasonry has been kept a profound 
 
 VV secret for several Ages, till at length some Men assembled themselves 
 at the Dover Castle, in the parish of Lambeth, under pretence of knowing 
 the secret, and likewise in opposition to some gentlemen that are real 
 Freemasons, and hold a Lodge at the same house ; therefore, to prove that 
 they are no more than pretenders, and as the Ladies have sometimes been 
 desirous of gaining knowledge of the noble art, (sic,) several regular-nmde 
 Masons, (both ancient and modern,) members of constituted Lodges in this 
 metropolis, have thought proper to unite into a select Body at Beau Sil- 
 vester's, the sign of the Angel, Bull Stairs, South w^ark, and stile themselves 
 Unions, think it highly expedient, and in justice to the fair sex, to initiate 
 them therein, provided they are women of undeniable character; for tho* 
 no Lodge as yet (except the Free Union Masons) have thought proper to 
 admit Women into the Fraternity, we, w^ell knowing they have as much 
 Right to attain to the secrets as those Castle Humbugs, have thought 
 proper so to do, not doubting but they will prove an honour to the 
 Craft ; and as we have had the honour to inculcate several worthy Sisters 
 therein, those that are desirous, and think themselves capable of having 
 the secret conferred on them, by proper Application, will be admitted, 
 and the charges will not exceed the Expences of our Lodge." — Publick Ad- 
 vertiser, March 7, 175y. 
 
 The sign of the Angel at Beau Silvester s was certainly well 
 chosen by those gallant soi-disant Masons ; but would not the 
 Silent Woman have been still more appropriate ? Be that as it 
 may. Lodges for ladies there were — witness the following adver- 
 tisement, a good specimen of ^' Stratford-le-Bow" French : — 
 
 C. LOGE C. 
 
 " A VERTISSEMENT AUX DAMES, etc. Pour vincre que les Francs 
 rx Massons ne sont pas telles que le public les a representees en parti- 
 Culier la sexe Feminine, cet Loge juge a propos de recevoir des Femmes 
 a'lssi bieu que des Hommea. 
 
 2 D 
 
4i8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " N. B. — Lea Dames seront introduits dans la Loge avec la Ceremonia 
 accoutum^e ou le Serment ordinaire et le reel Secret leur seront adminis- 
 trees. On commencera a recevoir des Dames Jeudy 11 de Mars 1762, at 
 Mrs Maynard's, next door to the Lying-in Hospital, Brownlow Street, Long- 
 acre. La Porte sera ouverte a 6 Heures du Soir. Les Dames et Mes- 
 sieurs sont priees de ne pas venir apres sept. Le prix est £1, Is." — {News- 
 paper, 1762.) 
 
 How the ladies were initiated — or, as the worthy secretary of 
 Beau Silvester's Lodge calls it, " inculcated," — we are not in- 
 formed ; but certainly some modification must have been made 
 in the usual ceremony attending the initiation of novices. 
 
 Llangollen Castle is painted on a sign in Deansgate, Man- 
 chester : under it is the following rhyme ; — 
 
 " Near the above place in a vault, 
 There is such liquor fixed, 
 You '11 say that water, hops, and malt, 
 Were never better mixed." 
 
 Many other castles occur, such as Jersey Castle, on the 
 token of Philip Crosse in Finch Lane, in the seventeenth century ; 
 EocHESTER Castle, Mitford Castle, Hereford Castle, 
 Warwick Castle, Edinburgh Castle, &c. 
 
 Towns are often adopted for signs as a point de ralliement for 
 the natives of such places, the birthplace of the landlord being 
 generally the town which has the honour of his selection. The 
 City of Norwich was the sign of a house in Bishopsgate Street 
 in the seventeenth century^ either for the reason just alleged, or 
 because " the fall of Niniveh with Norwich built in an hour,'' 
 was one of the penny sights at that period. Coventry Cross 
 was the sign of a mercer in New Bond Street at the end of the 
 last century, evidently chosen on account of the silk ribbons 
 manufactured in that town ] and the Chiltern Hundred, a 
 public-house at Boxley, near Maidstone, doubtless refers to the 
 well-known range of hills extending from Henley-on-Thames to 
 Tring in Herts. In old times these hills were covered with 
 forests, and infested by numerous bands of thieves. To protect 
 the people in the neighbourhood, an ofiicer was appointed by the 
 Crown, called the steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, and although 
 the duties have long ceased the office still exists, and is made 
 use of to afford members of the House of Commons an oj)por- 
 tunity of resigning their seats when they desire it. Being a 
 Government appointment, though without either duties or salary, 
 the acceptance of it disqualifies a member from retaining his seat. 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 419 
 
 The Wiltshire Shepherd was a sign in St Martin's Lane in 
 the seventeenth century. The Wiltshire downs were famous 
 for their flocks of sheep. Aubrey, himself a Wiltshireman, says 
 that the innocent lives of those shepherds " doe give us a re- 
 semblance of the golden age." He also states that their sight 
 inspired Sir Philip Sidney in charming pastorals, which on those 
 very downs he sketched from nature, as some of his old rela- 
 tions well remembered. " 'Twas about these purlieus," says he, 
 " that the muses were wont to appeare to Sir Philip Sidney, and 
 where he wrote down their dictates in his table-book, though on 
 horseback." Many of the customs of these shepherds Aubrey 
 traces down from the Eomans.'^ The Gentle Shepherd of 
 Salisbury Plain is the name given to Farmer Peek's house, on 
 the road from Cape Town to Simon s Bay, Cape of Good Hope. 
 On his signboard is the following mosaic inscription : — 
 " Multum in parvo, pro bono publico • 
 
 Entertainment for man or beast all of a row. 
 
 Lekker host as much as you please ; 
 
 Excellent beds without any fleas. 
 
 Nos patriam fugimus — now we are here, 
 
 Vivamus, let us live by selling beer. 
 
 On donne k boire et k manger ici ; 
 
 Come in and try it, whoever you be. 
 
 The Gentle Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." 
 
 Near Basingstoke there is a public-house sign representing a 
 grenadier in full uniform, holding in his hand a foaming pot of 
 ale ; it is called the Whitley Grenadier, and bears the follow- 
 ing disinterested verses : — 
 
 This is the Whitley Grenadier, 
 
 A noted house for famous beer. 
 
 My friend, if you should chance to call, 
 
 Beware and get not drunk withal ; 
 
 Let moderation be your guide, 
 
 It answers well whene'er 'tis try'd. 
 
 Then use, but not abuse, strong beer, 
 
 And don't forget the Grenadier." 
 
 This sign seems to have been suggested by the tragical death 
 of a grenadier, which is thus recorded on a tombstone in the 
 churchyard of Winchester Cathedral : — 
 
 Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadeer, 
 Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer. 
 Soldiers be warned by his untimely fall, 
 And when you 're hot, drink strong, or none at all." 
 
 * Aubrey, Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme. MS. Lansdowne Collection. 
 
420 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 To wliicli a wag appended the following lines : — 
 " An honest soldier never is forgot, 
 Whether he die by musket or by pot." 
 
 The Flitch op Dunmow is a common sign in Essex, and is 
 sometimes seen in other counties. The custom of giving a flitch 
 of bacon, on the well-known conditions, is not peculiar to Dun- 
 mow. In the reign of Edward IIL, the Earl of Lancaster, 
 lord of the honour of Tutbury, granted a manor near Wichnor 
 village, Burton-upon-Trent, to Sir Philip de Sommerville, stipulat- 
 ing that he was to give a flitch of bacon on the same conditions 
 as at Dunmow.* At the abbey of St Milaine, near Eennes, in 
 Normandy, the same custom was observed, but the practice was 
 still less successful, for Dunmow at least has six times given the 
 side of bacon away, but — 
 
 " A I'abbaye de Saint Milaine pr^s Rennes y a plus de six cents ans ont 
 un coste de lard encore tout frais et non corrompu ; et n^anmoins ont 
 voue et ordonne aux premiers qui par an et jour ensemble mariez ont 
 vescu sans debat, grondement et sans s'en repentir." + 
 
 Our next sign is geographical only in its relationship. At Wans- 
 ford Bridge, which crosses the river Nen in Northampton, there 
 is the Haycock Inn, deriving its name from a curious incident : 
 the river overflowed its banks and carried away a haycock with a 
 man upon it. Taylor, the Water poet, says of the circumstance : — 
 " On a haycock sleeping soundly, 
 
 The river rose, and took me roundly 
 
 Down the current ; people cried, 
 
 As along the stream I hied. 
 
 ' Where away ? ' quoth they, ' From Greenland ?* 
 
 ' No; from Wansford Bridge, in England.' " 
 The stone bridge, of thirteen arches, carries the Great North 
 Road across the river, so much traversed in the coaching times ; 
 and well known to many a traveller in those days was the Hay- 
 cock Inn, at one end of the bridge, which has on the signboard a 
 pictorial representation of the scene. 
 
 Scotland, which, besides Edinburgh ales and Highland whisky, 
 produces a great many publicans, is honoured in numberless signs. 
 Land Cakes, the name given by Burns to the country of the 
 " brighter Scotch," is a sign at Middle Hill Gate, near Stockport. 
 And here we may observe the popularity of Burns among the 
 
 ^ See Gent's Mag., Jan. 1819, where the conditions are given in extenso. 
 
 + "At the abbey of Saint Milaine, near Rennes, tliere has been for more than 600 yean 
 a flitch of bacon, still perfectly fresh and good ; yet it is promised and ordered to be given 
 to the first couple that h»n been married for a year and a day without quarrelling, scold- 
 ing, or rejfrettiug ihat tney were mai-ried." — Cor ff<i d'Eutrap. 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY, 
 
 421 
 
 publicans, for not only is tbe poet himself, and several of his 
 amusing heroes, exalted in innumerable places among the " living 
 dead," but at Kirby Moor some of his verses are even introduced 
 on the sign : — 
 
 When neebors anger at a plea, 
 
 An' just as wud as wud can be, 
 
 How easy can the barley bree 
 Cement the quarrel ? 
 
 It 's aye the cheapest lawyer's fee, 
 To taste the barrel." 
 Very good advice indeed. 
 
 Since the Highlander's love for snuff and whisky was such, 
 that he wished to have " a Benlomond of snuff, and a Loch 
 Lomond of whisky,'' nobody could make a better public-house 
 sign than the Highland Laddie, nor a better snuff-shop sign 
 than the kilted Highlander who stands generally at the door of 
 these establishments. Two others of the lares and penates of 
 the tobacconist are the Sailor and the Moor or Oriental. The 
 first presiding over the snuff, the second over the chewing, the 
 third over the smoking " department, — as the drapers term the 
 divisions of their shop. After the rebellion of 1745, when 
 everything was done by the Government to extinguish the na' 
 tionality of the Scotch, when Scotch ballads were forbidden, and 
 the names of some clans were deemed more odious than the word 
 raka to the Jews, the kilt was forbidden by the legislature as an 
 abomination. On that occasion the following trifle appeared in 
 the newspapers : — 
 
 " We hear that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so heroically 
 the doors of snuff-shops, intend to petition the Legislature, in order that 
 they may be excused from complying with the act of Parliament with re- 
 gard to their change of dress : alledging that they have ever been faithful 
 subjects to his Majesty, having constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch 
 out of their Mulls when they marched by them, and so far from engaging 
 in any Rebellion, that they have never entertained a rebellious thought; 
 whence they humbly hope that they shall not be put to the Expense cf 
 buying new cloaths." 
 
 The ubiquity of the Scotch packman produced the sign of the 
 Scotchman's Pack, St Michael's Hill, Bristol, and in some other 
 places. From the following passage it appears that these Scot- 
 tish packmen, in the sixteenth century, penetrated even as far 
 as Poland : — Ane pedder is called ane merchod or cremar quha 
 beirs ane pack or creame* upon his bak, quha are called beirares 
 
 * Creame — Dutch, Jcraam — a temporary booth erected in fair-time to serve as a shop. 
 Even at the present day those men that go Irom village to village selling cheap jewel- 
 
422 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 of the puddill be tlie Scottesmen in the realaie of Polonia, quhaii 
 I saw an greate multitude in the town of Cracovia, anno Dom. 
 1569."* 
 
 Geetna Green used at one time to be a not very uncommon 
 sign on the Border ; there is one at Ayeliffe, Darlington. The 
 origin of marriages at this place is not so generally known that it 
 would be superfluous to introduce it here. Marriages in Scotland 
 at all times having been considered legal if two parties accepted 
 each other for man and wife in the presence of witnesses, a dis- 
 sipated tobacconist, named Joseph Paisley, about a century ago, 
 conceived the idea of opening an establishment on the Border to 
 unite runaway couples in wedlock. For this purpose he selected 
 the common, or green, between Graitnoy and Springfield, in 
 Dumfries-shire, a place called Megshill, the first Scottish ground 
 on entering the country from Cumberland ; there he commenced 
 business. In 1791 he settled in the then newly-built village of 
 Springfield, but the reputation of his impromptu marriage-temple 
 on Graitney Common, (or Gretna Green, as the English called it,) 
 had already so widely spread that the name of the place had 
 passed into a by-word for clandestine marriages. Paisley died 
 in 1814, but marriage-mongering had become a trade in Spring- 
 field, and several self-appointed parsons started up to fill the 
 oflBce. Pennant says that in 1771 a young couple might be 
 united "from two guineas a job to a dram of whisky'' by a 
 fisherman, a joiner, or a blacksmith ; but the prices rose much 
 higher afterwards, varying from £40 to half-a-guinea, and this 
 last sum was only accepted from pedestrian couples. As a rule, 
 the fee was settled by the post-boys from Carlisle, each patronis- 
 ing certain houses, and the hymeneal priests, knowing the value 
 of their patronage, permitted them to go snacks in the proceeds. 
 It is estimated that about 300 couples a year used to get married 
 in this off-hand manner. 
 
 Of our colonies, Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope 
 seem to be almost the only ones considered worthy the honour 
 of the signboard. Gibraltar became popular as soon as the ac- 
 quisition had been esteemed at its proper value. As for the Cape 
 of Good Hope, the frequency of this sign all over England seems 
 to render it probable that it was not so much adopted in honour 
 
 lery and other articles, which they carry in a box or basket, are called mars-ATa»cr«— 
 apparently from marcher^ to walk, and the above kraam. 
 
 * Skene, De Verborum Significatione at the End of his Lawes and Actes. Edinburght 
 1597. 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOORAPHY. 423 
 
 of the colony as to express the landlord's hope of success, and 
 therefore as a sort of eq divalent to the Hope and Anchor, or the 
 Hope.* The Jamaica tavern, too, may have been christened in 
 compliment to the birth-place of rum. There is a house with this 
 name in Bermondsey, which is one of the many houses stated in 
 our time to have been a residence of Oliver Cromwell. " The 
 building, of which only a moiety now remains, and that very 
 ruinous, the other having been removed years ago to make room 
 for modern erections, presents probably almost the same features 
 as when tenanted by the Protector. The carved quatrefoils and 
 flowers upon the staircase beams, the old-fashioned fastenings of 
 the doors — ^ bolts, locks, and bars' — the huge single gable, 
 (which in a modern hoase would be double,) even the divided 
 section, like a monstrous amputated stump, imperfectly plastered 
 over, patched here and there with planks, slates, and tiles, to keep 
 the wind and weather out, though it be very poorly — all are in 
 keeping ; and the glimmer of the gas, by which the old and 
 ruinous kitchen into which we strayed was dimly lighted, seemed 
 to * pale its ineffectual fires' in striving to illumine the old 
 black settles, and still older wainscot." t After the Eest oration, 
 this house seems , to have become a tavern, and here, according 
 to the homely, kind-hearted custom of the times, Pepys, on Sun- 
 day, April 14, 1667, took his wife and her maids to give them a 
 day's pleasure. " Over the water to the Jamaica house, where I 
 never was before, and then the girls did run wagers on the bowl- 
 ing green, and there with much pleasure spent little, and so 
 home." Subsequently, he frequently returned to this place, 
 which seems to have been the same he elsewhere calls The Half- 
 way House. Besides this, there is the Jamaica and Madeika 
 coffee-house, a well-known business club or tavern in St Michael's 
 Alley, Cornhill. 
 
 Only a few European nations and towns are represented. 
 Amongst the Bagford shopbills there is one of a perfumer, named 
 Dighton, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, sold " true Hungary 
 Water, all sorts of snuff and perfumes," &c. His shop was next 
 door to the King's Head Tavern at Chancery Lane End, and had 
 the sign of the City of Sevilla ; the woodcut above his shop- 
 bill presents a distant family resemblance to that place, and with 
 a little goodwill one may recognise the Alcazar, the Giralda, San 
 
 * See in this same chapter, p. 417, for particulars of a signboard at tne Cape, ex- 
 hibited by Farmer Peek. f " Fly Leaves," I80A. 
 
424 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Clementi, and San Juan de la Palma ; the view is taken from 
 the suburb of Triana, on the other side of the river. This 
 famous Henry Dighton," as he styles himself in an advertise- 
 ment in 1718, "sworn perfumer in ordinary to H. M. King 
 George," had chosen the sign of the City of Sevilla from the 
 fact of his importing Spanish snuff, the fashionable mixture in 
 those days, which the gallants dislodged with such airy elegance 
 from among the lace frills of their shirts and neckties. His suc- 
 cessor, Henry Coulthurst, promised " to furnish greater variety 
 of the choicest and truest snuff than any perfumer in England, 
 viz., Havana, Port St Mary's, Barcelona, Port Mahon, Seville, 
 plain Spanish, and fine Lisbon." These Spanish snuffs had come 
 greatly into fashion at the capture of Puerta St Maria, near 
 Cadiz, when the fleet, under Sir George Eooke, captured several 
 thousand barrels of snuff. But long before that time enormous 
 quantities of Spanish tobacco had been yearly imported into 
 England. 
 
 There was wont to come out of Spain," said Sir Edwin Sandys, in 1620, 
 " a great mass of money to the value of £100,000 per annum for our cloths 
 and other merchandises ; and now we have from thence for all our cloth and 
 merchandises nothing but tobacco : nay, that will not pay for all the to- 
 bacco we have from thence, but they have more from us in money every 
 year, £20,000 ; so there goes out of this kingdom as good as £120,000 for 
 tobacco every year."* 
 
 The Three Spanish Gypsies, in the New Exchange, was the 
 shop of the future " Monkey Duchess,^' the nickname given by 
 her aristocratic friends to Anne Monk, Duchess of Albemarle. 
 " She was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy, 
 and horse-shoer to Colonel Monk. In 1632 she was married, in 
 the church of St Lawrence Poultney, to Thomas Eadford, son of 
 Thomas Radford, late a farrier, servant to Prince Charles, and 
 resident in the Mews. She had a daughter who was born in 
 1634, and died in 1638. She lived with her husband at the 
 Three Spanish Gypsies, in the New Exchange, and sold wash- 
 balls, powder, gloves, and such things, and taught girls plain 
 work. About 1647, being a sempstress to Colonel Monk, she 
 used to carry him his linen. In 1648 her father and mother 
 died. The year after she fell out with her husband, and they 
 parted. But no certificate from any parish register appears re- 
 citing his burial. In 1652 she was married in the church of 
 St George, Southwark, to General Monk, and in the followint^ 
 
 * Parliamentary History, vol. i., p. 1195. 
 
QKOORAPIIY AND TOPOORAPHY. 
 
 year was delivered of a son, Cliristoplier, (afterwards the second 
 and last Duke of Albemarle,) who was suckled by Honour Mills, 
 who sold apples, herbs, and oysters."* What became of her first 
 husband, and when he died, is not known. 
 
 Venice was the sign of B. Martin, a bookseller in the Old 
 Bailey, circa 1640, adopted probably in honour of the Aldi, the 
 famous printers, who carried on business in this city. In the 
 reign of Charles II. there was a house of indifferent fame in 
 Moorfields, called the Russia House, whether opened during the 
 time that the Eussian ambassadors visited the king, or how it 
 obtained its name, is not known. The house became notorious 
 in 1667 through the trial of Gabriel Holmes and a band of in- 
 cendiaries, among whom were two young boys, sons of James 
 Montague of Lackham, grandsons of the Earl of Manchester. 
 The boys turned king's evidence, and Holmes was hanged. 
 Russia House was one of the places where they planned their 
 expeditions and spent their money : the object of their incendi- 
 arism, it came out at the trial, was simply that they might stea] 
 the goods which would be flung into the streets by the terrified 
 inmates of the burning houses. 
 
 The Antwerp tavern was a famous house behind the Ex- 
 change, in the seventeenth century, of which tokens are extant, 
 representing a view of Antwerp from the river. The extensive 
 trade of Flanders, in the middle ages and long after, made 
 Antwerp a favourite subject for signboards, it being the best 
 harbour in Flanders. In Dieppe there is still a house on the 
 Quai Henri IV., bearing a stone bas-relief sign of Antwerp, {la 
 ville d^AnverSy) with the date 1697 ; but this house and sign are 
 named, as early as 1645, in a MS. list of rents of houses in 
 Dieppe, due to the Archbishop of Rouen. 
 
 Dutchmen, in some instances, have been appointed the tutelar 
 saints of public-houses, on account of their reputed love for drink ; 
 thus we have the Two Dutchmen at Marsden, near Hudders- 
 field, and the Jovial Dutchman at Crick, in Derbyshire. Now, 
 though the Dutchman's joviality is questionable, yet he certainly 
 has at all times been reputed a heavy drinker. Shakespeare 
 names, " your swag-bellied Hollander;' along with the Dane and 
 German, as the only (though unsuccessful) rival of the English in 
 the art of hard drinking. Massinger, in his " Duke of Florence," 
 has bj similar remark ; and Sir Richard Baker, in his Chronicles^" 
 
 * See GenVs Mag.. Jan. 1792, p. 19. 
 
426 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 says that tlie English in these Dutch wars learned to be drunk- 
 ards, and as we do not like to do things by halves in this country, 
 we soon surpassed our masters." Decker remarks that " Drunk- 
 enness, which was once the Dutchman's headake, is now become 
 the Englishman's." ^ Upsy Dutch and upsy freeze (for op zyn 
 Dutchy' and " op zyn Vriesch,^' a la Dutch and ^ la Yriesch) are 
 terms constantly used by Decker to denote a very drunken con- 
 dition. Yet there was a time, long before the " Dutch wars,'' 
 when the English did not want any foreign masters to teach them 
 drinking ; how could it have been otherwise with descendants of 
 the beer-drinking Saxons and Danes? Malmesbury complains 
 that in his time " the English fashion was to sit bibbing whole 
 hours after dinner, as the Normane guise was to walke and get 
 up and downe in the stretes with great waines of idle serving 
 men following them ; " t and Hollinshed, who wrote at the very 
 time of the Dutch wars, mentions among the improvements 
 which old men in his time observed, was that the farmers could 
 pay their rent without selling a cow or a horse, as they had been 
 wont to do in former times, " owing to too much attention to the 
 ale-home^ and too little to work." 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the Jovial Dutchman is a very good sign 
 for licensed victuallers, since the general opinion is : — 
 " Death's not to be ~, so Seneca doth think, 
 But Dutchmen say 'tis death to cease to drink." % 
 
 Besides drinking, the Dutchman has long had a reputation foi 
 smoking, whence the tobacconists of the last century used fre- 
 quently to have on their sign, a Scotchman, a Dutchman, and a 
 sailor, with tbe following rhyme : — 
 
 We three are engaged in one cause, 
 I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws." 
 A tobacconist in Kingsland Eoad had the same men, but a 
 different reading of the text : — 
 
 " This Indian weed is good indeed, 
 Puff on, keep up the joke, 
 'Tis the best, 'twill stand the test, 
 Either to chew or smoke." § 
 
 The introduction of coffee produced signs of various sultans, 
 but the Tuek's Head may, perhaps, date from earlier times, 
 
 * Tho. Decker's A Knight's Conjuring. 
 
 t Quoted in Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent, p. 356. 
 
 i Witt's Recreation, 1640. 
 
 § Banks collection of shopbills, where amateurs of tobacco curiositiea may find S 
 Very rich collection of all sorts of tobacco-paper rhymes, signs, &c. 
 
OEOGRAPBY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 427 
 
 possessing an origin similar to the Saracen's Head. The Turks 
 throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, 
 were a common topic of conversation, and the bugbear of the 
 European nations. This is well exemplified in the church- 
 wardens' accounts of St Helen s, Abingdon, where the following 
 entry occurs : — " Anno mdlxv — 8 of Q. Eliz. — payde for two 
 bokes of common prayer agaynste invading of the Turke, 0. 6." 
 That year the Turks had made a descent upon the isle of Malta, 
 where they besieged the town and castle of St Michael ; but upon 
 the approach of the fleet of the Order, they broke up the siege 
 and suffered a considerable loss in their flight. During the war 
 of Emperor Maximilian against the Turks in Hungary, similar 
 prayer-books were annually purchased for the parish. The first 
 prototypes of newspapers, also, were the printed despatches concern- 
 ing the battles and engagements of the emperor with the Turks,'^ 
 and even at the end of the seventeenth century no newspaper 
 was complete without its news from the Danube and " move- 
 ments of the Turks." One of the earliest patents granted for 
 pistols, contains a clause that square balls are not to be used, 
 except against the Turks." The number of Turk's Heads in Lon- 
 don in the seventeenth century was considerable ; not less than 
 eight trades tokens of different houses with this sign are known 
 to exist. 
 
 In 1667, Robert Boulter, at the Turk's Head in Bishopsgate, 
 published the first edition of Milton's " Paradise Lost." It was 
 with difficulty that the author sold the copy for Jive pounds ! he 
 was to receive £5 more after the sale of the 1300 copies which 
 comprised the first impression, and £5 more after the sale of each 
 new impression of 1300 copies each. "And what a poor con- 
 sideration was this," says one of his biographers, " for such an 
 inestimable performance," and how much more do others get by 
 the works of great authors than the authors themselves ! And 
 yet we find that Hoyle, the author of the " Treatise on the 
 Game of Whist," after having disposed of the whole of the first 
 impression, sold the copyright to the bookseller for two hundred 
 guineas. 
 
 Dr Johnson used often to take supper at the Turk's Head in the 
 Strand : I encourage this house, (said he ;) for the mistress of it 
 
 * In the Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, London 1816, toI. iii., p. 116, 
 Buch a paper is given, entitled: "The triumphant victory of the Imperyall Mageste 
 against the Turkes the xxvi day of Septembre, the yere of our lord mcccccxxxii. in 
 SteuermaiTce by a Capytayne named Michael Meschsaer." 
 
428 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 is a good, civil woman, and has not much business."* At 
 another Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, Soho, Johnson formed, in 
 1763, that well-known club, which was long without a name, but 
 which after Garrick's funeral became distinguished by the name 
 of the Literary Club. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds had the merit of being the first proposer of it, to 
 which Johnson acceded, and the original members were Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds, Dr Johnson, Mr Edmund Burke, Dr Nugent, Mr Beauclerck, Mr 
 Langton, Dr Goldsmith, Mr Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met 
 at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, one evening every week, at seven, 
 and generally continued their conversation till a pretty late hour. This 
 club has been gradually increased to its present [1791] number thirty-five. 
 After about ten years, instead of supping weekly, it was resolved to dine 
 together once a fortnight during the meeting of Parliament." f 
 
 After the death of the landlord of this house, the club removed 
 to the Prince in Sackville Street ; and after two or three more 
 changes, it finally settled down at the Thatched House, St 
 James's. The original portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, presented 
 to the club by the painter himself, is still preserved ; one of its 
 peculiarities is, that the artist has represented himself wearing 
 spectacles. The club is still in existence, under the name of the 
 Dilettanti Club. " The Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho," says 
 Moser in his Memorandum-book, " was, more than fifty years 
 since, removed from a tavern of the same sign, the corner of 
 Greek and Compton Streets. This place was a kind of head- 
 quarters for the Loyal Association during the rebellion of 1745." \ 
 
 About that time there was a waiter in this tavern, who, like 
 Tennyson's waiter at the Cock, Templebar, had obtained consider- 
 able celebrity. His name was Little Will, On an engraving 
 dated 1752, he is represented as a small man with a large head 
 and a periwig, dressed in a long apron, with a pair of snuflfers 
 suspended from the waist. The Rev. Mr Huddersford, of Trinity 
 College, Oxford, in a letter to Granger, says, — 
 
 " Little Will, as I have heard, was a great favourite with the gentlemen 
 of the coffee-house ; there is a print representing him in his constant atti- 
 tude, apparently insensible to anything around him, but swallowing every 
 article of politicks that dropped, which, I am told, he understands better 
 than any of his masters." 
 
 The Three Tueks was a sign at Norwich in 1750,§ and even 
 now, though the crescent is decidedly in the "last quarter," 
 
 * Boswell's Johnson, vol. i., p. 304. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 327. 
 
 X Moser's Memorandum-Book, M.S. dated 1799, as quoted in Notes and Queriett 
 December 22, 1849. 
 § Gent 's Mag., March 1842. 
 
QEOGRAPHT AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 429 
 
 there are still signs of Turks to be foiuid, as tlie Turk ^nd 
 Slave, Brick Lane, Spitalfields ; the Great Tuek (^. e., the 
 Sultan) at Wolverhampton — the last is of considerable antiquity, 
 for in 1600 it was the sign of John Barnes, a bookseller in Fleet 
 Street. One of the most opulent Turkish towns was commem- 
 orated by the Smyrna coffee-house, in Pall Mall, a fashionable 
 coffee-house in the reign of Queen Anne, when the wits and 
 beaux used to take their constitutional in St James' Park, and 
 then go to the Smyrna, where, sitting before the open windows, 
 they could see the ladies carried past in their sedans or coaches, 
 on their return from the Mall. This coffee-house seems to have 
 had a reputation for politics. In the Tatler, (No. 10,) a 
 " cluster of wise heads " is said to sit every evening from the 
 left side of the fire at the Smyrna to the door ; and in No. 7 8, 
 the public is informed that the seat of learning is now removed 
 from the corner of the chimney on the left hand towards the 
 window, to the round table in the middle of the floor, over 
 against the fire ; a revolution much lamented by the porters and 
 chairmen, who were greatly edified through a pane of glass that 
 remained broken all the last summer." Prior, Swift, and Pope, 
 were constant visitors at this house. 
 
 There was a Grecian coffee-house in Devereux Court, Strand, 
 which for nearly two centuries was equally well frequented. It 
 derived its name probably from having been opened by a 
 Greek, the natives of that country having been among the first to 
 open coffee-houses in London. It was a very fashionable house 
 in the time of the Spectators and Tatlers: My face is likewise 
 very well known at the Grecian,^' says Addison in Speetaior, No. 
 ] . It seems generally to have been frequented by literati and 
 savants, some of them rather hot-headed : — 
 
 " I remember two gentlemen, who were constant companions, disputing 
 one evening at the Grecian coffee-house, concerning the accent of a Greek 
 word. This dispute was carried to such a length that the two friends 
 thought proper to determine it with their swords ; for this purpose they 
 steptinto Devereux Court, where one of them (whose name, if I rememoer 
 right, was Fitzgerald) was run through the body, and died on the spot." * 
 
 In this coffee-house Mrs Mapp, the famous bone-setter, (see p. 
 113) performed her cures before Sir Hans Sloane : — 
 
 " On Saturday and yesterday, Mrs Mapp performed several operations at 
 the Grecian coffee-ho' ise, particularly one upon a niece of Sir Hans Sloane, 
 
 * Dr King's Anecdotes, p. 117. 
 
430 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 to Lis great satisfaction and her credit. The patient had her shoulder-bone 
 out for about nine years." — Grub Street Journal, October 21, 1736. 
 
 The cofFee-liouse was closed in 1843 ; a bust of Essex is in 
 front of the house it formerly occupied with the inscription, 
 "This is Devereux Court, 167G." 
 
 Various reasons are given to account for the sign of the Sara- 
 cen's Head. " When our countrymen came home from fighting 
 with the Saracens, and were beaten by them, they pictured them 
 with huge, big, terrible faces, (as you still see the sign of the 
 Saracen's Head is,) when, in truth, they were like other men. 
 But this they did to save their own credit." Or the sign may 
 have been adopted by those who had visited the Holy Land, 
 either as pilgrims or when fighting the Saracens. Others, again, 
 hold that it was first set up in compliment to the mother of 
 Thomas a Becket, who was the daughter of a Saracen : formerly 
 the sign was very general. During the time of the Common- 
 wealth, the Saracen's Head in Islington was a place of resort for 
 the Londoners. In the " Walks of Islington and Hogsden, with 
 the Humours of Wood Street Compter," a comedy by Thomas 
 Jordan, gentleman, 1648, the scene is laid at that tavern. It was 
 also the sign of the house occupied by Sir Christopher Wren in 
 Friday Street, which remained almost unchanged till it was taken 
 down in 1844. The Saracen's Head, Snow Hill, is one of the 
 last remaining, and, at the same time, one of the oldest, being 
 named in Dick Tarlton's Jests as the Sarracen's Head without 
 Newgate /' and Stow says, " next to this church [St Sepulchre's 
 in the Bailey] is a fair and large inn for receipt of travellers, and 
 hath to sign the Sarrazen's Head." The courtyard has still many 
 of the characteristics of an old English inn, with galleries all 
 round leading to the bed-rooms, and a spacious gate, through 
 which the dusty mail-coaches used to rumble in, the tired pas- 
 sengers creeping forth, and thanking their stars in having escaped 
 the highwaymen, and the holes and sloughs of the road. How 
 many hearts, beating with hope on their first entry into London, 
 have passed under this gate, that now lie mouldering in the quiet 
 little churchyards of the metropolis : some finding a resting-place 
 in Westminster, whilst others ceased to beat at Tyburn. It was 
 at this inn that Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited upon 
 Squeers, the Yorkshire schoolmaster. Mr Dickens describes the 
 old tavern as it was in the last years of our mail-coaching, when it 
 
 * Sftlden's Table-Talk. 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 was one of tlie most important places for arrivals and departures 
 in London : — 
 
 " Near to tlie jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield also, and the 
 Compter and the bustle and noise of the city ; and just on that particular 
 part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastwards seriously think 
 of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going 
 westwards not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coach-yard of the Sara- 
 cen's Head Inn, its portals guarded by two Saracens' heads and shoulders, 
 which it was once the pride and glory of the choice spirits of this metro- 
 polis to pull down at night, but which have for some time remained in 
 undisturbed tranquillity, possibly because this species of humour is now 
 confined to Saint James's parish, where door-knockers are preferred as 
 being more portable, and bell-wires esteemed as convenient toothpicks. 
 Whether this be the reason or not, there they are, frowning upon you from 
 each side of the gateway; and the inn itself, garnished with another Sara- 
 cen's Head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard ; while from the 
 door of the hind boot of all the red coaches that are standing therein, there 
 glares a small Saracen's Head with a twin expression to the large Saracen's 
 Head below, so that the general appearance of the pile is of the Saracenic 
 order." 
 
 Blackamoors and other dark-skinned foreigners have always 
 possessed considerable attractions as signs for tobacconists, and 
 sometimes also for public-houses. Negroes, with feathered head- 
 dresses and kilts, smoking pipes, are to be seen outside tobacco- 
 shops on the Continent, as well as in England. Thus, in the 
 seventeenth century, there was one in Amsterdam with the fol- 
 lowing inscription : — 
 
 " Josua badt den Heere van herten aan 
 Dat de zon en maan bleef stille staan. 
 Puik van Verinis en goe Blaan 
 Haalt men hier in den Indiaan." * 
 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Virginian" 
 was the most common in England, owing to the first tobacco 
 having been imported from that country : — 
 
 " They returned nomewards, passing by Virginia, a colony which Sir 
 "Walter Raleigh had there planted, from whence Drake brings home with 
 him Walter Lane, who was the first that brought tobacco into England, 
 which the Indians take against crudities of the stomach. " f 
 
 Publicans have a strange fancy for Indian Kings, Queens, 
 and Chiefs, thus bearing out Trinculo's assertion of the nation 
 at large : — " When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame 
 beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian^ There is a 
 
 * "Joshua prayed to the Lord from the bottom of his heart, 
 
 That the sun and moon might stand still. 
 
 The best Varinas and good tobacco in the leaf 
 
 Are sold here at the Indian." 
 t Sir Richard Baker's Chronicles, anno 15S8. 
 
432 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 sculptured sign of an Indian Chief at Shoreditcli^ Laving all 
 the appearance of an old ship's figure-head ; and, as a nomen ac 
 prceterea nihil, it figures in many places. In Dolphin Lane, 
 Boston, (Line.,) there used formerly to be a sign with some 
 fiinciful, masked-ball dressed figures on it, which were meant to 
 represent the Three Kings of Cologne ; but they conveyed so 
 little the idea of those holy personages, that the profanum vulgm 
 called them the Three Merry Devils. Eventually, by a meta- 
 morphosis more strange than any in Ovid, these three merry 
 devils were transformed into one very strangely dressed female 
 called the Indian Queen. The African Chief, in Sommers- 
 town, is evidently a variety of these Indian chiefs. 
 
 Another sign of venerable antiquity is the Black Boy. That 
 this is of old standing, appears from an entry in Machyn's Diary : 
 The XXX day of Desember 1562, was slayne in John Street, 
 Gylbard Goldsmith, dwellyng at the sene of the Blake Boy, in 
 the Cheap, by ys wyff's sun." 
 
 This Black Boy seems to have been a tobacconist's sign from 
 the first ; for in Ben Jonson's " Bartholomew Fair " we find : — 
 " I thought he would have run mad o' the Black Boy in Bucklers- 
 bury, that takes the scurvy roguy tobacco there." — Act L, Scene L 
 In the seventeenth century, it was the sign of a celebrated 
 ordinary in Southwark : — 
 
 " Jove, and all his hous'hold a'ter 
 
 Him, yesterday went crosse the water, 
 
 To th' signe of the Black Boy in Southwarke, 
 
 To th' ordinary, to find his mouth worke. 
 
 Here he intends to fuddle 's nose 
 
 This fortnight yet, under the rose." 
 
 Homer a la Mode, 1665. 
 
 At the Black Boy in Newgate Street, the Calves' Head Club 
 was sometimes held. It was not restricted to any particular house, 
 but moved yearly from one place to another, as it was found 
 most convenient. An axe was hung up in the club-room crowned 
 with laurel : the bill of fare consisted of calves' heads, dressed in 
 various ways ; a large pike, with a small one in his mouth, (an 
 emblem of tyranny ;) a large cod's head ; and a boar's head, to 
 indicate stupidity and bestiality.* 
 
 One of the early editions of Cocker's Arithmetic was published 
 at the Black Boy. Such was the fame of this work, that even as 
 the Pythagorians swore in verba magistris, and ot/jrog ht^ settled 
 
 • See Secret History of the Calves' Head Club. London, 170ft. 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 433 
 
 all questions, so our ancestors proved their points " according to 
 Cocker." The title of the work we must not abbreviate : — 
 
 Cocker's Arithmetic : Being a plain and familiar method, suitable to 
 the meanest capacity, for the full understanding of that incomparable art;, 
 as now taught by the ablest schoolmasters in city and country. Composed 
 by Thomas Cocker, late practioner in the art of writing, arithmetic, and 
 engraving. Being that so long since promised to the world. Perused and 
 published by John Hawkins, writing-master, near St George's Church, in 
 Southwark. By the author's correct copy, and commended to the world 
 by many eminent Mathematicians and writing-masters in and near London, 
 Licensed September 1677. London: printed by J. R. for T. P., and are to 
 be sold by John Back, at the Black Boy, on London Bridge. 1694. 12o." 
 
 The Black Girl is a variety of this sign at Clareborough, 
 Notts. So, too, appears to be the Aeab Boy, an ale-house on 
 the road between Putney and East-Sheen. The Two Black Boys 
 occurs on one of the London trades tokens, where they are repre- 
 sented shaking hands. The Black Boy and Comb was, in 1730, 
 a shop on Ludgate Hill, either a perfumer's or a mercer's, for 
 he advertises "right French Hungary water, at Is. 3d. a half 
 pint bottle; fine Florence oil, at 2s. per flask; right orange flower 
 water, at Is. 6d. per flask; Barbadoes citron water, at 14s. pei 
 quart; and all sort of Bermudas, Leghorn, and fine silk hats for 
 ladies," &c.* The combination on the sign arose from the combs 
 dangling at the doors of the shops where they were sold. 
 
 The Black Boy and Camel (doubtless a black boy leading a 
 camel) was not many years ago the sign of a tavern in Leadenhall 
 Street, where it was already in existence in the year 1700. 
 
 " rpHE Annual feast for the Parish of St Dunstan, in Stepney, being 
 X revived, will be kept the 29th instant, at the King's Head, in Stepney, 
 where Tickets may be had, and at Tho. Warham's, at the Blach Boy and 
 Camel, Leaden Hall Street," &c. — London Gazette, August 15-19, 1700. 
 
 These parish feasts show most unmistakably the general con- 
 viviality of the time. Natives of the same county used also to 
 have their public feasts. Thus the London Gazette for IMay 30 
 to June 3, 1700, advertises "the annual feast for gentlemen of 
 the county of Huntingdon;" and the Gazette for October 21-24, 
 " the anniversary feast for the gentlemen, natives of the county 
 of Kent." It is easy to imagine the attraction of such festivals 
 in times when travelling was both very expensive and very 
 dangerous, — when the post was badly conducted and extravagant 
 in its charges ; and, moreover, but few people could write. Such 
 meetings, then, were the only ties that connected the provincial 
 
 * Country Journal^ or Craftsman, Saturday, April 25, 17o0. 
 
 2 E 
 
434 
 
 THE IIISTOBY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 residing in London witli the home of liis childhood. At such 
 times friends brought up in the same town or village could meet 
 each other, talk over bygone times, call up the recollections of 
 early years, remember mutual friends, and drink a bumper to 
 those left behind. Sometimes these feasts took a religious turn, 
 when a native of the county or district preached in the neigh- 
 bouring church or chapel. Blessed occasions were these religious 
 yet merry feasts of the olden time. But the " march of intel- 
 lect" — that is to say, improved locoinotion, the spread of reading, 
 writing, and high notions — have done aAvay with these meetings 
 of warm hearts and jovial tempers as things low and vulgar. 
 
 Jerusalem was sure to figure early on signboards of those 
 inns at which pilgrims, on their way to the Holy Land, were 
 wont to put up ; and long after pilgrimages were discontinued it 
 was still retained as a sign. In 1657 we find it in Fleet Street. 
 What the sign was like it is impossible now to say, but on the 
 trades token of the house the Holy City is represented by one 
 single building. There is another token extant of a house, also 
 in Fleet Street, without date or name of the shop, on which 
 there is a view of a town, with the usual conventional represen- 
 tation of the temple of Solomon. It was equally common in 
 France. Eegnard mentions one in Nogent : — 
 
 Entrant dans la bonne ville 
 Cit^ Nogent 
 
 Jerusalem fut Tasile 
 Soleil couchant, 
 
 Bon sejour pour le pelerin, 
 
 Vin du Vaulx, et le bon vin." * 
 On a house in 'the Rue Etoupee, at Rouen, there is a stone carved 
 sign of Jerusalem, represented as a fortified town, with a figure 
 arriving on each side, evidently meant for pilgrims. A similar 
 idea seems to be conveyed by the sign of Trip to Jerusalem, 
 a public-house in Nottingham, and the Pilgrim in Coventry. 
 There is still an Old Jerusalem tavern in Clerkenwell, so called 
 after the Knights of St John, of whose hospital this house was 
 the principal gateway. 
 
 Mount Pleasant is a name frequently bestowed upon public- 
 houses, not always with any allusion to such a locality, but simply 
 OQ account of its being an alluring name of the same maudlin class 
 as Cottage of Content, Bank of Friendship, &c. There is 
 
 * "On entering the good town of Nogent by sunset, I put up at the Jerusalem, which 
 offers good accommodation for travellers, wine of Vaulx, and that good." 
 
OEOORAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
 
 435 
 
 said to be a mountain of that name in America, which obtained 
 some celebrity from being the locality on which the sassafras 
 {Orchis mascula) was gathered, the plant which produces the 
 saloop. This drink came in vogue at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. Eeide's coffee-house in Fleet Street was the 
 first respectable house where it was sold. When it was opened 
 in 1719, the following lines, painted on a board, hung in front of 
 the house ; in latter times, until the closing of the establishment 
 in 1833, they were preserved in the coffee-room : — 
 *' Come all degrees now passing by, 
 
 My charming liquor taste and try; 
 
 To Lockyer* come and drink your fill, 
 
 Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill. 
 
 The fumes of wines, punch, drams, or beer, 
 
 It will expel ; your spirits cheer ; 
 
 From drowsiness your spirits free ; 
 
 Sweet as a rose your breath shall be. 
 
 Come taste and try, and speak your mind, 
 
 Such rare ingredients here are joined. 
 
 Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind." 
 
 Lockyer had begun life with half-a-crown, and by selling salop, 
 or saloop, at Fleet-ditch, amassed sufficient to open the above 
 place in Fleet Street, where he died worth £1000,in March 1739.t 
 
 Our old friend Pepys mentions going to China Hall, but 
 gives no further particulars. It is not unlikely that this was the 
 same place which, in the summer of 1777, was opened as a 
 theatre. Whatever its use in former times, it was at that period 
 the warehouse of a paper manufacturer. In those days the 
 West-end often visited the entertainments of the East, and 
 the new theatre was sufficiently patronised to enable the 
 proprietors to venture upon some embellishments. The prices 
 were — boxes, 3s. ; pit, 2s. ; gallery. Is. ; and the time of com- 
 mencing varied from half-past six to seven o'clock, according 
 to the season. The Wonder," " Love in a Village," the " Co- 
 mical Courtship," and the " Lying Valet," were among the plays 
 performed. The famous Cooke was one of the actors in the 
 season of 1778. In that same year the building suffered the 
 usual fate of all theatres, and was utterly destroyed by fire. 
 
 One name we omitted to notice when speaking of signs de- 
 rived from European cities — Copenhagen House. Until very 
 recently, this stood isolated in the fields north of the metropolis, 
 
 ♦ The landlord 
 
 t Head's Wedcly Journal, March SI, 1739. 
 
436 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 near tlie old road to Higligate. It was said to liave derived its 
 name from the fact of a Danish prince or ambassador having 
 resided in it during a great plague in London. Another tradition 
 is to the effect that, early in the seventeenth century, upon some 
 political occasion, great numbers of Danes left that kingdom, and 
 came to London ; whereupon the house was opened by an emi- 
 grant from Copenhagen, as a place of resort for his countrymen 
 resident in the metropolis. This tradition probably refers to the 
 reign of James I., who was visited in London by his brother-in- 
 law, the King of Denmark, at which time it is very probable 
 that there was a considerable influx of persons from the Danish 
 capital. Coopen-Hagen is the name given to the place in the 
 map accompanying Camden's Britannia, 1695. For many years 
 previous to its demolition, the house had a great reputation 
 amongst Cockney excursionists, and its tea-gardens, skittle-ground, 
 Dutch pins, and particularly Fives Play, were great attractions. 
 For this last game especially the place was very famous. The , 
 house possessed another attraction. From its windows a very 
 fine view of London, the Thames, and the Surrey hills beyond, 
 was obtainable. The ^^"ew Cattle Market now occupies its site, 
 and a modern public- house only perpetuates the name. 
 
 Besides the above-mentioned geographical signs, we have 
 others of more modern introduction, such as the South Austea- < 
 LTAN in Cadogan Street, Chelsea, and the North Pole in Oxford 
 Street, which last commemorates one of those equally brave and < 
 unsuccessful expeditions that have taken place every now and 
 then since Admiral Frobisher first started on the discovery of ' 
 the Meta Incognita. 
 
 There exists a class of signs in some respects geographical, yet, 
 from their indefinite character, they are more adapted for insertion 
 in the following chapter than here. We allude to such tavern 
 decorations as that picture of the fiery sun going down behind a 
 hill, which is called The World's End, at St George's, near 
 Bristol ; The First and Last Inn in England, a sign which 
 may be seen in many other localities besides at the Land's End, 
 in Cornwall ; and No Place Inn, a public-house in the suburbs 
 of Plymouth, the sign representing an old woman standing at the 
 door, accosting her husband, just arrived — " Where have you 
 been f ' " No place." Many others of an equally indefinite char- 
 acter might be given here, but they would be found to be even 
 less topographical than those just named. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 Animals performing human actions, or dressed in human gar- 
 ments, are great items in signboard humour. This is a kind of 
 comicality undoubtedly dating from the first development of 
 human wit. The Batromyomachia" is one of the oldest per- 
 formances of the same description in literature, but the joke was 
 already too well understood at the period that piece was produced 
 to have been a first attempt. The Fable was the higher walk of 
 art in this branch, the simple Caricature the lower. 
 
 Numerous Egyptian, Greek, and Eoman caricatures of animals 
 personating men have come down to us ; from them this conceit 
 was borrowed by the mediaeval limners. Their MSS. teem with 
 such subjects ; and so much was this kind of humour relished 
 at that period, that even in church decoration the caricatures of 
 animals w^ere liberally mixed up with the sacred subjects of 
 biblical history. Not only the fable, conferring a moral lesson, 
 but even the plain and unpretending animal-caricature was ad- 
 mitted indiscriminately with representations of saints and miracles. 
 Thus the well-known sign of Pig and Whistle is seen in more 
 than one church. In the stall carving of Winchester Cathedral 
 a sow is represented sitting on her haunches, playing on a 
 whistle, the companion carving to which is a pig playing on a 
 violin, in accompaniment to which another pig appears to be 
 singing. These musical pigs are also common in illustrated 
 MSS. In Harl. MS., 4379, a sow is represented dressed in 
 the full fashion of the fifteenth century, with horned head-dress 
 and stilted heels, playing on a harp. 
 
 In old towns, such as Chester, Macclesfield, Coventry, &c., 
 the Pig and Whistle is still found on signboards. Very dif- 
 ferent and learned explanations have been given for its origin, 
 some saying it was a corruption of the pig and ivassail hoiul, or 
 of the pix and housel ; others that it is a facetious rendering of 
 the Bear and Eagged Staff. Very lately the correspondents of 
 a learned periodical have busied themselves in claiming for it a 
 Danish-Saxon descent, as pige-washail, our Ladies' Salutation. 
 The Scotch also claim it as their own ; pig being a pot or pot- 
 sherd j whistle, small change j and " to go to pigs and ivhistles/' a 
 
438 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 free translation of "going to pot^^' which Mr Jamieson states 
 (quoting two examples) to have been at one time a colloquial 
 phrase. I^on nostrum est tantas commoner e lites ; but the proverb 
 says, "a hog though in armour is still but a hog;" and there- 
 fore we are inclined to think that a pig with a whistle is still 
 but a pig, and not relating in any way to the Virgin ; and we 
 can see nothing in the Pig and Whistle but simply a freak of the 
 mediaeval artist. 
 
 As little hidden meaning is there in the Cat and Fiddle, still 
 a great favourite in Hampshire, the only connexion between the 
 animal and the instrument being that the strings are made from 
 the cat's entrails, and that a small fiddle is called a kit, and 
 a small cat a Jcitteii. Besides, they have been united from time 
 immemorial in the nursery rhyme — 
 
 " Heigh diddle diddle, 
 The cat and the fiddle." 
 
 Amongst other explanations offered is, the one that it may have 
 originated with the sign of a certain Caton jidele, a staunch Pro- 
 testant in the reign of Queen Mary, and only have been changed 
 into the cat and fiddle by corruption ; but, if so, it must have 
 lost its original appellation very soon, for as early as 1589 we 
 find " Henry Carr, signe of the Catte and Fidle in the Old 
 Chaunge." Formerly, there was a Cat and Fiddle at Norwich, the 
 cat being represented playing upon a fiddle, and a number of 
 mice dancing round her. The bagpipes being the national instru- 
 ment of the Irish, the sign is there frequently changed into the 
 Cat and Bagpipes. This was also, some twenty or thirty years 
 ago, a public- and chop-house, of considerable notoriety, at the 
 corner of Downing Street, Westminster, where the clerks of the 
 Foreign Office used to lunch ; at the present day, it is the sign 
 of a public-house near Moate, King's Co., Ireland. The Ape 
 and Bagpipes occurs on trades tokens as the sign of John 
 Tayler, in St Ann's Lane. This, too, was a joke not confined to 
 our country, for in the marginal illustrations to the title-page of 
 "P. Dioscoridse Pharmacorum Simplicum,'' dijc, printed at 
 Strasburg by John Schot in 1529, an ape is represented playing 
 on the bagpipes, and a camel dancing to the tune, with these 
 words, KaiJ.Yi'kov d'AXd^rev. The French were equally fond of this 
 kind of caricature. The Spinning Sow (la Truie qui file) is 
 common even at the present day, and has given its name to more 
 than one street in Paris and other cities. It is said to have 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 439 
 
 originated from a legend : — A certain Christian queen, Pedauca, 
 whose honour was in danger, imitated the chaste heroines of 
 mythology ; but, instead of praying to be metamorphosed into a 
 tree or a bird, she merely asked to have one of her feet changed 
 into a goose's foot, which was enough to frighten her ardent lover 
 away.* Another young lady, under similar circumstances, pre- 
 ferred going the whole hog, — to use a colloquialism, — and was 
 changed into a sow, merely praying to be permitted to keep her 
 spindle, as a token of her former condition : hence the sign. It 
 is also — (and hence, probably, the legend of the metamorphosis, 
 to remove the prejudices of the godly) — represented in relief 
 carving on the exterior of the cathedral of Chartres. In the 
 Fishmarket of the same town there is a stone carved sign of a 
 Donkey playing on a Hurdy-gurdy, (L'Ane qui veille.) Both 
 this sign and another, representing a Cat jylciying at Racket, (La 
 Chatte qui pelote,) have transmitted their names to streets 
 in Paris. The French seem to have delighted above all things 
 in such comicalities. Besides those named above, they had the 
 Fishing Cat, (La Chatte qui peche,) the Dancing Goat, (La 
 Chevre qui dance,) both of which Walpole mentions. We have 
 one modern sign in London of this class — namely, the Whistling 
 Oyster, the name of an oyster-shop in Drury Lane. 
 
 The Jackanapes on Horseback was, unfortunately for the 
 monkeys, a painful truth. A jackanapes or monkey on horseback 
 was generally the winding-up of a bear or bull baiting at Paris 
 Garden. Hollinshed, in his Chronicles, anno 15 62, relates how, 
 at the reception of the Danish ambassadors at Greenwich — 
 
 " For the diversion of the populace, there was a horse with an ape on 
 his back which highly pleased them, so that they expressed their inward 
 conceived joy and delight with shrill shouts and variety of gestures." 
 The inward conceived joy," we may safely conclude, was not 
 expressed by either the monkey or the horse, particularly when 
 we remember that in those days dogs were often let in the ring 
 to frighten both the horse and its animal Mazeppa. The preval- 
 ence of this sport is to be inferred from an admonition to Parlia- 
 ment by Tho. Cartwriglit, published in 1572, in order to show 
 the impropriety of an established form of prayer for the church 
 services, in which he remarks that the clergyman 
 
 Posteth it over as fast as he can galope, for eyther he has two places to 
 
 * The "goose's foot" she obtained was most probably that at the corner of her eye — 
 i.e., she became an old woman— for the French call patte d'oie— goose's foot— that "first 
 attack of time upon beauty which we term the crow's foot. 
 
440 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 serve, or else there are some games to be playde in the afternoon, as lying 
 for the whetstone,* heathenish dauncing for the ring, a beare or a bull to 
 be baited, or else a jackanapes to ride on horsehacTce, or an interlude to 
 be playde in the church. We speak not of [bell-j ringing after matins is 
 done." 
 
 Not much more than ten years ago, the good people of Paris 
 were, every Thursday afternoon, in the summer, entertained in 
 the Hippodrome, with "jackanapes on horseback," dressed up 
 like Arabs, and followed by miniature chasseurs d'A frique, to the 
 great gratification of our martial neighbours. This sign is named 
 in an advertisement, of the year 1700, for a mare stolen by a 
 '4usty black man with a brown coat,"t notice of the mare to be 
 given " to Mr John Wright, at the JacJcanapes on Horseback," 
 in Cheapside. The grinning, or, as it was written, " Grenning 
 Iackanapes," is a sign mentioned by Eliot in his " Fruits for 
 the French,'' or " Parlement of Pratlers," 1593, " ouer against the 
 Vnicorne in the lewrie." The Hog in Aemour, in Hanging 
 Sword Court, Fleet Street, is mentioned in an advertisement, j in 
 1678, as the place where there was to be sold "seacole sutt for 
 the great improvement of all sorts of lands, as well as gardens 
 and hop grounds." It is named amongst the absurd London signs 
 in the Spectator 28, April 2, 1711, and is still occasionally seen, 
 as in James' Street, Dublin. Though the sign does not exist anj 
 longer in London, yet the name is not lost among the lower orders, 
 it being a favourite epithet applied to rifle volunteers by coster- 
 mongers, street fishmongers, and such like. A jocular name 
 for this sign is the ''pig in misery^ There is also a Goat ik 
 Armour on the Narrow Quay, Bristol, and a Goat in Boots on 
 the Fulham Road, Little Chelsea. In 1663 this house was called 
 
 * a whetstone was anciently the name given in derision to a liar. The reason of it 
 is explained in the following rhymes under an old engraving in the Bridgewater collec- 
 tion, representing a man with a whetstone in his hand : — 
 
 " The whettstone is a man that all men know, 
 Yet many on him doe much cost bestowe : 
 Hee's us'd almost in every shoppe, but why? 
 An edge must needs be set on every lye." 
 How old is this connexion between lies and whetstones may be seen from Stow: — "Of 
 the like counterfeit physition have I noted (in the Summarie of my Chronicles, anno 
 1382,) to be set on horsebacke, his face to the horsetaile, the same taile in his hand as a 
 bridle, a collar of jordans about his necke, a whetstone on his breast, and so led through 
 the citie of London with ringing of basons, and banished."— /S^oty's Chronicle^ Howe's edi- 
 tion, 1614, p. 604. It is a curious coincidence that in France and Germany a knife — the 
 Rodomont knife — was handed over to outrageous liars. A vestige of this custom was 
 still preserved at the university of Bonn at the end of the last century, where, when ona 
 of the company at the students' mess drew the long bow a little too strongly, it was cus- 
 tomaiT for all who sat at the table, without making any remarks, to lay their dinner 
 knives on the top of their glasses, all pointing towards the offender, 
 t London Gazette, Dec. 23-26, 1700. J Ihid., Jan. 10-14, 1678. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC, 
 
 441 
 
 the Goat, and enjoyed the right of commonage for two cows and 
 one heifer upon Chelsea Heath. 
 
 " How the goat became equipped in boots, and the designation of the 
 house changed, have been the subject of various conjectures, the most pro- 
 bable of which is, that it originated in a corruption of the latter part of the 
 Dutch legend — 
 
 * Mercurius is der Goden Boode' 
 (Mercury is the messenger of the gods,) — 
 which being divided between each side of the sign, bearing the figure of 
 a Mercury — a sign commonly used in the early part of the last century [?] 
 to denote that post-horses were to be obtained — ' der Goden Boode' became 
 freely translated into English, * the Goat in Boots.' To Le Blond * is at- 
 tributed the execution of this sign and its motto ; but whoever the original 
 artist may have been, or the intermediate re-touchers or re-painters of the 
 god, certain it is that the pencil of Morland, in accordance with the desire 
 of the landlord, either transformed the Petasus of Mercury into the horned 
 head of a goat, his talaria into spurs upon boots of huge dimension, and 
 his caduceus into a cutlass, or thus decorated the original sign, thereby 
 liquidating a score which he had run up here, without any other means of 
 payment than what his pencil afforded. The sign, however, has been 
 painted over, with additional embellishments from gold leaf, so that not 
 the least trace of Morland's work remains, except, perhaps, the outline." t 
 
 With all deference to the opinion of Mr Croker, we cannot 
 help thinking of this, as of many other signboard explanations, 
 Se non e vero e hen trovato'^ 1°. the house was called the 
 Goat in 1663 ; 2^ there is no proof that it ever was called 
 the Mercury, (nor w^as that sign ever so common as Mr Crokei 
 asserts.) From the following quotation it will appear that as 
 early as 1738 some Goats in Boots had already appeared, not 
 the result of any mythological metamorphosis. The Craftsman 
 for June 17, 1738, in ridiculing some lenient measures taken by 
 Government, blames the signs for putting a martial spirit in the 
 nation, and proposes that " no lion should be draw^n rampant, 
 but couchant ; and none of his teeth ought to be seen without 
 this inscription, ^ Though he shows his teeth he wont bite.' All 
 bucks, bulls, rams, stags, unicorns, and all other w'arlike animaL 
 ought to be drawn without horns. Let no general be draw^n in 
 armour, and instead of truncheons let them have muster-rolls in 
 their hands. In like manner, 1 would have all admirals painted 
 in a frock and jockey cap, like landed gentlemen. The common 
 sign of the two Fighting Cocks might be better changed to a 
 
 * James Christopher le Llond, a Flemmg by birth, obiit 1740, made preparations to 
 copy the Hampton Court tapestry cartoorin. For this purpose he built a house in Mul- 
 berry Gardens, Chelsea, but the project failed, 
 
 t A Walk from London to Fulham. By the iate T. C. Croker. I860. 
 
442 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Cock and Hen, and tliat of the Valiant Trooper to a Hog in 
 Armour, or a Goat in Jackboots, as some Hampshire and 
 Welsh publicans have done already for the honour of their re- 
 spective countries." The sign, then, seems to be a sort of cari- 
 cature of a Welshman, the Goat having always been considered 
 the emblem of that nation, and the jackboots an indispensable 
 article of Taffy's costume. Thus, Captain Grose, in his " Essay 
 on Caricatures," * mentions a Welshman with his goat^ leek, hay- 
 hoots, and long pedigree, as a standard joke. Not improbably 
 the switch cariied by the goat on this sign was originally a leek. 
 Of the same origin is the well-known Welsh Trooper, repre- 
 senting a man with a leek in his hat riding on a goat. This 
 sign may still be seen in London. In the Roxburghe ballads 
 the Welshman with his jackboots and leek occurs in an old 
 woodcut ; in other places he is drawn riding a goat, and similarly 
 dressed. 
 
 Puss IN Boots occurs at Windley, Duffield, near Derby. The 
 Goat in Boots may have suggested the idea of making a sign of 
 this nursery-tale hero. The Dutch shoemakers, in pursuance of 
 the proverb, seem to have taken a particular delight in these 
 booted animals. Various creatures in boots occur amongst the 
 Dutch signboard inscriptions of the seventeenth century. One 
 was the Ox in Boots, {in den gelaarsden os) with this inscrip- 
 tion : — 
 
 ** 't Leer geeft den Schoenmaker de os daar hy schoenen van maakt om te 
 versly ten ; 
 
 Ik heb den os weer met leer tot dank gelaerst en gespoord doen conter- 
 fyten." f 
 
 Another innkeeper put up the Cow in Boots, {de gelaersden 
 koe,) and wrote beneath : — 
 
 " Ziet drees koe heeft laarzen aan 
 Was't noch een Bui dan kon het gaan."^ 
 A third, in Amsterdam, had the Cock in Boots, {de gelaat 
 de Haan,) with the following extraordinary rhymes : — 
 " Dit is de gelaars de haan 
 Cbristus is naar 't kruys gegaan, 
 Met een doornenkroon op 't hoofd. 
 Hy slacht Thomas die 't niet gelooft.'*§ 
 * Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i. 
 
 t "The ox gives the shoemaker leather of which he makes boots to be worn. As a 
 grateful return I have ordered the ox to be portrayed here in boots and spurs." 
 J " Look here, this cow wears boots ; 
 Were it a bull it would be less odd." 
 I " This is the Cock in Boots. Christ has been crucified, with a crown of thorns on 
 His head. He that does not believe it is as bad as Thomas." 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 443 
 
 The Jackass in Boots {de gelaarsde ezeV) was the sign of a 
 publican, with this inscription : — 
 
 " In den gelaars den ezel zeer kloek, 
 Yerkoopt men toebak, brandewyn, en knapkoek."* 
 
 The Dog also appears dressed, as the Dog in Doublet, a sign 
 which may be seen at Pyebridge, Derby, at Northbank, Cambridge, 
 and a few other out-of-the-way places. Dr Johnson did this 
 sign the honour of applying it as a metaphor. Speaking of an 
 old idea newly expressed, he said : " It is an old coat with a 
 new facing." Then (laughing heartily) it is the old dog in a 
 new doublet t 
 
 The Dog occurs in various other humorous combinations. 
 Ned Ward mentions a famous inn, in Petty Cury, Cambridge — 
 
 "the sign of the Devil's Lapdog, kept by an old grizly curmudgeon, 
 corniferously wedded to a plump, young, gay, brisk, black, beautiful, good 
 landlady, who I afterwards heard had so great a kindness for the Univer- 
 sity, that she had rather see two or three gowns' men come into her house, 
 than a c crew of aldermen in all their pontificalibusses." X 
 
 The Dog's Head in the Pot is mentioned on the Pardoner's 
 Roll in " Cocke LorelFs Bote : 
 
 " Also Annys Angry with the croked buttocke 
 
 That dwelled at ye sygne of ye Dogges hede in ye Pot, 
 
 By her crafte a brechemaker." 
 It seems originally to have been a mock sign to indicate a dirty, 
 slovenly housewife. A woodcut above the second part of the 
 Ptoxburghe ballad of The Coaches' Overthrow'' represents 
 various dirty practices. From the upper windows of one of the 
 houses a woman is emptying the unsavoury contents of a do- 
 mestic vase almost on the heads of the people underneath, and 
 the sign of that house is the Dog's head in the Pot, representing 
 a dog licking out a pot. A coarse woodcut sheet of the com- 
 mencement of the last century — evidently copied from a 
 much older original — to judge by the costumes, represents two 
 ancient beldames with high-crowned hats, starched ruffs and 
 collars, and high-heeled boots, in a very disorderly room or 
 kitchen ; one of the women wipes a plate with the bushy tail of 
 a large dog, whose head is completely buried in a capacious pot, 
 which he is licking clean ; under it : — 
 
 " All sluts behold, take view of me. 
 Your own good housewifry to see. 
 
 * ** At the brave Jackass in Boots, 
 
 There is tobacco, brandy, and gingerbread for ssilc." 
 t BosweU's Life of Johnson, vol. iii., p. 261. 1819. 
 X A Trip to Stirbitch Fair, 1703. 
 
444 ^-^^ HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 It is (methinks) a cleanly care, 
 My dish clout in this sort to spare, 
 Whilst Dog, you see, doth lick the pot, 
 His taile for dishclout I have got," &c. 
 
 One of the Eoxburghe Ballads, vol. i., foL 38o, entitled, Sel- 
 dome Cleanely," has the same idea : — 
 
 If otherwise she had 
 
 But a dishcloute faile. 
 
 She would set them to the dog to licke, 
 
 And wipe them with hys tayle." 
 
 In Holland there is a proverb still in use, to the effect that 
 when a person is late for dinner he is said to " find the dog in 
 the pot," (Jiy vindt den liondin depot,) meaning that he has arrived 
 late, — that the empty pot has been given to the dog to lick out, 
 previously to being washed, a custom still daily practised by the 
 peasantry of that country. This sign is sometimes also called 
 the Doa and Crock, as in the Blackfriars' Eoad ; at Michel- 
 mouth, Eomsey, Hants, and elsewhere. In the western counties 
 the word "crock" is indiscriminately applied to iron or earthen 
 pots. From the latter application comes the term " crockery 
 ware." 
 
 The Dancing Dogs was a sign at Battlebridge in 1668, as 
 appears from the trades tokens. This kind of canine entertain- 
 ment was one of the attractions of Bartholomew Fair, where Ben 
 Jonson mentions " dogs that dance the Morris." 
 
 The Laughing Dog (le chien qui rit) was formerly a sign in 
 Ftouen, and gave its name to a street, now called Du Guay 
 Troin, from the name of a celebrated admiral. This was one of 
 those quaint signs of which we have some specimens in this 
 country, as the Two Sneezing Cats, which is said to be some- 
 where in London ; the Flying Monkey, Lambeth ; the Mon- 
 key Island, at Bray, near Maidenhead ; the Gaping Goose, at 
 Leeds, Oldham, and various parts of Yorkshire ; and the Lov- 
 ing Lamb, two in Dudley. In Paris there was the old sign of 
 the Geeen Monkey, (le singe vert,) and some fifteen years ago 
 LiUe could boast of the Hunchbacked Cats {les chats hossus) 
 in the Eue Sec-Arembault. 
 
 Equally absurd is the Cow and Snuffeks, at Llandaff, Gla- 
 morgan. In a play of George Colman, entitled the " Keview, or 
 the Wags of Windsor," the following lines occur : — 
 " Judy 's a darling ; my kisses she suffers ; 
 She 's an heiress, that 'a clear. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 445 
 
 For her father sells beer, 
 He keeps the sign of the Cow and the Snuffers.*'* 
 
 The same song also occurs in the " Irishman in London, or the 
 Happy African. At Llandaff the sign is represented by a cow 
 standing near a ditch full of reeds and grasses, with a pair of 
 snuflfers, placed as if they had fallen from the cow's mouth. The 
 oddity of the combination in all probability pleased a publican 
 who had heard the song, and adopted it forthwith as his sign, 
 leaving the arrangement of the objects to the taste of the sign- 
 painter. 
 
 The Colt and Cradle might have been seen in St Martin's 
 Lane in 1667. It is still a common sign for houses of evil re- 
 pute in Holland, as may be seen from two examples in the Zand- 
 straat, Rotterdam, where the cradle is carved above the door, 
 with the colt in it lying on his back : the inscription is, " Het 
 paard in de Wieg," (the horse in the cradle.) And since, ac- 
 cording to Stow, in ancient times " English people disdayned to 
 be bawdes, froes of Flaunders were women for that purpose,^' it 
 Is more than probable that these " froes " introduced this sign 
 from their own country. In the Dutch language paar means " a 
 couple," and is constantly used for a man and woman, either 
 united b}^ the bands of lawful marriage or otherwise. The ori- 
 ginal form of the sign, then, we suppose was the couple in the 
 cradle," (Jiet paar in de wieg.) But the Dutch have an inve- 
 terate habit of adding diminutives, so that with this appendix it 
 became paartje — from paar^je to paarcZje, a small horse, the tran- 
 sition was easy enough ; and, covered with that transparent 
 veil, the indelicate sign has come down to the present day. 
 This seems so much the more probable to be the meaning, since 
 the Cradle in London also was a " bad sign," (see p. 394.) 
 
 The Goose and Guidiron occurs at Woodhall, Lincolnshire, 
 and in a few other localities : it is said to owe its origin to the 
 following circumstances: — The Mitre (see p. 319) was a cele- 
 brated music-house in London House Yard, at the N.-W. end of 
 St Paul's. When it ceased to be a music-house, the succeeding 
 landlord, to ridicule its former destiny, chose for his sign a goose 
 stroking the bars of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the 
 Swan and Hakp, a common sign for the early music-houses. Such 
 an origin does the Taller give ; but it may also be a vernacular 
 reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musicians, sus- 
 pended probably at the door of the Mitre when it was a music- 
 
446 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 liouse. These arms are, a swan with his wings expanded, within 
 a double tressure, counter, flory, argent. This double tressure 
 might have suggested a gridiron to unsophisticated passers-by. 
 Paddy's Goose is, at the present day, a nickname for a public- 
 house in Shadwell called the White Swan ; but why it was thus 
 travestied non liquet This tavern acquired some notoriety during 
 the Crimean campaign. When the Government w^anted sailors to 
 man the fleet, the landlord of the house used to go among the 
 shipping in the river and enlist numbers of men. His system of 
 recruiting was to go in one of the small steamers, with flags and 
 colours flying and a band playing, the heart-stirring or heart- 
 rending notes of which used to awaken the martial ardour of the 
 merchant sailors, and make them enlist in the Eoyal Navy. This 
 sign also triumphantly proclaims the presence of British gin and 
 Irish whisky in a low public-house near the harbour of La Yalette 
 at Malta. 
 
 Not a few signs represent proverbs or proverbial expressions. 
 The BiED IN" Hand, for instance, with occasionally the Book in 
 Hand, — the former denoting the landlord's full appreciation of 
 the truth of the proverb, One bird in the hand is worth tv/o in 
 the bush." It is frequently accompanied by the following truthful 
 rather than grammatical distich : — 
 
 ** A bird in hand far better 'tis 
 Than two that in the bushes is." 
 
 This sign occurs among the trades tokens, being literally ren- 
 dered by a hand holding a bird. Innumerable are the jokes 
 resorted to by landlords to intimate that hard truth that no 
 credit is given.* Frequently the pill is gilt in the most agree- 
 able manner: a deceptive hope of "better luck to-morrow" is 
 frequently held out, as 
 
 " Drink here, and drown all sorrow ; 
 Pay to-day, I'll trust to-morrow." 
 
 Or:— 
 
 " Pay to-day and trust to-morrow, 
 And so endeth all our sorrow." 
 
 The same in Holland : — 
 
 Van daag voor geld, morg in voor niet.*' t 
 
 * Sometimes it- is conveyed in an ingenious manner by a watch face without pointers 
 accompanied by the significant words, No Tick. 
 t "To-day for money, to-morrow for nought." 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 447 
 
 In Italy a cock is sometimes painted, with the following in- 
 scription : — 
 
 " Quando questo gallo cantaia 
 Allora credenza si fara." * 
 
 Tlie inventive genius of the French, with its usual fondness 
 for romance^ has constructed a little dramatic incident to express 
 the idea : — 
 
 " Credit est mort ; les mauvais payeurs I'ont tu^." f 
 Which phrase was seen by Coryatt, nearly two centuries ago, on 
 one of the inns where he put up at in France : a similar idea is 
 expressed at femethwick in the following inscription : — 
 
 " Sacred to the memory of Poor Trust, who fought hard at the battle of 
 Deception, but fell under General Bad Pay.'* 
 
 A print hung up in a public-house in ISTottingham, depicting a 
 black tombstone (or signboard, — it is difficult to say which) 
 spotted with briny white tears, gives the inscription with still 
 greater force : — 
 
 ** This monument is erected to the memory of Mr Trust, who was some 
 time since most shamefully and cruelly murdered by a villain called Credit, 
 who is prowling about, both in town and country, seeking whom he may 
 devour. " 
 
 Others have the picture of a dead dog, and under him : — 
 
 Died last night, Poor Trust ! Who killed him ? Bad Pay." 
 A very general inscription is : — 
 
 " This is a good world to live in, 
 To lend, or to spend, or to give in ; 
 But to beg or to borrow, or to get a man's own, 
 It is such a world as never was known/' 
 
 Or:— 
 
 ** The rule of this house, and it can't be unjust, 
 Is to pay on delivery, and not to give trust ; 
 I 've trusted many to my sorrow, 
 Pay to-day, I '11 trust to-morrow." 
 
 Stuck up in many tap-rooms may be seen the following 
 
 " All you that bring tobacco here 
 Must pay for pipes as well as beer ; 
 And you that stand before the fire, 
 I pray sit down by good desire, 
 That other folks as well as you 
 May see the fire, and feel it too. 
 
 ♦ *' When this cock shall croTV, 
 Credit will be given." 
 t "Credit is dead : he has been killed by bad payers. 
 
448 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Since man to man is so unjust, 
 I cannot tell what man to trust. 
 My liquor 's good, 'tis no man's sorrow, 
 Pay to day, I '11 trust to-morrow." 
 
 At an ale-house in Eanston, Norfolk, the usual information is 
 conveyed in the following manner, (to be read upwards, begin- 
 ning from the bottom of the last column) : — 
 
 MORE 
 
 BEER 
 
 SCORE 
 
 CLERK 
 
 FOR 
 
 MY 
 
 MY 
 
 THEIR 
 
 DO 
 
 TRUST 
 
 PAY 
 
 SENT 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 MOST 
 
 HAVE 
 
 SHALL 
 
 IF 
 
 I 
 
 BREWERS 
 
 WHAT 
 
 AND 
 
 AND 
 
 MY 
 
 At other places it comes in a still more " questionable shape," 
 reminding us of the curious literary conceits of the old monkish 
 rhymesters. In the following, the letters must be connected into 
 words, thus — The brewer^ &c. 
 
 Th. ebr: Ewe ! Rh. eH. Ass? 
 
 en . THIS. cLEr 
 kaNd ! IM. ustp, A YM. Ys 
 
 cO. r. ef, 0 
 r IFIT r US. ? tandam, No tpA. 
 
 i D wlia. ts ; Ha : 
 LL i D , 0 ? Fo Rm. Or .e. 
 The little wayside inn, between Pateley Bridge and Eipon, has 
 the following plaintive appeal to a stifFnecked race : — 
 " The malster doth crave 
 
 His money to have, 
 The exciseman says have I must. 
 By that you can see 
 How the case stands with me ; 
 So I pray you don't ask me for trust.'* 
 
 A small beer-house at Werrington, in Devonshire, yclept the 
 
 Lengdon Inn, has : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, walk in, and sit at your ease, 
 Pay what you call for, and call what you please; 
 As trusting of late has been to my sorrow, 
 Pay me to-day, and I'll trust ee to-morrow." 
 
 The Maypole, near Hainault Forest, has : — 
 " My liquor's good. 
 My measures just; 
 Excuse me, sirs! 
 I cannot trust." 
 
 At Preston, in Lancashire : — 
 
 " Greadley Bob, he does live here, 
 And sells a pot of good strong beer ; 
 
PLATE XVII. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 449 
 
 His liquor's good, his measure just, 
 But Bob 's so poor he cannot trust." 
 
 The Green Man, on Finchley Common, under a trophy com- 
 posed of two pipes crossed and a pot of beer, presents us with 
 the following ; — 
 
 "Call. Softly, 
 * Drink . Moderate 
 
 Pay . Honourably, 
 Be Good . Company 
 VB.Tt , FRIENDLY 
 Go . HOME . quietly. 
 Let those lines be no MANS Sorrow 
 Pay to DAY and ill TRUST to Morrow.^ 
 At Middleton, Co. Cork, the verses usually accompanying the 
 sign of the Bee-hive are slightly altered to meet the emergency of 
 the case, surgit amari aliquid : — 
 
 Within this hive we Ve all alive 
 With whisky sweet as honey ; 
 If you are dry, step in and try, 
 But don't forget the money." 
 
 So old is the necessity of informing the public that they must 
 pay for what they obtain, that even in the ruined city of Pompeii 
 a similar caution is found. Above the door of a house, once in- 
 habited by a surgeon, occurs the following laconic intimation : — 
 " Eme et habebis.'' And so widely spread is the evil, that even 
 in Chinese towns the shopkeepers have found it necessary to in- 
 form the public on their signs — 
 
 "Former customers have inspired us with caution ; no credit given here." 
 One publican, at Little town, in Durham, seems to have taken a 
 somewhat opposite view, putting up, for a sign, the Bied in the 
 Bush, but it may be doubted if his experience has confirmed 
 him in a preference of the bird in the bush to the bird in the 
 hand. 
 
 Another proverb illustrated is the Cow and Haee, at Staf- 
 ford, Bottisham, (near Newmarket.) and other places, evidently 
 suggested by the adage, " A cow may catch a hare." This sign 
 is mentioned, about 1708, in a rather curious memorandum from 
 the pen of Partridge, the almanac-maker, at the commencement 
 of a book of " the Cselestial Motions and Aspects for the years 
 of our Lord 1708 to 1720."* The MS. note is as follows :— " At 
 the Cowe and Hare by Whitechappel Church, a rare rogue lives 
 
 • Harl, MSS., No. 6200. 
 
450 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 there, a pickpocket.'' Of the same class as the Cow and Hare is 
 Who 'd ha' thought it ? which sometimes is seen on an ale-house 
 sign, as, for instance, at North End, Fulham. A wag suggested 
 this as the motto to the coat-of-arms of a certain baronet-brewer : 
 
 Who'd ha' thought it? 
 
 Hops had bought it." 
 
 The sign of the Jolly Brewer — Who 'd ha' thought it ? 
 occurs in the Jersey Eoad, Hounslow. Originally, it seems to 
 have implied that, after a hard struggle in some other walk of 
 life, the landlord had succeeded in opening the long-wished-for 
 ale-house. So in Holland : many country retreats of retired 
 tradespeople bear such names as " ¥ooit gedacht,'' (never ex- 
 pected,) &c. 
 
 Why not, the name of a public-house at Essington, in Staf- 
 fordshire, seems to imply quite the reverse, and to have been 
 adopted as the motto of a more sanguine landlord ; unless it may 
 be considered as a ready answer to the often-repeated question, 
 before " popping in round the corner," " Shall we have a drop V 
 
 The Lame Dog is very common ; but is particularly appro- 
 priate at Brierley Hill, near Dudley, the establishment being kept 
 by a collier, rendered lame in a pit accident. Under a pictorial 
 representation of a lame dog trying to get over a stile, the fol- 
 lowing appeal is made to the thirsty and benevolent public : — 
 ^' Stop, my friends, and stay awhile 
 To help the Lame Dog over the stile.'* 
 
 Sometimes, as at Bulmer, Essex, we see a somewhat similar idea 
 expressed by a man struggling through a globe — head and arms 
 protruding on one side, his legs on the other — with the inscrip- 
 tion, " Help me through this World." The same allegory 
 might have been seen on a beer-house in Holland in the seven- 
 teenth century, but the inscription was difierent — Dies na hen 
 in door de weveld^^ (" Thus far I have got through the world.") 
 This sign is also called the Struggler, or the Struggling Man, 
 and at Hampton, where the house is kept by a widow, the 
 Widow's Struggle. In Salop Street, Dudley, the struggle is 
 represented by a man, with a dog beside him., walking against a 
 strong head wind. The Live and let Live has a somewhat 
 similar meaning ; it occurs at North End, Fulham, and in many 
 other places. To this class, also, the following seems to refer : — 
 A witty, though unfortunate, fellow having tryed all trades, 
 but thriving by none, took the pot for his last refuge, and set up 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 an ale-house, with the sign of the Shirt, inscribed under it, 
 ' This is my last shift.' Much company was brought him thereby, 
 and much profit."* Nathaniel Oldham, the friend of Sir Hans 
 Sloane, Doctor Mead, and the leading virtuosi of that time, him- 
 self a collector, as well as a sporting man, at last got so reduced 
 in circumstances that he had to dispose of his curiosities and 
 superfluities. He opened his house, therefore, as a curiosity 
 shop, and wrote over the door, Oldham! s last Shift. Unfortu- 
 nately, it was his "last shift," for scarcely had he opened his 
 shop when one of his innumerable creditors had him arrested and 
 sent to King's Bench Prison, where he died. J. T. Smith, in his 
 " Cries of London," tells a similar device of a sailor, maimed at 
 the battle of Trafalgar, who used to go about town with a wheel- 
 barrow of ginger nuts, which he called " Jack's last shift." 
 
 The uncertainty of success in trade is expressed by the sign 
 of the Two Chances ; and Hit or Miss, the good and the bad 
 chance which innkeepers, as well as all other mortals, have to 
 run in this transitory world. This sign occurs at Hannington, 
 Northampton, and at Clun, in Salop. At Openshaw, near Man- 
 chester, a similar idea is expressed by a sign representing two 
 men running a race, which seems to promise a dead heat, with 
 the inscription. Luck's all. 
 
 Others have a sort of satirical humour in them, such as the 
 well-known Four Alls, representing a king who says, " I rule 
 all;" a priest who says, "I pray for allj" a soldier who says, 
 " I fight for all ;" and John Bull, or a farmer, who says, " I pay 
 for all." Sometimes a fifth is added in the shape of a lawyer, 
 who says, " I plead for all." It is an old and still common sign, 
 and may even be seen swinging under the blue sky in the sunny 
 streets of La Yalette, Malta. In Holland, in the seventeenth 
 century, it was used, but the king was left out, and a lawyer 
 added ; each person said exactly the same as on our signboards, 
 but the farmer answered : — 
 
 " Of gy vecht, of gy bidt, of gy pleyt, 
 Ik ben de boer die de eyeren leyt." f 
 
 The author of " Tavern Anecdotes " observes that he used to 
 notice in Rosemary Street, the sign of the Four Alls, but passing 
 
 * Cambridge Jests ; or, Witty Alarums for Melancholy Spirits. Printed at the Look. 
 Ing-Glass, on London Bridge, for Thomas Morris. 
 
 t " You may fight, you may pray, you may plead, 
 
 But I am the farmer who lays lue eggs,"— i, e., finds the money. 
 
452 THE HISTORY OF SIONBOARDS. 
 
 that way some time after, he found it altered into the Four A wis; 
 the sign painter who renewed the picture had probably found 
 himself not equal to a representation of the four human figures. 
 In Ireland, a similar corruption may be observed, the four shoe- 
 maker's awls taking the place of the four representatives of society. 
 Although having no connexion with the Four Alls, it may be men- 
 tioned that three and four awls constitute the charges in the shoe- 
 makers' arms of some of the continental trade societies or guilds. 
 
 This enumeration of the various performances coupled with 
 the word all has been used in numerous different epigrams : an 
 address to James I. in the Ashmolean MSS., No. 1730, has : — 
 " The Lords craved all, 
 
 The Queene graunted all, 
 
 The Ladies of honour ruled all, 
 
 The Lord-Keeper seal'd all, 
 
 The Intelligencer marred all, 
 
 The Parliament pass'd all, 
 
 He that is gone oppos'd himself to all, 
 
 The Bishops soothed all, 
 
 The Judges pardon'd all. 
 
 The Lords buy, Rome spoil'd all, 
 
 Now, Good King, mend all. 
 
 Or else the Devil will have all." 
 This again seems to have been imitated from a similar de- 
 scription of the State of Spain in Greene's ^' Spanish Masquerade," 
 1589 ;— 
 
 " The Cardinalls solicit all. 
 
 The King grauntes all. 
 
 The Nobles confirm all, 
 
 The Pope determines all. 
 
 The Cleargie disposeth all. 
 
 The Duke of Medina hopes for all, 
 
 Alonso receives all. 
 
 The Indians minister all, 
 
 The Soldiers eat all, 
 
 The People paie all. 
 
 The Monks and friars consume all, 
 
 And the Devil at length will carrv away all." 
 The Naked Boy was a satirical sign reflecting upon the ccn- 
 stant changes of the fashions of our ancestors. William Her- 
 bert has this observation in his manuscript memoranda, "I 
 remember very well when I was a lad seeing on Windmill Hill, 
 Moorfields, a taylor s sign, a naked hoy with this couplet : — 
 *' So fickle is our English nation, 
 
 I wou'd be clothed if I knew the fashion." * 
 
 * AuDOtatiODS to Amef; s Typographical Antiquitiec 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 453 
 
 The same idea is expressed in the " Introduction to Know- 
 ledge/' by Andrew Borde, (the original Merry Andrew/') 
 Doctor of Physick, 1542, where a naked man is introduced un- 
 decided as to the style of dress he should adopt on account of 
 the continual change in the fashions : — 
 
 Now am I a frysker, all men doth on me looke, 
 What should I do but set cocke on the hoope, 
 What do I care yf all the worlde me fayle, 
 I will get a garment shall reche to my tayle." 
 
 Coryatt also reflects upon this ever-varying change in his 
 " Crudities : " — " For whereas they [the gentlemen of Venice] 
 have but one colour, we use many more than are in the rainbow ; 
 all the most light garing and unseemly colours that are in the 
 world. Also for fashion we are much inferior to them : for we 
 weare more phantastical fashions than any nation vnder the 
 Sunne doth, the French onely excepted ; which hath given 
 occasion to the Venetians and other Italians to brand the Eng- 
 lishmen with a notable mark of levity by painting him stark 
 naked with a pair of shears in his hand, making his fashion of 
 attire according to the vain conception of his brain sick head, not 
 to comeliness and decorum." 
 
 So ancient is this complaint as to the versatility of our fashions 
 that we verily believe even our tattooed forefathers must have 
 been constantly altering the hue of their blue stencilling, and 
 bedaubing themselves with new patterns. John Harding, in his 
 " Chronicles/' of the reign of Richard II., describing the various 
 materials and cuts of the " unpayed doublettes and govvnes/' 
 even long before his time, says, ch. 193 : — 
 
 Broudur and furres and goldsmith werke ay newe, 
 In many a wyse eche day they did renewe." 
 
 Douglas, the monk of Glastonbury, wrote not less angrily in 
 the days of Edward III : 
 
 Englyshmen hawnted so moche unto the folye of strawngers that fro 
 that tyme every yere thei chaungedde them in diverse schappes and disgis- 
 ingges of clothengge now long, now large, now wide, now streite, and every 
 day clothingges newe destitute and deserte from alle honeste of holde array 
 and gode usage." *" 
 
 Indeed so angry does the good monk become about these ex- 
 travagant fashions, that he says, — If I sethe shalle say, they 
 weren more like to turmentours and Diviles in their clothing and 
 also in schoyng and other aray that they semed no menne." 
 
 Not only did we invent, but we borrowed absurd loreigu 
 
 * MS. Harleian. 4690. 19 Edw. III. 
 
454 HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 fasliions. Samuel Rowland, in " The Letting of Humours Blood 
 in the Head Vaine," 1611, says : — 
 
 " Behold a most accomplisli'd cavaleere, 
 That the world's ape of fashions doth appeare ; 
 Walking the streete his humours to disclose, 
 In the French dowblet and the German hose, 
 The muffes, cloake, Spanish hat, Tolledo blade, 
 Italian ruffe, a shoe right Flemish made, 
 Like the Lord of Misrule, where he comes he '11 revel." 
 
 And Heywood, in the Eape of Lucrece," 1638, epigr. xxvi., 
 has : — 
 
 " The Spaniard loves his ancient slop, 
 The Lombard his Venetian ; 
 And some like breechless women go, 
 The Russ, Turk, Jew, and Grecian; 
 The thrifty Frenchman wears small waist, 
 The Dutchman his belly boasteth, 
 The Englishman is for them all, 
 And for each fashion coasteth." 
 
 Shakespeare seems to allude to the sign of the Naked Boy in 
 his " Comedy of Errors," act iv., scene 3, where Dromio says, 
 
 What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparell'd/' 
 At Skipton-in-Craven, there is still a stone bas-relief of the Naked 
 Boy, fixed in the front of a house, with the date 1633. 
 
 The Good Woman, or the Silent Women, and at Pershore, 
 in Worcestershire, the Quiet Woman, represent a headless 
 woman carrying her head in her hand. Brady, in his " Clavis 
 Calendaria," vol. ii., p. 203, says, " The martyrs who had been 
 decapitated were, therefore, usually represented with headless 
 trunks, and the head on some adjoining table, or more commonly 
 in their hands ; and it was easy for ignorance and credulity not 
 only to mistake that type, but to be led into belief that those 
 holy persons had actually carried their heads about for the bene- 
 fit of believers. The sign, yet preserved, particularly by the oil- 
 shops, of the Good Woman, although originally meant as expres- 
 sive of some female saint, holy or good woman, who had met 
 death by the privation of her head, has been converted into a 
 loke against the females whose alleged loquacity is considered to 
 be satirised by this representation, which, to conform to such 
 meaning, they now more commonly call the Silent Woman. The 
 fact, however, of it being particularly an oilman's sign, makes it 
 possible that it may have some reference to the heedless \head 
 anciently was pronounced heed'\ or foolish virgins of the parable. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 455 
 
 who liad no oil in their lamps when the bridegroom came. 
 Where is your head ? is still a question addressed to forgetful 
 people. 
 
 There is a very curious example of this sign at Widford, near 
 Chelmsford, representing on one side a half-length portrait of 
 Henry VIII., on the reverse, a woman without a head, dressed 
 in the costume of the latter half of the last century, with the in- 
 scription Forte Bonne, The addition of the portrait of Henry 
 YIII. has led to the popular belief that the headless woman is 
 meant for Anna Boleyn, though probably it is simply a com- 
 bination of the King's Head and Good Woman. 
 
 This sign is equally common on the Continent ; the book of 
 Dutch signboard inscriptions of the seventeenth century, from 
 which we have constantly quoted, gives several verses which 
 figured under various signs of the Good Woman. Amongst 
 them the following are worth noticing : — 
 
 " Hier is de goede vrouw te vinden, 
 Ka't leven zeer net afgebeeld, 
 Daar niet als't hoofd maar aan en scheeld, 
 Dewyl dat draait met duizend winden ; 
 Indien er't hoofd was aangebleven 
 Sy was nooit goed haar gansche leven."* 
 Another had : — 
 
 " De vrouw die is een mannen-plaag, 
 Al zyn snot-leepels daarna graag; 
 Dies als dat vuur is uitgedoofd 
 Dan wenschen zy, haar zonder hoofd." t 
 
 In Italy, also, it is known, and serves as a sign to many an 
 inn. Eeaders who may have visited Turin will remember the 
 kind reception of "la buona Moglie" in that town. In Paris it 
 gives its name to a street, Rue de la Femme sans Tete, The pic- 
 ture in France is generally accompanied by the legend, " Tout en 
 est hon,'' the absence of the head probably implying "/ors la 
 tete,'' except the head ; ergo, everything is good in woman ex- 
 cept her head — her ever-changing whims and fancies. At the 
 present day there is, in the Eue St Marguerite, a pork butcher 
 
 • " Here you may find a pood woman, 
 
 Faithfully portrayed from the life. 
 
 Nothing is wanting but her head, 
 
 Because that turns about with every wind. 
 
 If the head had been left her, 
 
 She would never have been good in all her life." 
 ^ " Women are a plague to man. 
 
 And though young 'spoons' are fond of Ihenv 
 
 As soon as their fire is quenched, 
 
 They wish her head was off." 
 
456 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 who lias made the following use of this sign : Under the usual 
 representation of the Good Woman he has written in golden 
 letters, " Tout en est bon, depuis les'' (a representation of four 
 pigs' feet) " jusqu'^ la," (a representation of an enormous boars 
 head.) This ungallant association of ideas of a woman and a 
 pig is^ we are sorry to say, not without an example in our nation, 
 though fortunately our rudeness was two hundred years ago, and 
 we have grown more refined since : — 
 
 " One Ambrose Westrop, vicar of the Parish church Much to Sham (?) 
 in the county of Essex, taught in a Sermon That a Woman is worse than a 
 sow in two respects ; First : because a sowskin is good to make a cart 
 saddle and her bristles good for a sowter. Secondly : because a sow will 
 run away if a man cry but hoy^ but a woman will not turn her head, 
 though beaten down with a leaver, and that all the difference between a 
 woman and a sow is in the nape of the neck, where a woman can bend 
 upwards, but a sow cannot, etc. The said Westrop is a great malignant 
 and very envious and full of venome against the Parliament. But his 
 benefit is sequestered, as well he deserves, from his filthiness and unfit- 
 nesse to the place." — Remarhable Passages and Occurrences of Parliament, 
 <bc. December 8 to 15, 1644. 
 
 Lawyers, priests, and women have, at all times and in all 
 countries, received a liberal share of abuse and slander; no 
 wonder, then, that the Lawyer kept the Good Woman in coun- 
 tenance. In a sign derived from the Good Woman the man of 
 law is " damned to fame" as the Honest Lawyer, the sign re- 
 presenting him with his head in his hand, as the only condition 
 in which by any possibility he could be honest. Another sign 
 abusive of the softer sex is the Man loaded with Mischief, 
 the sign of an ale-house in Oxford Street. The original, said to 
 be painted by Hogarth, is fastened to the front of the house, and 
 has the honour of being specified in the lease of the premises 
 as one of the fixtures. An engraving of it is exhibited in the 
 window. It represents a man carrying a woman, a magpie, 
 and a monkey, the woman with a glass of gin in her hand. In 
 the background, on the left-hand side, is a public-house with a 
 pair of horns as a " finial" on the gable end ; this house is called 
 
 CuckholdJs Fortune;'^ a woman is passing in at the door, and a 
 sow is asleep in a pot-house, with a label above, " She is as 
 drunk as a sow,'' whilst two cats are making love on the roof. 
 On the right-hand side is the shop of aS^. Gripe, Paivnhroker, 
 which a carpenter enters to pledge his tools. The engraving is 
 signed : " Drawn by Experience ; engraved by Sorrow." Under 
 it is the following rhyme : — 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 457 
 
 " A monkey, a magpie, and a wife, 
 Is the true emblem of strife." 
 
 This sign has been imitated in other places, sometimes called 
 the MiscniEF, as at Blewbury, Wallingford, or the Load of 
 Mischief, as at Norwich. About twenty years ago there was 
 one to be seen in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, with this 
 expressive addition, that the man was tied to the woman by a 
 chain and padlock. A similarly malicious reflection on the 
 " softer sex" is seen in many parts of France, as in Paris, Troyes, 
 and various other towns. It is called " Le trio de Malice,^' (the 
 three bad ones,) the trio being composed of a cat, a woman, and 
 a monkey. 
 
 Nobody was the singular sign of John Trundell, a ballad- 
 printer in Barbican in the seventeenth century. In one of Ben 
 Jonson's plays Nobody is introduced, attyred in a payre of 
 Breeches, which were made to come up to his neck, with his 
 armes out at his pockets and cap drowning his face." This 
 comedy was " printed for John Trundle and are to be sold at his 
 shop in Barbican at the sygne of No-Body." A unique ballad, 
 preserved in the Miller Collection at Britwell House, entitled 
 " The Well-spoken No-Body," is accompanied by a woodcut re- 
 presenting a ragged barefooted fool on pattens, with a torn 
 money-bag under his arm, walking through a chaos of broken 
 pots, pans, bellows, candlesticks, tongs, tools, windows, &c. 
 Above him is a scroll in black-letter : — 
 
 Blame/' 
 
 The ballad commences as follows : — 
 
 " Many speke of Robin Hoode that never shott in his bowe, 
 So many have layed faultes to me, which I did never knowe ; 
 But nowe, beholde, here I am, 
 Whom all the worlde doeth diffame ; 
 Long have they also scorned me, 
 And locked my mouthe for speking free. 
 As many a Godly man they have so served 
 Which unto them God's truth hath shewed ; 
 Of such they have burned and hanged some. 
 That unto their ydolatrye wold not come : 
 The Ladye Truthe they have locked in cage., 
 Saying of her Nobodye had knowledge. 
 For as much nowe as they name Nobodye 
 I thinke verilye they gpeke of me : 
 Whereffore to answere I nowe beginne — 
 
45S 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The locke of my mouthe is opened with ginne, 
 Wrought by no man, but by God*s grace, 
 Unto whom be prayse in every place," &c. 
 
 In J. 0. Halliwell's "Shakespeare," vol. i., p. 450, from 
 "whence we borrow the above, the subject is still further illus- 
 trated by the following quotation : — 
 
 " Nobody keeps such a rule in every bodies house that from the mis- 
 tresse to the basest maide, there is not a shrewde turne done without him : 
 for if the husband finde his study opened and enquire who did it ? he shall 
 finde Nobody : if the goodwife see her utensils disordered and demand 
 who displast them, the issue of every servant's reply will bee, Nobody : if 
 the servants discover the beds towsed and the chambers durtied it will bee, 
 Nobody ; when every child is examined ; nay, if the children fall and 
 break their noses, or scratch one another's faces, and either mother or 
 nursse seeme angry and aske, who hurt them, they will quickly answer 
 Nobody toucht them ; and their desire of excuse hath brought lying to a 
 custom." — Rich Cabinet furnished with Variety of Excellent Bescnption, 
 1616. 
 
 At present there is an inn in Plymouth called No Place inn ; 
 and formerly there was at Norwich a public-house called No- 
 where — a name which would, to the truant husband returning 
 home in the small hours of night, suggest a ready answer to the 
 warm reception of his partner for better and for worse, who, for 
 the last few hours, has been 
 
 " Gathering her brows, like gath'ring storm — 
 Nursing her wrath to keep it warm." 
 
 Another ancient sign, to which constant allusions are made in the 
 old writers, is the Three Loggerheads, w^hich, old as it is, and 
 stale as the joke may be, has not yet lost its charms for the in- 
 habitants of many of our villages and quiet inland towns. It 
 represents two silly-looking faces, with the inscription — 
 
 We three 
 
 Loggerheads be," 
 — the unsuspecting spectator being, of course, the third. Douce, 
 in his " Illustrations to Shakespeare," suggests that the original 
 picture should have represented three fools. Thus, in Shirley's 
 Bird in Cage," Morello, who counterfeits a fool, says, " We be 
 three of old, without exception to your lordship, only with this 
 difference, I am the wisest fool." In Day's Comedy of Law 
 Tricks,'' 1608, Julia says, "Appoint the place prest,'' to which 
 the answer is, At the three fools.'' Sometimes, as Mr Henley 
 has stated, it was two asses. Thus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 "Queen of Corinth," ac. iii., sc. 1 : — 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 459 
 
 " Nean. He is another ass, he says ; I believe him. 
 Uncle. We be three, heroical prince. 
 
 Nean. Nay, then we must have the picture and the word Nos minus.'" 
 In this form it is still seen on valentines and humorous cartes de 
 visite, Shakespeare, too, alludes to this sign in " Twelfth Night, 
 ac. ii, sc. 2 : — " How now, my hearts ? did you never see the 
 picture of We Three ? " Decker, ridiculing the manners and cus- 
 toms of his day, speaks of the fast men sitting on the stage at 
 theatrical representations — " but assure yourself, by continual 
 residence, you are the first and principal man in election, to begin 
 the number of We three.'^* In a pamphlet, entitled, " Heads of 
 all Fashions; being a plain Bisection or Definition of Divers and 
 Sundry Sorts of Heads," London, 1642, the Loggerheads are 
 thus mentioned : — 
 
 " A Logerhead alone cannot well be, 
 At scriveners' windows many time hang three* 
 A country lobcocke, as I once did I eare, 
 Upon a penman put a grievous jeaie. 
 If I had been in place, as this man was, 
 I should have called this country coxcomb asse." 
 
 This alludes to one of the jokes in " Mother Bunch's Merri- 
 ments,'' 1604, where a country fellow asks a poor scrivener, sit- 
 ting in his shop, " I pray you, master, what might you sell in 
 your shop, that you have so many ding-dongs hang at your dore?" 
 "Why, my friend," quoth the obligation-maker, "I sell nothing 
 but loggerheads." " By my fay, master," quoth the countryman, 
 " you have a fair market with them, for you have left but one in 
 your shop, that I see and so, laughing, went his way, leaving 
 nmch good sport to them that heard him. This old anecdote 
 may have given rise to scriveners using the Loggerheads as their 
 sign, which otherwise seems a not very pleasant reflection on 
 their customers. We can scarcely think that any symbolism was 
 intended, and that the Loggerheads were emblematical of the 
 secretary's silence and discretion. In the seventeenth century 
 the sign might have been seen in London. There was one in 
 Tooley Street in 1665, having on its trades token the inscription, 
 "We are 3 f another variety had "We three Logerheads" 
 underneath the usual heads. In the ballad of the " Arraigning 
 and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knt., printed for Timothy 
 Tosspot," the trial takes place at the Three Loggerheads, by the 
 Justices Oliver and Old Nick. The witnesses are cited at the 
 
 * GuU's Hornbook. 
 
460 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 sign of the Three Merry Companions in Bedlam — viz., Poor 
 Ptobin, Merry Tom, and Jack Lackwit. 
 
 The Labour in Vain occurs among the trades tokens, and 
 such a sign gave its name to Old Fish Street, which Hatton, in 
 his "New View of London," 1708, p. 405, calls "Old Fish 
 Street, or Labour in Vain Hill." The sign represented two 
 women scrubbing a negro; hence it was called by the lower 
 classes, the Devil in a Tub. " To wash an iEthiop," is a pro- 
 verbial expression, often met with in ancient dramatists, for 
 labour in vain.* The Case is Altered, generally alludes to 
 some alteration in the affairs of the landlord, either " for better 
 or for worse." A public-house near Banbury was so called on 
 account of being built on the site of a mere hovel. Another 
 house of the same name was, in 1805, erected on the road be- 
 tween Woodbridge and Ipswich, to meet the demand of the 
 thirsty sons of Mars then quartered in those two towns. Its 
 sign in those days was tlie Duke of York, or some such name. 
 But when, after the downfall of the " Corsican Tyrant," and the 
 subsequent declaration of peace, the barracks were pulled down, 
 the soldiers disbanded, and the benches of the ale-house remained 
 empty, the old sign was removed, and in its place put up the sad 
 truth — " The Case is Altered." In another instance, the sign 
 was adopted at Oxford 33 a quiet hint by a sharp business man, 
 who succeeded as landlord to an easy-going Boniface, undei 
 whose sway the customers had been allowed to run up debts ; 
 but the case was altered under the new regulations. A corre- 
 spondent of Notes and Queries (Nov. 21, 1857) gives the fol- 
 lowing example : — I saw this sign once pictorially represented 
 in the West of England thus : — A person, with a large wig and 
 gown, and seated at a table ; another, dressed like a farmer, 
 stood talking to him. In the distance, seen through the open 
 door, was a bull. The story, of course, is that related of Plow- 
 den, the celebrated lawyer, t and which is now in most books of 
 fables. The farmer told Plowden that his (the farmer s) bull had 
 gored and killed the latter's cow. 'Well,' said the lawyer, 
 ' the case is clear, you must pay me her value.' ' Oh ! but,' said 
 the farmer, * I have made a mistake. It is your bull which has 
 killed my cow.' ' Ah ! the case is altered,' quoth Plowden. 
 The expression had passed into a proverb in Old Fuller's time." 
 
 ► Massinger's Parliament of Love, ac. ii., sc. 2 ; Koman Actor, ac. ili., sc. 2, &c. 
 
 t Edmuad Plowden, obiit 1584, was buried and has a raouument in tne Temul« Church. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 461 
 
 This sign also occurs in some London localities, as at Upper 
 Kensal Green, and elsewhere. 
 
 The Grinding Young is a very curious sign at Harold's 
 Cross, Dublin. The subject is taken from the old ballad of the 
 Miller's Maid Grinding Old Men Young," commencing — 
 
 " Come, old, decrepit, lame, or blind, 
 Into my mill to take a grind.'* 
 
 It is also a favourite subject on old chap-prints, which represent 
 a kind of hand-mill, into the funnel-shaped top of which various 
 decrepit-looking old men creep by a ladder, most of them glass 
 in hand, greatly elated at the prospect of a renewal of youth. 
 Meanwhile, a young maid is turning the handle of the mill, from 
 the bottom of which the patients come out, quite young and new 
 — if not better — men. Pretty girls stand at the side, ready to 
 receive the rejuvenated creatures and walk off with them, their 
 arms affectionately twined round their necks, and evidently pre- 
 paring to play the old game over again, for " the cordial drop of 
 life is love alone" — the whole affair a very decided improvement 
 upon the usual way of entering the stage of this world. 
 
 A somewhat similar sign, though not quite so anacreontic, is 
 of frequent occurrence in France, namely The Fountain op 
 JuvENCA, — la Fontaine de Jouvence, A stone bas-relief of this 
 subject, a carving of the sixteenth century, still remains in the 
 Rue du Four, in Paris. The story was borrowed by the French 
 romancers from the Eastern tales. 
 
 The sign of the last house in a row on the outskirts of a town, 
 used frequently to be the World's End. This was represented 
 in various punning ways ; sometimes by a globe in clouds, as on 
 the trades token of Margaret Tuttlesham, of Golden Lane, Barbi- 
 can, in 1666. Others rendered it by a fractured globe in a dark 
 background, with fire and smoke bursting through the rents, 
 and thus it was represented at the World's End in the King's 
 Road, Chelsea, in 1825. At Ecton, Northampton, it is typified, 
 with a truly classical notion of physicaLgeography, by a horseman 
 whose steed is rearing over an abyss on the edge of a world 
 terminated perpendicularly. A fourth, and more homely, way of 
 representing it was a man and a woman walking together on the 
 margin of a landscape, with this distich : 
 
 " I '11 go with my friend 
 To the world's end." 
 
 The out-of-the-way sites of such houses was the cause of their 
 
4b2 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 not enjoying the very best of reputations. Those, at least, of 
 the World's End at Chelsea and at Knightsbridge were rather 
 exceptionable. Both these houses were much patronised by the 
 gallants of the reign of Charles II. when breaking the seventh 
 commandment ; hence the altercation between two sisters in 
 Congreve's play of "Love for Love 
 
 Mrs Foresight. I suppose you would not go alone to the World's 
 End? 
 
 " Mrs Frail. The World's End ! What, do you mean to banter me ? 
 Mrs Foresight. Poor innocent; you don't know that there is a place 
 called the World's End. I '11 swear you can keep your countenance — 
 Burely you'll make an admirable player. 
 
 ^' Mrs Frail. I '11 swear you have a great deal of impudence, and in my 
 mind too much for the stage. 
 
 " Mrs Foresight. Very well, that will appear who has most. You never 
 were at the World's End? eh." 
 
 Pepys also honoured a World's End, the " drinking-house by 
 the Park," with an occasional visit. On Sunday, the 9th of 
 May 1669, for instance, he went to church at St Margaret's, 
 Westminster, and that duty performed, walked " towards the 
 park, but too soon to go in, so went on to Knightsbridge, and 
 there eat and drank at the World's End, where we had good 
 things, and then back to the park, and there till night, being 
 fine weather and much company, and so home." The "good 
 things" evidently proved a strong attraction, for three weeks 
 after he went again, "and there was merry, and so home late." 
 In 1708 Tom Brown thus alluded to its equivocal reputation. 
 " The lady must take a tour as far as Knightsbridge or Kensing- 
 ton, stop, maybe, at the World's End or the Swan ; offer my 
 spark a small treat," &c."^ Under the name of le Bout du 
 Monde, the same sign was common in France, where in ancient 
 Paris it gave a name to the street now called Rue du Cadran. 
 With that inveterate weakness for punning inherent to sign- 
 painters — those of the French nation in particular — it was 
 sometimes represented by a he-goat (pouc) and a world. 
 
 The World turned Upside down is still common, being 
 generally represented by a man walking at the south pole ; in that 
 guise it was to be seen some twenty-five years ago on the Green- 
 wich Road. But the meaning of the sign is a state of things 
 the opposite of what is natural and usual, — a conceit in which the 
 artists of former ages took great delight, and which they repre- 
 
 ♦ Walk round London and Suburbs, 1708, p. 46. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 sented by animals chasing men, horses riding in carriages, and 
 similar pleasantries. This also was a Dutch sign under the 
 name of De Verkeerde Wereld, (the world reversed.) It was 
 used by a publican in the seventeenth century in Holland, with 
 this inscription : 
 
 " De wereld staat niet regt, 
 Voor de deur haugt hy verkeerd 
 'K Heb wyn en bier, en *t geen gy meer begeert." * 
 
 Of the MooNRAKERS we only know one instance, that in 
 Great Suffolk Street, Borough, where it has been for at least 
 half a century. The original of this may have been one of the 
 stories of the Wise Men of Gotham. A party of them going out 
 one bright night, saw the reflection of the moon in the water ; 
 and, after due deliberation, decided that it was a green cheese, 
 and so raked for it. Another version is, that some Gothamites, 
 passing in the night over a bridge, saw from the parapet the 
 moon's reflection in the river below, and took it for a green 
 cheese. They held a consultation as to the best means of secur- 
 ing it, when it was resolved that one should hold fast to the 
 parapet whilst the others hung from him, hand-in-hand, so as to 
 form a chain to the water below, the last man to seize the prize. 
 When they were all in this position, the uppermost, feeling the 
 load heavy, and his hold giving way, called out, Halloo ! you 
 below, hold tight while I take off my hand to spit on it !" The 
 wise men below replied, "All right !" upon which he let go his hold, 
 and they all dropped down into the water, and were drowned. 
 
 A Moonraker is also the nickname for a native of Wilt- 
 shire, and a very silly story is told there as its origin. 
 Some Wiltshire smugglers, on one of their nightly exj^editions, 
 being surprised by excisemen, were compelled to hide a barrel 
 of brandy in a pond, which one of the gang at the first 
 opportunity privately fished out for his own personal benefit. 
 A few nights after, when the Argus eyes of the Excise were 
 soundly closed, the rest of the band availed themselves of a clear 
 moonlight to return to the spot in order to "call the spirits 
 from the vasty deep," and began raking the water to their 
 hearts' content, for, taking the reflection of the moon to be the top 
 of the barrel, they could not be convinced that the " spirit was 
 departed/' till morning came and showed them that their barrel 
 
 * " The world does not go right, 
 
 Before my door it hangs upside down. 
 I sell wine and beer, and all that you may desire." 
 
464 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 was all moonshine." Another version substitutes thieves and 
 a cheese for the smugglers and the brandy barrel. 
 
 The Cradle and the Coffin, or First and Last, was for- 
 merly a sign in Norwich, and one can still be seen on the South 
 Quay, Yarmouth. This combination may have its moral ; not 
 so the equally serious Mortal Man, in the little village of 
 Troutbeck, near Ambleside, for there the denomination is simply 
 borrowed from the beginning of the inscription which has no- 
 thing of the memento mori about it : — 
 
 " Thou mortal man that Uv'st by bread, 
 What is it makes thy nose so red ?" 
 
 Thou silly elf with nose so pale, 
 It is with drinking Burkett's ale." 
 
 This imaginary dialogue is supposed to be held by the tw^o 
 figures on the signboard, the one a poor miserable-looking object, 
 the other, who indulged in Burkett's ale, the chubby picture of 
 health, with a nose like that of Bardolph, " clothed in purple.'' 
 This sign was the work of Ibbetson ; the picture is now gone, 
 but the verses remain.* 
 
 At Hedenham, on the road between Norwich and Bungay, 
 there is a sign called Tumble-down Dick, representing on one 
 side Diogenes, on the other, a drunken man, with the following 
 distich : 
 
 " Now Diogenes is dead and laid in his tomb, 
 Tumble-down Dick is come in his room." 
 
 At Alton, in Hants, a drunken man is represented upsetting a 
 table covered with cups and glasses. The verses underneath this 
 picture are the same as at Hedenham, except that it is " Bar- 
 naby " who is said to be defunct, and not Diogenes. At Wood- 
 ton in Norfolk, another sign with this name represents a jolly 
 old farmer in a red coat, with bottle and glass in his hand, falling 
 off his chair in a state of Bacchi plenus. The earliest mention 
 we find of the sign is in the Original Weekly Journal for April 
 26 — May 3, 1718, where a murder is reported to have been 
 committed at the Tumbling-down Dick in Brentford. Tumble- 
 down Dick, in the borough of South wark," says the Adventurer, 
 No. 9, 1752, "is a fine moral on the instabiUty of greatness, 
 and the consequences of ambition." As such it was set up in 
 derision of Bichard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, 
 or " tumble down," being very common in the satires published 
 
 * A somewhat different version of these rhymes is given on page 40. 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 465 
 
 after the Restoration, and amongst others, Hudibras; thus, part 
 iii., canto ii., 231 : — 
 
 Next him his son and heir app'arent 
 
 Succeeded, though a lame viceregent, 
 
 Who first laid by the Parliament, 
 
 The only crutch on which he leant ; 
 
 And then sunk underneath the state 
 
 That rode him above horseman's weight." 
 
 The same idea, and almost the identical words, occur again 
 in his " "Remains," in the tale of the Cobbler and the Vicar of 
 Bray : — 
 
 What *s worse, old Noll is marching off. 
 
 And Dick, his heir apparent, 
 Succeeds him in the Government, 
 
 A very lamo Vice-regent; 
 He '11 reign but little time, poor tool. 
 
 But sinks beneath the state, 
 That will not fail to ride the fool 
 
 'Bove common horseman's weight.'* 
 
 We meet it also in the ballad, " Old England is now a brave 
 Barbary,^' i.e. horse, from a "Collection of Loyal Songs," re- 
 printed in 1731, vol. ii., p. 231, — 
 
 But Nol, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle, 
 
 And made her show tricks, and curvate, and rebound ; 
 
 She quickly perceiv'd he rode widdle-waddle, 
 
 And like his coach-horses* threw his highness to ground, 
 
 " Then Dick, being lame, rode holding the pummel, 
 Not having the wit to get hold of the rein ; 
 But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell, 
 That poor Dick and his kindred turn'd footmen again." 
 
 Dick's bacchic propensities are also sung in many an old song. 
 Two of the Luttrell Ballads, vol. ii., pp. 11 and 36, allude to 
 his weakness in this respect : — 
 
 " Then thirdly Oliver he took place. 
 And set up young Dick the fool of his race ; 
 Dick loved a cup of nectar.'''* 
 
 In another : — 
 
 "Drunken Dick was a lame Protector." 
 Perhaps to the same origin may be referred the sign of Sol- 
 dier Dick, which occurs near Disley, Stockport; and Happy 
 Dick, at Abingdon. Tumbling-down Dick was also the name 
 of a dance in the last century, which gives additional strength to 
 
 ♦ In allusion to CromweU's accident in Hyde Park, October 1654, when his coach- 
 horses ran away, and his highness, who was driving, fell iroin the box between the 
 traces, and was dragged along for a considerable distance. 
 
 2 G 
 
466 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 the supposition that Dick Cromwell was intended, since other- 
 wise an ordinary signboard would scarcely have come to such 
 honour. 
 
 The Jolly Toper is a common public-house sign, probably 
 put up as a good example to the customers ; in London, there is 
 a Tippling Philosopher, " the right man in the right place," 
 for he ^' hangs out " in Liquor Pond Street, opposite Keid^s great 
 brewery. Here we have Vemharras du choix ; which philosopher 
 was intended by the sign, for they all, more or less, " pleaded 
 guilty to the soft impeachment." Theophrastus, in his " Treaty 
 on Drunkenness," tells us that the seven sages of Greece often 
 met together to indulge in a cheerful glass. Plato not only ex- 
 cuses a drop too much occasionally, but even orders it. Hera- 
 clitus, the weeping philosopher, never laughed but when he was 
 " half seas over." Xenocrates gained a golden crown, awarded 
 by Dionysius the tyrant to the deepest drinker. Seneca states that 
 Solon and Arcesilaus are believed to have " indulged in wine," 
 and Cornelius Gallus says that Socrates carried off the palm 
 from his contemporaries by his drinking capacities." Cato, we 
 know from various sources, liked his glass j Horace tells us — 
 " Narratur et prisci Catonis 
 Ssepe mero caluisse virtus ; " * 
 and Seneca says of him : " Cato vinum laxabat animum curis 
 publicis fatigatum;"t elsewhere he remarks : ^'Catoni ebrietas ob- 
 jecta est, at facilius efficiet quisquis qui objecerit honestum quam 
 turpe Catoni."j Seneca was certainly a biassed judge, for he 
 says : " Habebitur aliquando ebrietas honor et plurimum meri 
 cepisse virtus erit." § Other tippling philosophers are enumerated 
 in the following quaint Latin verses, the author of which is not 
 known : — 
 
 Tunc vix Demoeritus poterat compescere risum, 
 
 Riderent cum sibi vina labris. 
 Tergeret ut fletus contrarius alter amaros, 
 
 Sugebat lacrymas saepe, lagena, tuas. 
 Divinum ut Bacchi semper spiraret odorem, 
 
 Diogenes medii vixit in orbe cadi. 
 Dicitur ardentem cum sese misit in ^thnam, 
 
 Empedocles modico non caluisse mero. 
 
 * **It is said that the virtue of Cato the elder was frequently warmed by wine." 
 t "Cato refreshed his mind with wine when it was wearied with the cares of the 
 commonwealth." 
 
 X "Cato has been blamed for drunkenness, but it is easier to find reason to praiso, 
 than to blame Cato." 
 
 § "Drunkenness will be sometimes considered as honourable, and to drink a great 
 <iuantity of pure wine as a virtue." 
 
HUMOROUS AND COMIC. 
 
 467 
 
 Teque ferunt veteres guttas, Epicure, Lysei 
 
 Vel minimas atomis antetulisse tuis. 
 Talia ne dubiter potare exempla secutus, 
 
 Qui sapit ille bibit, qui bib it ergo sapit." * 
 
 In Holland they have a curious practice, which the Spectator 
 thus describes : — 
 
 " The Dutch who are more famous for their industry than for their wit 
 and humour, hang up in several of their streets what they call the sign of 
 the Gaper; that is, the head of an idiot dressed in a cap and bells and 
 gaping in a most immoderate manner ; this is a standing jest in Amster- 
 dam." 
 
 But the statement is slightly — probably wilfully — incorrect. 
 Carved wooden busts of Gapers are still used at the present day 
 in Holland, but are, and have always been, chemists', or rather, 
 druggists' signs, to intimate that narcotics are sold within, as 
 gaping or yawning is a precursor of sleep. The costume of 
 these busts is generally somewhat Oriental, as Eastern nations 
 were supposed to be not only expert in herbs and medicines, 
 but also, because opium came from Eastern climes. 
 
 A very curious and rare sign is to be seen in the little village 
 of Nidd, near Knaresborough ; this is the Ass in the Band-Box. 
 We find it mentioned in 1712 in Partridge's MS. book of 
 ^' Celestial Motions." t In the month of October of that year he 
 entered the following memorandum : — " At the end of this 
 month the villains made the Band-box plot, to blow up Robin 
 and his family with a couple of inkhorns, and that rogue Swift 
 w^as at the opening of the band-box and the discovery of the plot. 
 
 The truth of it all was : * in a Band-box.' "J It 
 
 figured also as one of the signs in Bonnel Thornton's signboard 
 exhibition of 1762.§ It seems to have originated from an ex- 
 tremely indelicate Joke called " selling bargains, with which the 
 
 * "When the wine sparkled on the lips of Democritus, it was then that he could not 
 restrain himself from laughter. Another [lleraclius] on the contrary, often drank thy 
 tears, 0 bottle, in order to dry his own tears. Diogenes lived in a barrel so that he 
 might always smell the odour of divine wine. It is said that Empedocles, when he 
 jumped down burning Etna, had first warmed himself with no small quantity of wine. 
 They also say that thou, 0 Epicurus, didst prefer even the smallest drops of old wine 
 to thine atoms. In imitation of these examples, I do not hesitate in drinking, for he who 
 tastes drinks, consequently he that drinks is wise." It is almost impossible to trans- 
 late this last line, on account of the pun contained in the verb sapere, which at the 
 same time means " to taste" and "to be wise." The second line is evidantly imperfect. 
 
 t Ilarl. MSS., 6200, p. 68. 
 
 t This alludes to the well-known plot of a bandbox sent to the Lord Treasurer, con- 
 taining a very poor infernal machine, made of inkhorns. The affair, however, has 
 never been satisfactorily cleared up. Swift is called a rogue by the indignant Part- 
 ridge, because he had made a droll ballad and epitaph upon the "Supposed death of 
 Partridge, the Alm.-iu:\c-maker," which Swift had predicted and Partridsje publicly denied. 
 
 § See Appendix. 
 
 • 
 
468 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 maids of honour amused themselves in Swift's time, (see his 
 " Polite Conversation unless it be a vernacular reading of 
 some crest, such as an antelope or a unicorn issuing out of a 
 mural crown. 
 
 In the borough of Southwark is a sign on which is inscribed 
 " The Old Pick-my-toe," which, in the absence of any better 
 origin, we may suppose to be a vulgar representation of the 
 Roman slave who, being sent on some message of importance, 
 would not stop to pick a thorn out of his foot, until he had 
 completed his mission. Probably this was the same sign as that 
 represented on the trades token of Samuel Bovery in George 
 Lane, a naked figure picking one of its feet ; but the name of the 
 house is not given on the token. Jack of Both Sides, at Read- 
 ing, is so named because the house stands at a point where two 
 roads meet in the form of a Y, and the house being wedge- 
 shaped, has an entry at each side. Such a house in London is 
 often called by the vulgar a " Flat-iron." 
 
 The Old Smugs is a sign on the trades token of Joseph Hall, 
 at Newington Butts, 1667, representing a smith and an anvil; 
 but whether John Hall himself was " old Smvgs," or whether he 
 kept a tavern frequented by blacksmiths, history does not inform 
 us. This last is also the name of one of the characters in the 
 ''Merry Devil at Edmonton." The Battered Naggin {sic 
 for Noggin) is an Irish sign, it being in that country a figurative 
 expression for a man who has got more than is good for him, 
 — " he has got a lick of a battered naggin." The Noggin, with- 
 out the adjective, occurs at a few places in Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire. The Tumbling Sailors, representing three seamen 
 half-seas-over," and reeling arm-in-arm down a street, may be 
 seen near Broseley ; at Dudley, and in other places. The Crip- 
 ple's Inn at Stockingford, Warwick, is doubtless nothing more 
 than a very "lame" attempt at comicality. The Hat in Hand, 
 in Portsea, promises a polite host ; but what can be expected of 
 Old Careless, the ominous name of a public-house at Staple- 
 ford, Notts, of Spite Hall at Brandon, Durham, or of Old No, 
 w^hich occurs in Silver Street, Sheffield] Slow and Easy is 
 the unpromising name of an ale-house at Lostock, Chester ; let 
 us hope that it may be meant for a version of the Italian pro- 
 verb, " chi va piano va sano,'' meaning that the landlord will be 
 content with small and fair profits, and acquire fortune by slow 
 and easy steps. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PUNS AND REBUSES. 
 
 Punning on names, or a figurative rendering of names, was pro- 
 bably at first adopted not so much with any intent at joking, as 
 means to assist the memory, giving the name a visible token, 
 which would take the place of writing at a time when but few 
 persons could either read or write. At the revival of learning, 
 and the spread of what we may term the refinement of society, 
 punning was one of the few accomplishments at which the fine 
 ladies and gentlemen aimed. From the twelfth to the sixteenth 
 century, it was at its greatest height. The conversation of the witty 
 gallants and ladies, and even of the clowns and other inferior 
 characters, in the comedies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, 
 which we may be sure was painted from the life, is full of puns 
 and plays upon words. The unavoidable result of such an ex- 
 cess was a surfeit, and the consequent degout, which lasted for 
 more than a century.* Like other diseases, it broke out again 
 subsequently with redoubled virulence, and made great havoc in 
 the reign of Queen Anne. " Several worthy gentlemen and 
 critics," says the Tatler for June 23, 1709, "have applied to me 
 to give my censure of an enormity, which has been revived after 
 being long suppressed, and is called Punning. I have several 
 arguments ready to prove that he cannot be a man of honour 
 who is guilty of this abuse of human society." 
 
 Bagford makes the following remark on this subject : — 
 As for rebuses or name devices, thei ware brought into use heare in 
 England after King Edward ye 3 had conquered France, and this was 
 taken up by most people heare in this nation, espesially by them which 
 had none armes ; and if their names ended in ton, as Haton ; Boulton ; 
 Luton ; Grafton ; Middellton ; Seton ; Norton ; they must presently have 
 for their signes or devises a hat and a tun ; a boult and a tun ; a lute and 
 a tun, and so on, which signifies nothing to ye name, for all names end- 
 ing in Ton signifieth a toune from whence they tooke their name. It 
 would make one very merry to loke ouer ye learned Camden in his ^Re- 
 maines,' and to consider ye titles of our ould books printed by Haryson, 
 Kingston, Islip, Woodcooke, Payer, Bushell," &c. — ^a?'Z. i)//SuS'., 5910, p. ii. 
 
 Camden, in his " Eemains," mentions these punning signs, 
 and gives a like statement with Bagford, that they were intro- 
 duced from France, where they are still much in fashion. 
 
 * In the oW sermons and religious treatises ol the seventeenth century, however, wtt 
 occasionally find punning resorted to by the preachers of the time. 
 
470 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 "These," says C^tmden, "were so well liked by our English 
 there and, sent hither ouer the streight of Calice with full sayle, 
 were so entertained here although they were most ridiculous, by 
 all degrees of the learned and unlearned, that he was nobody 
 that could not hammer out of his name an invention by this wit- 
 craft, and picture it accordingly : whereupon who did not busy 
 his brain to hammer his device out of this forge." After many 
 examples too long to quote, he concludes with the following : — 
 "Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of great wisedome, and 
 oorne to the universall good of this realme, was content to use mor upon 
 a ton, and sometimes a mulberry -tree, called Morus in Latine, out of a 
 ton. So Luton^ Thornton, Ashton, did note their names with a Lute, a 
 Thorn, and an Ash upon a Ton. So an hare on a bottle for Harebottle, a 
 Maggot-pie upon a Goat for Pigot. Med written on a Calf for Medcalfe ; 
 Chester, a chest with a starre over it; Allet, a Lot ; Lionel Ducket, a Lion 
 with L on his head, where it should have beene in his tayle ; if the lion 
 had been eating a ducke it had been a rare device, — worth a Duckat or a 
 duck-egge. And if you require more, I refer you to the wittie inventions 
 of some Londoners ; but that for Garret Dewes is most memorable : two 
 in a garret casting dews at dice.* This for rebus may suffice, and yet if 
 there were more, I think some lips would like such kind of Lettice." f 
 
 How punning signboards were concocted we may gather from 
 a scene in Ben Jonson's "Alchymist," act ii., scene 1, where a 
 rebus sign is to be found for Abel Drugger, who for that purpose 
 goes to a kind of fortune-teller, styling himself an alchymist, 
 and who provides our shopkeeper in the following manner : — 
 He shall have a hell, that's Abel, 
 And by it standing one whose name is Dee 
 In a rug gown, there 's D and rug, that 's drug. 
 And right anenst him a dog snarling er. 
 There 's Drugger, Abel Drugger. That 's his sign, 
 And here 's no mystery and hieroglyphic." 
 This wonderful sign the Alchymist terms a "' mystic character,'' 
 the " radii " of which are to produce no end of good results to 
 Abel's trade. 
 
 The Cockneys (" gentle dulness dearly loves a joke ") have at 
 all times been celebrated for this kind of pleasantry. The men- 
 tion of a few of their signs will be sufficient to show the extent of 
 their wit and originality in this direction. The well-known bird- 
 
 * He was a printer who kept his shop at the sign of the Swan in St Paul's Church- 
 yard in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This Garatt D'Ewes was grandfather of the cele- 
 brated antiquary, Sir Symond D'Ewes ; he amassed a handsome fortune, which enabled 
 him to purchase the manor of Gains near Upminster, Essex, and thus laid the foun- 
 dation of the future greatness of his family. D'Ewes was of Dutch origin, being a native 
 of the province of Geldorland. Some of the letters of this early printer are preserved 
 in the Harl MS., No. 381. 
 
 t Camden's Remains, p 140, et seq. 1629. 
 
PUMS AND REBUSES. 
 
 bolt through a tun, or Bolt in Tun, for Bolton, the device of 
 one of the priors of St Bartholomew, is still in existence in Fleet 
 Street. 
 
 It may seem doubtful," says Camden, " whether Bolton, prior of St 
 Bartholomew, in Smithfield, was wiser when he invented for his name a 
 bird-bolt through his Tun, or when he built him a house upon Harrow 
 Hill, for fear of an inundation after a great conjunction of planets in the 
 watery triplicity." 
 
 From an entry in the Patent Boll of 21 Henry VI., (1443,) this 
 house in Fleet Street appears to have been an inn at that period. 
 In a licence of alienation to the Friars Carmelites of London, of 
 certain premises in the parish of St Dunstan, Fleet Street, 
 " Hospitium vocatum le Boltenton " is mentioned as a boundary. 
 On some of the seventeenth century trades tokens, we meet with a 
 tun pierced by three arrows ; this variation of the Bolt in Tun was 
 called the Tun and Arp.ows, (or /^arrows, as the Cockney tokens 
 have it.) There was one in Bishopsgate Street Within, and 
 another in Bishopsgate Street Without, in the reign of Charles II. 
 
 A Hand and Cock was the punning sign of John Hancock, 
 in Whitefriars. George Cox, in the Minories, tallow-chandler by 
 trade, had Two Cocks for his sign. Thomas Cockayne, a dis- 
 tiller in Southwark, had the same sign, as a feeble pun on part 
 of his name ; whilst Christopher Bostock, not seeing any possi- 
 bility " to hammer " a rebus out of his own patronym, fortu- 
 nately for him lived at Cock's Key, and so could make up for 
 this misfortune by punning on the name of that place, whence 
 his sign triumphantly exhibited the Cock and Key. John 
 Drinkwater, a publisher, intimated his name by a Fountain ; 
 and William Woodcock, a bookseller in St Paul's Church- 
 yard in the seventeenth century, happily rendered his by a coek 
 standing on a bundle of wood. William Hill, another book- 
 seller in St Paul's Churchyard in 1598, lived at the sign of 
 the Hill. John Buckland, who followed the same profession 
 in Paternoster Bow, in 1750, was modestly content with half a 
 pun, and adopted the sign of the Buck, while, in the same 
 manner, another of his colleagues, Samuel Manship, who in 1720 
 lived against the Boyal Exchange, Cornhill," was satisfied with 
 the Ship. The Sun and Bed Cross, in Jewin Street, was the 
 sign of John Cross, who, taking a house with the sign of the 
 Sun^ added to it a Cross, In the same manner Pelham More, in 
 Jfoorsgate, had the Sun and Moor's Head. John Cherry, of 
 
472 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Maidenhead, adopted a Cherry-tree as his sign, showing in 
 this as much wit as the ancestor of the Crequi family in France, 
 who chose a Grequier (old French for cherry-tree) as his coat of 
 arms. Hugh Conny, of Caxton and Elsworth, Cambridge, had 
 in 1666 Three Conies, or rabbits, for a sign. Eichard Lion, in 
 the Strand, had the Lion. Bartholomew Fish, at Queenhithe, 
 in 1667, Three Fishes. William Home, in Oak Lane, 1671, the 
 Horns. Thomas Fox, in Newgate Market, a Fox. William 
 Geese, King Street, Westminster, Three Geese. Ellinor Gandor, 
 Upper Shadwell, 1667, a Gander ; whilst H. Goes, a native of 
 Antwerp, printer at York in 1506, next at Beverley, and finally, 
 in London, had for his sign a Goose with an H above it. 
 Joseph Parsons, " at the sign of Parson's Green," Market 
 Place, St James, seems to have had a view of Parson's Green, 
 Fulham, for his sign ; though why he did not simply take a 
 parson is, we fear, a secret he has carried with him to the grave. 
 John Hive, St Mary's Hill, 1667, had the sign of the Beehive. 
 Grace Pestell, in Fig-tree Yard, RatclifFe, the Pestle and Mor- 
 tar. John Atwood, in Eose Lane, the Man in the Wood. 
 Andrew Hind, over against the Mews, Charing Cross, a Hind. 
 Taylor, the Water poet, mentions a similar sign at Preston : — 
 
 " There at the Hinde, kinde Master Hinde, mine host, 
 Kept a good table, bak'd, and boyld, and rost." * 
 
 Jane Keye, Bloomsbury Market, 1653, a Key. The Lion and 
 Key was, in 1651, a sign in Thames Street, punning perhaps on 
 the neighbouring Lion's Quay ; it is still the sign of a public- 
 house in Hull, whilst the Red Lion and Key still occurs in 
 Mill Lane, Tooley Street. A grocer, named Laurence Green, 
 proved that to the fortem ac tenacem propositi virum nothing 
 is impossible, and found means to pun upon his untractable 
 name by painting his doorposts green, and called his shop the 
 Green Posts. We meet with him in a newspaper advertise- 
 ment, which, as it gives the price of various articles at that date, 
 is not uninteresting. Green sold — 
 
 " Chocolate, made of the best nuts, at 3s. a pound ; the t>est, with sugar, 
 at 2s. a pound ; a good sort of all nut, at 2e> 6d. ; with sugar, Is. 8d. To 
 the buyers of three pounds, a quarter gratis. The best coffee, at 5s. 4d. a 
 pound; to the buyer of throe pounds, Ts. allowed. Bohee tea, at 16, 
 20, 24s., the very finest, a« 28s. a pound. Fine green tea, at 14s., good, 
 at 10s. a pound. Fine Spanish gnuff, at 4s. a pound." &c.f 
 
 * Taylor'd Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630. 
 
 t Postmarii January 26-27, 1711. 
 
PUNS AND BE BUSES. 
 
 473 
 
 The Harp was the sign of Eichard Harper, West Smithfield ; 
 it occurs on a trades token. The house seems afterwards to have 
 assumed the sign of the Bible and Harp. What occupation 
 Eichard Harper followed does not appear from his token, but in 
 1641 a Eichard Harper at the sign of the Bible and Harp, pub- 
 lished a tract called 
 
 Bartholomew Fayre, 
 or 
 
 Varieties of Fancies where you may find, 
 
 A fayre of Wares and all to please your mind.** 
 
 In 1670 the house was occupied by a certain J. Clarke, and at 
 a subsequent period by J. Bisset; both these men published 
 numerous ballads. 
 
 The Hat and Tun is a pun on the name of Hatton, and is 
 still preserved on a public-house sign in Hatton Wall. A man 
 named Nobis, at the beginning of the present century opened 
 an inn on the road to Pappenburgh, which he called ISToBis Inn, 
 and made free with grammar in order to find a punning motto, 
 viz. : " Si Deus pro nobis quis contra Nobis." Bells have 
 been used by innumerable persons of the name of Bell. The 
 Salmon was the sign of Mrs Salmon, the Madame Tussaud of 
 the eighteenth century; her gallery was first in St Martin's-le- 
 Grand, near Aldersgate, whence she removed to Fleet Street, 
 opposite what is now Anderton's Hotel, then called the Horns 
 Tavern. The Brace Tavern, in Queen's Bench prison, was so 
 called on account of its being kept by two brothers of the name 
 of Partridge, The Golden Heart was the sign of Thomas 
 Hart, a tailor in Monmouth Street, St Giles. (Harl. MSS., 
 Bagford Bills, 5931.) Bat Pidgeon, the hairdresser immortal- 
 ised in the Spectator, lived at the Three Pigeons, " the corner 
 house of St Clement's churchyard, next to the Strand," says 
 Pennant, where he " cut my boyish locks in the year 17 40." 
 
 The Black Swan in Bartholomew Lane, nicknamed Cobweb 
 Hall, was kept by Owen Swan, parish clerk (hence the Mack 
 Swan?) of St Michael's, Cornhill. It was a tavern of great 
 resort for the musical wits in the seventeenth century. Failing 
 in this business, Owen set up as a tobacconist in St Michael's 
 Alley; on the papers in which he wrapped tobacco for his cus- 
 tomers, were the following rhymes: — 
 
 " The dying Swan in sad and mourning strains 
 Of his near end and hapless fate complains. 
 
474 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 In pity then your kind assistance give, 
 
 Smoke of Swan's best that the poor bird may live." 
 
 To whicli a friend of his wrote the following reply : — 
 
 " The aged Swan opprest with time and cares, 
 With Indian sweets his funeral prepares. 
 Light up the pile ! thus he '11 ascend the skies 
 And Phoenix-like from his own ashes rise." 
 
 There is a well-known anecdote of a man named Farr, who 
 opened a tobacco shop on Fish Street Hill, and soon obtained a 
 good custom from the pun over his door, " The best tobacco hy 
 Farr,^^ rather than from the quality of his tobacco. Opposite 
 him there was another tobacconist who lost his customers through 
 his pun, but he regained them in the same way as he lost them, 
 for he fought Farr with his own weapons, and wrote up ^'Faf 
 better tobacco than the best tobacco hy FarrP This joke was 
 thought so good that all his customers returned. Tobacco-papers 
 of the original " finest tobacco hy Farr " are preserved among 
 the Banks hand-bills in the British Museum, as a proof of the 
 truth of this history. 
 
 A Ling, or codfish, strange to say, entwined with honey- 
 suckles, was the sign of Nicholas Ling, at the north-west door 
 of St Paul's, where, in 1595, he published "Pierce Pennylesse 
 his Supplicacion to the Divell.^' An Oak was the sign of 
 Nicholas Okes, a bookseller dwelling at Gray's Inn, publisher of 
 some of Taylor the Water Poet's works. His colophon repre- 
 sents Jupiter seated on an eagle between two oak trees. A 
 French publisher, Nicholas Cheneau, in the Rue St Jacques, 
 Paris, in 1580, had also an oak for his sign, [chene, an oak.) 
 
 John Day, another publisher of the time of Queen Elizabeth, 
 had a sort of pun, or charade, on his name in the sign of the 
 Resurrection, his device representing a man waking a sleeper, 
 with the words, "Arise, for it is day'' The Castle and Falcon 
 was another of his signs. Richard Grafton, the first printer of 
 the Common Prayer, who also printed the proclamation of Lady 
 Jane Grey as Queen of England, for which he fell under the 
 displeasure of Queen Mary, had a tun with a grafted fruit-tree 
 growing through it. Stow made a pun upon this sign, saying 
 that one of Grafton's works was " a noise of empty tonnes and 
 unfruitful grafftes,^' to which Grafton retaliated by calling Stow's 
 Chronicle " a collection of lyes foolishly stowed together." Hugh 
 Singleton had a Golden Tun; Harrison, 15 GO, a hare shelter- 
 
PUNS AND REBUSES. 
 
 475 
 
 ing under a corn-slieaf tied with a ribbon, and with the letters ri 
 and a sun shining above ; but the most absurd rebus of all was 
 that of one Newberry, who, according to Camden, had a Yew 
 Tree with several berries upon it, and in the midst a great 
 golden N upon one of the branches, which by the help of a 
 little false spelling made N-yew- berry. 
 
 A few punning signs still remain. At Oswaldstwistle, near 
 Accrington, a man named Bellthorn has the Bell in the 
 Thorn ; at Warbleton, in Sussex, an old public-house has the 
 sign of a war-bill in a tun, which sign of the Axe and Tun is 
 further intended as an intimation to axe for beer " ! Another 
 innkeeper named Abraham Lowe, who lives half way up Rich- 
 mond Hill, near Douglas in the Isle of Man, has the following 
 innocent attempt at punning on his name : — 
 
 " I 'm Abraham Lowe, and half way up the Hill, 
 If I were higher up, what 's funnier still, 
 I should be lowe. Come in and take your fill, 
 Of porter, ale, wine, spirits, what you will, 
 Step in, my friend, I pray, no further go ; 
 My prices, like myself, are always low.'* 
 
 Besides rebuses, and puns on names, the French have another 
 class of punning signs, for which we have only very few equiva- 
 lents, namely, rebus signboards. One of the most common is 
 the BcEUF A LA Mode, which some twenty or thirty years ago 
 was thus Englished in golden letters on a low boarding-house at 
 Brussels : — 
 
 ''The Board House of the Fashionable Beef'' 
 It is the usual sign for eating-houses, being the standard dish of 
 the French bourgeoisie. The picture represents an ox dressed up 
 in the height female elegance, with bonnet, shawl, &c. A good 
 repartee is told, originating in this method of representing the 
 sign : a citizen s wife, of aldermanic proportions, was coming out 
 of a magasin de nouveautes in Paris, just as two " social evils 
 were going in; "Bis-done, Felagie/' said one of the girls to her 
 companion, " look at that Boeuf-a-la-Mode who is going out." 
 " Yes," replied the indignant matron, who had overheard the 
 remark, " and now game is coming in 
 
 Other French punning signs, such as St Jean" Baptists, Au" 
 Juste Peix, Le Bout du Monde, Le Signe de la Ceoix, and 
 many more, have been noticed in former chapters, and need not, 
 therefore, be again mentioned here. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 Signs which could not well be classed under any of the former 
 divisions will find their place in this chapter, and hence a motley 
 gathering may be expected. As in all inquiries it is proper to 
 begin with the a. b. c, we shall do so here. The a. b. c. was 
 the sign of Eichard Fawkes, a bookseller, as the imprint of his 
 works says : — 
 
 " In the suburbss of the famous Cytye of Lodon, withoute Templebaire 
 dvvellynge in Durresme rentes [part of Durham House, where now the 
 Adelphi stands] or else in Powles churche-yerde at the sygne of the a. b. c. 
 The year of our Lorde Mcccccxxx." 
 
 This, we must admit, was a very reasonable sign for a " man 
 of letters.'' Continental booksellers also employed it; amongst 
 others, Jacob Pietersz Paetsy, of Amsterdam, in 1597; in the 
 Hague such a sign gave its name to a street. About 1825 there 
 was a public-house in Clare Market called the a. b. c, where the 
 alphabet from A to Z was painted over the door. Even at the 
 present day many public-houses are called the Letters; thus 
 there are two in Shrewsbury, two in Carlisle, one in Oldham, 
 and others in various places. Grand A is a public-house near 
 East Dereham, Norfolk. Little A was the sign of a tobacconist 
 in Leadenliall Street, circa 1780; his tobacco-papers, preserved 
 among the Banks bills, were adorned with a portrait of " Sir 
 Jeffrey Dunstan, or Old Wigs," one of the mayors of Garrat. 
 styled " Old Wigs " from his practice of buying those articles, by 
 which he made an honourable living before ambition flamed his 
 soul and he entered upon a political career. Grand B may be 
 seen at Long Framlington, Morpeth ; Q Inn at Staleybridge ; 
 and Q in the Corner in Sheffield. Rhyming alphabets and 
 nursery rhymes present us with the first and last, but the second 
 we confess is somewhat mysterious : the Crowned Q, (au Q 
 CouRRONNE,) which was an old sign in the Hue de la Ferroniere, 
 Paris, is easy enough to understand, and one of those broad 
 Ptabelaisian strokes of humour which the public deUs^hted in a 
 century or two ago ; indeed the sign continued in its old quarters 
 until 1828. The Y was formerly a mercer's sign in France, and 
 may have originated from the custom of tying ribbons up in 
 festoons, Avhen they would assume somewhat the shape of that 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 All 
 
 letter. It was also the sign of Nicliolas Duchcmin, a bookseller 
 in Paris, 1541-1576. He, however, took a Pythagorean view of 
 this letter, and considered it, as the freemasons do, an emblem 
 of the double path of life, the broad way leading to destruction, 
 the narrow way unto life ; hence the top of the 
 left hand branch terminated in flames, the right 
 hand in a crown. The idea was evidently bor- 
 rowed from Matt. vii. 13, unless it be from Per- ^ 
 sius, who says — 
 
 " Et tibi quae Samios deduxit litera ramos, 
 Surgentem dextro monstravit limite callem." 
 
 Z was formerly a grocer's sign in this country, and was said to 
 stand for Zinzibar, (ginger,) but this Z after all was perhaps only 
 a corruption of the figure 4 which, we are informed, is or was a 
 constant grocer's sign in some parts of Scotland, as for instance 
 in Stirling, implying that their provisions came from the four 
 quarters of the world. Numbejr IY is still the sign of an 
 ale-house at 74 Hope Street, Salford, Manchester. Number 
 Theee is to be seen at Great Lay ton, near Blackpool. In 1633 
 it was the sign of a bookseller, Jean Brunet, in the Eue Neuve 
 S. Louis, Paris. He says on the imprints of his books, an Trois 
 de chiffres, in contradistinction to the Eoman numerals, which at 
 that time were not named chiffres but nomhres; chiffres applied 
 only to the Arab numerals. The latter were introduced by Pope 
 Silvester II. (999 — 1003) who, having studied at Seville, ac- 
 quired them from the Moors. 
 
 The Bell is one of the commonest signs in England, and was 
 used as early as the fourteenth century, for Chaucer says that the 
 " gentil hostelrie that heighte the Tabard,'^ was " faste by the 
 Belle." Most probably bells were set up as signs on account of 
 our national fondness for bell-ringing, which procured for our 
 island the name of the " ringing island," and made Handel 
 say, that the bell was our national musical instrument ; and long 
 may it be so ! We confess to have derived infinitely more 
 pleasurable feelings from hearing the melodious bells on a sum- 
 mer afternoon ringing through the clear air and sending their 
 sweet sounds over corn-field and meadow, over brook and stream, 
 than from any cavatina or cantata, sung by the dearest paid 
 [talians in crowded operas, and at over-heated concerts. Paul 
 Hentzer, a German traveller, who visited this country in the 
 
478 
 
 ^HE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, says, " the English are vastly fond of 
 noises that fill the air, such as firing of cannon, beating of drums, 
 and ringing of hells ; so that it is common for a number of them 
 to go up into some belfry, and ring bells for hours together for 
 the sake of exercise." Aubrey makes a similar remark ; and, for 
 further reference, we may go to Sir Symonds D'Ewes, who writes 
 in his " Memoirs," that, in 1618, he was ringing the large bell ot 
 St John's College, Cambridge, for exercise, when the great comet 
 was in the heavens ; the consequence was, that he got entangled 
 in the ropes, and nearly fractured his skull, whereupon he wisely 
 resolved not to ring so long as the mischievous comet was to be 
 seen. Generally, for a merry peal, the different toned octave 
 bells are rung in succession ; then changes are introduced, which, 
 by continually altering, the succession of the bells produces a 
 most pleasing effect. A peal of bells usually consists of eight, 
 hence the frequency of the Eight Bells ; besides these, there 
 are the Four Bells, the Five Bells, the Six Bells, the Ten- 
 Bells j the Eight Ringees, (Norwich and elsewhere,) the Old 
 Ring o' Bells, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, &c. Three 
 Swans and Peal, Walsall, Staffordshire ; the Nelson and 
 Peal, also in Warwickshire, and many others mentioned in a 
 previous chapter. In some old belfries, the rules and fines of the 
 ringers are painted in rhymes on the walls ; as for instance, in 
 St John's Church, Chester, (dated 1687,) in All Saints' Church, 
 Hastings, (dated 1756,) &c. One of the oldest Bell taverns in 
 Middlesex stood in King Street, Westminster ; it is named in 
 the expenses of Sir John Howard, (Jockey of Norfolk,) in 1466. 
 Pepys dined at this house, July 1, 1660, invited by purser Wash- 
 ington ; but came away greatly disgusted, for, says he, " the 
 rogue had no more manners than to invite me, and let me pay 
 my club.'' In November of the same year, he was there again, 
 ^'to see the 7 flanders mares that my Lord has bought 
 lately." In Queen Anne's reign, the October club, consisting oi 
 about one hundred and fifty county members of Parliament, all 
 unmitigated Tories, used to meet at this tavern. The Bell, in 
 Warwick Lane, Newgate Street, is another example of the old 
 London coaching inns, still in its original condition, the galleries 
 being propped up to prevent their falling down : everything 
 about the place has a seventeenth century look, — the country 
 carts, the chickens here in the very heart of the city, the inw 
 kitchen with its old black clocks its settles and white benches, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 479 
 
 tlie very smell of the cookery going on seems more homely and 
 old English than the hot greasy vapours emanating from the 
 Areas of modern taverns. Coming into this yard from the 
 adjacent crowded streets, is like entering a latter-day Pompeii. 
 It was at this inn that Archbishop Leighton, the honest, steady 
 advocate of peace and forbearance, died in 1684:. 
 
 " He often used to say that if he were to choose a place to die in, it 
 should be an Inn ; it looks like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this 
 world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in 
 it. He added, that the officious tenderness and care of friends was an en- 
 tanglement to a dying man ; and that the unconcerned attendance of those 
 that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. And 
 he obtained what he desired." * 
 
 At the Bell, in the Poultry, lived, in the reign of King Wil- 
 liam and Queen Anne, Nathaniel Crouch, the famous bookseller, 
 who was the first to condense great and learned works into a 
 small and popular form. He generally wrote under the name of 
 " John Burton." His " Historical Rarities in London and West- 
 minster," was one of the books Dr Johnson, in his old age, 
 desired to read again in remembrance of the pleasure derived 
 from their teaching in the days of his youth. 
 
 At Finedon, three miles from Wellingborough, there is an old 
 inn, called the Bell, having for a sign the portrait of a female 
 with the following lines beneath : — 
 
 Queen Edith, lady once of Finedon, 
 Where at the Bell good fare is dined on.'* 
 
 The Bell Inn, kept by John Good, at Oxford, has : — 
 " My name, likewise my ale, is good. 
 Walk in and taste my own home brew'd ; 
 For all that know John Good can tell, 
 That, like my sign, it bears the Bell." 
 
 There was a Golden Bell, in St Bride's Lane, Fleet Street, 
 in the reign of Queen Anne, next door to which lived Lydia Bur- 
 craft, a female hairdresser, who, as appears from her bill,t sold 
 an infallible pomatum to make the hair grow long and curly. 
 The Black Bell is mentioned by Stowe, p. 81 : — 
 
 *' Above this lane's [Crooked Lane] end upon Fish Hill Street, is one 
 great house, for the most part built of stone, which pertained some time 
 to Edward the Black Prince, son to Edward III., who was in his lifetime 
 lodged there. It is now altered to a common hostelry, having the Black 
 Bell for a sign." 
 
 The Monument now stands on the site of this house. 
 
 * Purnet's Own Times, vol. ii., p. 426, ed. 1823. 
 t Ilarl. MSS., 6931. Eagford Bills. 
 
48o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The Bell occurs in innumerable combinations, most of wlii^h 
 seem to have no particular meaning, but simply to arise from 
 the old custom of quartering signs. Among them, we may men- 
 tion the Bell and Anchoe, Hammersmith, which was much 
 visited by the fashion in the beginning of the reign of George III. 
 Bepresentations of the place and its visitors may be seen in 
 several of the caricatures of that period, published by Bowles 
 and Carver, of St Paul's Churchyard. It is still in existence, 
 but its days of glory are past, for, instead of youth and beauty, 
 and " names known to chivalry," its customers now mostly con- 
 sist of the Irish labourers who live in the lanes and back slums 
 of North End. Further, w^e meet with the Bell and Lion, 
 Crew, Cheshire; the Bell and Bullock, Netherem, Penrith, 
 probably united on account of the alliteration ; the Bell and 
 Cuckoo, Erdington, near Birmingham ; and the Bell and 
 Candlestick, also in Birmingham. 
 
 The Bell and Crown is very common, and withal is a 
 reasonable combination, for the bell has, from time immemorial, 
 been rung to express tlie loyalty of the nation on royal entries, 
 •whether into the world or into a town, on occasion of royal mar- 
 riages or deaths, at times of great victories and declarations of 
 peace, and other loyal celebrations. Hence many bells are in- 
 scribed with the words, Fear God, honour the King," w^hich, in 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century, seems also to have been 
 a common inscription on the sign of the Bell.* This sentiment 
 was thus versified by a sign-painter, who- evidently had more 
 loyalty than poetical genius : — 
 
 ''Let the King 
 Live Long. 
 Dong Ding, 
 Ding Dong.'* 
 
 Few signs have so often been wrongly explained as the Bell 
 Savage, on Ludgate Hill. Stow, generally so accurate, says it 
 received its name from one Isabella Savage, who had given the 
 house to the company of cutlers. Where he gathered that in- 
 formation we do not know, but he was " burning," as the children 
 say, and was certainly much nearer the truth than the Spectator^ 
 who states that it was called after a French play of " la Belle 
 Sauvage." The "Antiquarian Repertory," following Stow, asserta 
 
 • See Crajtsman, Sept. 30, 1738. 
 
PLATE XVIII. 
 
 THREE ANGELS. 
 (Banks's Bills, 1770.) 
 
 NAKED MAN. FIRE BALLOON. 
 
 (From a print, 1542.) (Banks's Collection, 1780.) 
 
 THREE MORRIS DANCERS. 
 (Formerly in Old Change, Cheapside, circa 1668.) 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 that the inn was once the property of the Lady Arabella Savage, 
 familiarly called Bell Savage/' which name was represented in 
 a rebus by a wild man and a bell, and so it was always drawn 
 on the panels of the coaches that used to run to and from it, 
 until the railways changed our style of travelling. The true 
 origin of the name is manifest from a document in the Clause 
 RoU, 31 Henry VI * 
 
 "D. Script, irrot. Frenssh. 
 Omnib; Xpi fidelib; ad quos p'sens Scriptum p'ven. Joh'nes Frenssb, filiua 
 primogenitus Joh'is Frenssh, Gentilman, quondam civis et aurifabri Lon- 
 don' salutem in Domino. Sciatis me dedisse, concessisse, et hoc p'senti 
 scripto meo confirmasse, Johanne Frenssh, vidue, matri mee, totum ten sive 
 hospicium, cum suis p'ten', vocat' Savagesynne, alias vocat' le Belle on the 
 Hope, in parochia S'ce Brigide in Fletestreet, London', h'end et tenend, 
 totum p.'dcm ten' sive hospicium, cum suis p't' in p'f at' J ohanne ad 
 t' minu vite sue, absq' impeticoe vasti. In cugis rei testimoniu, &c." f 
 
 In the sixteenth century, the Belle Savage appears to have 
 been a place of amusement. " Those who go to Paris garden, 
 the Bel Savage, or theatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or 
 fence play, must not account of any pleasant spectacle unless 
 they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the 
 scaffold, and a third for quiet standing. "J One of the attrac- 
 tions about that period was Banks's wonderful horse, Marocco, 
 which here performed his tricks before a half-admiring, lialf-awe- 
 stricken audience, many of whom doubtless considered the 
 animal a witch, if not a devil. " To mine host of the Bel 
 Sauage and all his honest guests,'^ was dedicated the satirical 
 tract of " Marocco Extaticus," in which this horse is introduced. § 
 During the civil wars we find this inn mentioned as apparently a 
 Royalist house : " Upon search at Bell Savage (by order of Par- 
 liament) great quantities of plate were found, intended for York, 
 but stayed by order. '^|| A very odd accident happened in this 
 inn during the terrific storm of November 26, 1703. A Mr 
 
 * Archseologia, xviii., p. 198. 
 
 t "To all true Christian people to whom this present writing shall come: John 
 Frenssh, eldest son of John Frenssh, gentleman, late citizen and goldsmith of London, 
 sends greeting in our Lord. Know ye that I have given, granted, and by this my pre- 
 sent writing confirmed to Joan Frenssh. widow, my mother, all that tenement or inn, 
 with its appurtenances, called Savage's Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in 
 the parish of St Bride, in Fleet Street, London, to have and to hold the aforesaid 
 tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, to the said Joan, for the term of her life, with- 
 out impeachment of waste. In witness whereof," &c. (here follow the names of six wit 
 D esses.) Dated at London the 5th day of February, in the thirty-first year of the reign 
 of King Henry VI. after the conquest. 
 
 X Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent, 1576. 
 
 § See Bosom's or Blossoms Inn, under "Legendary and Biblical Signs,** p. 297. 
 U Speciall Passages from Westminster, London, York, ifcc., Jup» :i6— July 5, 1642. 
 
 2 H 
 
482 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Hempson, we are told, was blown in Hs sleep out of an upper 
 room window, and knew nothing of the storm nor of his aerial 
 voyage, till awaking, he found himself lying in his bed on Ludgate 
 hill No doubt the good wine of mine host must have had some- 
 thing to do with this miraculous flight.* Having been for cen- 
 turies a coaching inn, its name spread to the provinces, and some 
 inn-keepers copied its sign, whence we meet with La Belle Sau- 
 VAGE, Macclesfield, and in one or two other places. 
 
 Balls were extremely common in former times, frequently in 
 combination with other objects ; this arose from the custom of 
 the silk mercers in hanging out a Golden Ball. Constantine 
 the Great adopted a golden globe (termed Hesa) as the emblem 
 of his imperial dignity, on which, after he embraced Christianity, 
 he placed a cross, and with this addition it continues as one of the 
 insignia of royalty at the present day. The early silk-mercers 
 adopted this golden globe, or ball, as their sign, because in the 
 middle ages, all silk was brought from the East, and more par- 
 ticularly from Byzantium and the imperial manufactories there, 
 whence it was called serica Constantinopolitana, pannus imperi- 
 alls, Basilica, de Basilicio, ^^riy/zov, &c. The Golden Ball con- 
 tinued as a silk-mercer's sign until the end of the last century, 
 when it gradually fell to the Berlin wool shops, and with them 
 it continues at the present day. 
 
 Balls of various colours were invariably the signs of quacks 
 and fortune-tellers in the eighteenth century ; the Bagford Bills 
 are full of Red, Blue, Black, White, and Green Balls, all signs 
 of those gentry who profess to cure all the evils flesh is heir to. 
 How they came to choose this sign is hard to say, for we can 
 scarcely imagine that they were intended to represent magnified 
 pills. Moorfieldst was the head-quarters of this trade ; — 
 " If in Moorfields a Lady stroles 
 Among the Globes and Golden Balls, 
 
 * Pamphlet in the Harleian Miscellany, Index, vol. x. This dreadful storm is said 
 to have caused more damage than the fire of 1666. Bishop Kedder and his wife were 
 killed in it by the fall of a house in which they were sleeping. Admiral Beaumont was 
 shipwrecked and lost with nearly the whole of his ship's company. The Eddystone 
 lighthouse was blown down and swallowed by the sea, with its architect, Mr Henry Win- 
 stanley. A sermon is still yearly preached at Little Wild Street Baptist Chapel, Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields, in memory of this fearful storm, a Mr John Taylor, bookseller of 
 Paternoster Row, having left £40 to it as a thank-offering for his miraculous preserva- 
 tion at the time of the occurrence. 
 
 f After having been for a long time one of the most secure strongholds of the devil, 
 a godly garrison was sent into Moorfields at the end of the last century. The Gazetteer, 
 10th September 1790, has the following paragraph: — "So numerous are become the 
 Gospel shops in the vicinity of Moorfields. that like Monmouth Street, the proprietors 
 employ -'pluckers in" on Sundays to inveigle customers. The cant phrase at the door 
 U, Good sound doctrine here iu p«rfcctioa." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 483 
 
 Where ere they hang she may be certain 
 Of knowing what shall be her fortune. 
 Her husband too, I dare to say, 
 But that she better knows than they." 
 
 Compleat Vintner, London, 1720, p. 38. 
 
 The Golden Ball was the sign of J. Osborne, bookseller in 
 Paternoster Eow, circa 1740, who printed one of the earliest 
 "London Directories;" also of Doctor Forman in Lambeth 
 Marsh, who was deeply implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas 
 Overbury in 1613. The Two Golden Balls at the upper end 
 of Bow Street, Covent Garden, was a place famous for concerts, 
 balls, and other amusements, in the end of the seventeenth and 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century. Prince Eugene once 
 attended a concert at this house. The Two White Balls, in 
 Marylebone Street, was the sign of a school in 1712, where Latin, 
 French, mathematics, &c., were taught ; in the same house there 
 also lived a clergyman who taught "to write well in three 
 days."* 
 
 The balls of the silk mercers and the quacks, suspended from 
 an iron above the door, were generally added (in name at least) 
 to the painted sign, when the house possessed one ; as, iot 
 instance, the Ball and Cap, Hatton Garden, 1668; the Ball 
 AND Eaven, Spitalfields, in the seventeenth century, (both on 
 trades tokens ;) the Red Ball and Acorn, Queen Street, 
 Cheapside, ''a [quack] gentlewoman, daughter of an eminent 
 physician in 1722 ;"t the Plough and Ball, at Nuneaton; the 
 Salmon and Ball, several in London ; the Bible and Ball, a 
 bookseller's in Ave Maria Lane, 1761 ; the Heart and Ball, 
 a silk-mercer's in Little Britain, 1710; the Green Man and 
 Ball, on a trades token of Charter House Lane, where the man 
 is represented throwing a ball ; and thus innumerable other 
 combinations with the Ball might be mentioned. 
 
 The Three Blue Balls, generally a pawnbroker's sign, was 
 also in old times used for taverns and other houses, while pawn- 
 brokers used at pleasure such signs as the Blackamoor's Head, 
 the Black Dog and Still, &c.J On 26th March 1668, Pepys 
 tells us that, coming from the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 he and his party went to the Blue Balls tavern in the same 
 
 * Postboy, Jan. 1, 1711-12. 
 
 t Advertisements in the Weekly Journal for that year, 
 i Both named in the Daily C'ourant tor I7id 
 
484 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 locality, wliere they met some of their friends, including Mrs 
 Knipp ; 
 
 "And after inucli difficulty in getting of musick, we to dancing and then 
 to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and then to 
 dance and sing, a.nd mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelve at 
 night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as I love 
 to dOf enjoy myself. My wife extraordinary fine to-day, in her flower 
 tabby suit, bought a year and more ago, before my mother's death put 
 her into mourning, and so not worn till this day, and everybody in love 
 with it, and, indeed, she is very fine and handsome in it. I having paid 
 the reckoning, which came to almost £4, we parted/' 
 
 What a delightful flow of animal spirits that old Secretary of 
 the Admiralty enjoyed! Alas, for the awful dignity of his 
 modern successors! 
 
 There is still a public-house sign of the Blue Balls, at New- 
 port, I.W. 
 
 The Ring and Ball, Fenchurch Street, 1700, seems suggested 
 by the game of pall mall, recently revived under the name of 
 croquet, in which a ball was struck by a mallet through an iron 
 ring. This sign is mentioned in an advertisement of some valu- 
 able trinkets which had been lost : — 
 
 ^' A gold watch in a plain case, made by Thompson, with the hours of 
 the day only ; a gold chain, pear fashion, two lengths, with a gold watch- 
 hook of Filegrin Indian work, and hung on it a diamond locket, large 
 diamonds with hair in the middle and death at length on a tombstone ; 
 another diamond locket, less diamonds, with a cypher in hair; a red cor- 
 nelian set in gold engraved with a head ; a plain locket with A. K. in 
 golden letters ; a civet-box with a white stone, and engraved on it out- 
 wards a small head and a camel [cameo?] Whosoever stops them if 
 offered to be pawned or valued, and gives notice to Mr Hankey at the 
 Ring and Ball in Fenchurch Street, shall have 5 guineas for the whole, 
 or proportionable for any part."* A small inducement to honesty! 
 
 The Bat and Ball is a common sign for public-houses fre- 
 quented by cricketers ; also the Ceicketers' Aems, the Five 
 Cricketers, and many others. The Wrestlers obtain their 
 name from a sport formerly in great favour in this country, and 
 still cultivated in some parts. At Yarmouth an inn of that 
 name is more celebrated for the jeu d' esprit of the immortal 
 Nelson than anything else. When the fleet was riding in the Yar- 
 mouth roads, the landlord, desirous of the patronage of the blue- 
 jackets, requested permission to call his house the Nelson Arms. 
 His lordship gave him full power to do so, but at the same time 
 reminded him that his arms were only in the singular number. 
 
 • London Gazette, Nov. 18-21, 1700. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 485 
 
 ** Odium quod certaminibus ortum ultra metum durat," 
 Bays Velleius Paterculus, and the truth of the assertion is ex* 
 emplified in the old national antipathy betwixt this country and 
 our neighbours across the channel, whence the Antigallican 
 (th^ name assumed by a London association in the middle of 
 the last century) could not fail to be a favourite sign. At pre- 
 sent this feeling exists to only a very small extent in the minds 
 of our lower orders ; but formerly a Frenchman could not pass 
 through the streets of London with impunity. Stephen Perlin, 
 a French ecclesiastic, who wrote in 1558 a description of Eng- 
 land, Scotland, and Ireland, says : — 
 
 " The people of this country have a mortal hatred for the French as 
 their ancient enemies, and in common call us France chenesve [French 
 knave], France dogue, which is to say, French rascals and French dogs. 
 They also call us or son.'' 
 
 Grosley* devotes a whole chapter to this subject, and tells 
 that the French were ridiculed on the stage, and insulted and 
 ill-treated in the streets. Even at the present day, when the 
 penny romances are in want of a melodramatic villain, a French- 
 man is sure to have the honour of personating him. 
 
 At the beginning of this century there was a tavern of this 
 name in Shire Lane, Temple Bar, kept by Harry Lee, of sport- 
 ing notoriety, and father of Alexander Lee, the first and origi- 
 nal tiger'' in which capacity he was produced by the notorious 
 Lord Barrymore. This tavern was much frequented by his lord- 
 ship and other gentlemen fond of low life, pugilism, and so-called 
 sport. The nicknames of the brothers Barrymore will give a toler- 
 ably good idea of their amiable qualities ; the eldest was called 
 Hellgate; the second Cripplegate, (he was lame,) and the third 
 Newgate, so styled, because, though an honourable and a reverend, 
 he had been in almost every goal in England except Newgate. 
 This interesting family circle was completed by a sister, called 
 Billingsgate, on account of the forcible and flowery language she 
 made use of. The Antigallican is still in vogue, as there are three 
 public-houses with that sign in London, besides some in the 
 country, and an Antigallican Aems at New Charlton, Kent. 
 
 On the 29th of September 1783, the first balloon — or air- 
 balloon as it was then called — was let off at Versailles, in the 
 
 * Tour to London, vol. i., p. 84. *' A perfectly fair judge, and writing in the true spirit 
 of a philosopher," says his translator. Grosley remarks that the foreigners would 
 be in the wrong to complain of the rude insults of the lower classes, since" even the 
 better sort of Londoners" liberally show their hatred to the French whenever they can 
 find an opportunity. 
 
486 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 presence of Louis XVI. and the Royal Family. A slieep was tlie 
 first aeronaut, and with this freight, in a cage, the balloon rose to a 
 height of about 200 yards, floated over a part of Paris, and came 
 down in the Carrefour Marechal. The novelty was at once taken 
 hold of by caricaturists, ballad-mongers, writers of comic articles, 
 and also by the sign-painters. One of the first balloon-signs in 
 London was that of the Balloon Fruit-shop, in Oxford Street, 
 near Soho Square.* As those primitive balloons were, in the opi- 
 nion of the vulgar, filled with smohe, the tobacconists considered 
 them as within their province, and thus it became a favourite device 
 with this class of shops. Several of their tobacco papers are pre- 
 served in the Banks collection. One has the following legend : — 
 
 The best Virginia under the Balloon.'' Another, Smoke the 
 best balloon." A third, The best air-balloon tobacco," &c. 
 Some of these balloon- cuts will be found in our illustrations. One 
 of them represents a balloon ascending, and two smokers stand- 
 ing beneath ; one says, " I wish them a good voyage ; " the 
 other, " Smoak the balloon." As a sign, the Balloon, or Air- 
 balloon, is still not uncommon, and may be seen at Kingston, 
 Hants, Birdlip, Gloucester, &c. 
 
 The Black Doll, hung at the doors of rag and marine store- 
 dealers, probably originated in these shops buying old clothes and 
 finery, which was sold to the buccaneers and coasting-traders, who 
 exchanged them with the natives of Africa and America, for gold, 
 ivory, furs, &c. ; just as we see at the present day, Mr Abraham, 
 or Mr Isaacs, constantly advertising in the Times for our Left- 
 off clothes for Australia and the Colonies.^' The popular legend, 
 however, has spread a halo of romance around the black doll. 
 Once upon a time, an ancient dame came to a rag-shop in Norton 
 Folgate, with a bundle of old clothes, which she desired to sell, 
 but having no time to spare, she left them with the man to 
 examine, promising to call for the money next day. The rag- 
 merchant opened the bundle and found amongst the clothes a 
 pair of diamond ear-rings, and a black doll. Anxious to restore 
 the diamonds, (as may be imagined,) he expected the old woman 
 to call day after day, but in vain ; at last, thinking that she 
 might have forgotten the house, he hung up the black doll at the 
 door, but the old woman never came, and the doll hung until it 
 rotted away, when it was replaced by a new one. The novelty of 
 the object attracted many customers to the house, other ragmcD 
 
 • Banks Bills* dated 1787. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 487 
 
 imitated it, and so it finally became a sign, one which is now fast 
 dying away, and being supplanted by coarse coloured prints, with 
 absurd rhymes. 
 
 At the castles of the nobility the weary traveller formerly found 
 food, shelter, and good " herborow ; " the lower hall was always 
 open to the adventurer, the tramp, the minstrel, and the pilgrim; 
 the upper hall to the nobleman, the squire, the wealthy abbot, 
 and the fair ladies. It was natural, then, that the Castle should at 
 an early period have been adopted as a sign of " good entertain- 
 ment for man and beast." Such a sign became historical in the 
 Wars of the Eoses ; for the Duke of Somerset, who had been 
 warned to " shun castles," was killed by Richard Plantagenet, at 
 j»n ale-house, the sign of the Castle. 
 
 For underneath an ale-house' paltry sign, 
 
 The Castle in Saint- Albans, Somerset 
 
 Hath made the Wizard famous in his death." 
 
 2 Henry VI.. ac. v., sc. 2. 
 
 According to Hatton,* in 1708, the Castle Tavern in Fleet 
 Street had the largest sign in London ; next to it came the 
 White Hart Inn, on the east side of the Borough, in Southwark. 
 
 In the reign of George I., the Castle, near Co vent Garden, was 
 a famous eating-house, kept by John Pierce, the Soyer of his 
 day. Here the gallant feat was performed of a young blood 
 taking one of the shoes from the foot of a noted toast, filling it 
 with wine, and drinking her health, after which it was consigned 
 to the cook, who prepared from it an excellent ragout, which 
 was eaten with great relish by the lady's admirers. 
 
 The Castle and Falcon (probably a combination of two signs, 
 as there is a Falcon Court close by,) is the sign of an inn in 
 Aldersgate, which house, or one on its site, in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, was occupied by John Day, the most considerable 
 printer and publisher of his time. In after years the house be- 
 came a famous coaching inn, and its reputation spread to all parts 
 of England, whence we meet, at present, with Castles and Falcons 
 in various towns, as at Birmingham, Chester, &c. Although we 
 incline to the opinion that the sign arose from a combination, 
 still it is worthy of remark, that the crest of Queen Catherine 
 Parr was a crowned falcon, perched on a castle, and of course 
 represented as large as the castle. 
 
 The Three Old Castles occurs at Mandeville, near Somerton ; 
 
 * " Kew View of London," 17O8, p. 9, 
 
488 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 the Castle and Banner at Hunny Hill, Carisbrooke, originating 
 in the banner floating from the castle turret, when the Lord of 
 the Manor was residing there. Castles in the Air is to be 
 seen at Lower Quay, Fareham ; the origin seems to be an allu- 
 sion to the ordinary sign swinging in mid-air — a piece of humour 
 on the part of the landlord. The Castle and Wheelbarrow, 
 at Eouse Lench, was, doubtless, another innkeeper's notion of 
 suggestive humour — but he was a dull wit. 
 
 Perhaps the most patriarchal of all signs is the Chequers, 
 which may be seen even on houses in exhumed Pompeii. On 
 that of Hercules, for instance, at the corner of the Strada Ful- 
 lonica, they are painted lozenge-wise, red, white, and yellow, and 
 on various other houses in that ancient city, similar decorations 
 may still be observed. Originally it is said to have indicated 
 that draughts and backgammon were played within. Brand, in 
 his " Popular Antiquities," ignorant of any existence of the sign 
 in so remote a period as that mentioned, says that it represented 
 the coat of arms of the Earls of Warenne and Surrey, who bore 
 checqui or and azure, and in the reign of Edward lY., possessed the 
 privilege of licensing ale-houses. A more plausible explanation, 
 and one which is not set aside by the existence of the sign in 
 Pompeii, is that given by Dr Lardner : — 
 
 " During the middle ages, it was usual for merchants, accountants, and 
 judges, who arranged matters of revenue, to appear on a covered banc, so 
 called from an old Saxon word, meaning a seat, (hence our Bank.) Before 
 them was placed a flat surface, divided by parallel white lines, into per- 
 pendicular columns ; these again divided transversely by lines crossing the 
 former, so as to separate each column into squares. This table was called 
 an Exchequer, from its resemblance to a chess-board, and the calculations 
 were made by counters placed on its several divisions, (something after the 
 manner of the Roman abacus.) A money-changer's office was generally 
 indicated by a sign of the chequered board suspended. This sign after- 
 wards came to indicate an inn or house of entertainment, probably from 
 the circumstance of the innkeeper also following the trade of money-changer 
 — a coincidence still very common in seaport towns."* 
 
 Chaucer's Merry Pilgrims put up in Canterbury, at the sign ot 
 the Checker of the Hope,'' (i.e. the Chequers on the Hoop.) 
 They took their in and loggit them at mydmorowe, I trowe, 
 Atte cTccker of the Hoipe that many a man doth knowe." 
 
 Ludgate's Continuation of the Canterbury Tales, 
 
 This inn (says Mr Wright, in his edition of the above work) 
 is still pointed out in Canterbury, at the corner of High 
 
 * Dr Lardner's Arithmetic, j?. 44. 
 
MTfiGELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 489 
 
 Street and Mercery Lane, and is often mentioned in the Cor- 
 poration Eeports, under the title of the Chequer. It is situated 
 in the immediate vicinity of the Cathedral, and was therefore 
 appropriate for the reception of the pilgrims. 
 
 When the inn had another sign besides the Chequers, these 
 last were invariably painted on the door-post ; an example of this 
 may still be seen at the Swiss Cottage, Chelsea. In or near 
 Calcots Alley, Lambeth, was formerly situated an inn or house of 
 entertainment called the Chequers. In the year 1454 a licence 
 was granted to its landlord, John Calcot, to have an oratory in 
 the house and a chaplain for the use of his family and guests, as 
 long as his house should continue orderly and respectable, and 
 adapted to the celebration of divine service.'^* The Black 
 Chequers in Cowgate, Norwich, is so called on account of the 
 chequers being black and white, whilst others are red and white, 
 blue and white, or in such other contrast as may be fancied by 
 the publican. 
 
 The Ckooked Billet is a sign, for which we have not been able 
 to discover any likely origin ; it may have been originally a rag- 
 ged staff, or a pastoral staff, or a baton cornu — the ancient name 
 for a battle-axe.t It is also the name for a part of the tankard. 
 Frequently the sign is represented by an untrimmed stick sus- 
 pended above the door, as at Wold Newton, near Bridlington, 
 where it is accompanied by the following poetical effusion on 
 one side of the signboard : — 
 
 " When this comical stick grew in the wood, 
 Our ale was fresh and very good; 
 Step in and taste, 0 do make haste, 
 For if you don't 'twill surely waste/* 
 
 On the other side : — 
 
 " When you have viewed the other side, 
 Come read this too before you ride, 
 And now to end we '11 let it pass ; 
 Step in, kind friends, and take a glass." 
 
 Though a very rustic sign, it was also used in towns; thus it 
 occurs among the trades tokens of Montague Close, and was the 
 sign of Andrew Sowle, a bookseller in Holloway Lane, Shore- 
 ditch, in 1683. 
 
 ♦ Allen's History of Lambeth, 
 t Siege of Carlaeverock, c. 11 : — 
 
 " — on li respont 
 Pe grosses pierres et cornuesr' 
 
490 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 The Golden Head appears to have been a favourite with 
 artists, probably a classic or modern bust gilded. It was the 
 sign of Hogarth's master and of himself. 
 
 Hogarth made one essay in sculpture. He wanted a sign to distin- 
 guish his house in Leicester Fields ; and thinking none more proper than 
 the Golden Head, he out of a mass of cork made up several thicknesses 
 compacted together, carved a bust of Van Dyke, which he gilt and placed 
 over his door. It is long since decayed, and was succeeded by a head in 
 plaister, which has also perished, and is succeeded by a head of Sir Isaac 
 Newton." — NichoWs Anecdotes of Hogarth. 
 
 At this sign in 1735 Hogarth published the " Harlot's Progress,^' 
 and several other engravings. Sir Eobert Strange the engraver 
 (1721-92) lived at the Golden Head, Henrietta Street, Covent 
 Garden; and in 1762 the portrait of Cunneshote, one of the 
 Cherokee chiefs, then on a visit to this country, was for sale at 
 the Golden Head in Queen Square, Ormond Street ; it was en- 
 graved after a painting by Francis Parsons. In 1700 it was the 
 Bign of a Monsieur Desert, "almost over against the King's 
 Bagnio in Long Acre, who sold guitars from 30 gs. to 30 sh. 
 a piece."* Thomas Carte the historian (1686 to 1754) lived at 
 Mr Ker s at the Golden Head, Newport Street, Long Acre. 
 This sign also occurs in a most amusing advertisement : — 
 ^^An Exceeding Small Lap Spaniel. 
 
 AKY ONE THAT has (to dispose of) such a one, either dog or bitch, and 
 of any colour or colours, that is very, very small, with a very short 
 round snub nose, and good ears, if they will bring it to Mrs Smith, at a 
 coachmaker's over against the Golden Head in Great Queen Street, near 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, they shall (if approved of) have a very good pur- 
 chaser. And to prevent any further trouble, if it is not exceeding small, 
 and has anything of a longish peaked nose, it will not at all do. And 
 nevertheless after this advertisement is published no more, if any person 
 should have a little creature that answers the character of the advertise- 
 ment, if they will please but to remember the direction and bring it to 
 Mrs Smith ; the person is not so provided but that such a one will still at 
 any time be hereafter purchased." — Daily Advertiser, Nov. 1744. 
 
 The Two Heads was the sign of a dentist in Coventry Street 
 in 1760. One head probably represented the mouth as possess- 
 ing a fine set of teeth; the other doubtless showed how unfortu- 
 nate is their absence. The advertisements of this man are gems 
 in their way : — 
 
 Ye Beauties, Beaux, ye Pleaders at the Bar, 
 Wives, Husbands, lovers, every one beside, 
 Wh'd have their heads deficient rectify'd, 
 The Dentist famed who by just applicatioa 
 
 * London Gaxette, April 29— May 2, 1700. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 491 
 
 Excels each other operator in the Nation, 
 
 In Coventry's known street, near Leicester Fields, 
 
 At the Two Heads full satisfaction yields. 
 
 Teeth artificial he fixes so secure, 
 
 That as our own they usefully endure ; 
 
 Not merely outside show and ornament 
 
 But ev'ry property of Teeth intent ; 
 
 To eat, as well as speak, and form support 
 
 The falling cheeks and stumps from further hurt. 
 
 Nor is he daunted when the whole is gone, 
 
 But hy an art peculiar to him known, 
 
 He '11 so supply you '11 think you 've got your own. 
 
 He scales, he cleans, he draws ; in Pain gives Ease, 
 
 Nor in each operation doth fail to please. 
 
 Doth the foul scurvy fierce your Gums assault ? 
 
 In this he also rectifies the Fault 
 
 By a fam'd Tincture. And his Powder nam'd 
 
 A Dentifrice is also justly fam'd. 
 
 Us'd as directed 'tis excellent to serve 
 
 Both teeth and gums, cleanse, strengthen, and preserve ; 
 
 Foul mouth and stinking breath can ne'er be loved. 
 
 But by his aid those evils are removed." 
 
 London Evening Post, July 1760. 
 
 Taylor the Water poet (1632) mentions two taverns with the 
 sign of the Mouth, the one without Bishopsgate, the other within 
 Aldersgate. Trades tokens of the first house are extant, repre- 
 senting a human head with a huge mouth wide open. An 
 inventory is still extant of the stock in trade of this house in 
 the year 1612/^ which is not uninteresting. From it we gather 
 that the wines drunk at that period in taverns were white wine, 
 Vin de Grave, (a small white Burgundy wine,) Orleans wine, 
 Malaga, sherry, sack. Malmsey, (Malvasia, a wine from the coast 
 of Morea, sweet and white,) Alicante, (also sweet,) claret, &c. 
 Beer seems to have been but little asked for by those that fre- 
 quented this house; for whilst some of the wines were kept in 
 such large quantities as seven hogsheads, there were only two 
 dozen and eight bottles of ale. The names of the rooms in 
 the house were ^Hhe Pomegranate,'' "the Portcullis," "Three 
 Tuns,'' "Cross Keys,'' "Vine," "Kings Head," "Crown," "Dol- 
 phin," and "Bell," all of them favourite tavern signs, and (as 
 remarked on page 280) the usual names for tavern rooms. 
 Among the utensils may be remarked fifteen silver bowls. 
 
 The Merry Mouth is still a sign at Fifield, Chipping Norton. 
 
 • Pnnted in Nichols's Illustrations of Manners and Expenses in Ancient Times, 
 
492 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 The Hand was the sign of a victualler near the Marshalsea in 
 Southwark, in 1680. Hands occur in many combinations, owing 
 to the custom of draughtsmen and sign-painters representing a 
 hand issuing from the clouds to perform some action or hold 
 some object ; thus a hand holding a coflfee-pot was a very general 
 coffee-house sign. The " Hand " seems to have been a bad or 
 evil sign : — 
 
 " I '11 go back to the country of the coffee-houses, [Fleet Street,] where 
 being arrived I 'm in a wood, there are so many of them I know not which 
 to enter ; stay, let me see, where the sign is painted with a womarCs hand 
 in it, 'tis a bawdy house, where a mans it has another qualification ; but 
 where it has a star in the sign 'tis calculated for every lewd purpose."* 
 
 Though this is a sweeping denunciation, yet we find the Hand 
 AND Star occurring as the sign of a very respectable bookseller, 
 Eichard Tothill in Fleet Street, within Temple Bar, who in 1553 
 printed the " Dialogue of Comfort," by Sir Thomas More. Not 
 unlikely Tothill had adopted this sign from the watermarks in 
 13aper, for one of the most ancient of them is a hand, either in 
 the position of giving benediction, or in that position called the 
 upright hand, with a star above it. Messrs Butterworth, the 
 law-publishers, who now occupy Tothill's premises, possess all 
 the leases and documents from the time of that old printer down 
 to the present day. 
 
 Quacks, also, were very fond of a hand in their sign, point- 
 ing tc an eye or an ear, to intimate that the great doctor 
 cured the blind or the deaf. Thus, in the Harleian collection 
 (5931) there is a handbill of S. Ketelby, sworn physician, who 
 lived at the Hand and Eae, in Exeter Street near the Strand, 
 and who professed to cure deafness, lameness, &c. 
 
 He is capable now, not only of curing those incurable by others, but 
 even those he could not cure himself six months ago ! Note : He resolves 
 all persons deaf from external causes, whether curable or not, in two 
 minutes, in the dark as well as at noonday, which no other pretender can 
 do," &c. 
 
 The Hand and Face was the sign of another quack, who 
 lived in Water Lane, Blackfriars, near Apothecaries' Hall, in 
 1735.t 
 
 A few combinations of the hand refer to games, as the Hand 
 AND Ball, Barking, (trades token,) 1650, which seems to be de- 
 rived from some of the innumerable games at ball in which our 
 
 * Tom Brown's Amusements for the Meridian of London, p. 71. 
 t Country Journal or Craftsman^ Feb. I, 1734-5. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 493 
 
 ancestors delighted, such as handball, tennis, ballo(3n or windball, 
 stoolball, hurling, football, stowball, pallmall, clubball, trapball, 
 nortben-spell, cricket, bowling, &c. The Hand and Tennis, 
 Whitcombe Street, Haymarket, is so called from the adjoining 
 Tennis Court, erected in 1678. The Old Hand and Tankard 
 is a public-house sign at Wheatly, near Halifax. The Hand 
 AND Tench seems to point to a connexion with the followers 
 of Isaac Walton ; it was a mug-house in Seven Dials in 1717. 
 The mugs in those days used to be suspended above the door, or 
 on the sign-iron, not only in this, but in all the mug-houses, for 
 the mug might be considered as much a badge of King George's 
 friends, as the white cockade was the badge of the Jacobites. 
 
 The Hand and Heart was, in 1711, the very appropriate 
 sign of a marriage insurance office in East Harding Street, Shoe 
 Lane.* Two right hands holding a heart was a very old symbol 
 of concord. Aubrey gives quotations from Tacitus, by which he 
 derives it from the Eomans, and adds : — 
 
 " I have seen some rings made for sweethearts with a heart enamelled 
 held between two hands. See an Epigrame of G. Buchanan, on two rings 
 that were made by Q. Elisabeth's appointment, which, being laid one upon 
 the other, shewed the like figure. The heart was two diamonds, w^^ 
 joyned, made the Heart. Q. Elisabeth kept one moietie, and sent y^ other 
 as a token of her constant friendship to Mary Q. of Scotts; but she cutt off 
 her head for all that." f 
 
 The Heart in Hand is still a common ale-house sign. A 
 similar meaning is conveyed by the equally common Hand in 
 Hand or Cross Hands ; at Turnditch, Derby, this sign is called 
 the Cross o' the Hands, and a corruption of this again is the 
 Cross in Hand, at Waldron, Sussex. The Hand in Hand was 
 also one of the usual signs of the marriage-mongers in Fleet Street. 
 Pennant says : — 
 
 **In walking along the streets in my youth, on the side next this 
 prison, (the Fleet,) I have often been, tempted by the questiou, ^ Sir, will 
 you be pleased to walk in and be married.' Along this most lawless space 
 was most frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand con- 
 joined, with 'Marriages performed within' written beneath. A dirty 
 fellow invited you in ; the parson was seen walking before his shop, a 
 squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery 
 face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or a roll of tobacco." 
 
 The two hands conjoined is also common in France — where 
 
 * Postman, 1711. 
 
 t Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme. Lansdowne MSS.. No. 231. 
 
494 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 it is called hla bonne Foi. In 1G24 it was the sign of Pierre 
 Billaine, bookseller and printer in the Eue St Jacques, Paris. 
 
 The Leg used formerly to be at the door of every hosier. It 
 was also the sign of a tavern in King Street, Westminster, fre- 
 quented by Pepys. Trades tokens are extant of the Leg and 
 Star, kept by Eichard Finch, in Aldersgate, in the seventeenth 
 century. It may have represented a leg with the garter round 
 it, and the star of that order ; but more probably it was a com- 
 bination of two signs. 
 
 The Old Man, Market Place, Westminster, was probably in- 
 tended for Old Parr, who was celebrated in ballads as " The 
 Olde, Olde, Very Olde Manne.'^ The token represents a bearded 
 bust in profile, with a bare head. In the reign of James I. it 
 was the name of a tavern in the Strand, otherwise called the 
 Hercules Tavern, and in the eighteenth century there were two 
 coffee-houses, the one called the Old Man's, the other the 
 Young Man's Coffee-house. 
 
 The Fountain was a favourite sign with the Londoners before 
 the Eeformation, perhaps on account of its connexion with the 
 martyrdom of St Paul, whose head, says the legend, on being 
 struck off, rebounded three times, when a fountain gushed up at 
 each spot where the sacred head had touched the ground. Hence 
 there is a church near Eome, in the midst of the desolate Cam- 
 pagna, called San Paolo delle Tre Fontane, where altars are 
 raised over each of those three fountains. There is also a foun- 
 tain connected with the martyrdom of St Alban, the English proto- 
 martyr, and Saints Wells may be met with all over kingdom. 
 
 During the Plague of 1665, the following advertisement used 
 to figure constantly in the papers : — 
 
 l\/rONSIEUR Augier's famous Remedies for stopping and preventing the 
 luL plague having not only been recommended by several certificates from 
 Lyons, Paris, Thoulouse, &c., but likewise experimented here by the 
 special directions of the Lords of hts Majesty's most honourable Privy 
 Council, and proved by Witnesses upon oath, and several Tryals, to be of 
 singular virtue and effect, are to be had at Mr Drinkwater's, at the Foun- 
 tain, in Fleet Street, «&c." * 
 
 Mr Drinkwater had evidently intended a pun by selecting a 
 fountain as his sign. 
 
 The Fountain Tavern in the Strand was famous as the meet- 
 ing-place of the ultra-loyal party in 1685, who here talked over 
 public affairs before the meeting of Parliament Eoger Lestrange, 
 
 * The Intelligencer, Sept. 4, 1666. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 495 
 
 who had been recently knighted by the king, took a leading 
 part in these consultations. But the fate of things lies always 
 in the dark ; in the reign of George II. this same house became 
 a great resort for the Whigs, who sometimes used to meet here as 
 many as two hundred at a time, making speeches and passing 
 resolutions. 
 
 For this re?ason it was proposed that Master Jepbson the 
 landlord should write under his sign : — 
 
 Hoc Fonte derivata libertas 
 
 In Patriam, Populumq : fluxit.'* 
 
 " From this fam'd Fountain Freedom flow'd, 
 For Britain's and the People's good." 
 
 In this tavern, Law, subsequently famous as the Mississippi 
 schemer, quarrelled with the magnificent and mysterious Beau 
 Wilson j they left the house, adjourned to Bloomsbury Square, 
 and fought a duel, in which the Beau was killed. The Kit Cat 
 Club, in winter, used to meet at this house. This club was first 
 established in an obscure house in Shire Lane ; it consisted of 
 thirty-nine distinguished noblemen or gentlemen, zealously at- 
 tached to the Protestant succession of • the house of Hanover. 
 Among the members were the Dukes of Richmond, Devonshire, 
 Marlborough, Somerset, Grafton, Newcastle, and Dorset, the 
 Earls of Sunderland and Manchester, some lords, and Steele, 
 Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Manwaring, Stepney, WaJ- 
 pole, and Pulteney ; Lord Mohun (implicated in the murder of 
 Mountford the actor, and killed in a duel by the Duke of Hamil- 
 ton) was also a member. 
 
 "The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berwick were entered of it, 
 Jacob [Tonson, the secretary] said he saw they were just going to be 
 ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the top of 
 his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said a man who would do 
 that would cut a man's throat." * 
 
 Tonson, for fulfilling the duties of this honorary office, was 
 presented with the portraits of all the members. After Jacob's 
 death, his brother Richard removed the pictures to his residence 
 a,t Water Oakley, near Windsor. A list of them is to be found 
 in Bray's History of Surrey," vol. iii., p. 318. Forty-three of 
 them have been engraved by Faber in mezzotint. The name of 
 the club is spid to have been derived from the first landlord, who 
 was called Christopher Cat ; he excelled in the making of 
 
 * Spence's Anecdotes, ed. by Singer, p. 337. 
 
496 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 mutton-pies, which were named after him Kit Cat, and were the 
 standard dish of the club. 
 
 " Here did th* assembly's title first arise, 
 And Kit Cat's wits sprung first from Kit Cat's* nies." 
 
 Next door to the Fountain Tavern lived Charles Lillie, the 
 celebrated snuff-seller of the Spectators and Tatlers^ but " he was 
 burnt out when he began to have a reputation in his way." — 
 {Tatler, xcii.) 
 
 The Fountain and Bear is a sign named in the following 
 quaint imprint : — 
 
 A Present for Teeming Women, or Scripture Directions for Women 
 with childe ; how to prepare for the hour of Travel. Written first for the 
 private use of a Gentlewoman of quality in the West, and now published 
 for the common good by John Oliver, less than the least of saints. Sold 
 by Mary Roth well, at the Fountain and Bear, in Cheapside, 1663." 
 
 The Sun and the Moon have been considered as signs o{ 
 Pagan origin, typifying Apollo and Diana. Whether or no this 
 conjecture be true, would be difficult to prove, but certain it is 
 that they rank among the oldest and most common signs, not 
 v)nly in England but on the Continent. Early in the sixteenth 
 century the French poet Desir6 Arthus wrote in his " Loyaulte 
 Consciencieuse des Taverniers : " — 
 
 " Sur les chemins des grands villes et champs, 
 Ne trouverez de douze maisons Tune, 
 Qui n'ait enseigne d'un soleil, d'une lune. 
 Tons vendant vin, chascun k son quartier."* 
 
 Like the Star, (see p. 501,) the Sun did not enjoy a good repu- 
 tation. Henry Peacham thus cautions young men from th« 
 country : — 
 
 *'Let a monyed man or gentleman especially beware in the city, ah utU 
 calidis et callidis solis filiahus as Lipsius : these overhot and crafty daughters 
 of the Sunne, your silken and gold laced harlots, everywhere (especially 
 in the suburbs) to be found."f 
 
 The reason of this sign having been especially adopted by that 
 description of houses, we are unable to state, unless it be the one 
 Tom D'Urfey gives in " Collin s Walk through London/' where, 
 speaking of a frail and fair one, he says : — 
 
 " And nice the Sun, was understood 
 To all mankind a common good." 
 
 * " On the roads near large towns and in the country, you will not find one house in 
 twelve but it docs exhibit the sign of the Sun or the Moon. They all sell wine, eac^ 
 of them to his own neighbourhood." 
 
 t Henry Peacham's Art of Living in London, 1642. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 497 
 
 But as tlie sun shines alike over good and evil, so respectable 
 as well as disreputable persons have used him for a sign ; thus 
 Wynkyn de Worde, in Fleet Street, and Anthony Kytson, another 
 early printer, and the publisher of some works of Master John 
 Skelton, poet laureate, carried on business under this device. 
 Taylor the Water poet mentions three Sun taverns : being com- 
 pelled one day on his " pennylesse pilgrimage," to dine a la belle 
 etoile, he says : — I made virtue of necessity, and went to 
 breakefast in the Sunne : I have fared better at three Sunnes many 
 a time before now : in Aldersgate Street, Criplegate, and New 
 Fish Street ; but here is the oddss : at those Sunnes they will 
 come vpon a man with a tauerne bill as sharp cutting as a taylor's 
 bill of items : a watchman's bill or a watch hooke falls not halfe 
 so heauy vpon a man."* The Sun on Fish Street Hill is also 
 named by Pepys : — 
 
 " Dec. 22, 1660.— Went to the Sun Tavern on Fish Street Hill, to a 
 dinner of Captain Teddimans, where was my Lord Inchequin, (who seems 
 to be a very fine person,) Sir W. Penn, Captain Cuttance, and Mr Laurence, 
 (a fine gentleman now going to Algiers,) and other good company, where 
 we had a very good dinner, good music, and a great deal of wine. I very 
 merry — went to bed, my head aching all night." 
 
 But the finest of all the Sun Taverns did not exist in Taylor's 
 time ; it was built after the fire of 1666, behind the Exchange. 
 " Behind ? I'll ne'er believe it ; you may as soon 
 Persuade me that the sun stands behind noon.'* 
 
 These are the opening lines of a ballad of 1672, entitled "The 
 Glory of the Sun Tavern, behind the Exchange." f From this 
 ballad it is evident that the tavern was splendidly furnished, and 
 offered comforts not generally to be met with at that time. 
 
 " There every chamber has an aquaeduct, 
 As if the sun had fire for water truckt, 
 Water as't were exhal'd up to heavens sprouds, 
 To cool your cups and glasses in the clouds." 
 
 Pepys w^as a frequent visitor at this house, and, in fact, all the 
 pleasure-seekers of that mad reign patronised it ; the profligate 
 Duke of Buckingham, in particular, was a constant customer. 
 Simon Wadloe, the landlord, had made his fortune at the Devil 
 in St Dunstan's, whereupon he went to live in the country, and 
 spent his money in a couple of years. He then " choused Nick 
 Colbourn out of the Sun, and Nick, who had amassed a handsome 
 
 * Taylor's Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630. 
 i Luttrell Ballads, ii., fol. 92. 
 
 2 I 
 
498 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 competence in the house, was easily persuaded to retire, and left it 
 " to live like a prince in the country,'' says Pepys. During the 
 reign of Charles II., the house appears to have had an excellent 
 custom, and was from morning till night full of the best com- 
 pany. The Sun Tavern, in Clare Street, was one of the haunts 
 of the witty Joe Miller, and is often given as the locality of his 
 jokes : — 
 
 " Joe Miller, sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, Clare 
 Street, a fish woman and her maid passing by, the woman cried : * Buy my 
 soals, buy my maids!' 'Ah ! you wicked old creature/ cry'd honest Joe, 
 ' what, are you not content to sell your own soul, but you must sell your 
 maid's too V " 
 
 A stereotype joke of the publican connected with the Sun is 
 the motto, "the best liquor [generally beer] under the Sun," 
 which, of course, must be believed, for Solem quis dicere falsum 
 Ojudeat ? Sometimes the sign is called the Sun in Splendour, 
 as at Nottinghill, the " splendour" having reference simply to 
 the golden beams or rays usually drawn by the painter. There is 
 still a carved stone sign of the Sun, now gilt, dating from the 
 seventeenth century, walled in the front of a house in the Poultry. 
 
 The Golden Sun was the sign of Ulrich Gering, in the Eue 
 St Jacques, Paris, printer of the first Bible in France, in 1475. 
 At the end of the volume the Bible thus addresses the 
 reader : — 
 
 " Jam tribus undecimus lustris Francos Ludovicus 
 Rexerat; Ulricus, Martinus, itemque Michael 
 Orti Teutonia, hanc mihi composuere figuram 
 Parisii arte sua ; me correctam vigilanter 
 Venalem in. vico Jacobi Sol Aureus offert."* 
 
 Their successor, Berthold Rumbold, on removing the business 
 to another house in the same street, opposite the Eue Fromentel, 
 kept the same sign, and there it continued as late as 1689, 
 having constantly been in the hands of booksellers. Not impro- 
 bably the first printers, both in England and abroad, adopted the 
 sign of the Sun, as an emblem of the new era opened to the 
 Avorld by the invention of printing, which, when they reflected on 
 their discovery, they saw would, at no distant period, spread an 
 
 * *' Already had Louis XI. reigned fifteen years over the French when Ulrich and 
 Martin [Crantz] and Michel [Friburger,] all natives of (xermany, produced me in this 
 shape at Paris by their art ; carefully corrected, I am now offered for sale in the Rue St 
 Jacques, at the Golden Sun." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIOFS. 
 
 499 
 
 intellectual light over the world, as brilliant and as vivifying as 
 that of the radiant sun.* 
 
 The sign of the Sun occurs in endless combinations, often 
 capricious, without any other reason than a whim, and an alliter- 
 ation, as the Sun and Sawyers ; the Sun and Sword ; the 
 Sun and Sportsman; or quartered with other signs, as the 
 Sun and Anchor ; Dial ; Falcon ; Last ; Horseshoe, &c. 
 All these, and innumerable others of the same sort, occur among 
 the London public-house signs of the present day. The Sun and 
 Hare is a stone carved sign, walled up in the facade of a house 
 in the High Street, Southwark. Were it not for the initials 
 H.N.A., it might be taken for a rebus on the name Harrison ; as 
 it is, it may be a jocular corruption of the Sun and Hart, the 
 badge of Eichard IL (See p. 109.) 
 
 The EisiNG Sun is nearly as common as the sun in his meridian ; 
 perhaps on account of the favourable omen it presents for a man 
 commencing business. In 1726 it was the sign of a noted tavern 
 in Islington, where some merry doings went on occasionally : — 
 " Tuesday next, being Shrove Tuesda}^ will be a fine hog barbygu'd 
 
 \J whole at the house of Peter Brett, at the Rising Sun, in Islington 
 Road, with other diversions. It is the house where the ox was roasted 
 whole at Christmas last." — Mist's Journal, February 9, 1726. 
 
 To barbecue a hog, was a West Indian term for roasting a 
 whole pig, stufifed with spice, and basted with Madeira wine. 
 
 The EisiNa Sun and Seven Staes was the very appropriate 
 sign, at which was printed a work on " Astrological Optics but 
 better still, it was printed for E. Moon, whose shop was *'in 
 Paul's Churchyarde, in the New Building, between the two North 
 Doors. 1655." An old jest-book says that an Irishman, seeing 
 the sign of the Eising Sun was kept by A (nthony) Moon, accused 
 the said Moon of having made a bull, for saying that the Sun 
 was kept by the Moon. 
 
 One of the learned questions propounded by Hudibras to that 
 cunning man, Sidrophel, the Eosicrucian, was : — 
 " Tell me but what's the natural cause 
 Why on a sign no painter draws 
 
 The full moon ever, but the half — Hudibras, part iii., c. 3. 
 This might be true in Butler's time, but is no longer so ; at 
 
 * This idea is in a measure set forth in some lines on the titlepage of "Gasparinl 
 Pergamensis Epistolarium opus per Joannem Lapidarium Sorbonensis Scholae Priorem 
 multis vigiliis ex corrupto integrum affectum ingeniosa arte impressoria in luca 
 redactum," 1470, beginning: — 
 
 " Ut sol lumen sic doctrinam fundis in Orbem." 
 
500 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Leicester, for instance, there are two signs of the Full Moon, 
 and it occurs in many other places. The Crescent, or Half-Moon, 
 was the emblem of the temporal power, as the Sun was the dis- 
 tinction of the spiritual. 
 
 Ben Jonson once desiring a glass of sack, went to the Half- 
 Moon Tavern, in Aldersgate Street, but found it closed, so he 
 adjourned to the Sun Tavern, in Long Lane, and wrote this 
 epigram : — 
 
 " Since the Half Moon is so unkind, 
 To make me go about, 
 The Sun my money now shall have, 
 And the Moon shall go without." 
 
 The Half-Moon, Upper HoUoway, was famous in the last cen- 
 tury for excellent cheesecakes, which were hawked about the 
 streets of London, by a man on horseback, and formed one of the 
 London cries. This circumstance is noticed in a poem in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine for 1743, entitled " A Journey to Notting- 
 ham.^' In April 1747, the following advertisement appeared in 
 the same magazine : — 
 
 HALF-MOON Tavern, Cheapside, April 13. His Royal Highness the 
 Duke of Cumberland having restored peace to Britain, by the ever 
 memorable Battle of Culloden, fought on the 16th of April 1745, the choice 
 spirits have agreed to celebrate that day annually by A Grand Jubilee in 
 the Moon, of which the Stars are hereby acquainted and summoned to 
 shine with their brightest Lustre by 6 o'clock on Thursday next in the 
 Evening.** 
 
 The Crescent and Anchor is a sign at Korton-in-Hales, 
 near Market Drayton ; the Half-Moon and Seven Stars at 
 Aston Clinton, near Tring; and the Sun, Moon, and Seven Stars 
 at Ellsworth, in Northampton. These Seven Stars have always 
 been great favourites ; they seem to be the same pleiad which 
 is used as a Masonic emblem — a circle of six stars, with one in 
 the centre; but to tell to ears profane, what this emblem means, 
 would be disclosing the sacred arcana. The Seven Stars was 
 the sign of Richard Moone, before he was so ambitious as to place 
 the whole firmament on his sign : in 1653 he printed — 
 
 " The first addresses to his Excellence the Lord General, &c., by John 
 Spittlehouse, a late Member of the Army, and a servant to the Saints of 
 the Most High God, &c. London, printed by J. C., for himself and 
 liichard Moon, at the Seven Stars, in Paul's Churchyard, near the great 
 North Door. 1653." 
 
 As a change upon the Seven Stars, a publican at Counter- 
 elip, Bristol, has put up the Fourteen Stars. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 501 
 
 We liave seen (p. 492) tliat the sign of the Star was " calcu- 
 lated for every lewd purpose f a great change certainly from 
 mediaeval times, when a star was the emblem of the Holy Virgin, 
 who was thus styled Maris Stella (star of the sea) — the signi- 
 fication of the name Miriam in Hebrew — or Stella Jacohi, (star 
 of Jacob,) Stella Matutina, (morning star,) Stella non erratica, 
 (fixed star, unerring star,) &c. ; a star being always painted either 
 on her right shoulder, or on her veil, as may be readily observed 
 in the works of the early Italian masters in our National Gallery. 
 A star of sixteen rays is the crest of the Innholders' Company. 
 Oliver Cromwell used to meet some of his party at the Star in 
 Coleman Street, as was deposed by one of the witnesses in the 
 trial of Hugh Peters : — 
 
 " Gunter. My Lord, I was servant at the Star in Coleman Street, with 
 one Hildesley. That house was a house where Oliver Cromwell and several 
 of that party did use to meet in consultation." 
 
 John Bunyan died in 1682 at the Star, on Snowhill, in the 
 house of his friend, Mr Strudwick, a grocer. 
 
 The Pole Star is now a not uncommon sign. To make this 
 device more intelligible, tavern-keepers ought to attach to it the 
 motto it bore in the middle ages, when it was a symbol of the 
 Church : qui me non aspicit errata (He who does not look 
 at me goes astray.) The Star and Crown was the sign of 
 a haberdasher in Princes Street, Coventry Street, 17 80, who, 
 among other things, sold " dress and undress hoops." 
 
 The signs of the zodiac appear occasionally to have been 
 adopted by conjurors and astrologers. Ned Ward describes them 
 as figuring, in his time, on the door of a star-peeper," in Prescot 
 Street.* 
 
 The Two Twins, or Naked Boys, was the sign of a quack in 
 Moorfields, "near the steps going out of the Lower Field into 
 the Middle Field. There is a door above the steps, and another 
 below the steps, with the Twins, and the name Langham on both 
 doors ; — keep the bill to prevent mistaking the house or being 
 sent to a wrong place.^t To such lengthy explanations our ances- 
 tors were compelled to resort in the absence of numbers on their 
 houses. Either this quack had adopted the Two Twins on ac- 
 count of his obstetrical pretensions, or he was an astrologer a* 
 well as a quack, for Moorfields was the head-quarters of 
 
 ♦ London Spy, part xiii., p. 319, 1706. 
 t Han ibill in Harleian Collection, p. 5964. 
 
502 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 " Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers, 
 Diviners, and interpreters of dreams." 
 
 In the last case lie might have chosen it as being the ascendant 
 of the city of London, which stands in a benign and temperate 
 climate, in the latitude of 52" and longitude of 19° 15', — having 
 (as artists reckon) the celestial twins, the house of Mercury, patron 
 of merchandise and ingenious arts, for her ascendant."* 
 
 The Rainbow, in Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane, is the 
 oldest coffee-house in London : — 
 
 " I find it recorded that one James Farr, a barber, who kept the coffee- 
 house, which is now the Eainbow, by the Inner Temple gate, (one of the 
 first in England,) was, in the year 1657, presented by the inquest of St 
 Dunstan's in the West, for making and selling a sort of liquor called Coffee, 
 as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighboorhood, &c., and who would 
 have thought London would ever have had near three thousand such 
 nuisances, and that coffee would have been (as now) so much drank by the 
 best of quality and physicians."t 
 
 The presentation here alluded to is still preserved among the 
 records of St Sepulchre's Church. It says : — 
 
 " We present James Farr, Barber, for making and selling a drink called 
 coffee, whereby, in making the same, he annoyeth his neighboors by evill 
 smells, and for keeping of fire the most part night and day, whereby hia 
 chimney and chamber has been set on fire, to the great danger and affreight- 
 ment of his neighboors." 
 
 This danger of fire was so much the greater, as a bookseller, 
 Samuel Speedal, had his shop in the same house. In 1682, the 
 Phoenix Fire Office, one of the first in this country, was estab- 
 lished at this place. 
 
 The Thunder Storm is the sign of a public-house at Framwell- 
 gate Moor, Durham ; and the Hailstone, at Knowle, Staflford- 
 shire ; both these houses may have taken their names from a 
 severe storm, which visited the neighbourhood at or about the 
 time of their opening, just as the Haylift, at Wansforth, 
 Northampton, is said to owe its origin to the fact of a man float- 
 ing a long way down the river on a haycock, during an inunda- 
 tion, and landing near that place. 
 
 As for the Wild Sea, the sign of John Horton, over against 
 Parson s Brewhouse, Croydon, J in 1718, no more plausible ex- 
 planation occurs to us than that John Horton might have been a 
 sailor in his younger days. 
 
 The Hole-in-the-Wall is believed to have originated from 
 
 * A Compleat Description of London, llarl. MSS., 5953, vol. i. 
 t Hatton's New View of London. 1708, p. 30. 
 X Weekly Journal, Sept. 27, 171S. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 the hole made in the wall of the debtors' or other prison, through 
 which the poor prisoners received the money, broken meat, or 
 other donations of the charitably inclined. The old sign of the 
 Hole-in-the-Wall (see our illustrations) shows such an opening 
 in a square piece of brickwork. Generally, it is believed to refer 
 to some snug corner, perhaps near the town walls ; but at the old 
 public-house in Chancery Lane the legend is as we have given it. 
 Hard- by, in Cursitor Street, prisoners for debt found a temporary 
 lodging up to a very recent date. Trades tokens are extant of 
 this house, which, about 1820, was kept by Jack Eandall, alias 
 Nonpareil, a famous member of the P.R. ; on one occasion some 
 verses were made containing the following lines : — 
 
 Then blame me not, swells, kids, or lads of the fancy, 
 For opening a lush crib in Chancery Lane, 
 An appropriate spot 'tis, you doubtless all can see, 
 Since heads I 've oft placed there, and let out again." 
 
 The poet, Thomas Moore, in the fast days whpn George IV. 
 was king, and when pugilism and gin drinking were fashionable 
 accomplishments, used to visit Mr Randall's parlour. It was here 
 that he picked up his materials for those rhyming satires on the 
 politics and general topics of his time : — '^Tom Crib's Memorials 
 to Congress, by one of the Fancy " Eandall's Diary of Pro- 
 ceedings at the House of Call for Genius;" "A Few Selectiontt 
 from Jack KandalFs Scrap Book, with Poems on the late Fight for 
 the Championship." 
 
 At the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos Street, Claude Duval tile 
 highwayman was taken prisoner ; whilst the Hole-in-the-Wal^! hi 
 Baldwin's Gardens was the citadel in which Tom Brown used to 
 intrench himself from duns and bailiffs, with Henry Purcell the 
 musician, as his companion in revelry and merriment. Tom 
 Brown's introductory verses, prefixed to Playford's " Musical 
 Companion," 1698, are dated " from Mr Stewart's at the Hole-in- 
 the-Wall, in Baldwin's Gardens." Another Hole-in-the-Wall still 
 exists in Kirby Street, Hatton Garden. It is a curious fact that 
 the refreshment-room, or liquor-bar, attached to the House of 
 Eepresentatives at Washington, is known to most thirsty American 
 politicians as The Hole-in-the-Wall , 
 
 Anciently, instead of being a painted board, the object of the 
 sign was carved and hung within a hoop, hence (as we had occa- 
 sion to remark on a former page) nearly all the ancient signs are 
 called the on the hoop." In the Clause Roll, 43 Edward 
 
504 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 III., we find the George on the Hoop ; 26 Henry YI, the 
 Hart on the Hoop; 30 Henry VI., the Swan, the Cock, and 
 the Hen on the Hoop. Besides these we find mentioned the 
 Crown on the Hoop, the Bunch of Grapes on the Hoop, the 
 Mttre on the Hoop, the Angel on the Hoop, the Falcon on 
 the Hoop, &c. In 1795, two of these signs were still extant, for 
 a periodical of the time says : — A sign of this nature is still 
 preserved in Newport Street, and is a carved representation of a 
 Bunch of Grapes within a Hoop. The Cock on the Hoop may 
 be seen also in Holborn, painted on a board, to which, perhaps, it 
 was transferred on the removal of the sign-posts."* These hoops 
 seem to have originated in the highly ornamented bush or crown, 
 which latterly was made of hoops, covered with evergreens. In 
 France, the Hoop (le Gerceau) was used as a sign. Jacques 
 Androuet, a celebrated architect, and author of a work entitled 
 " Les plus excellents Batiments de France," lived at the sign 
 of the Hoop, whence he adopted the surnames of Jacques 
 Androuet du Cerceau. In 1570 he published a book on metal- 
 work, containing several designs for ornamental iron frames and 
 posts to suspend signboards from. That names in this country 
 also were occasionally derived from signboards, has been stated in 
 our introduction. Of this practice. Sir Peter Lely, the portrait 
 painter, was an illustrious example. He belonged to a Dutch 
 family named Van der Vaas. His grandfather was a perfumer, 
 and lived at the sign of the Lily, (perhaps a vase of lilies, with 
 a pun on his name.) When his son entered the English army 
 he discarded his Dutch name, and from the paternal sign, adopted 
 the more euphonious one of Lilly or Lely; and this name he and 
 his children afterwards retained. The famous Rothschild family 
 is another case in point. From the Red Shield (the roth schild) 
 above the door of an honest old Hebrew, in the Juden-gasse, (or 
 Jews' Alley,) at Frankfort, has been derived the name of the 
 richest family in the world. 
 
 The Hoop and Bunch of Grapes was the sign of a public- 
 house, in St Albans Street, (now part of Waterloo Place,) kept at 
 the beginning of the present century, by the famous Matthew 
 Skeggs, who obtained his renown from playing, in the character of 
 Signor Bumbasto, a concerto on a broomstick, at the Haymarket 
 Theatre, adjoining. His portrait was painted by King, a friend 
 of Hogarth, engraved by Houston, and published by Skeggs him- 
 
 ♦ Looker-On, Jan. 1795. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 self. The Hoop and Griffin was a coffee-house in Leadenhall 
 Street, circa 1700 ;* and the Hoop and Toy is a public-house 
 in Thurloe Place, Brompton. Here the original meaning of the 
 hoop seems entirely lost, as its combination with the toy seems to 
 allude to the hoop trundled by children. 
 
 The Toy at Hampton used to be a favourite resort with the 
 Londoners till 1857, when it was pulled down to make room for 
 private houses. Trades tokens of this house of the seventeenth 
 century are extant. " In the survey of 1653 (in the Augment- 
 ation office) mention is made of a piece of pasture ground near 
 the river, called the Toying place, the site, probably, of a well- 
 known inn near the bridge now called the Toy.^'t 
 
 Cardmakers usually took a card for their sign, as the Queen 
 OF Hearts and King's Arms, which was the sign of a card- 
 maker in Jermyn Street in 1803.:|: One of the Bagford Bills 
 has : " At the Old Knave of Clubs at the Bridgefoot, in South- 
 wark, liveth Edward Butling, who maketh and selleth all sorts of 
 hangings for rooms," &c. § Possibly he sold also playing-cards. 
 These knaves, however, seem at one time to have been a badge, 
 for at the creation of seventeen knights of the Bath by Eichard 
 III., the Duke of Buckingham was "richely appareled, and his 
 horse trapped in blue velvet embroudered with the knaves oj 
 cartes burnyng of golde, which trapper was borne by foteman 
 from the gronnde."|| The Queen of Trumps is a public-house 
 sign at West Walton, near Wisbeach. 
 
 The Heart and Trumpet is a somewhat curious sign at 
 Pentre-wern near Oswestry, perhaps a corruption of Hearts and 
 Trumps. Other games have produced the sign of the Golden 
 Quoit, in Whitehaven, and the Corner Pin, which is so com- 
 mon that it figures in a Seven Dials ballad, a parody on the 
 Low-back Car : — 
 
 " When first I saw Miss Bailey, 
 'Twas on a Saturday, 
 At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin, 
 And smoking a yard of clay," &c. 
 
 All bowlers know that the corner pins are the most diflScult to 
 
 ♦ London Gazette, Dec. 9-12, 1700. 
 
 t Lyson's Historical Account of Parishes in Middlesex, p. 75 
 
 i Banks Bills. 
 
 § Harleian MSS., 5962. 
 
 II Uraiton's prose continuation of John Harding's Chronicle, p. ISS, 
 
5o6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS, 
 
 Btrike, and that from their fall with the rest depends whetl^er 
 the throw counts double or not. 
 
 Formerly the merriest day of the year in Merry England " 
 was certainly the first of May, but of its many festivities scarcely 
 a trace is left except the dance of the sweeps and the sign of the 
 Maypole. Stubbe, with puritanical horror, thus describes the 
 Maypole : — 
 
 " They have twenty or fonrtie yoke of oxen, every one having a sweet 
 nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his homes, and these oxen draw 
 home this Maie pole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is couered all oner 
 with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from the 
 toppe to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours with 
 two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with great 
 devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flaggea 
 Btreaming on the toppe they strawe the ground aboute, binde green 
 boughes aboute it, sett up sommer houses. Bowers, and Arbours hard by 
 it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute 
 it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their IdoUes, whereof 
 this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself."* 
 
 The same author also reports that it was customary for lads and 
 lasses to go the night before May-day to the hills and woodlands 
 to gather branches and flowers to deck the houses with on that 
 day, and that they used to "spende all the night in pastymes" 
 to the great detriment of female virtue ; Featherstone, another 
 sulky puritan, scandalised the fair sex by the assertion that 
 " of tenne maydens which went to fetch May, nine of thera 
 came home with childe.^'t The consequence of all this grum- 
 bling was that the Maypole was abolished in the godly times of 
 the Commonwealth, and as a matter of course, revived at the 
 Restoration — but its prestige was gone. At present it is only 
 commemorated by hundreds of signboards. There is one on the 
 outskirts of Hainault Forest, immortalised in " Barnaby Rudge," 
 which has all the regulations of the house laid down in rhyme ; 
 part of these have been quoted on p. 449. There is on the 
 stable door: — 
 
 " Whosoever smokes tobacco here 
 
 Shall forfeit sixpence to spend in beer. 
 
 Your pipes lay by, when you come here. 
 
 Or fire to me may prove severe." 
 An old, and not uncommon sign, is the Wheel of Foetune, 
 which may be seen at Alpington, Norwich, and in other places. 
 This wheel is sometimes represented with four kings, one on 
 
 * Stubbe's Anatomy of Abuses, London, 1585, p. 94. 
 
 t Feathers ti>ne's Dialogue against Light and Lascivious Dancing. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 each quadrant. In the middle ages it was a very common sym- 
 bol, as well in England as on the continent, being frequently 
 painted in churches ; there is one still to be seen among the 
 half obliterated frescoes of Catfield church in Norfolk. Other 
 instances occur in the church of St Etienne, at Beauvais ; in St 
 Martin, at Basle; in San Zeno, at Verona; and in the beautiful 
 pavement of the Dnomo, at Sienna. Not only in those countries, 
 but all over Europe, this device occurs as a sign. Peacham thus 
 accounts for the wheel being chosen as the emblem of Fortune : — 
 " For like ourselves, the spoke that was on high 
 Is to the bottom in a moment cast, 
 As fast the lowest riseth by and bj, 
 All human things thus find a change at last." 
 
 Peacham' s Minerva Brittana, p. 76. 
 
 The Monster, at one period an inn of some resort in Willow 
 "Walk, Chelsea, now a starting-point for the Pimlico omnibuses, 
 is perhaps a corruption of the Monastery. Eobert de Heyle in 
 1368 leased the whole of the manor of Chelsea to the abbot and 
 convent of Westminster for the term of his own life, for which 
 they were to allow him a certain house within the convent for 
 his residence, to pay him the sum of .£20 per annum, to provide 
 him every day two white loaves, two flagons of convent ale, and 
 once a year a robe of esquire's silk. At this period, or shortly 
 after, the sign of the Monastery may have been set up, to be 
 handed down from generation to generation, until the meaning 
 and proper pronunciation were forgotten, and it became "the 
 Monster.^' In stiir older times, viz., during the Norman rule, 
 Chelsea appears to have been one of the manors of Westminster, 
 so that the connexion between the village of Chelsea and the 
 monastery of Westminster had been of very old standing. This 
 tavern, we believe, is the only one with such a sign. Ned Ward 
 mentions a Geeen Monster tavern in Prescott Street, but that 
 may have been one of Ned's jokes on the very common Green 
 Dragon. The tavern in question was a very unlucky house, and 
 not less than three or four landlords had failed in it, which was 
 not to be wondered at, for the street appears at that time to 
 have been one of the soberest in London. According to Ned, 
 one "would walk by forty or fifty houses and not an ale- 
 house."* 
 
 The Million Gardens, Strutton Ground, Westminster, was 
 
 * London Spy, part xiii., p. 320, 1706. 
 
5o8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 the singular name of the house where tickets might be obtained 
 for a lottery of plate in 1718.* The name in reality refers to 
 the "Melon Gardens," which fruit was pronounced after the 
 signboard orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 
 ries. 
 
 Pepys, on the 3d of August 1660, informs us that he dined at 
 an ordinary called the Quaker, a somewhat unusual godfather 
 for a sinful tavern. This house was situated in the Great Sanc- 
 tuary, Westminster, and was only pulled down in the beginning 
 of the present century to make way for a market-place, w^hich in 
 its turn has made room for a new sessions-house. Tull, the last 
 landlord, opened a new public-house in Thieving Lane, and 
 adorned the doorway of this house with twisted pillars decorated 
 with vine-leaves, brought from the old Quaker tavern. J. T. 
 Smith presents us with a view of this house in the additional 
 plates to his "Antiquities of Westminster.'' 
 
 The Pilgrim has been mentioned incidentally (on p. 434) as a 
 sign at Coventry. There is another public-house of this name 
 in Kew Lane. In 1833 a figure of a pilgrim was placed upon 
 the roof of this house, which by concealed machinery moved to 
 and fro like the Wandering Jew, doomed to wander up and 
 down until the end of the world ; it was, however, of contemp- 
 tible workmanship, and very soon got out of order. 
 
 The Gipsy's Tent occurs at Hagley, Stourbridge; the Gipsy 
 Queen at Highbury and other places; and the Queen of the 
 Gipsies was the sign of the so-called gipsy house near Nor- 
 wood. The queen alluded to was Margaret Finch, who died at 
 the great age of 109 years ; Norwood was her residence during 
 the last years of her life, and there she told fortunes to the credu- 
 lous. She was buried October 24, 1760, in a deep square box, 
 as from her constant habit of sitting with her chin resting on 
 her knees, her muscles had become so contracted that she could 
 not at last alter her position. This woman, when a girl of seven- 
 teen, may have been one of the dusky gang pretty Mrs Pepys 
 and her companions went to consult, August 11, 1668, which 
 her lord duly chronicled in the evening : " This afternoon my 
 wife and Mercer and Deb went with Pelling to see the gypsies at 
 Lambeth, and have their fortunes told, but what they did I did 
 not enquire." A granddaughter of Margaret Finch, also a so- 
 styled queen, was living in an adjoining cottage in the year 1800. 
 
 * Weekly Journal, Jan. 18, 1718. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 The True Lover's Knot is a sign at Uxbridge, the only ex- 
 ample of it we have met with. In the North of England and in 
 Scotland it is still the custom with betrothed lovers of the lower 
 class to present each other with a curious kind of knot called a 
 true lover's knot." Brand says the word is not derived from true 
 love, but from trulofa, Danish for fidem do. It was formerly a 
 common present between lovers of all stations of life in England. 
 
 The Folly is not unusual ; it is generally applied to a very 
 ambitious, extravagantly furnished, or highly ornamented house; 
 in such a sense it was already used in Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign : — 
 
 " Kirby Castle and Fisher'' s Folly 
 Spinola's Pleasure and Megse's Glory." 
 
 One of the most notorious " Follies " was an edince of timber 
 divided into sundry rooms, with a platform and balustrade on 
 the top, which in the reign of Charles II. floated in the Thames 
 above London Bridge. At first it was very well frequented, and 
 the beauty and fashion of the period (Pepys amongst them, 
 April 13, 1668,) used to go there on summer evenings, partake 
 of refreshments on the platform, and enjoy the breeze on the 
 river (then .guiltless of the modern sewers and filth.) On one 
 occasion Queen Mary honoured it with a visit, accompanied by 
 some of her courtiers. Gradually, however, it took to evil 
 courses ; loose and disorderly females were admitted, and un- 
 restrained drinking and dancing soon gave it an unenviable 
 notoriety. In this condition it was visited by Tom Brown, who 
 describes it with his usual coarse vigour: "This whimsical piece 
 of Architecture was designed as a musical Summer-house for the 
 entertainment of quality where they might meet and ogle one 
 another ; but the Ladies of the Town finding it as convenient a 
 rendez-vous, overstock'd the place with such an inundation of 
 harlotry, that dashed the female quality out of countenance, and 
 made them seek some more retired conveniency.'^ He next 
 describes the company in very glowing colours, but found it 
 such a confused scene of folly, madness, and debauchery, that he 
 — no very bashful person — was compelled to return to his boat 
 without drinking ! ^""^ At length the place became so scandalous 
 that it had to be closed ; it went to decay, and at last was sold 
 for firewood. 
 
 The sign of the Blue-Coat Boy, usually chosen by toy-shops, 
 
 * Tom Brown's Walk rouua London. 
 
5 1 0 THE HISTOR Y OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 printsellers, and colourmen, was either in compliment to the 
 scholars of King Edward YI.'s foundation, Christ's Hospital, — 
 commonly called " the Blue Coat School," from the blue tunic 
 of the lads, or was named after the Bridewell Boys, i.e., found- 
 lings and deserted children, who wore a blue coat and trousers, 
 with a white hat. Until the end of the last century they used 
 to attend at all the fires with the Bridewell engine, but on the 
 whole they were an unruly mischievous set. There was a Blue 
 Coat coiffee-house in Sweeting's Alley, near the Exchange, in 
 1711.* At present it is generally called the Blue Boy, as at 
 Old Swinford, Stourbridge ; Minchinham^^ton, Gloucester, and in a 
 few other places. In Islington there is still such a sign, and in 
 Aldersgate Street, if we remember rightly, there is an ironmonger 
 with such a decoration. 
 
 A very strange sign occurs amongst the Banks Bill?. On a 
 shop-bill dated 1698, is the following inscription: "At the signe 
 of the Tare lives one Mr Grenier who makes all sorts of good 
 rasors, lancets, sisers, very well, and all other sorts of instru- 
 ments for chirugeons." The engraving represents two angels hold- 
 ing a tear by a string, surrounded by a quantity of surgical instru- 
 ments, after the true meat-axe type, and vicious-looking enough 
 to " draw tears of molten brass from the eyes of Pluto himself." 
 
 The Weaky Teaveller occurs at Sutton Ptoad, Kiddermin- 
 ster; the Traveller's Best in a great many places, sometimes 
 accompanied by the phrase Rest and be Thankful, which last 
 advice serves as a sign to two public-houses at Whitehaven. 
 Finally the Finish was the sign of a notorious night-house in 
 Covent Garden, kept at the beginning of the present century by 
 a Mrs Butler. Here, according to "Tom Crib's Memorial to 
 Congress," the gentlemen of the road used to divide their spoil 
 in the gray dawn of the morning, when it was time for the night- 
 birds to fly to their roost. Crib (in reality Thomas Moore the 
 poet, see p. 503) says that the congress is : — 
 
 " Some place that 's like the Finish, lads, 
 
 Where all your high pedestrian pads 
 
 That have been up and out all night, 
 
 Running their rigs amongst the rattlers,t 
 
 At morning meet, and, honour bright. 
 Agree to share the blunt and tatlers." 
 
 This house was originally named the Queen's Head, but waa 
 
 ♦ Daily Courantt Jan. 27, 1711. 
 
 t Carriages. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS. 
 
 nicknamed tlie Finish from its being the place where the fast men 
 of the day generally finished off/' Ned Shuter was at one time 
 a drawer in this house, but, inspired by the neighbourhood of tho 
 theatres, he left the pots and bottles and took to the stage. Down 
 to a recent date it was a gloomy disreputable coffee-house, kept 
 by one Smith, and here, in interdicted hours, beer and spirits 
 could be obtained when all the public-houses were closed. It 
 w^as pulled down very recently. These last four signs have in a 
 measure been the expression of the authors' minds : who, weary of 
 their long task, and fearful of having fatigued their readers, will 
 now betake themselves to rest, and he thankful if they have given 
 a few hours' entertainment upon the subject of signboards. They 
 now take their leave in the words of an old ballad : — 
 
 " Then faire fall all good tokens, 
 And well fare a good heart, 
 For by all signs and tokens 
 'Tis time for to def^art." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 BONNELL THORNTON'S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION. 
 
 On the evening of Tuesday, 23d of March 1762, the ladies and 
 gentlemen of London were informed at their tea-tables, by means 
 of the St James's Chronicle, of the following fact : — 
 " Proscript." 
 INTELLIGENCE EXTRAORDINARY. 
 *' Strand. The Society of Manufactures, Art, and Commerce, are pre- 
 paring for the annual Exhibition of Polite Arts, hoping by Degrees to 
 render this Nation as eminent in Taste as War ; and that, by bestowing 
 Praemiums, and encouraging a generous Emulation, among the Artists, the 
 Productions of Painting, Sculpture, &c., may no longer be considered as 
 Exotics, but naturally flourish in the Soil of Great Britain." 
 
 Immediately under this notice was the following : — 
 
 " Grand Exhibition. The Society of Sign-painters are also preparing a 
 most magnificent Collection of Portraits, Landscapes, Fancy Pieces, Flower 
 Pieces, History Pieces, Night Pieces, Sea Pieces, Sculpture Pieces, &c., &c., 
 designed by the ablest Masters, and executed by the best Hands in tliese 
 kingdoms. The Virtuosi will have a new Opportunity of displaying their 
 Taste on this Occasion, by discovering the different Stile of the several 
 Masters employed, and pointing out by what Hand each Piece is drawn. 
 A remarkable Cognoscente who has attended at the Society's great Room, 
 with his Glass, for several Mornings, has already piqued himself on dis- 
 covering the famous Painter of the Rising Sun, a modern Claude Lorraine, 
 in an elegant Night-piece of the Man-in-the-Moon. He is also convinced 
 that no other than the famous Artists who drew the Red Lion at Brentford, 
 can be equal to the bold figures in the London * Prentice, and that the 
 exquisite Colouring in the Piece called Pyramus and Thisbe must be by the 
 same hand as the Hole-in-the-WallJ^ 
 
 Shortly after this advertisement, the Exhibition was opened. 
 It was held in Bonnell Thornton's chambers in Bow Street : the 
 hours were from nine till four, admission one shilling. The tickets 
 had a catalogue prefixed to them. The names of the signboard- 
 painters given in this catalogue were those of the journeymen 
 printers in Mr Baldwin's office, where it was printed. Hagarty 
 alone was a transparent variation on the name of Hogarth, who 
 had largely contributed to the fun and humour of the Exhibition. 
 
 The opening of the saloons was the signal for a perfect storm 
 among the newspapers. The artists and their friends were terribly 
 ruffled, and persisted in seeing in it a persifflage of their exhibi- 
 tion just then opened in the Strand. To this animosity, however, 
 
' PLATE XIX. 
 
 WELSH TROOPER. 
 (From an old print, 1750.) 
 
 ELEPHANT AND CASTLE. 
 (Belle Sauvase Yard, circa 1668.) 
 
 BLACK PRINCE. 
 (Banks's Collection, 1799.) 
 
BONNELL THORNTON'S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION 5 I 3 
 
 we owe all the particulars of the signs exhibited. Catalogues, 
 criticisms, and reviews of the Exhibition were daily brought before 
 the public, giving full details. The most important of them we 
 present to our readers 
 
 By Permission. 
 
 A CATALOGUE of the Original Paintings, Busts, Carved Figures, d'C, 
 <£:c., etc., Now exhibiting by the Society of Sign- Painters, at the Large 
 Rooms, the Upper End of Bow Street, Covent Garden^ nearly opposite the 
 Play-Honse Passage, 
 
 In the Large Passage Room, 
 [N.B. — That the Merit of the Modern Masters may be fairly examined 
 into, it has been thought proper to place some admired Works of the most 
 eminent Old Masters in this Room, and along the Passage thro*^ the Yard."? 
 No. 
 
 1. [Over the Door.] A Coach and Four, Supposed to be by Stanhope. 
 
 2. Windsor, or any other Castle. By Mason, The Centinel and Great 
 
 Gun by another Hand. 
 
 3. Hand and Lock op Hair. Hand unknown. 
 
 4. A Pandour, or Indian Prince, uncertain which. Stanhope's undoubtedly. 
 
 5. A Ship and Castle. Thomas Knife written under. But it is not 
 
 known whether this is the name of the Artist or the Publican. 
 
 6. A Hen and Chickens. By Lodge, 
 
 7. Three Nuns. The Drapery copied from a Bas-Relief at Rome. By 
 
 Soames. 
 
 8. An original Whole-Length of Gut of Warwick. By the same. 
 
 9. A Major Wig. By Harrison, [N,B, — The Tails appear to have been 
 
 added.] 
 
 10. A Barge, in Still-Life. By Van der Trout. [He cannot properly be 
 
 called an English artist; not being sufficiently encouraged in his 
 own Country, he left Holland with William the Third, and was the 
 first artist who settled in Harp Alley.*] 
 
 11. The Hercules Pillars. The Architecture by Young Soames. The 
 
 Figure (from the Farnesian Hercules) by the Father. 
 
 12. An Heroe's Head, unknown. By Moses White. With the least alter- 
 
 ation, may serve for an Heroe past, present, or to come. 
 
 13. An original Three Quarters Length of King Charles the Second : a 
 
 striking Likeness. By Ditto, 
 
 In the Passage through the Yard. 
 
 1. A Flying Swan, — by some supposed to be a Dying one. By Goustry. 
 
 2. An Half-Moon. By Masmore, 
 
 3. An Original Half Length of Camden, the great Historian and Antiquary, 
 
 in his Herald's Coat. By Van der Trout, [As this Artist was oi i- 
 ginally Colour Grinder to Hans Holbein, it is conjectured there are 
 some of the great Master's Touches in this Piece.} 
 
 4. A Buttock of Beef stuft. By Lynne» 
 
 5. An Hair-cutter. By the sam^. 
 
 6. Adam and Eve. The first Attempt of that famous Artist, Barnahi' 
 
 Smith. 
 
 • In Farringdon Street; the head-quarters of the London Sign-Paintera. 
 
 2 K 
 
514 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 7. A Black Prince. By Hitchcock. 
 
 8. [Over the Entrance.^ An Holy Lamb; highly finished. By the same 
 
 Grand Room. 
 
 [The Society of Sign-Painters take this Opportunity of refuting a most 
 malicious Suggestion, that their Exhibition is designed as a Ridicule on the 
 Exhibitions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., and of the 
 Artists. They intend theirs as only an Appendix, or (in the Stile of Painters) 
 a Companion to the others. There is nothing in their Collection, which 
 will be understood by any Candid Person as a Reflection on any Body, or 
 any Body of Men. They are not in the least prompted by any mean 
 Jealousy to depreciate the Merits of their Brother Artists. Animated by 
 the same Public Spirit, their sole View is to convince Foreigners as well aa 
 their own blinded Countrymen, that however inferior this Nation may be 
 unjustly deemed in other Branches of the Polite Arts, the Palm for Sign- 
 Painting must be universally ceded to Us, th^ Dutch themselves not ex- 
 cepted.] 
 
 1. Portrait of a justly celebrated Painter, though an Englishman and a 
 
 Modern. 
 
 2. A Crooked Billet, formed exactly in the Line of Beauty* its Com- 
 
 panion. These by Adams. 
 
 3. The Good Woman. A Whole Length, but no Portrait. By Sympson, 
 
 [N.B. — It is done from Invention, not being able to find one to sit 
 for it.] 
 
 4. A Star. By * * 
 
 5. The Light Heart. A Sign for a Vintner. By Hogarty. [N.B. — This 
 
 is an elegant Invention of Ben Jonson, who in The New Inn or Light 
 Heart, makes the Landlord say (speaking of his Sign :) — 
 An Heart weighed with a Feather, and outweighed too : 
 A Brain-child of my own and I am proud on't.] 
 
 6. The Hog in Armour. By Thurmond, 
 
 7. A Buttock of Beef. By Simmes. 
 
 8. The Vicar of Bray. The Portrait of a Beneficed Clergyman, at Full 
 
 Length. By Allison. 
 
 9. The Irish Arms. By Patrick OBlaney. [iV;^.— Captain Terence 
 
 O Cutter STOOD for them.] 
 
 10. The Gentleman of Wales. By David Rice. 
 
 11. Butter AND Eggs. Bj Simmes. 
 
 12. The Scotch Fiddle. By M'Pharson, done from Himself. 
 
 13. The Barking Dogs. A Landscape at Moonlight. The Moon some- 
 
 what eclipsed by an Accident. Whitalcer, 
 
 14. Three Apothecaries' Gallipots. D'aeth's first Attempt. 
 
 15. Three Coffins. Its Companion. Finished by Shrowd, 
 
 16. A Man. By Hagarty. 
 
 17. The Rising Sun. A Landscape. Painted for The. Moon, alias Theo- 
 
 PHiLus Moon. By Morris, 
 
 18. The Magpie. By Whitaker. 
 
 19. Nobody, alias Somebody. A Character. 
 
 20. Somebody, alias Nobody. A Caricature. Its Companion. Botti 
 
 these by Hagarty. 
 
 * In allusion to a well-known art-theory of Hogarth'3, 
 
BONNELL THORKTOIPS SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION. 5 1 5 
 
 21. The World's End. By Sympson. 
 
 22. The Strugglers. A Conversation. By Ransbey. 
 
 23. A Freemason's Lodge, or the Impenetrable Secret. By a Sworn Brother, 
 
 24. The Blackamoor. By Sympson. [N.B. — This is not intended as any 
 
 Reflection on the Gentlemen who have been lately Whitewashed.] 
 
 25. A Man running away with the Monument. By Whitaker, 
 
 26. Devil hugging the Witch. A Conversation. By Ranshey. 
 
 27. The Spirit of Contradiction. Ditto. By Hagarty, 
 
 28. The Loggerheads. Ditto. By Ditto, 
 
 29. The Man in the Moon drinks Claret. By Blaclcman. 
 
 30. The Dancing Bears. A Sign for N. Dukes, or A. Hart, or any other 
 
 Dancing-Master to Grown Gentlemen. By Hagarty, 
 
 31. My a — in a Bandbox. By Sympson, 
 
 32. A Man struggling through the World. By the same. 
 
 33. St John's Head in a Charger. 
 
 34. A Dog's Head in the Porridge Pot. Its Companion. Both these by 
 
 Blaclcman. 
 
 35. A Man in his Element. A Sign for an Eating House. 
 
 36. A Man out of his Element. A Sign for a Publick House at Wapping, 
 
 Rotherhithe, or Deptford. Both these by Stainsley, 
 
 37. The Barley Mow. By Whitaker. 
 
 38. A Bird in the Hand. A Landscape. By Allison. 
 
 39. Absalom hanging. A Peruke-Maker's Sign. By Sclater, 
 
 40. Welcome Cuckolds to Horn Fair. By Hagarty, 
 
 41. The Cat 0' Nine Tails. A Kit Cat. By Masmore. 
 
 42. King Charles in the Oak. A Land-schape. By Allison, The Face 
 
 in Miniature. By Sclater. 
 
 43. An Owl in an Ivy Bush. Its Companion. By Allison, 
 
 44. FooTE in the Character of Mrs Cole. A Sign for a Boarding-School, 
 
 By Stainsley. 
 
 45. Peeping- Tom. A Sign for a Shoemaker. By the same. 
 46. 
 
 47. A Pair of Breeches. 
 
 48. A Green Canister. Its Companion. Both these by Blaclcman, 
 
 49. An Ha ! Ha ! 
 
 50. [On a parallel line with the foregoing on the other side of the chimney."] 
 
 The Curiosity. Its Companion. [These two by an unknown Hand, 
 the Exhibitors being favoured with them from an unknown Quar- 
 ter.] Ladies and Gentlemen are requested not to finger them, 
 as Blue Curtains are hung on purpose to preserve them. 
 
 51. [Over the Chimney^ A Star of the first Magnitude. 
 
 52. The Renowned Seven Champions of Christendom, from an entire 
 
 New Design. 1. St George for England. 2. St Andrew for Scot- 
 land. 3. St Denis for France. 4. St Anthony for Italy. 5. St 
 James for Spain. 6. St David for Wales. 7. St Patrick for Ire- 
 land. This by Bransley. 
 
 53. An Original Portrait of the present Emperor of Russia. 
 
 54. Ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary. Its Antagonist. These 
 
 by Sheerman. 
 
 55. The Silent Woman, or A Good Riddance. A Family Piece. By 
 
 Barnsley, 
 
5l6 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 56. The Ghost of Cock Lane. By Miss Fanny * 
 
 57. Three Portraits in One. 
 
 58. All the World and his Wife. By Blachman. 
 
 59. Cat and Bagpipes. By Forster, 
 
 60. A perspective view of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution. 
 
 61. Thie Robin Hood Society, a Conversation ; or Lectures on Elocution, f 
 
 Its Companion. These two by Barnsley. 
 
 62. An Author in the Pillory. By , Bookseller. First Attempt.lj: 
 
 63. Liberty crowning Britania. By command of his Majesty. 
 
 64. View of the Road to Paddington, with a Presentation (sic) of the 
 
 Deadly Never-Green § that bears Fruit all the Year round. The 
 Fruit at full length. By Hag arty. 
 
 65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners. By Blachman. 
 
 66. Good Company. A Conversation. Intended as a Sign for a Tobac- 
 
 conist. By Bransley. 
 
 67. Death and the Doctor ; in Distemper. By Hagarty. 
 
 68. Hogs Norton. || A Sign for a Music Shop. By Bransley, 
 
 69. St Dunstan and the Devil. 
 
 70. St Squintum ** and the Devil. Its Companion. By . 
 
 71. Shave for a Penny. Let Blood for Nothing. 
 
 72. Teeth drawn with a Touch. A Caricature. Its Companion. These 
 
 two by Bransley. 
 
 73. A Man loaded with Mischief. By Sympson. 
 
 74. Entertainment for Man and Horse. A Landscape. By Bransley. 
 
 75. First and Last. By BlacJcman. 
 
 76. The Constitution ; Alderman Pitt*s Entire. By Hagarty, 
 
 BUSTS, CARVED FIGURES, &c., &c., &c. 
 
 1. A Blue Boar. By Lester. 
 
 2. Two Indian Kings. By Taverner, 
 
 3. A Flaming Sword of Paradise. 
 
 4. St Peter's Key. Both these by Carey. 
 
 5. A Bunch OF Grapes from Portugal, By Pendred, 
 
 6. A Divided Crown. By Ward. 
 
 7. Birmingham Case of Knives and Forks. [See at the other end oi 
 
 this a Sheffield Case. Its Companion.] Both these by Asgill. 
 
 8. A Nag's Head, after the Manner of the Antient Bronzes. By Mill- 
 
 wich. 
 
 9. A Block, done from the Life. By Brown, 
 
 10. An exact Representation of the famous Running Horse. BlacJc and 
 All BlacJc, 
 
 * Fanny Parsons was the girl who played such an active part in the Cock Lane ghost 
 performances, Jan. and Feb. 1762. 
 
 t A famous discussion club held at the Robin Hood Tavern, Essex Street, Strand. 
 
 X Evidently an allusion to Edmund Curll, the notorious bookseller, who stood in the 
 Pillory at Cheapside. 
 
 g The gallows at Tyburn. 
 
 B A corruption of Hook-Norton, the name of a small village in Oxfordshire, where the 
 hogs formerly played upon the church organ. So, at least, the story runs. 
 
 '* "St Squintum" was probably intended for John Whitfield, the famous preacher, 
 whose personal appearance was the subject of numerous lampoons and caricatures at 
 this time. 
 
BONNELL THORNTON'S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION. 5 I 7 
 
 11. Underneath, an Escutcheon, shewing his Pedigree, as warranted by 
 
 the Herald's office. These by Fishbourne. 
 
 12. Bust of a celebrated Beauty. By Edley. 
 
 1 3. Head of the Thoughtless Philosopher. By Masmore, 
 
 14. Take Time by the Forelock. By Clark, 
 
 15. A Dumb Bell. By the same. 
 
 16. The British Lion, and 
 
 17. Unicorn. [The Lion in excellent Condition.] By Jones, 
 
 18. A French Fleur-de-Lys [tarnished.] By Garthy. 
 
 19. Two Bronzes. By Millvnch. 
 
 20. A Gold Fish, considerably larger than the Life. By Cooh. 
 
 21. A Mitre, and 
 
 22. Crown. By Hughes. 
 
 23. A Dolphin, painted with the true Verd Antique. By Quarterman. 
 
 %* Several Tobacco Rolls, Sugar Loaves, Hats, Wigs, Stock- 
 ings, Gloves, &c., &c., &c., hung round the Room. By the 
 above-mentioned Artists. 
 
 24. [On the Left Hand of the Door ^ going out] A Stand of Cheeses, with 
 
 a Bladder of Lard on the Top. 
 
 25. A Westphalian Ham. These two by Bricken. 
 
 —St James's Chronicle, Ap. 20-22. 1762. 
 
 The next number of tlie St James's Chronicle contained an 
 article on tlie Exliibition from another journal, written with 
 great animosity : — 
 
 *' As your paper is always ready to expose any Abuses on the Publick, 
 I beg you will give place to the following Observations : — 
 
 " I acknowledge myself to have been one of the Curious who went yes- 
 terday morning to see the Grand Exhibition, as it is called, of the Sign- 
 Painters, from which I did not indeed expect any great Entertainment ; 
 however, I did not imagine any Set of Gentlemen would have been con- 
 cerned in a senseless Attempt at Satire, and along with it the most 
 impudent and pickpocket Abuse that I ever knew offered to the Publick. 
 
 The Exhibition is really of Signs, and those, in general, worse exe- 
 cuted than any that are to be seen in the meanest streets. The Busts, 
 carved Figures, &c., are of corresponding Excellence, all of them being the 
 very worst of Signpost Work, and such as seem collected foi* an Insult on 
 the Human understanding. 
 
 " But that your Readers may All save their Time, Money, and Credit, 
 by not falling into this Hum-trap, I shall give them an Account of some of 
 the choicest Articles of this Collection as a sample that must damp their 
 Curiosity for seeing the Whole.'' 
 
 GRAND ROOM, 
 
 1. Mr Hogarth, or a wretched Figure done for him drawing his five orders 
 
 of Periwigs. 
 
 2. A Crooked Billet, hung under it, on which is written. The Exact 
 
 Line of Beauty. 
 
 3. The Good Woman. The old stale Device of a Woman without a Head, 
 
 badly executed. 
 
5i8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 5. The Light Heart. A Feather weighing down a Heart in a pair of 
 Scales. 
 
 9. The Irish Arms, A great clumsy pair of Legs. 
 10. The Gentleman of Wales. A Taffey with a great Leek in his Hat. 
 
 19. Nobody. A man all Legs. 
 
 20. Somebody. A man all Belly, with a Constable's Staff. 
 
 23. A Freemason's Lodge. A new Member blinded and befouling himself. 
 27. The Spirit op Contradiction. Two Brewers bearing a cask. The 
 Men going different ways. 
 
 30. The Dancing Bears. Bears in Men's cloaths, learning to dance, a 
 
 great one amongst them, with a gold Chain round his Neck ; the 
 Dancing Master a Monkey, holding a Kitten on his Breast with one 
 hand, and pincing its tail with the other. 
 
 31. Band box. An Ass standing in a great Band-box.* 
 
 32. A Man Struggling through the World. The Sign of a Pasteboard 
 
 Terrestrial Globe, with a Man creeping through it, his Head being 
 out at one End, and his Heels at the other. 
 
 35. A Man in his Element. A man gluttonizing.f 
 
 36. A Man out of his Element. A Sailor fallen off his Horse. 
 
 44. Foote in the Character of Mrs Cole. The wit lies in the writing 
 
 under it, which is, Young Ladies educated here. 
 
 45. Peeping Tom.^ A Shoemaker trying on a Shoe on a Woman. 
 
 But the Cream of the whole Jest is (49 and 50) two Boards behind two 
 Curtains, (one on each side of the Chimney,) which, when the Cur- 
 tains are lifted up, show the written Laughs of ha ha ha and 
 
 HE HE HE. 
 
 53 and 54 are two old Signs of a Saracen's Head and a Queen Anne s, 
 with their Tongues lolling out at one another, designed to represent 
 the Czar and the Queen of Hungary. Over them is a great wooden 
 Bill, with this inscription, The present State of Europe. 
 
 64. A view of the Eoad to Paddington, with a Kepresentation of the 
 
 Deadly Never Green that bears Fruit all the year round. This is 
 T3^burn, with three felons hanging on it. 
 
 65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners, which shows a 
 
 Frenchman cringingly bowing, and an Englishman taking him by 
 the Nose. 
 
 66. Good Company. Three Men drunk, and burning one another's Faces 
 
 with their Pipes. 
 
 69. St Dunstan and the Devil. The Saint taking the Devil by the Nose 
 
 with a Pair of Tongs. 
 
 70. Its Companion. Doctor Squintum doing the same. 
 
 71. Shave for a Penny, Let Blood for Nothing. A man under the 
 
 hands of a barber surgeon, who shaves and lets blood at the same 
 time, by cutting at every stroke of his razor. 
 
 * This seemed to be a sort of slang phrase equivalent to the present— "It's all my 
 eye it occurs in "Tom Brown," vol. ii., p. 13, 1708. See also p. 467 of this work. 
 
 t 35. From another source we learn that this was very different : — " No. 35. A Man 
 in his Element, a sign for an Eating-house," — a cook roasted on a spit at a kitchen fire, 
 and basted by the devil. 
 
 ♦ In allusion to Peeping Tom, the shoemaker of Coventry. 
 
BONN ELL THORNTON'S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION, ^ig 
 
 73. A Man loaded with Mischief. A Fellow with a Woman, a Moukey, 
 
 and a Magpie on his Back. 
 
 74. Entertainment for Man and Horse. A Woman and a Hay Mow. 
 
 75. First and Last. A Cradle and a Coffin. 
 
 76. The Constitution. Alderman Pitt's Entire, A tall Grenadier and a 
 
 short Sailor. 
 
 " Such is the Entertainment that these wits have been able to prepare for 
 the curious, with all the assistance of the Virtuosi which they have been 
 long advertising to procure. If there is any Satyre in this Design, it must 
 be in humming their Customers. Wit or taste there is certainly none ; 
 but there is a Magnitude of Imposition that is surely deserving of Punish- 
 ment. 
 
 It is well known that the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, 
 Manufactures, and Commerce, are at a great Expense for making their 
 elegant Exhibition, and give their Tickets all away. The Artists, indeed, 
 sell Catalogues there to those who chuse to buy them, and dispose of the 
 Money that is got by them to Charities. 
 
 The Body of Artists made their Catalogues Tickets to serve last year 
 for the whole Time of Exhibition in Spring Gardens, and sold them but 
 a shilling a-piece, the Profits of which were likewise distributed in 
 Charities. 
 
 The Society, as they call themselves, of Signpainters, or rather of Bites 
 who borrow that Name, have the Assurance to fix a Ticket to each Cata- 
 logue, which they sell for their own Profit at a shilling ; and, by obliging 
 the Ticket to be torn ofi" at the Second Door, make the Purchase of a New 
 Catalogue absolutely necessary for a Second Admission. It is true most 
 Gentlemen do refuse to let their Catalogues be torn ; and many of those 
 who had submitted to the tearing of them, insisted upon their being ex- 
 changed for whole ones, resolving, Uke Men of Spirit, not to be bubbled 
 every Way. 
 
 In fine, this Mock Exhibition is a most impudent and scandalous Abuse 
 and Bubble. An Insult on Understanding, and a most pickpocket Impos- 
 ture. The best entertainment it can afi'ord is that of standing in the street, 
 and observing with how much shame in their Faces People come out of the 
 House. Pity it will be, if all who are employed in the carrying on this 
 Cheat, are not seized and sent to serve the King. And those who are 
 Sharers in the Booty deserve likewise to be severely chastised. 
 I am, Sir, yours, &c., 
 
 A DESPISER OF ALL TRICKERY." 
 
 " The Signpainters return their Thanks to the author of the above most ex- 
 cellent Letter y which is seemingly abusive of their Design, but is in Fact a most 
 admirable Irony. 
 
 The Ledger of this Morning, after having pillaged the Catalogue of 
 SiGNPAiNTiNG, is Candid enough to abuse it. Bat it is plain that the author 
 has not seen the Exhibition^ or could not find out the Humour of it." 
 
 From the GAZETTEER.— (^Sif James Chronicle, Ap. 24-27, 1762.)— 
 " The Society of Signpainters, in their Catalogue, tell us they take the 
 opportunity of refuting what they are pleased to call a malicious Suggestion 
 — viz., ' Their Exhibition being designed as a Ridicule on the Exhibition 
 of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, etc., and the Artists,' and 
 
520 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 that they intend theirs only as an Appendix or (in the Style of Painiera) 
 ' Companion ' to the others. What is that but ridiculing, or an attempt 
 towards it ? They say ' there is nothing in their Collection which will be 
 understood by any candid person as a Reflection on any Body or any Body 
 of Men.' They might have spared this Assertion, for no Person, endued 
 with the least Share of common Sense, can imagine so impotent and futile 
 an Attempt a Satire or Ridicule on any Thing except the few Spectators 
 who go there ; which would have been better understood had it opened 
 on the First of April. 
 
 *' They also say, ' They are not in the least prompted by any mean 
 jealousy to depreciate the Merits of their Brother Artists.* Which is owing 
 to their Inability, not want of Assurance ; for an Attempt in them to de- 
 preciate the Merit of the Professors of Painting and Sculpture, whom they 
 are impudently pleased to call their Brother Artists, would be (to borrow 
 a Simile from one of their own Productions) like Dogs barking at the 
 Moon. 
 
 ''^ Their sole View, etc., etc. — 'Their sole View* (without any Breach of 
 Charity) we may infer is that of filling their own Pockets by duping the 
 Publick ; for no private Men would by an Advertisement invite People 
 to their House, and place a Porter at the Door to take a Shilling of 
 them, with a Pretence of being animated by a public Spirit, for any other 
 Motive. 
 
 Bow Street, Covent Garden, April 27. 
 The Society of Sign-painters are obliged to the GAZETTEER for the 
 above Remarks" 
 
 Articles and letters abusive of the Exhibition appeared in 
 most of the newspapers, and not a day passed but it was at- 
 tacked in no very measured terms. The committee, however, 
 generally reprinted the articles in their own organ, thanking the 
 critics for so successfully advertising their efforts, after which no 
 more was heard from them. The following review, having very 
 similar annotations upon the signs to those in the letter signed 
 
 A Despiser of all Trickery may have come from one of their 
 own pens. It appeared in a monthly sheet, entitled, " The Lon- 
 don Register^'' for April :* — 
 
 " Humour is confessedly one of the chief characteristics of the English 
 nation. There is no Country that delights in it so much, exerts it on such 
 various occasions, or shows it in so many Shapes. In conversation, in 
 Books, on the Stage, we meet with it every Day ; and it has sometimes 
 been introduced, not without success, even into the Pulpit. To an Artist 
 of our own Country, and of our own Times, we owe the Practice of enrich- 
 ing Pictures with Humour, Character, Pleasantry, and Satire. Such an 
 Artist could not fail of Applause in such a Nation as ours, and his Fame 
 is equal to his Merit. 
 
 The original Paintings, etc., the Catalogue of which now lies before us, 
 are the Project of a well-known Gentleman, in whose house they are ex- 
 
 * Under the title of—" Particular Account of the Grand Exhibition in Bow Street, 
 with Remarks and Illustrations of it." 
 
BONN ELL THORNTONS SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION. 521 
 
 Libited ; a Gentleman who has, in several instances, displayed a most un- 
 common Vein of Humour. His Burlesque Ode on St Cecilia's Day,* his 
 Labours in the Drury Lane Journal, and other papers, all possess that 
 singular Turn of Imagination so peculiar to himself. This Gentleman is 
 perhaps the only Person in England (if we except the Artist above men- 
 tioned) who could have projected, or have carried tolerably into Execution, 
 this scheme of a Grand Exhibition. There is a whimsical drollery in all his 
 Plans, and a Comical Originality in his Manner, that never fail to distin- 
 guish and to recommend all his Undertakings. To exercise his Wit and 
 Humour in an innocent Laugh, and to raise that innocent Laugh in others, 
 seems to have been his chief Aim in the present Spectacle. The Ridicule 
 or Exhibition, if it must be accounted so, is pleasant without Malevolence ; 
 and the general Strokes on the common Topics of Satire are given with the 
 
 most apparent Good-humour 
 
 On entering the Grand Room, .... you find yourself in a large and 
 commodious Apartment, hung round with green Bays, on which this 
 curious collection of Wooden Originals is fixt flat, (like the Signs at present 
 in Paris,) and from whence hang Keys, Bells, Swords, Poles, Sugar-Loaves, 
 Tobacco-Rolls, Candles, and other ornamental Furniture, carved in Wood, 
 that commonly dangle from the Penthouses of the different Shops in our 
 streets. On the Chimney-Board (to imitate the Stile of the Catalogue) is 
 a largO; blazing Fire, painted in Water-colours ; and within a kind of Cupola, 
 or rather Dome, which lets the Light into the Room, is written in Golden 
 Capitals, upon a blue Ground, a Motto from Horace, disposed in the Form 
 following : — 
 
 SPECTATUM 
 
 From this short Description of the Grand- Room, (when we consider the 
 singular Nature of the Paintings themselves, and the Peculiarity of the 
 other Decorations,) it may be easily imagined that no Connoisseur, who 
 has made the Tour of Europe, ever entered a Picture- Gallery that struck 
 his Eye more forcibly at first Sight, or provoked his Attention with more 
 extraordinary Appearance. 
 
 We will now, if the Reader pleases, conduct him round the Room, and 
 take a more accurate Survey of the curious Originals before us. To which 
 End we shall proceed to transcribe the ingenious Society's Catalogue, add- 
 ing (as we proposed before) such Notes and Illustrations as may seem 
 necessary for his Instruction or Entertainment. 
 
 * Bonnell Thornton composed an ode on St Cecilia's Day, which was set to music by 
 Dr Burney, and performed by the aid of those national instruments, the marrow bones 
 and cleavers. The affair came off at Ranelagh, and gave general satisfaction. In a 
 former chapter we have given full particulars of this event. Thornton was Dorn in Lon- 
 don 17-24, educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. In connection 
 with Geo. Colman the elder he started the Connoisseur, the St James' Chronicle, and 
 otlier periodicals. He died May 9, 1768, ana was buried in Westminster Abbev. 
 
THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 8. The Vicar of Bray : The Portrait of a Beneficed Clergyman, at Full 
 Length. [The vicar of Bray is an Ass in a Feather-topped Grizzle, Band, 
 and Pudding Sleeves. — This is a much droller Conceit, and has more Effect 
 when executed, than the old Design of The Ass loaded with Preferment.] 
 
 9. The Irish Arms. By Patrick O'Blaney. [N.B. Captain Terence 
 0^ Cutter stood /or them. [A Pair of extremely thick Legs in white Stock- 
 ings and black Garters.] 
 
 12, The Scotch Fiddle. By M'Pharson, done from Himself. [The Figure 
 of a Highlander sitting under a Tree, and enjoying that greatest of Plea- 
 sure of scratching where it itches.'] 
 
 IQ. A Man. [Nine Taylors at Work; in Allusion to the old Saying of 
 nine Taylors maTce a Man.] 
 
 19. Nobody, alias Somebody. A Character. [The Figure of an Ofi5cer, 
 all Head, Arms, Legs and Thighs. — This Piece has a very odd Effect, being 
 80 drolly executed that you don't miss the Body.] 
 
 20. Somebody, alias Nobody. A Caricature. Its Companion. Both these 
 by Hagarty. [A rosy figure with a little Head and a huge Body, whose 
 Belly swags over, almost quite down to his Shoe-Buckles. By the Staff in 
 his Hand it appears to be intended to represent a Constable. — It might also 
 have been mistaken for an eminent Justice of Peace.] 
 
 22. The Strugglers. A Conversation. By Bransley, [Represents a Man 
 and Wife fighting for the Breeches.] 
 
 2S. A Free- Mason's Lodge, or the Impenetrable Secret. By a Sworn 
 Brother. [The supposed Ceremony and probable Consequences of what is 
 called maJcing a Mason, representing the Master of the Lodge with a red 
 hot Salamander in his Hand, and the new Brother blindfold, and in a 
 comical Situation of Fear and Good-LucJc.] 
 
 25. A Man running away with the Monument. By WhitaTcer. [This 
 Picture of a London Night, like the Farmer Returned, represents 
 
 the Watchmen in Town, 
 
 Lame, feeble, half blind. 
 
 Two of these Cripples are pursuing the Thief, one crying out. Stop Thief ! 
 and the other, I can't catch him.] 
 
 27. The Spirit of Contradiction. Ditto. By Hagarty. [Two Brewers 
 with a Barrel of Beer, pulling different Ways.] 
 
 28. The Logger Heads. Ditto. By Ditto. [Underwritten, the old Joke 
 of We are Three. Shakespeare plainly alludes to this sign in his Twelfth 
 Night, where the Fool comes between Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew 
 Aguecheek, and, taking each by the Hand, says, How now, my Hearts, 
 did you never see the Picture of We Threes " 
 
 30. The Dancing Bears. By Hagarty. [Most drolly conceived and comi- 
 cally executed. — Represents Four Bears on their hind Legs, drest in 
 different Characters, one with a gold Chain round his Neck, giving Right 
 Paw and Left, gravely practising Country-Dances, under the Tuition of a 
 Monkey, drest like a Dancing-Master, and fiddling on a KiT-ten. — The 
 Seriousness and Solemnity of each of these Figures is incomparable. Un- 
 derneath is written, " Grown Gentlemen taught to Dance." 
 
 31. Band Box, By Sympson. [Hieroglyphically expressed .... an 
 Ass standing in a Bandbox.] 
 
 33. St Johns Head in a Charger, [The dead Saint's Eyes, like those in 
 most Portraits, seem to be looking at you.] 
 
BOKNELL THORNTON'S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION, 523 
 
 35. A Man in his Element. A Sign for an Eating-IIouse. [A Cook 
 roasted upon a Spit at the Kitchen-Fire and basted by the Devil.] 
 
 36. A Man out of his Element. [A Sailor fallen otf his Horse, with his 
 Skull lighting against the ten mile Stone from Portsmouth.] 
 
 38. A Bird in the Hand, a Landscape. By A llison. [A common sign 
 in various Parts of England, which has usually this Inscription, 
 
 A Bird in Hand is better far 
 
 Than two that in the Bushes are. 
 But these Lines are much improved in the Inscription that is under this 
 Sign in the Exhibition : 
 
 A Bird in Hand far better 'tis 
 
 Than two that in the Bushes is.] 
 
 39. Ahsalon Hanging , a Peruke Maker's Sign. By Sclater. [Underneath 
 is written — 
 
 If Absalon had not worn his own Hair 
 Absalon had not been hanging there.] 
 
 40. Welcome Cuckholds to Horn-Fair. By Hagarty. [Whimsically ima- 
 gined, and droUy executed — Being a Picture of Horn- Fair containing 
 various Figures of Cuckholds in different Characters ; some with large 
 staring Bulls', Goats'-Horns, &c., others with their Horns just budding. 
 The center Figure is that of a fine Gentleman (copied from the fine Gen- 
 tleman in Lethe) with Rams'-Horns. On a Bank, fast asleep, sits a Citizen- 
 like Figure, with large branching antlers, and on the other side of the 
 Picture, is a jemmy Figure in Boots, who has no Horns upon his Head, 
 but carries them in his Pocket, out of which the tops appear tipt with 
 Gold. This last Gentleman's Horse (to make the Picture complete) is also 
 represented as a Cuckhold, having a Horn in his Forehead like an Uni- 
 corn's.] 
 
 49. An Hal Ha! 
 
 50 [On a parallel Line loith the foregoing on the other Side of the Chim-. 
 ney] The Curiosity, its Companion. [These two hy an unknown Hand, the 
 Exhibitors being favoured loith them from an unknown Quarter.^ \* Ladies 
 and Gentlemen are requested not to finger them, as blue Curtains are hung 
 over in purpose to preserve them. [Behind the blue Curtains on one 
 of these Boards is written Ha / Ha! Ha ! and on the other He ! He! He! 
 At the first opening of the Exhibition the Ladies had infinite Curiosity to 
 know what was behind the Curtain, but were afraid to gratify it. This 
 covered Laugli is no bad satire on the indecent Pictures in some Collec- 
 tions, hung up in the same Manner with Curtains over them.] 
 
 52. [Over the Chimney'] The Renowned Seven Champions of Christendom, 
 from an entire New Design. [A Capital Piece. The Seven Champions are 
 represented in the following Manner. 1. St George is an English Sailor 
 mounted on a Lion, with a Spit (by Way of Lance) bearing a Sirloin of 
 Beef in one Hand, and a full Pot of Porter marked only Three Pence a 
 Quart in the other. By the Lion 3 Foot are two Scrolls, like Ballads, the 
 one inscribed 0 the Roast Beef of Old England : the other. Hearts of Oak 
 are our Men. 2. St Andrew is a Highlander mounted on a Scotch 
 Galloway, with a Broad Sword, bearing an Oat Cake at the End of it in 
 one Hand, and a Flask of Whisky in the other. 3. St Dennis is a French- 
 man, mounted on a Deer, a timorous swdft-footed Animal with a small 
 Sword in one Hand on which a Frog appears to be spitted, and a Dish oi 
 
524 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGKBOARDS. 
 
 Soupe Maigre in the other. 4. St Anthony is the Pope, mounted on a 
 Bull, with a Crosier and a Vessel of Holy Water dangling from it, in one 
 Hand, and a Cod- Fish inscribed Food for Lent in the other. From his 
 Right Foot hangs a Scroll inscribed Kiss my Toe, and on the Ground seve- 
 ral Rolls of Paper, on which are written, Pardons, Indulgencies, &c. &c. 
 5. St James is a Spaniard mounted on a Mule with an Ingot of Gold in 
 one Hand and a Padlock in the other. 6. St David is Taffy mounted on a 
 Goat brandishing a Leek in one Hand, and bearing a Cheese, by Way of 
 Target, in the other. 7. St Patrick is an Irish Soldier, mounted on a 
 large Stone-Horse, at whose Feet is a kind of Bill with this Inscription — 
 To cover this Season Black and All Black. He has a Sword, bearing a 
 Potatoe on the End of it in one Hand, and a three-square Bottle, inscribed 
 Green Usqiiehaugh in the other.] 
 
 53. An original Portrait of the present Emperor of Russia. 
 
 54. Ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its Antagonist. [These are 
 two old signs of the Saracen's Head and Queen Anne. Under the first is 
 written The Zarr, and under the other the Empres Quean. They are 
 lolling their tongues out at each other, and over their heads runs a wooden 
 label, inscribed. The present State of Europe.] 
 
 56. The Ghost of Cock Lane. By Miss Fanny . [The figure of two 
 
 hands, one bearing a hammer, the other a curry-comb, in allusion to 
 knocking and scratching.] 
 
 58. All the World and his Wife. By Blachman. [The figure of a 
 foolish-looking fellow, with the globe round his body, (like Orbis in the 
 Rehearsal,) and his wife cudgelling him.] 
 
 60. A Prospective View of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution. 
 
 61. The Robin Hood Society, a Conversation ; or Lectures on Elocution. 
 Its Companion. These two by Barnsley. [These two Strokes at a famous 
 Lecturer on Elocution,* and The Reverend Projector of a Rhetorical Aca- 
 demy, are admirably conceived and executed : and (the latter more especially) 
 almost worthy the Hand of Hogarth. They are full of a Variety of droll 
 Figures, and seem indeed to be the Work of a great Master, struggling to 
 suppress his Superiority of Genius, and endeavouring to paint down to the 
 common Stile and Manner of the School of Sign-painting.] 
 
 64. View of the Road to Paddington, with a Presentation of the Deadly - 
 Never-Green., that hears Fruit all the year round. The Fruit at full 
 Length. By Hagarty. [Tyburn with three Felons on the Gallows. This 
 Piece is remarkable for the Execution^ 
 
 65. The Salutation, or French and English Manners. By BlacJcman. 
 [An English Jack Tar, kicking, and taking a tawdry Mounseer, cringing 
 and bowing, by the Nose.] 
 
 66. Good Company. A Conversation. Intended as a Sign for a Tobacco- 
 nist. By Bransley. [The Conceit and Execution are admirable. It 
 represents a Common-Council-Man, and two Friends, drunk, over a Bottle 
 and a Pipe. The Common-Council-Man is fallen back on his Chair as 
 asleep. One of the Friends, an officer, is lighting a Pipe at his red Nose, 
 while the other, a Doctor, is using his Thumb for a Tobacco Stopper.] 
 
 68. Hogs-Norton. A Sign for a Musick-Shop. By Bransley. [Repre- 
 sents (in allusion to the old saying concerning Hog's Norton) an Hog drest 
 in a Laced Suit, and an enormous Tye Wig, playing upon the Organ.] 
 * Orator Henley is doubtless intended. 
 
BONNELL THORNTON'S SIGNBOARD EXHIBITION . ^2^ 
 
 69. St Bnnstan and the Devil. [The Saint Taking the Devil by the 
 Nose.] 
 
 70. St Squintum and the Devil, its Companion. By . [Dr W d 
 
 doing the same. The Portrait is not unlike the Docto?-.*] 
 
 71. Shave for a Penny, Let Blood for Nothivg. [A Man under the 
 Hands of a Barber-Surgeon, who shaves and lets Blood at the same Time, 
 by cutting at every Stroke of his Kazor.] 
 
 72. Te2th Drawn with a Touch. A Caricature. Its Companion. [A 
 Man in much the same circumstances, mutatis mutandis, under the Hands 
 of a Tooth-Drawer.] 
 
 " Such," says the London Register^ are the Original Paintings 
 in the Society's Collection." It may be remarked that there is 
 some humour in placing many of the signs, which of themselves 
 would not be very striking : for instance, The Theee Apothe- 
 CAEiEs' Gallipots, with The Theee Coffins as its companion ; 
 King Charles in the Oak, and by its side The Owl in the 
 Ivy Bush. Some of the signs are very indelicate, but this 
 objection does not appear amongst the many charges brought 
 against Mr Thornton and his friends. The opinion of society 
 upon this point was very different in the last century from what 
 it is now. 
 
 Besides the official catalogue there also appears to have been 
 a comic or satirical guide, for the newspapers of the day adver- 
 tise — 
 
 This Day was published, Price Gt^., 
 
 HA! HA! HA! Or the Laugher's Companion to the GRAND EXHI- 
 BITION of the SIGN PAINTERS. Also He ! He ! He ! Or the 
 Artist's Guide to the Society's Exhibition. 
 
 Printed for W. Nicholl, at the Papermill, in St Paul's Churchyard, 
 
 We shall close this subject with a paper in favour of the 
 much abused exhibition, a weak, but w^ell meant, effusion in 
 doggerel rhyme : — 
 
 To the Pkinter o/the ST JAMES'S CHRONICLE. 
 
 SIR, 
 
 As the Sign Painters in this Catalogue have directed any Essays on their 
 Exhibition to be sent to you, I have troubled you with the enclosed Trifle, 
 by inserting which in your Chronicle, you will oblige 
 Your humble Servant 
 And constant Reader 
 
 A Friend to the Sign Paintees. 
 
 ♦ The celebrated preacher, George Whitfield, who was chaplain to Selina, Countess o/ 
 OuDtingdon. 
 
26 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIGNBOARDS. 
 
 Addressed to the Gentlemen of the Society o/Sign Painters^ 
 Though Malice darts around malignant Kays 
 And pow'rful Envy all its Spleen displays : 
 Go on, great Chiefs, pursue your noble Play, 
 And nobly end, what nobly you began. 
 Spite vif Detraction shall your Mirth rise 
 With odorif rous Flavour to the Skies, 
 And Masmore's, Lester's, Ward's, and Fishhourne's Name^ 
 With thine, Van Dyke, shall live to endless Fame ; 
 For your Collection Wit and Skill combine, 
 And Humour flows in ev'ry well chose Sign ; 
 To you the Palm, th' admiring World must give, 
 To you the Honour ev'ry Artist leave. 
 Regard not they the little-minded' s Rage, 
 Nor dread the snarling Critic's angry Page ; 
 For conscious Worth shall be your safest Guard, 
 And Immortality your sure Reward. 
 
 April 27-29, 1762. E. N. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. B.C., 476. 
 Abel Drugger, 85. 
 Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, 58. 
 Abraham Offering his Son, 
 
 259. 
 Absalom, 263. 
 Acorn, 246. 
 Adam's Arms, 136. 
 Adam and Eve, 257, 258. 
 Addison's Head, 68. 
 African Chief, 432. 
 Air-Balloon, 486. 
 Airesdale Heifer, 190. 
 Albemarle, Duke of, 69. 
 Albion, 329. 
 Ale-stakes, 6. 
 Ale-pole, 233. 
 Alfred's Head, 45. 
 Almond Tree, 245. 
 Anchor, 332. 
 Anchor and Castle, 333. 
 Anchor and Can, 333. 
 Anchor and Shuttle, 333. 
 Ancient Briton, 415. 
 Andrew Marvel, 63. 
 Angel, 266, 267, 268. 
 Angel and Bible, 270. 
 Angel and Crown, 270. 
 Angel and Gloves, 271. 
 Angel and Still, 271. 
 Angel and Stilliards, 271. 
 Angel and Sun, 272. 
 Angel and Woolpack, 272. 
 Angel on the Hoop, 504. 
 Angler, 361. 
 Annunciation, 279. 
 Anodyne Necklace, 405. 
 Antelope, 110. 
 Antigallican, 485. 
 Antigallican Arms, 136, 485. 
 Antwerp, 425. 
 Anvil, 346. 
 
 Anvil and Blacksmlth,346. 
 Anvil and Hammer, 346. 
 Ape, 161. 
 
 Ape and Bagpipes, 438. 
 Apollo, 69. 
 Apple-tree, 239. 
 Apple-tree and Mitre, 239. 
 Arabian Horse, 175. 
 Archimedes, 62. 
 Arethusa, 329. 
 Arrow, 326. 
 Artichoke, 250. 
 Ash-tree, 246. 
 Ass in the Bandbox, 467. 
 Atlas, 71. 
 
 Auld Lang Syne, 81. 
 Australian, 436. 
 Ave Maria, 280. 
 Axe, 346. 
 
 Axe and Cleaver, 346. 
 Axe and Compasses, 346. 
 Axe and Saw, 346. 
 Axe and Tun, 475. 
 
 Babes in the Wood, 76. 
 Bacchus, 69. 
 Bag o' Nails, 347. 
 Baker and Basket, 348. 
 Baker and Brewer, 348. 
 Balaam's Ass, 261. 
 Balcony, 375. 
 Bald Face, 165. 
 Bald Hind, 164. 
 Bald-faced Stag, 164. 
 Ball, 482, 
 Ball and Cap, 483. 
 Ball and Raven, 483. 
 Balloon, 355, 486. 
 Barrel, 349. 
 Bang Up, 355. 
 Bank of Friendship, 434. 
 Banner, 322. 
 Baptist Head, 273. 
 Barber's Pole, 341. 
 Barber's signs, 344, 345. 
 Barley Broth, 384. 
 Barleycorn, Sir John, 79. 
 Barley Mow, 244, 327. 
 
 Barley-Stack, 244. 
 Bat and Ball, 484. 
 Battered Naggin, 468. 
 Battle of the Nile, 61. 
 Battle of Pyramids, 61. 
 Battle of Waterloo, 61. 
 Bay Childers, 175. 
 Bay Horse, 171. 
 Beadle, 336. 
 Beagle, 194. 
 Bear, 152, 153, 154. 
 Bear and Bacchus, 155. 
 Bear and Harrow, 155. 
 Bear and Ragged StafF, 136. 
 Bear and Rummer, 155. 
 Bear's Paw, 144. 
 Bear's Head, 155. 
 Bedford Head, 99. 
 Beech-tree, 246. 
 Beef Steaks, 378. 
 Beehive, 231, 472. 
 Bee's Wing, 384. 
 Bel and Dragon, 256. 
 Bell, 473, 477, 478, 479. 
 Bell and Anchor. 480. 
 Bell and Black Horse, 174. 
 Bell and Bullock, 480. 
 Bell and Candlestick, 4S0. 
 Bell and Crown, 480. 
 Bell and Cuckoo, 480. 
 Bell and Horse, 174. 
 Bell and Lion, 480. 
 Bell and Mackerel, 230. 
 Bell and Talbot, 165. 
 Bell in the Thorn, 475. 
 Bell Savage, 480, 481. 
 Benbow, Admiral, 57. 
 Bess of Bedlam, 370. 
 Bible, 253. 
 
 Bible and Ball, 256, 483. 
 Bible and Crown, 103. 
 Bible, Crown, and Constitu- 
 tion, 254. 
 Bible and Dial, 250. 
 Bible and Dove, 255. 
 
528 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bible and Harp, 473. 
 Bible and Key, 285. 
 Bible and Lamb, 255. 
 Bible and Peacock, 255. 
 Bible and Sun, 256. 
 Bible and Three Crowns, 127. 
 Bible, Sceptre, and Crown, 
 255. 
 
 Birch-tree, 246. 
 Bird and Bantling, 138. 
 Birdbolt, 361. 
 Bird in the Bush, 449. 
 Bird in Hand, 446, 447, 448, 
 449. 
 
 Bishop Blaize, 283. 
 
 Bishop Blaize and Two Saw- 
 yers, 252. 
 
 Bishop of Canterbury, 64. 
 
 Bishop's Head, 315. 
 
 Blackamoor's Head, 485. 
 
 Black Ball and Lillyhead, 64. 
 
 Black Bell, 479. 
 
 Blackbird, 202. 
 
 Black Boy, 432. 
 
 Black Boy and Camel. 433. 
 
 Black Boy and Cat, 105. 
 
 Black Boy and Comb, 433. 
 
 Black Bull and Looking- 
 Glass, 187. 
 
 Black Cock, 209. 
 
 Black Crow, 203. 
 
 Black Dog, 193. 
 
 Black Dog and Still, 483. 
 
 Black Doll, 486. 
 
 Black Girl, 433. 
 
 Black Friar, 319. 
 
 Black Goat, 192. 
 
 Black Greyhound, 195. 
 
 Black Jack, 384, 385, 386. 
 
 Black Lion, 120. 
 
 Blackmoor's Head and Wool- 
 pack, 347. 
 
 Black Posts, 373. 
 
 Black Prince, 46. 
 
 Black Ram, 190. 
 
 Black Spread Eagle, 139. 
 
 Black Swan. 215, 216, 473. 
 
 Blaize, Bishop, 283. 
 
 Bleeding Heart, 300. 
 
 Bleeding Horse, 175. 
 
 Bleeding Wolf, 143. 
 
 Blind Beggar of Bethnal 
 Green, 73. 
 
 Blink Bonny, 175. 
 
 Block, 363. 
 
 Blossom's Inn, 297. 
 
 Blue Anchor, 333. 
 
 Blue Anchor and Ball, 333. 
 
 Blue and Gilt Balcony, 376. 
 
 Blue Balls, 483. 
 
 Blue Bible, 253. 
 
 Blue Boar, 116, 288. 
 
 Blue Bowl, 395. 
 
 Blue Boy, 510. 
 
 Blue Bull, 195. 
 
 Blue-coat Boy, 509. 
 
 Blue Cock, 209. 
 
 Blue Cow, 195. 
 
 Blue Dog, 194, 195. 
 
 Blue Flower Pot, 377. 
 
 Blue Fox, 195. 
 
 Blue Garland, 236. 
 
 Blue Greyhound, 195. 
 
 Blue Helmet, 326. 
 
 Blue Horse, 170. 
 
 Blue Lion, 146. 
 
 Blue Man, 195. 
 
 Blue Peruke and Star,. 404. 
 
 Blue Pig, 116, 195. 
 
 Blue Posts, 373. 
 
 Blue Pump, .397. 
 
 Blue Ram, 195. 
 
 Blue Stoops, 406. 
 
 Board, 377. 
 
 Boar's Head, 378, 379, 380. 
 Boat, 334. 
 Boatswain, 332. 
 Boatswain's Call, 332. 
 Boeuf a la Mode, 475. 
 Bolt in Tun, 471. 
 Bombay Grab, 328. 
 Bonny Cravat, 406. 
 Book in Hand, 446. 
 Booksellers' Signs, 6, 7. 
 Boot, 409. 
 
 Boot and Slipper, 409. 
 Bosom's Inn, 297, 298. 
 Bottle, 387. 
 Bottle and Glass, 387. 
 Bowman, 363. 
 
 Bowls and Candle-poles, 362. 
 
 Boy and Barrel. 349. 
 
 Boy and Cap, 349. 
 
 Brace. 473. 
 
 Brandy Cask, 349. 
 
 Brass Knocker, 376, 
 
 Brawn's Head, 381. 
 
 Brazen Serpent, 7, 261. 
 
 Breeches and Glove, 409. 
 
 Britannia, 415. 
 
 British Oak, 246. 
 
 Brood Hen, 178. 
 
 Broughton, 87. 
 
 Brown Bear, 152. 
 
 Brown Bill, 336. 
 
 Brown Cow, 190. 
 
 Brown Jug, 387. 
 
 Brown Lion, 150. 
 
 Brunswick, The, 50. 
 
 Buchanan Head, 63. 
 
 Buck, 471. 
 
 Buck and Bell, ICS. 
 
 Bucket, 397. 
 
 Buck in the Park, 127. 
 
 Buckthorn Tree, 246. 
 
 Buffalo Head, 186. 
 
 Bugle, 188. 
 
 Bugle Horn, 340. 
 
 Bull, 182, 183. 
 
 Bull and Bedpost. 187. 
 
 Bull and Bell, 165. 
 
 Bull and Bitch, 187. 
 
 Bull and Butcher, 187. 
 
 Bull and Chain, 182. 
 
 Bull and Dog, 187. 
 
 Bull and Gate, 62. 
 
 Bull and Garter, 252. 
 
 Bull's Head, 185. 
 
 Bull Inn, 92. 
 
 Bull and Magpie, 187. 
 
 Bull and Mouth, 61. 
 
 Bull and Oak, 188. 
 
 Bull and Stirrup, 116. 
 
 Bull and Swan, 188. 
 
 Bull and Three Calves, 177. 
 
 Bullen Butchered, 47. 
 
 Bull in the Oak, 188. 
 
 Bull in the Pound, 188. 
 
 Bull's Neck, 186. 
 
 Bumper, 390. 
 
 Bunch of Carrots, 243. 
 
 Bunch of Grapes, 243. 
 
 Bunch of Roses, 236. 
 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, 63. 
 
 Burnt Tree, 246. 
 
 Bush, 3, 4, note, 233, 234. 
 
 Bushel, 347. 
 
 Butler's Head, 63. 
 
 Butt and Oyster, 381. 
 
 Cabbage, 251. 
 Cabbage Hall, 25L 
 Cabinet, 393. 
 Caesar's Head, 45. 
 Camden Arms, 68, 
 Camden Head, 68. 
 Camden House, 416. 
 Camel, 162. 
 Camel's Head, 162. 
 Canary House, 384. 
 Cannon Ball, 327. 
 Canute Castle, 45. 
 Cap and Stocking, 402. 
 Cape of Good Hope, 422. 
 Cardinal's Hat or Cap, 315. 
 Case is Altered, 460. 
 Castle, 130, 417, 487. 
 Castle and Banner, 488. 
 Castle and Falcon, 487, 
 Castle and Wheelbarrow, 
 488. 
 
 Castles in the Air, 488. 
 Castor and Pollux, 70. 
 Cat, 197. 
 
 Cat and Bagpipes, 438. 
 Cat and Cage, 1&8. 
 Cat and Fiddle, 438. 
 Cat and Kittens, 177. 
 Cat and Lion, 198. 
 Cat and Parrot, 198. 
 Cat and Wheel, 299. 
 Caterpillar Hall, 261. 
 Catherine Wheel, 298, 357. 
 Cat in the Basket, 198. 
 Centurion's Lion, 151. 
 Chaffcutter's Arms, 352. 
 Chained Bull, 182. 
 Cbaise and Pair, 17& 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Chapel Bell, 321. 
 Charing Cross, 416. 
 Charles the First's Head, 48. 
 Charles the Second's Head, 
 49. 
 
 Charter about signs granted 
 
 by Charles I., 10. 
 Chase, 361. 
 
 Chelsea Waterworks, 416. 
 Chequers, 488. 
 Cherry Garden, 240. 
 Cherry Tree, 240, 472. 
 Cheshire Cheese, 383. 
 Chestnut, 246. 
 Child-Coat, 407. 
 Chiltern Hundred, 418. 
 China Hall, 435. 
 Church, 321. 
 Church Gates, 321. 
 Church Stile, 321. 
 Cinder Oven, 346. 
 Circe, 329. 
 Civet, 162. 
 Cleaver, 358. 
 Clog, 410. 
 Clown, 85. 
 
 Coach and Horses, 355, 356. 
 Coach and Dogs, 357. 
 Coble, 334. 
 
 Cock, 205, 206, 207, 208, 
 209. 
 
 Cock and Anchor. 212. 
 Cock and Bear, 212. 
 Cock and Bell, 211. 
 Cock and Blackbird, 202. 
 Cock and Bottle, 207, 211. 
 Cock and Breeches, 212. 
 Cock and Bull, 212. 
 Cock and Crown, 212. 
 Cock and Dolphin, 212. 
 Cock and House, 212. 
 Cock and Key, 471. 
 Cock and Lion, 151. 
 Cock and Magpie, 382. 
 Cock and Pie, 382. 
 Cock and Pynot, 383. 
 Cock and Trumpet, 211. 
 Cock and Swan, 212. 
 Cockatrice, 161. 
 Cock in Boots, 442. 
 Cocoa Tree, 248. 
 Cock on the Hoop, 504. 
 Cock's Head, 209. 
 Coffee-house, 249. 
 Coffee-pot, 394. 
 Colt and Cradle, 445. 
 Complete Angler, 80. 
 Comus, 70. 
 Copper Pot, 396. 
 Corner Pin, 505. 
 Cottage of Content, 434. 
 Cotton Breeches, 409. 
 Cotton-tree, 248. 
 Coventry Cross, 418. 
 Cow and Calf, 177. 
 Co^ and Hare, 449. 
 
 Cow and Snuffers, 414. 
 Cow and Two Calves, 177. 
 Cow in Boots, 442. 
 Cow Roast, 378. 
 Cow's Face, 186. 
 Crab and Lobster, 381. 
 Crab-tree, 247. 
 Cradle, 130, ^93. 
 Cradle and Coffin, 464. 
 Craven Arms, 59. 
 Craven Head, 59. 
 Craven Heifer, 190. 
 Craven Ox, 188. 
 Craven Ox Head, 188. 
 Crawfish, 381. 
 Crescent and Anchor, 500. 
 Cricketers, 39. 
 Cricketers' Arms, 484. 
 Cripples' Inn, 468. 
 Crispin and Crispian, 281. 
 Crocodile, 162. 
 Cromwell, 46. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 121. 
 Crook and Shears, 353. 
 Crooked Billet, 489. 
 Cross, 275, 276. 
 Cross Axes, 346. 
 Cross Bullets, 327. 
 Cross Foxes, 142. 
 Cross Guns, 322. 
 Cross Hands, 493. 
 Cross in Hand, 493. 
 Cross Keys, 131, 
 Cross Keys and Bible, 131. 
 Cross Lances, 322. 
 Cross o' the Hands, 493. 
 Cross Pistols, 322. 
 Cross Scythes, 353. 
 Cross Swords, 322. 
 Crow in the Oak, 203. 
 Crown, 101, 239, 258. 
 Crown and Anchor, 103. 
 Crown and Can, 106. 
 Crown and Column, 103. 
 Crown and Cushion, 102. 
 Crown and Dove, 105. 
 Crown and Fan, 105. 
 Crown and Glove, 102, 
 Crown and Halbert, 106 
 Crown and Harp, 126. 
 Crown and Leek, 126. 
 Crown and Last, 105. 
 Crown and Mitre, 103. 
 Crown and Punchbowl, 388. 
 Crown and Rasp, 105. 
 Crown and Rolls, 337. 
 Crown and Sceptre, 103. 
 Crown and Tower, 103. 
 Crown and Trumpet, 106. 
 Crown and Woolpack, 103. 
 Crown and Woodpecker, 103. 
 Crowned Q, 476. 
 Crowned Fan, 412, 
 Crown of Thorns. 275, 
 Crown on tne Hoop, 504, 
 Crow's Nest, 178. 
 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 54. 
 Czar's Head, 52. 
 
 Dagger, 325. 
 
 Dairymaid, 353. 
 
 Daisy, 2.38. 
 
 Dancing Dogs, 444. 
 
 Dancing Goat, 439. 
 
 Dandie Dinmont, 81. 
 
 Dapple Grey, 171. 
 
 Darby and Joan, 79. 
 
 David and Harp, 263. 
 
 Davy Lamp, 346. 
 
 Defiance, 355. 
 
 Denmark House, 436, 437. 
 
 Devil, 291, 294, 295. 
 
 Devil and Bag of Nails, 347. 
 
 Devil and St Dunstan, 291. 
 
 292, 293. 
 Devil in a Tub. 460. 
 Devil's Head, 295. 
 Dick Tarleton, 83. 
 Digby, Captain, 99. 
 Dirty Dick, 90. 
 Dr Johnson's Head, 68. 
 Doctor Syntax, 81. 
 Dog, 192. 
 
 Dog and Bacon, 378. 
 Dog and Badger, 197. 
 Dog and Bear, 196. 
 Dog and Crock, 444. 
 Dog and Duck, 196, 197. 
 Dog and Gun, 197. 
 Dog and Hedgehog, 162. 
 Dog and Partridge, 197. 
 Dog and Pheasant, 197. 
 Dog and Punchbowl, 588. 
 Dog in Doublet, 443. 
 Dog's Head in the Pot, 443, 
 444. 
 
 Dolphin, 227, 228. 
 Dolphin & Anchor, 228, 220. 
 Dolphin and Bell, 165. 
 Dolphin and Comb, 229. 
 Dolphin and Crown, 129. 
 Don Cossack, 99. 
 Don John, 68. 
 Don Juan. 68. 
 Don Saltero, 93, 94. 
 Donkey Playing on Hurdy 
 
 Gurdy, 4o9. 
 Doublet, 407. 
 Dove, 219. 
 
 Dove and Rainbow, 259. 
 Dovecote. 219. 
 Dover Castle, 417. 
 Drairon, 111, 158. 
 Drake, 218. 
 Drake, Admiral, 56. 
 Dray and Horses, 349. 
 Drovers' Arms. 136. 
 Drover's Call, 355. 
 Druid and Oak, 100. 
 Druid's Head, 99. 
 Drum and Trumpet, 32.'?. 
 Dryden's Head. 67. 
 
 2 L 
 
530 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Duck and Mallard, 218. 
 Duke's Head, 69. 
 Dunciad, 67. 
 Dun Cow, 74. 
 Durham Heifer, 190. 
 Durham Ox, 188. 
 Dust Pan, 397. 
 Dusty Miller, 348. 
 Dwarf, 89. 
 
 Eagle, 199. 
 Eagle and Ball, 199. 
 Eagle and Child, 138. 
 Eagle and Serpent, 198. 
 Eagle's Foot, 139. 
 Early Christian signs, 3, 4. 
 East India House, 415. 
 Edinburgh Castle, 418. 
 Eight Bells, 478. 
 Eight Ringers, 478. 
 Elephant and Castle, 155, 
 156. 
 
 Elephant and Fish, 156. 
 Elephant and Friar, 156. 
 Elisha's Raven, 264. 
 Elliott, General, 58. 
 Elm, 246. 
 Elysium, 73. 
 
 England, Scotland, and Ire- 
 land, 415. 
 English Arms. 129. 
 Essex Arms, 60. 
 Essex, Earl of, 60. 
 Essex Head, 60. 
 Essex Serpent, 80. 
 Exchange, 415. 
 Exmouth, Lord, 57. 
 Experienced Fowler, 361. 
 Express, 355. 
 Ewe and Lamb, 177. 
 
 Falcon, 219. 
 
 Falcon on the Hoop, 220, 
 504. 
 
 Falcon and Horseshoe, 115. 
 Falstaff, Sir John, 67, 86. 
 Fan, 412. 
 
 Farmer's Arms, 136, 352. 
 Father Redcap, 98. 
 Feathers, 122. 
 Ferguson, James, 63. 
 Fiddler's Arms. 83. 
 Fifteen Balls, 127. 
 Fighting Cocks, 210, 252. 
 Fig-tree, 245. 
 Filho, 175. 
 Filho da Puta, 175. 
 Finish, 511. 
 Fire-beacon, 117. 
 First and Last, 436, 464. 
 Fir-tree. 246. 
 Fish, 230, 
 
 Fish and Anchor, 228. 
 Fish and Bell, 165, 230. 
 Fish and Dolphin, 230. 
 Fish and Eels, 231. 
 
 Fish and Kettle, 231. 
 Fish and Quart, 231, 
 Fishbone, 231. 
 Fishing Cat, 439. 
 Fishing Smack, 334. 
 Five Bells, 331, 478. 
 Five Clogs, 410. 
 Five Cricketers, 484. 
 Five Inkhorns, 337. 
 Flaming Sword, 258. 
 Flank of Beef, 378. 
 Flask, 387. 
 Fleece, 68. 
 
 Flitch of Dunmow, 420. 
 Flower de Luce, 128. 
 Flower .Pot, 376. 
 Flowers of the Forest, 81. 
 Flying Bull, 73. 
 Flying Childers, 175. 
 Flying Dutchman, 175. 
 Flying Fox, 170. 
 Flying Horse, 72, 365. 
 Flying Monkey, 444. 
 Foaming Quart, 387. 
 Foaming Tankard, 349. 
 Folly, 509. 
 Fool, 339. 
 
 Forest Blue Bell, 238. 
 Fortune, 73. 
 Foul Anchor, 333. 
 Fountain, 471, 494, 495. 
 Fountain and Bear, 496. 
 Fountain of Juvenca, 461. 
 {Four) 4, 477. 
 Four Alls,'451, 452. 
 Four Bells, 478. 
 Four Coffins, 371. 
 Fourteen Stars, 500. 
 Fox, 168, 472. 
 Fox and Bull, 169. 
 Fox and Cap, 170. 
 Fox and Crane, 169. 
 Fox and Crown, 170, 354. 
 Fox and Duck, 169. 
 Fox and Goose, 168. 
 Fox and Grapes, 169. 
 Fox and Hen, 169. 
 Fox and Hounds, 169. 
 Fox and Knot, 170. 
 Fox and Lamb, 169. 
 Fox and Owl, 169. 
 Fox and Punchbowl, 388. 
 Fox's Tail, 170. 
 French Arms, 128. 
 French Horn, 339. 
 French Horn and Half Moon, 
 339. 
 
 French Horn and Queen's 
 
 Head, 339. 
 French Horn and Rose, 339. 
 French Horn and Violin, 
 
 338. 
 
 French signs, 8, 11, 16. 17, 
 28, 35, 36, 37, 41, 279, 280 
 Frighted Horse, 175. 
 ; Froghall, 232. 
 
 Frying Pan, 396. 
 Full Measure, 349. 
 Full Moon, 500. 
 Full Ship, 33u. 
 
 Galloping Horse, 173. 
 
 Gander, 472. 
 
 Gaper, 467. 
 
 Gaping Goose, 444. 
 
 Garden House, 373. 
 
 Garrick's Head, 85. 
 
 Garter, 410, 411. 
 
 Gelding, 176. 
 
 General's Arms, 136. 
 
 Geneva Arms, 130. 
 
 Generous Briton, 415. 
 
 Gentle Shepherd of Salis- 
 bury Plain, 419. 
 
 George, 287, 2S8. 
 
 George and Blue Boar, 288. 
 
 George and Dragon, 40. 
 
 George and Thirteen Can. 
 tons, 289. 
 
 George and Vulture, 289. 
 
 George on the Hoop, 604. 
 
 Gibraltar, 61, 422. 
 
 Gipsy Queen, 508. 
 
 Gipsy Tent, 508. 
 
 Globe, 414. 
 
 Globe and Compasses, 147. 
 Glorious Apollo, 69. 
 Glove, 411. 
 Goat, 192. 
 Goat and Kid, 177. 
 Goat in Armour. 440. 
 Goat in Boots, 440, 441. 
 Godfrey, Sir Edmund, 64. 
 God's Head, 279. 
 Golden Angel, 269. 
 Golden Ball, 482. 
 Golden Beard, 405. 
 Golden Bell, 479. 
 Golden Bottle, 386. ' 
 Golden Buck, 165. 
 Golden Candlestick, 394. 
 Golden Can, 386. 
 Golden Cross, 2\ 6. 
 Golden Crotchet, 339. 
 Golden Cup, 149. 
 Golden Eagle, 198. 
 Golden Farmer, 352. 
 Golden Field Gate, 62. 
 Golden Fleece, 72. 
 Golden Frog, 232. 
 Golden Fryingpan, 396. 
 Golden Globe, 415. 
 Golden Griffin, 145. 
 Golden Head, 490. 
 Golden Heart, 300 473. 
 Golden Jar, 397. 
 Golden Key, 398. 
 Golden Key and Bible, 255. 
 Golden Lion, 146, 201, 327. 
 Golden Maid, 364. 
 Golden Measure, 349. 
 Golden Quoit, 605. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Golden Rinj?, 412. 
 Golden Slipper, 409. 
 Golden Sun, 498. 
 Golden Tiger, 152. 
 Golden Tun, 47^. 
 Goliah, or Golias, 2C2. 
 Goliah Head, 262. 
 Good Samaritan, 274. 
 Good Woman, 454, 455. 
 Goose and Gridiron, 2:39,445. 
 Goose and Gridiron, 316. 
 Gospel Oak, 278. 
 Grafton's Head, Dukeof,386. 
 Granby, Marquis of, 55, 58. 
 Grand A., 476. 
 Grand B., 476. 
 Grasshopper, 140. 
 Grave Maurice, 53. 
 Gray Ass, 221. 
 Grazier's Arms, 352. 
 Great Mogol, 51. 
 Great Turk, 429. 
 Grecian, 429. 
 Greek Signs, 1. 
 Green Bellows, 394. 
 Green Dragon, 111. 
 Green Lattice, 375. 
 Green Lettuce, 375. 
 Green Man, 366, 367, 368, 
 449. 
 
 Green Man and Ball, 483. 
 Green Man and Still, 148. 
 Green Monkey, 444. 
 Green Monster, 507. 
 Green Pales, 373. 
 Green Parrot, 222. 
 Green Posts, 472. 
 Green Seedling, 246. 
 Green Tree, 245. 
 Gresham, Thomas, 63. 
 Gretna Green, 422. 
 Grey Goat, 192. 
 Greyhound, 194. 
 Grey Mare, 177. 
 Grey Ox, 188. 
 Gridiron, 396. 
 Griffin, 145. 
 Griffin's Arms, 136. 
 Grinding Young, 461. 
 Grinning Jackanapes, 440. 
 Grouse and Moorcock, 223. 
 Grouse and Trout, 223. 
 Guardian Angel, 269. 
 Guilded Cup, 387. 
 Gun, or Cannon, 117. 
 G uy of Warwick, 74. 
 
 Halbert and Crown, 327. 
 Half Eagle and Key, 130. 
 Half-Moon, 327, 500. 
 Half-Moon and Punchbowl, 
 388. 
 
 Halt-Moon and Seven Stars, 
 
 500. 
 Hailstone, 502. 
 Ham, 381. 
 
 Ham and Firkin, 381. 
 Hammer, 347. 
 Hammer and Crown, 149. 
 Hand, 492. 
 
 Hand and Apple, 239. 
 Hand and Ball, 492. 
 Hand and Bible, 299. 
 Hand and Cork, 471. 
 Hand and Ear, 492. 
 Hand and Face, 492. 
 Hand and Flower, 235. 
 Hand and Heart, 493. 
 Hand and Hollybush, 250. 
 Hand and Pen, 337. 
 Hand and Scales, 362. 
 Hand and Shears, 350. 
 Hand and Slipper, 409. 
 Hand and Tench, 493. 
 Hand and Tennis, 493. 
 Handel's Head, 83. 
 Handgun. 326. 
 Hand in Hand, 493. 
 Hare, 163. 
 Hare and Cats, 164. 
 Hare and Hounds, 163, 164. 
 Hare and Squirrel, 163. 
 Hark the Lasher, 361. 
 Hark to Bounty, 361. 
 Hark up to Glory, 361. 
 Hark up to Nudger, 361. 
 Harlequin, 365. 
 Harmer, Captain, 99. 
 Harp, 340, 473. 
 Harp and Hautboy, 338. 
 Harrow, 351. 
 
 Harrow and Doublet, 407. 
 Hart on the Hoop, 504. 
 Harvest Home, 354. 
 Hat, 399. 
 
 Hat and Beaver, 191, 400. 
 Hat and Feathers, 400. 
 Hat and Star, 402, 492. 
 Hat and Tun, 473. 
 Hautboy and Two-Flutes, 338. 
 Have at It, 209, 210. 
 Hawk and Buck, 115. 
 Hawk and Buckle, 115. 
 Hawthorn, 117. 
 Haycock, 420. 
 Haylift, 502. 
 
 Heart and Ball, 300, 483. 
 Heart and Trumpet, 505. 
 Heart in Bible, 299. 
 Heart in Hand, 493. 
 Hearts of Oak, 246. 
 Hearty Good Fellow, 82. 
 Heathfield, Lord, 58. 
 Heaven, 300. 
 Hedgehog, 162. 
 Hell, 301. 
 Helmet, 326. 
 
 Help me thro' thisWorld,450. 
 Hen and Chickens, 178. 
 Hen on the Hoop, 504. 
 Hercules, 70. 
 Hercules' Pillars, 70. 
 
 ITereford Castle, 418. 
 Hero of Switzerland, 100. 
 Highland Laddie, 421. 
 Hill, 471. 
 Hind, 472. 
 Hippopotamus, 162. 
 Hit or Miss, 451. 
 Hob in the Well, 79. 
 Hobnails, .347. 
 Hobson's Inn, 92. 
 Hog in Armour, 440. 
 Hog in the Pound, 192. 
 Hole in the. Wall, 502, 503. 
 Hogarth's Head, 82. 
 Holland Arms, 172. 
 Hollybush, 250. 
 Homer's Head, 65. 
 Honest Lawyer, 456. 
 Hood and Scarf, 406. 
 Hoop, 504. 
 
 Hoop and Bunch of Grapes, 
 
 252, 504. 
 Hoop and Griffin, 505. 
 Hoop and Horseshoe, 180. 
 Hoop and Toy, 505. 
 Hop and Barleycorn, 244. 
 Hopbine, 244. 
 Hope and Anchor, 73, 333. 
 Hop-pole, 244. 
 Horace's Head, 65. 
 Horn, 340. 
 
 Horn and Three Tuns, 339. 
 Horns, 166, 167, 168, 473. 
 Horns and Horseshoe, 180. 
 Horse, 170, 171. 
 Horse and Chaise, 176. 
 Horse and Dorsiter, 175. 
 Horse and Farrier, 175. 
 Horse and Gate, 176. 
 Horse and Groom, 173. 
 Horse's Head, 176. 
 Horse and Horseshoe, 180. 
 Horse and Jockey, 173. 
 Horse and Stag, 176. 
 Horse and Tiger, 175. 
 Horse and Trumpet, 176. 
 Horseshoe, 178, 179, 180, 32li 
 Horseshoe and Crown, 181. 
 Hour-glass, 397. 
 Hunchbacked Cats, 444. 
 Huntsman, 361. 
 Hyde Park, 416. 
 
 Ibex, 162. 
 
 Illuminated Dust Pan, 397. 
 Indian Chief, 431, 432. 
 Indian Handkerchief, 405. 
 Indian King, 51, 431, 
 Indian Queen, 431. 432. 
 In Vino Veritas. 144. 
 Iron Balcony, 375. 
 Iron Pear-tree, 239. 
 Ironwork, Signs suspended 
 
 from ornamental, 7, 8. 
 Ivy Bush, 233. 
 Ivy Green, 233. 
 
532 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Jackanapes on Horseback, 
 489. 
 
 Jackass in Boots, 443. 
 Jack of Both Sides, 468. 
 Jack of Newbury, 78. 
 Jack on a Cruise, 332. 
 Jacob's Well, 26^, 274. 
 Jamaica, 423. 
 
 Jamaica and Madeira, 423. 
 Jane Shore, 76. 
 Jenny Lind, 83. 
 Jersey Castle, 418. 
 Jerusalem, 434. 
 Jew's Harp, 340. 
 Jim Crow, 81. 
 Joey Grimaldi, 85. 
 John Bull, 415. 
 John of Gaunt, 46. 
 John of Jerusalem, 274. 
 John o' Groat's, 79. 
 Jolly Brewer, 450. 
 Jolly Butchers, 302. 
 Jolly Crispin, 281. 
 Jolly Farmer, 352. 
 Jolly Toper, 466. 
 Jonson's Head, 66. 
 Jovial Dutchman, 425, 426. 
 Jubilee, 100. 
 Judge's Head, 335. 
 Jug and Glass, 387. 
 Junction Arms, 136. 
 Juno, 69. 
 
 Kangaroo, 162. 
 Kettledrum, 322. 
 Key, 397, 472. 
 King and Miller, 74. 
 King Astyages' Arms, 257. 
 King Charles in the Oak, 
 49. 
 
 King Crispin. 281. 
 King David, 262. 
 King Edgar, 46. 
 King John, 46. 
 King of Denmark, 52. 
 King of Prussia, 54. 
 King's Arms, 106. 
 King's Head, 305, 306, 307. 
 Kings and Keys, 302. 
 King's Head and Good Wo- 
 man, 455. 
 King's Porter and Dwarf, 89. 
 Kite's Nest, 178. 
 Knowles, Sheridan, 69. 
 Kouli Khan, 51. 
 
 La Belle Sauvage, 482. 
 Labour in Vain, 460. 
 Laced Shoe, 409. 
 Lads of the Village, 105. 
 Lady of the Lake, 81. 
 Lamb, 191. 
 
 Lamb and Anchor, 300. 
 Lamb and Breeches, 191. 
 Lamb and Crown, 191. 
 Lamb and Flag, 300. 
 
 Lamb and Hare, 191. 
 
 Lamb and Inkbottle, 229. 
 
 Lamb and Lark, 191. 
 
 Lamb and Still, 191. 
 
 Lambert, Daniel, 88. 
 
 Lame Dog, 450. 
 
 Lamp, 376. 
 
 Land o' Cakes, 420. 
 
 Lass o' Gowrie, 81. 
 
 Last, 349. 
 
 Lattice, 374, 375. 
 
 Laughing Dog, 444. 
 
 Leather Bottle, 386. 
 
 Lebeck's Head, 93. 
 
 Lebeck and Chaffcutter, 93. 
 
 Leg, 409, 494. 
 
 Leg and Star, 494. 
 
 Leigh Hoy, 333. 
 
 Leopard, 152. 
 
 Leopard and Tiger, 152. 
 
 Letters, 476. 
 
 Lilies of the Valley, 238. 
 
 Linskill, Colonel, 99. 
 
 Lion, 472. 
 
 Lion and Adder, 299. 
 Lion and Ball, 151. 
 Lion and Castle, 128. 
 Lion and Dolphin, 150. 
 Lion and Goat, 299. 
 Lion and Horseshoe, 180. 
 Lion and Lamb, 299. 
 Lion and Pheasant, 150. 
 Lion and Snake, 299. 
 Lion and Swan, 150. 
 Lion and Tun, 150. 
 Lion in the Wood, 149. 
 Little A, 476. 
 Little Devil, 294. 
 Little Pig, 192. 
 Live Vulture, 224. 
 Live and Let Live, 450. 
 Llangollen Castle, 418. 
 Load of Hay, 353. 
 Load of Mischief, 457. 
 Lobster, 381. 
 Loch-na-Gar, 81. 
 Lock and Key, 398. 
 Lock and Shears, 403. 
 Locke's Head, 63. 
 Locks of Hair, 403. 
 Looking-Glass, 392, 393. 
 London Apprentice, 79. 
 London Signs, temp. James 
 
 L, 8, 9. 
 London Signs, temp. Charles 
 
 I., 9, 10 
 London Signs after the Fire, 
 
 16. 
 
 London Signs in 1803, 31, 
 32. 
 
 London Signs in 1865, 42, 43, 
 44. 
 
 London Signs, Roxburghe 
 Ballad upon the, 13, 
 
 London Signs taken down, 
 28, 29. 
 
 Lord Anglesey, 64. 
 Lord Bacon's Head, 63. 
 Lord Byron, 68. 
 Lord Cobham's Head, 97. 
 Lord Craven, 59. 
 Loving Lamb, 444. 
 Lubber's Head, 147. 
 Luck 's All, 451. 
 Lucrece, 80. 
 
 Mad Cat, 196. 
 Mad Dog, 196. 
 Maggoty Pie, 221. 
 Magna Charta, 46. 
 Magpie, 40, 220. 
 Magpie and Crown, 220, 221, 
 Magpie and Horseshoe, 180, 
 Magpie and Pewter Platter, 
 221. 
 
 Magpie and Punchbowl, 388. 
 Magpie and Stump, 221. 
 Maid and the Magpie, 83. 
 Maidenhead, 141. 
 Maid's Head, 142. 
 Mail, 355. 
 
 Malt and Hops, 244. 
 Manage Horse, 175. 
 Man in the Wood, 472. 
 Man Loaded with Mischief, 
 456. 
 
 Man of Ross, 68. 
 Man in the Moon, 303, 304. 
 Mare and Foal, 177. 
 Marlborough's Head, Duke 
 of, 59. 
 
 Marquis of Granby, 55, 58. 
 Marrowbones and Cleaver, 
 358. 
 
 Martin's Nest, 178. 
 Martyi-'s Head, 48. 
 Marygold, 237. 
 Matrons, 321. 
 Mattock and Spade, 353. 
 Maypole, 506. 
 Mazeppa, 68. 
 Medieval Signs, 4, 5. 
 Melancthon's Head, 97. 
 Mercury, 70. 
 Mercury and Fan, 70. 
 Merlin's Cave, 77. 
 Merry Andrew, 368. 
 Merry Harriers, 194. 
 Mermaid, 225, 226, 227. 
 Merry Mouth, 491. 
 Merry Song, 339. 
 Merry Tom, 369. 
 Middleton, Sir Hugh, 63. 
 Million Gardens, 607. 
 Millstone, 348. 
 Milton's Head, 67. 
 Minerva, 69. 
 
 Miraculous Draught ol 
 
 Fishes, 275. 
 Mitre, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319. 
 Mitre and Dove, 319. 
 Mitre and Keys, 310. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 533 
 
 Mitre and Rose, 315, 319. 
 Mitre on the Hoop, 604. 
 Mischief, 457. 
 Mitford Castle, 418. 
 Minister's Gown, 407. 
 Mock-Signs, 12. 
 Monck's Head, 59. 
 Monster, 507. 
 Moon, 499. 
 
 Moonrakers, 105, 463. 
 Moore, General, 58. 
 Mortal Man, 40, 464. 
 Mortar and Pestle, 341. 
 Moses and Aaron, 260. 
 Moss-rose, 236. 
 Mother Huff, 97. 
 Mother Redcap, 96. 
 Mother Shiptou, 76. 
 Mount Pleasant, 434. 
 jNIourning Crown, 48, 49. 
 Mourning Mitre, 49. 
 Mouth, 491. 
 Moath of the Nile, 61. 
 Mulberry Tree, 240, 241. 
 Mustard Pot, 383. 
 Myrtle Tree, 238. 
 Mystic Number Three, 269, 
 note. 
 
 Nag's Head, 176. 
 Naked Boy, 452, 45o. 
 Naked Boy and Woolpack, 
 272. 
 
 Name of Jesus, 279. 
 Napier, Sir Charles, 57. 
 Nell Gwynne, 97. 
 Nelson and Peal, 166, 478. 
 Neptune, 70. 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 62. 
 Next Boat by Paul's, 335. 
 Nine Elms, 246. 
 Noah's Ark, 258. 
 Nobis Inn, 473. 
 Noblemen's Badges, 131, 
 
 132, 133, 134, 135, 136. 
 Nobody, 457, 458. 
 Noggin, 468. 
 No Place, 436, 458. 
 North Pole, 436. 
 Norwich, City of, 418. 
 Nowhere, 458. 
 Number IV., 477. 
 Numbers versus Signs, 29, 
 
 30. 
 
 Number Three, 477. 
 
 Oak, 246, 474. 
 Oak and Black Dog, 203. 
 Oak and Toy, 246. 
 Oakley Arms, 144. 
 Oatsheaf, 252. 
 Old Barge, 334. 
 Old Careless, 468. 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 97. 
 Old Coach and Six, 355. 
 
 Old English Gentleman, 81, 
 415. 
 
 Old Hand and Tankard, 493. 
 
 Old Hobson, 92. 
 
 Old House at Home, 82. 
 
 Old Knave of Clubs, 505. 
 
 Old Man, 494. 
 
 Old Parr's Head, 91. 
 
 Old Pharaoh, 261. 
 
 Old Pick my Toe, 468. 
 
 Old Prison, 416. 
 
 Old Ring o' Bells, 478. 
 
 Old Roson, 81. 
 
 Old Smuggs, 468. 
 
 Old Will Somers, 86, 87. 
 
 Olive-tree, 242. 
 
 One and All, 128. 
 
 One Tun, 148. 
 
 Orange-tree and Two Jars, 
 
 241, 242. 
 Ormond's Head, 59. 
 Orpheus, 72. 
 Ostrich, 223. 
 Our Lady, 272. 
 Our Lady of Pity, 272. 
 Owl, 223. 
 
 Owl's Nest, 169, 223. 
 Ox and Compasses, 188. 
 Oxford Arms, 127. 
 Ox in Boots, 442. 
 Oxnoble, 251. 
 
 Pack Horse, 175. 
 
 Paganini, 83. 
 
 Pageant, 50. 
 
 Palatine Head, 54. 
 
 Palm-tree, 248. 
 
 Panting Hart, 263. 
 
 Panyer, 348. 
 
 Paracelsus, 64. 
 
 Paradise, 301. 
 
 Parrot, 222. 
 
 Parrot and Cage, 222. 
 
 Parrot and Punchbowl, 388. 
 
 Parson's Green, 472. 
 
 Parting Pot, 349. 
 
 Parta Tueri, 144. 
 
 Pasqua Rosee, 92. 
 
 Patten, 410. 
 
 Paltzgrave, 54." 
 
 Paul's Head, 290. 
 
 Paul Pry, 86. 
 
 Paviors' Arms, 352. 
 
 Peach-tree, 245. 
 
 Peacock, 222. 
 
 Peacock and Feathers, 223. 
 Pearl of Venice, 406. 
 Pear-tree, 239. 
 Pease and Beans, 251. 
 Peat Spade, 353. 
 Peel, 348. 
 Pelican, 200. 
 Periwig, 404. 
 Pestle, 341. 
 
 Pestle and Mortar, 472. 
 Peter's F'cger, 291. 
 
 Pewter Platter, 396. 
 Pewter Pot, 387. 
 Philpott, Toby, 81. 
 Phoenix, 199. 
 Pickled Egg, 383. 
 Pickwick, 81. 
 Pie, 382. 
 Pied Bull, 184. 
 Pied Calf, 190. 
 Pied Dog, 194. 
 Pig and Tinder-box, 156. 
 Pig and Whistle, 437. 
 Pigeon, 218. 
 Pigeon Bow, 219. 
 Pilgrim, 508. 
 Pindar of Wakefield, 75. 
 Pindar, Sir Paul, 98. 
 Pine Apple, 244. 
 Pistol and C, 326. 
 Pitcher and Glass, 387. 
 Plate, 326. 
 Plough, 351. 
 Plough and Ball, 483. 
 Plough and Harrow, 351. 
 Plough and Horses, 351. 
 Poet's Head, 48, 337. 
 Pointer, 194. 
 Pole Star, 501. 
 Political Sign Pasquinade, 
 13. 
 
 Pontack's Head, 93. 
 Pope's Head, {the Poet,^ 67. 
 Pope's Head, 312, 313, 314. 
 Popinjay, 222. 
 Portcullis, 121. 
 Porter Butt, 349. 
 Porter and Gentleman, 861. 
 Porter's Lodge, 351. 
 Portobello, 39, 57. 
 Postboy, 363. 
 Prince, 428. 
 Prince Eugene, 53. 
 Prince Rupert, 54. 
 Prince of Wales' Arms, 122. 
 Prince of Wales' Feathers, 
 122. 
 
 Puddlers' Arms, 352. 
 Pump, 396. 
 Punchbowl, 388. 
 Punchbowl and Ladle, 388. 
 Purcell's Head, 83. 
 Purgatory, 301. 
 Purple Lion, 146. 
 Puss in Boots, 442. 
 
 Q Inn, 476. 
 Q in the Corner, 476. 
 Quaker, 608. 
 Queen Anne, 47. 
 Queen Catherine, 47. 
 Queen Charlotte, 40. 
 Queen Eleanor, 47. 
 Queen Elizabeth, 47. 
 Queen Mary, 60. 
 Queen of Bohemia, 47. 
 
534 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Qaeen of Hearts and King's 
 Arm?), 505. 
 
 Queen of Hungary, 55. 
 
 Queen of Saba, 263. 
 
 Queen of Trumps, 505. 
 
 Queen of tlie Gipsies, 508. 
 
 Queen's Arms, 107. 
 
 Queen's Arms and Corn- 
 cutter, 107. 
 
 Queen's Elm, 246 
 
 Queen s Head, 130. 307, 308, 
 309, 310, 311, 349, 510. 
 
 Queen's Head and Artichoke, 
 312. 
 
 Queen Victoria, 50. 
 Quiet \V Oman, 454. 
 
 Racoon, 162. 
 Raffled Anchor, 333. 
 Railway, 334. 
 Rainbow, 502, 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 56. 
 Ram, 190. 
 
 Raven and Bell, 165. 
 Ram and Teazel, 149. 
 Ram's Head, 190. 
 Ram's Skin, 190. 
 Ranged Deer, 165. 
 Rat and Ferret, 162. 
 Raven, 201. 
 
 Recruiting Sergeant, 322. 
 Red Ball and Acorn, 483. 
 Red Bear, 152. 
 Red Bull, 185. 
 Red Cat, 197. 
 Red Cow, 188, 189. 
 Red Dragon, 111. 
 Red Horse, 171. 
 Red Lion, 119, 327. 
 Red Lion and Key, 472. 
 Red Lion and Punchbowl, 
 388. 
 
 Red M and Dagger, 325. 
 Red Poles, 373. 
 Red Rover, 81. 
 Red Shield, 504. 
 Red Streak Tree, 239. 
 Red, White, aj?d Blue, 332. 
 Reindeer, 157. 
 Rembrandt's Head, 82. 
 Resurrection, 277, 474. 
 Rest and be Thankful, 510. 
 Rhenish Wine House, 384, 
 Ribs of Beef, 378. 
 Ring, 412. 
 Ring and Ball, 484. 
 Rising Buck, 165. 
 Rising Deer, 165. 
 Rising Sun, 118, 499, 
 Rising Sun and Seven Stars, 
 499. 
 
 Robin Adair, 81. 
 Robin Hood and Little John, 
 75. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 81. 
 Rob Roy, 81. 
 
 Rochester Castle, 418. 
 Rodney, Admiral, 57. 
 Rodney and Hood, 57. 
 Rodney Pillar, 57. 
 Roebuck, 165, 166. 
 Rolls, 336. 
 
 Roman Signs, 1, 2, 3, 
 Rope and Anchor, 333. 
 Rose, 124, 125, 126, 235. 
 Rose and Ball, 126. 
 Rose and Crown, 121. 
 Rose and Key, 126. 
 Rose and Punchbowl, 388. 
 Rosebud, 236. 
 Rose Garland, 236. 
 Rosemary Branch, 238. 
 Rose of Normandy, 237. 
 Ross on Clinker, Captain, 
 99. 
 
 Round of Beef, 378. 
 Round Table, 79. 
 Roxellana, 85. 
 Royal Badges, 108, 109, 110, 
 Royal Bed, 377. 
 Royal Champion, 102, 
 Royal Charles, 330. 
 Royal Cofifec-mlll, 394. 
 Royal Hand and Globe, 312. 
 Royal Oak, 40, 49. 
 Royal Standard, 105. 
 Rummer, 389, 390. 
 Rummer and Grapes, 239. 
 Rum Puncheon, 349. 
 Running Footman. 360. 
 Running Horse, 173, 327. 
 Running Man, 361. 
 Russia House, 425. 
 
 Saddle, 357. 
 St Alban, 297. 
 St Augustine, 297. 
 St Clement, 297. 
 St Christopher, 285. 
 St Crispin, 281. 
 St Cuthbert, 296. 
 St Dominic, 320. 
 St Edmund's Head, 296. 
 St George and the Dragon. 
 287. 
 
 St John the Evangelist, 296. 
 
 St Hugh's Bones, 282, 283. 
 
 St Julian, 283. 
 
 St Luke, 286. 
 
 St Martin, 284. 
 
 St Mychel, 296. 
 
 St Patrick, 295, 
 
 St Peter and St Paul, 291. 
 
 St Thomas, 296. 
 
 Salamander, 158. 
 
 Salmon, 473. 
 
 Salmon and Ball, 231, 483. 
 Salmon and Compasses, 231, 
 5a It- Horn, 377. 
 Salutation, 264, 265, 
 Salutation and Cat, 265, 266. 
 Samaritan Woman, 274. 
 
 Samson, 70, 262. 
 Samson and the Lion, 262. 
 Saracen's Head, 430, 431. 
 Saucy Ajax, 329. 
 Saul, 290. 
 Sawyers, 40. 
 Scales, 362. 
 Sceptre, 312. 
 Sceptre and Heart, 312. 
 Scotchman's Pack, 421. 
 Sedan Chair, 358, 359. 
 Seneca's Head, 65. 
 Setter Dog, 194. 
 Seven Sisters, 246. 
 Seven Stars, 500, 
 Sevilla, City of, 423. 
 Shakespeare's Head, 66, 335. 
 Shamrock, 127. 
 Shears, 350, 
 Sheep and Anchor, 330. 
 Shepherd and Crook, 353. 
 Shepherd and Dog, 353, 
 Shepherd and Shepherdess, 
 352, 
 
 Sheridan Knowles, 69. 
 Sheet Anchor, 333. 
 Ship, 328, 329, 471. 
 Ship and Anchor. 330. 
 Ship and Bell, 33L 
 Ship and Blue Coat Boy, 331. 
 Ship and Castle, 331. 
 Ship and Fox, 331. 
 Ship and Notchblock, 331. 
 Ship and Pilot-boat, 33i). 
 Ship and Plough, 331. 
 Ship and Punchbowl, 388 
 Ship and Rainbow. 331. 
 Ship and Shovel, 331. 
 Ship and Star, 331. 
 Ship and Whale, 330. 
 Ship at Anchor. 330. 
 Ship Friends. 331. 
 Ship in Full Sail, 330. 
 Ship in Distress, 330. 
 Ship in Dock, 330. 
 Ship on Launch, 330. 
 Shirt, 451. 
 Shoe and Slap, 409. 
 Shoulder of Mutton and Cat, 
 378. 
 
 Shoulder of Mutton and Cu- 
 cumbers, 378. 
 
 Shovel and Sieve, 347. 
 
 Sieve, 395. 
 
 Silver Lion, 119. 
 
 Simon the Tanner, 286. 
 
 Signboard Ballads, Modern, 
 32, 33. 
 
 Signboard, Heraldic, Enor- 
 mities, 35. 
 Signboard Poetry, 17, 18, 
 Sign-Painters, 37, 38, 39, 40, 
 41. 
 
 Signs, bad spelling on. 27. 
 Signs temp. George II., 2^ 
 23, 24, 25. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 535 
 
 Signs temp. Queen Anne, 18, 
 19, 20, 21. 
 
 Signs during the Common- 
 wealth, 11. 
 
 Signs, exhibition of, 28. 
 
 Signs, extravagance in, 26. 
 
 Signs, family names derived 
 from, 42, 
 
 Signs, jocular alteration of 
 the names of, 22. 
 
 Signs, London localities 
 named after, 41. 
 
 Sigijs of the zodiac, 501. 
 
 Signs of the stews, 8. 
 
 Signs, quarterings of, 21, 22. 
 
 Silent Woman, 454. 
 
 Sir Charles Napier, 57. 
 
 SirEdmundbury Godfrey, 64. 
 
 Sir Frances Burdett, 63. 
 
 Sir Hugh Middleton, 63. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton, 62. 
 
 Sir John Falstaff, 67, 86., ^ 
 
 Sir John Barleycorn, 79. 
 
 Sir John Oldcastle, 97. 
 
 Sir Paul Pindar, 98. 
 
 Sir Ralph Abercrombie, 58. 
 
 Sir Roger de Coverley, 80. 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, 66. 
 
 Six Bells, 478. 
 
 Bix Cans, 388. 
 
 Bix Cans and Punchbowl, 388. 
 Sloop, 333. 
 Slow and Easy, 468. 
 Smith and Smithy, 346. 
 Smyrna, 429. 
 Snowdrop, 238. 
 Snow-shoes, 327. 
 Soldier and Citizen, 264. 
 Sol's Arms, 149. 
 South Sea Arms, 149. 
 Sow and Pigs, 177. 
 Spade and Becket, 353. 
 Spanish Galleon, 100. 
 Spanish Lady, 405. 
 Spanish Patriot, 100. 
 Sparrow's Nest, 177. 
 Speaker's Frigate, 330. 
 Spiller's Head, 84. 
 Spinning Sow, 438. 
 Spinning Wheel, 362. 
 Spite Hall, 468. 
 Spread Eagle, 139. 
 Spur, 357. 
 Squirrel, 163. 
 Stafl'ordshire Knot, 128. 
 Stag, 164. 
 
 Stag and Castle, 165. 
 Stag and Oak, 165. 
 Stag and Pheasant, 165. 
 Stag and Thorn, 165. 
 Standard, 322. 
 Star, 501. 
 
 Stai and Crown, 501. 
 Stai and Garter, 410. 
 Stave Porter, 361. 
 etill, 3i9. 
 
 Stock Dove, 219. 
 Stocking, 409. 
 Stork, 203. 
 
 String of Horses, 355. 
 Struggler, 450. 
 Struggling Man, 450. 
 Sugarloaf, 394. 
 Sugarloaf and Three Coffins, 
 371. 
 
 Sultan Morat, 51. 
 Sultan Soliman, 51. 
 Sun, 272, 381, 496, 497, 498. 
 Sun and Anchor, 499. 
 Sun and Dial, 499. 
 Sun and Falcon, 499. 
 Sun and Horseshoe, 180, 499. 
 Sun and Last, 499. 
 Sun and Moor's Head, 471. 
 Sun and Red Cross, 471. 
 Sun and Sawyers, 499. 
 Sun and Sportsman, 499. 
 Sun and Whalebone, 231. 
 Sun in Splendour, 498. 
 Sun, Moon, and Seven Stars, 
 500. 
 
 Swan, 212, 213, 214, 215, 327, 
 379. 
 
 Swan and Bottle, 217. 
 Swan and Falcon, 118. 
 Swan and Harp, 445. 
 Swan and Helmet, 218. 
 Swan and Hoop, 217. 
 Swan and Maidenhead, 118. 
 Swan and Rummer, 'J17. 
 Swan and Rushes, 218. 
 Swan and Salmon, 217. 
 Swan and Soldier, 394, note. 
 Swan and Sugarloaf, 217. 
 Swan and White Hart, 118. 
 Swan on the Hoop, 504. 
 Swan with Two Necks, 216, 
 217. 
 
 Sweet Apple, 391. 
 Swiss Cottage, 489. 
 Sword and Ball, 312. 
 Sword and Buckler, 323, 324. 
 Sword and Cross, 324. 
 Sword and Dagger, 324. 
 Sword and Mace, 312. 
 Sword Blade, 324. 
 Sycamore, 246. 
 Syntax, Doctor, 81. 
 
 Tabard, 407. 
 Tabor, 83. 
 Talbot, 195, 408. 
 Tallow-chandler, 362. 
 Tally-Ho, 355. 
 Tam o' Shanter, 81. 
 Tankard, 390. 
 Tarlton, General, 58. 
 'J'elegraph, 355. 
 Temple, 416. 
 'J'en Bells, 478. 
 Thirteen Cantons, 289. 
 Thistle and Crown, 126. 
 
 Thomas Gresham, 63. 
 Thorn, 165. 
 Three Admirals, 332. 
 Three Angels, 209. 
 Three Arrows, 130. 
 Three Bad Ones, 457. 
 Three Balis, 128, 395. 
 Three Blackbirds, 203. 
 Three Bibles, 254. 
 Three Bibles and Three Ink 
 
 bottles, 254. 
 Three Blue Balls, 483. 
 Three Brushes, 322. 
 Three Candlesticks, 394. 
 Three Chairs, 358. 
 Three Cocks, 209. 
 Three Coffins and SugarloaL 
 
 218 
 
 Three Colts, 178. 
 Three Compasses, 146. 
 Three Conies, 162, 472. 
 Three Cranes, 204. 
 Three Crickets, 393. 
 Three Crosses, 277. 
 Three Crowned Needles, 350. 
 Three Crowns, 99, 102. 
 Three Crowns and Sugarloaf, 
 218. 
 
 Three Crows, 203. 
 Three Cups, 149. 
 Three Death's-Heads, 371. 
 Three Elms, 246. 
 Three Fishes, 230, 472. 
 Three Flower de Luces, 129. 
 Three Forges, 346. 
 Three Frogs, 129. 
 Three Funnels, 395. 
 Three Geese, 472. 
 Three Goats' Heads, 147. 
 Three Hats, 402. 
 Three Hats and Nag's Head, 
 403. 
 
 Three Herrings, 230. 
 Three Horseshoes, 180. 
 Three Johns, 63. 
 Three Jolly Butchers, 358. 
 Tiiree Jolly Sailors, 332. 
 Three Kings, 301, 302, 432, 
 Three Legs, 127. 
 Three Legs and Bible, 127. 
 Three Leopard's Heads. 
 Three Loggerheads, 39, 458, 
 459. 
 
 Three Mariners, 331. 
 Three Merry Devils, 432. 
 Three Morris-dancers, 364, 
 365. 
 
 Three Mumpers, 371. 
 Three Neats' Tongues, 381. 
 Three Nuns, 320. 
 Three Old Castles, 487. 
 Three <^ heasants and Seep. 
 
 tre, 150. 
 Three Pigeons, 218, 219, 47a 
 Three Pots, 389. 
 Tliiee Radishes* 251. 
 
536 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Thyee Ravens, 202. 
 Three Roses, 236. 
 Three Spanish Ladies, 424. 
 Three Spies, 261. 
 Three Squirrels, 163. 
 Three Stags, 119. 
 Three Sugarloaves, 395. 
 Three Swans & Peal. 166,478. 
 Three Tuns, 58, 148. 
 Three Turks, 428. 
 Three Washerwomen, 364. 
 Three Widows, 321. 
 Throstle's Nest, 177. 
 Thunderstorm, 502. 
 Ticket Porter, 361. 
 Tiger, 152. 
 Tiger's Head, 134. 
 Tiltboat, 334. 
 Tinker's Budget, 369. 
 Tippling Philosopher, 466. 
 Tobacco Plant, 252. 
 TobaccoRoll & Sugarloaf,218. 
 Tobacco Rolls, 252. 
 Tobv Philpott, 81. . 
 Tom of Bedlam, 369, 370. 
 Tom Sayers, 88. 
 Topham, 88. 
 Tower of London, 416. 
 Toy, 505. 
 Trafalgar, 61. 
 Trap, 361. 
 
 Traveller's Rest, 510. 
 
 Trinity, 277. 
 
 Triumph, 50. 
 
 Triumphal Car, 327. 
 
 True Briton, 415. 
 
 True Lover s Knot, 509, 
 
 Trumpeter, 323. 
 
 Trunk, 394. 
 
 Tub, 397. 
 
 Tulip, 238. 
 
 Tulloch Gorum, 81. 
 
 Tully's Head, 65. 
 
 Tumble Down Dick, 464, 465. 
 
 Tumbling Sailors, 468. 
 
 Tun, 474. 
 
 Tun and Arrows, 471. 
 Turk's Head, 426, 427, 428. 
 Turk and Slave, 429. 
 Two Black Boys, 433. 
 Two Blue Flowerpots, 377. 
 Two Brewers, 349. 
 Two Chances, 451. 
 Two Chairmen, 358. 
 Two Cocks, 471. 
 
 Two Crowns & Cushions, 102. 
 Two Draymen, 349. 
 Two Dutchmen, 425. 
 Two Fans, 412. 
 Two Flowerpots and Sun- 
 dial, 377. 
 Two Golden Balls, 483. 
 Two Heads, 490. 
 Two Jolly Brewers, 349. 
 Two Pots, 389. 
 Two Sawyers, 346. 
 Two Smiths, 347. 
 Two Sneezing Cats, 444. 
 Two Spies, 261. 
 Two Storks, 204. 
 Two Twins, 501. 
 Two White Balls, 483. 
 
 Umbrella, 412. 
 Umbrella Hospital, 413. 
 Uncle Tom, 81. 
 Under the Rose, 236, 237 
 Union, 100. 
 Unicorn, 159, 160. 
 Unicorn and Bible, 159. 
 Union Arms, 136. 
 Union Flag and Punchbowl, 
 388. 
 
 Up and Down Post, 363. 
 
 Valentine and Orson, 76. 
 Van Dyke's Head, 82. 
 Venice, 425. 
 Vernon, Admiral, 57. 
 Vine, 243, 244. 
 Violin, Hautboy, and Ger- 
 man Flute, 338. 
 Virgil's Head, 65. 
 Virgin, 272. 
 Virginian, 431. 
 Vulcan, 70. 
 
 Wallace's Arms, 45. 
 Walmer Castle, 417. 
 Walnut-tree, 240. 
 Water Tankard, 391. 
 Waving Flag, 322. 
 Weary Traveller, 510. 
 Welch Head, 98. 
 Well and Bucket, 374. 
 Well with Two Buckets, 374. 
 Wentworth Arms, 144. 
 Wheatsheaf, 251. 
 Wheatsheaf and Sugarloaf, 
 218. 
 
 Wheel, 357. 
 Wheel of Fortune, 508w 
 Whip, 357. 
 Whip and Egg, 357. 
 White Bait, 231. 
 White Bear, 93, 154, 155, 296, 
 416. 
 
 White Boar, 116. 
 White Dragon, 111. 
 White Greyhound, 194. 
 White Hart, 112, 487. 
 White Hart and Fountain, 
 263. 
 
 White Horse, 171, 172, 296, 
 327. 
 
 White Lion, 119. 
 White Peruke, 404. 
 Whitley Grenadier, 419. 
 Whittington and his Cat, 78. 
 Who 'd ha' Tliought it ? 450. 
 Widow's Struggle, 450 
 Wild Bull, 182. 
 Wild Dayrell, 175. 
 Wild Man, 367. 
 Wild Sea, 502. 
 Wilkes' Head, 63. 
 William and Mary, 50. 
 Willow Tree, 247. 
 Wiltshire Shepherd, 419. 
 Windmill, 348. 
 Wolf and Lamb, 299. 
 Wolfe, General, 53. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 63. 
 Woodbine, 238. 
 Wooden Shoe, 410. 
 Woodman, 355. 
 Woolsack, 362. 
 World's End, 436, 461, 462. 
 World Turned Upside Down, 
 462. 
 
 Wounded Heart, 300. 
 Wrestlers, 484. 
 
 Y, 476. 
 
 Yellow Lion, 150. 
 Yew Tree, 248, 475. 
 Yorick's Head, 68. 
 York, city of, 416, 417. 
 York Minster, 417. 
 Yorkshire Grey, 58, 171. 
 Yorkshire Stingo, 384. 
 Young Devil, 294. 
 Young Man, 494. 
 
 Z, 477. 
 
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