VII. FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC…

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, &c. 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 Romans, and with it the oft-repeated proverb, “Good wine needs no Bush.” (Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus; in Italian, Al buon vino non bisogna frasca; in French, à bon 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 building 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 Rummyng:--

“Another brought her bedes Of jet or of coale, To offer to the Alepole.”

How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to enlarge and encroach upon the public way, has been shown in our 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 upon 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 compleat, it’s a signe of a good custome.”[326]

In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described:--“A flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe doore, but especially a conceited signe and an eminent bush.” “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.”--Shirley’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, signboard and bush went together:--

“La taverne levée L’enseigne et le bouchon, La dame bien peignée Les cheveux en bouchon.”[327]

--Chanson nouvelle des Tavernes et Tavernières, Fleur des Chansons Nouvelles, 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 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 King’s Road, a little past Cremorne, though there the nursery ground has very recently been built over.

The ROSE, 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 I.H.C. in its heart, and round it the words

SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORUM, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM.[328]

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.”[329]

It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some allusion to the Rose 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 VIII., and signed by him, preserved at the Remembrance Office, in 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 of Ely for the rent of Ely House for a term of twenty-one years in 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 Edward 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 whimsical tenure was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York, for which yearly a payment was to be made of a red rose at Christmas, and a snow ball at Midsummer.[330] Unless the flower of the Viburnum or Gueldres Rose, sometimes called a Snowball, was 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 Rose; in Macclesfield, and at Preston, for instance, there is the MOSS ROSE; on Silkstone Common, in Yorkshire, the BUNCH OF ROSES; on the London Road, Preston, the ROSEBUD, &c. The THREE ROSES 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 ROSE GARLAND, Robert 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.” Rose 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 shott under the lyne, Whoso faileth of the Rose garlonde, sayth Robyn, His tackyll he shall tyne.”

Merry Gestes of Robin Hoode.

Copland’s Rose 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 ROSE, is sometimes used as a sign, or written under the pictorial representation of the rose; it occurs on a trade’s token of Cambridge,[331] and may be seen on 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.”[332]

At Lullingstone Castle, in Kent, the residence of Sir Percival Dyke, Bart., there is, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, 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 Rose is spoken.”

The Dutch have a similar phrase. In an old Book of Inscriptions of the seventeenth century is a device written round a rose painted on the ceiling:--

“Al wat hier onder de Roos geschied, Laat dat aldaar en meld het niet.”[333]

There is one sign of the Rose, the origin of which it is difficult to ascertain, this is the ROSE OF NORMANDY, a public-house in the High Street, Marylebone. It was built in the seventeenth century, and is the oldest house in that parish. In 1659 it is described 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 indented like town walls.”[334]

The street having been raised, the entrance to the house is at present 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 reading 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 allusions, 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, 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 bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard. His name still occurs at the same house in 1673,[335] when it was also the sign of “Mr Cox, milliner, over against St Clement’s Church in the Strand.”[336] This must have been the same house in which Richard Blanchard and Francis Child, the goldsmiths, kept their “running cashes.”[337] It is the oldest banking firm in London. Francis Child, the founder, was, in the reign of Charles I., apprenticed to a goldsmith, 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 Dunkerque. Alderman Blackwell, who was ruined by the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., was at one time a partner in this house. It was here that Dryden deposited the £50 offered for the discovery of the bullies of the “Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade.”[338] The old sign of the house is still preserved by their 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, Chelmsford; the LILIES OF THE VALLEY, Ible, near Wirksworth; the SNOWDROP, near Lewes; WOODBINE Tavern, South Shields; and the FOREST BLUE BELL, Mansfield. The Blue Bell is very common, but, inter doctores 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 ROSEMARY BRANCH, in Camberwell, and in many other places. Rosemary was formerly an emblem of Remembrance, in the same way as the Forget-me-not is now; “There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” says Ophelia, (Hamlet, ac. iv., s. 5,) and in Winter’s Tale, Perdita says:--

“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 Tale, ac. iv., s. 4.

Hence Rosemary 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 PEAR-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 Coldbath Fields prison, was 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, Parker’s Lane; and at the RUMMER AND GRAPES Tavern, Westminster. The HAND AND APPLE was the sign, in 1782, of a shop in Thames Street, where “syder, Barcelona, cherry brandy, tobacco,” &c., were sold. It represented a hand holding an apple, and was chosen on account of the cider.[339] 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.[340] 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 in 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 the same county, may have been derived from some noted pear-tree in that neighbourhood, whose hollow and broken stem was secured with plates or bands of iron. Very general, also, is the CHERRY-TREE. It was the sign of a once famous resort in Bowling-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 Rotherhithe, 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 side 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 travellers, and hath to sign the WALNUT-TREE.”[341]

The WALNUT-TREE was also the sign of a tavern at the south side 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.[342] The Walnut-tree was frequently adopted by cabinetmakers, and is at the present day a not uncommon 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 y^{e} only place of refreshment about y^{e} towne for persons of y^{e} best quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partizans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been y^{e} usual rendezvous for y^{e} ladys and gallants at this season.”

Here Dryden went to eat mulberry tarts, and here Pepys occasionally dined, as 5th April 1669, when he indulged in what he calls an “olio,” evidently an olla podrida, since it was prepared by a Spanish cook; and the dish was so “noble,” and such a success, that he and his friends left the rest of their dinners untouched; 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 II.; and at that period and long after, were mostly used as signboards of the seed-shops, and by Italian merchants. The ORANGE-TREE AND TWO JARS was the sign of a shop of the latter description in the Haymarket in 1753.[343] 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 with quincys en comfyte doucettys, and other items of a modern dessert.[344] 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, 15 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 1509, when their price is quoted one day at iijd., and another at ijd., whilst the charge for strawberries was vijd., and on another day iiijd.[345] Perhaps, however, they were only used as hors d’œuvres, for Randle Holme, in his instructions how to arrange 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 Westmynster shott and threw eges and orengs on a-gaynst a-nodur.”[346] In an “Account of several Gardens near London,” in 1691,[347] 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 candied 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 still 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 our 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 bookseller and printer at the end of the Rue de St Jean Beauvais, otherwise Clos Bruneau, in Paris. This firm, for several generations, 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 beautiful letters which Estienne proudly mentions on his title-pages: “Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi regii, typis regiis.”

The VINE, or the BUNCH OF GRAPES, is a very natural sign at a place where wine is sold. The last particularly was almost inseparable 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 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 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,[348] 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 agrariæ scriptores, as well as from Pliny and other authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden, (which at this time is called Vine Street,) and a third in St Giles-in-the-Fields.[349] 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 Robert of Gloucester, in summing up the various commodities of the English counties, says:--

“And London ships most, and wine 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 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, [Gloucester,] either for fertility or sweetness of the grape; the wine whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not much inferior to French in sweetness.”[350]

From the household expenses of Richard 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[351] quotes the following memorandum from the MS. notes of Peter Collinson:--

“October 18, 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[352] 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 BARLEY 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.[353] Several of them had travelled; they expected to meet every day, but did not know one another’s names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, 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 the 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, Camerarius represents it:--

“Verno tempore ficus arbor speciosis floribus aut fructuum præcocium 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.”[354]

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 common, originally had allusion to the foresters of the “merry greenwood,” or was suggested by some large evergreen, or tree sheltering, or standing near the inn; of this green tree the GREEN SEEDLING 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 following 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 Bilston, 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.

Next 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 present 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 tradition 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, “buckthorn and elder-berries, besides leeches and vipers.” What the use of the first was is well known; 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 TREE, 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 TREE is very rare; in the seventeenth 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:--

“Sylli. If you forsake me, Send me word, that I may 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!”--Ibid., 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 the 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 his love must wear a willow garland.”--Swan’s Speculum Mundi, ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[327]

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

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

[329]

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

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

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

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

[333]

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

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

[335] London Gazette, Nov. 6, 1673.

[336] Ibid., Oct. 20, 1673.

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

[338] Domestic Intelligencer, Sept. 9, 1679.

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

[340] Hereford Journal, January 7, 1775.

[341] Stow’s Survey, p. 340.

[342] Daily Courant, July 1, 1718.

[343] Banks’s Bills.

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

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

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

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

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

[346] Machyn’s Diary.

[347] Archæologia, vol. xii.

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

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

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

[351] Faulkner, Antiquities of Kensington.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[359] Publick Advertiser, Tuesday, June 16-22, 1657.

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

[361] Bagford Bills.

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

[363] Gent. Mag., March 1842.

[364]

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

[365]

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

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

VIII. BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The BIBLE AND LAMB, i.e., the Holy Lamb, we find mentioned in an advertisement in the Publick Advertiser, March 1, 1759--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“From the Gymnasium at Tottenham Court on Thursday next at Twelve o’clock will begin:

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

by THOMAS SMALLWOOD, A.M., Gymnasiast of St. Giles, and THOMAS DIMMOCK, A.M., Athleta of Southwark, (Both fellows of the Athletic Society.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another one at Leyden had the following rhyme:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Saturday, January 17, 1735/6.

“SIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When Hope and Prudence kept this house, the Angel kept the door, Now Hope is dead, the Angel fled, and Prudence turned a w----.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ST MARY, ISLINGTON.

SIR,

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

Walter Sebbon. John Booth. Bourchier Durrell. James Sebbon.

STEWARDS.

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

Pray pay the Bearer Five Shillings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dearest, bury me Under that holy oak, or gospel tree; Where, though thou see’st not, thou may’st think upon Me, when thou yeerly go’st procession.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[375]

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

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

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

[378]

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

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

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

[381] Weekly Journal, August 4, 1722.

[382]

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

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

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

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

[384]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[391] London Gazette, Nov 8 to 11, 1680.

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

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

[394] Kingdom’s Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1663.

[395] Stow’s Survey of London.

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

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

[398]

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

[399]

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

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

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

IX. SAINTS, MARTYRS, ETC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry the Fifth, iv. 3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In mediæval French, L’hotel Saint Julien was synonymous with good cheer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A Cristofre on his brest of silver shene.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim. To the Devil, father?

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

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

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

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

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

5. Let no scent offensive the chamber infest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To the Printer of the Publick Advertiser.

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

“H. G.

“May 25, 1767.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The CATHERINE WHEEL was formerly a very common sign, most likely adopted from its being the badge of the order of the knights of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai, created anno 1063, for the protection of pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Sepulchre. Hence it was a suggestive, if not eloquent sign for an inn, as it intimated that the host was of the brotherhood, although in a humble way, and would protect the travellers from robbery in his inn,--in the shape of high charges and exactions,--just as the knights of St Catherine protected them on the high road from robbery by brigands. These knights wore a white habit embroidered with a Catherine wheel, (i.e. a wheel armed with spikes,) and traversed with a sword stained with blood.[432] There were also mysteries in which St Catherine played a favourite part, one of which was acted by young ladies on the entry of Queen Catherine of Arragon (queen to our Henry VIII.) in London in 1501; in honour of this queen the sign may occasionally have been put up. The Catherine wheel was also a charge in the Turners’ arms. Flecknoe tells us, in his “Enigmatical 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.”[433]

Besides these, there were other signs expressing a religious idea, such as the HEART IN BIBLE, which occurs under one of the Luttrell Ballads:--“The Citizens’ joys for the Rebuilding of London, printed by P. Lillicross, for Richard 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 AND BIBLE. Biblical phrases also were employed, as for instance, the LION AND LAMB, which occurs on several seventeenth century trades tokens of Snowhill, Southwark, &c., and is still much in vogue. It is an emblematical representation of the Millennium, 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’ll kill the Lyon--if we can; But if the Lamb show’d kill the Lyon, We’ll 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 the sign the LION AND GOAT, and that name it still bears. THE LION AND ADDER, Nottingham, Newark, and various other places, or the LION AND SNAKE, as at Bailgate, Lincoln, come from Psalm 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 alehouse 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 HEART, the emblematical 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,[434] 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 indicated 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[435] was a sign in Greenwich 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, and with due respect for the 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 VII.[436] 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 London printers. The Three Kings was formerly a constant mercer’s sign. Bagford gives the following reason for this:--

“Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Marchantes and traded in all sortes of Rich Goodes, besides those of scelckes (silks) as they do nou at this day: but they brought into England fine Leninn thered (linen thread) gurdeles (girdles) finenly worked from Collin[437] (Cologne.) Collin, the city which then at that time of day florished much and afforded rayre commodetes, and these merchāts that vsually traded to that citye, set vp 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.”[438]

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 Collen.” 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 “Comédie de l’Adoration des Trois Roys,” by Marguerite de Valois. Their offerings are recorded in the following charm against falling sickness:--

“Jaspar fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazar aurum, Hæc tria qui secum portabit nomina regum Solvitur a morbo, Christi pietate, caduco.”[439]

Another Latin distich has--

“Tres Reges Regi Regum tria dona firebant Myrrham Homini, uncto aurum, thura dedere Deo.”[440]

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 Deschamps, in the sixteenth century, thus celebrated the good cheer of one of the taverns in Paris:--

“Prince, par la Vierge Marie, On est à la Cossonerie, Aux Caunettes ou aux Trois Rois.”

L’Adoration des Trois Rois was, in 1674, the sign of François 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 execution, the sign of the Three Queens, in Clerkenwell Green, was removed 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 12-14, 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, similar advertisements were of almost daily occurrence. “The Praise of Yorkshire Ale,” 1685, also mentions--

“Selling of Ale, in Muggs, Silver Tankards, 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 seventeenth 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 represented 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 y^{e} 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 mistress 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.”--Midsummer Night’s 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 l’onda Sotto Sibilia Caino è le spine.”[441]

And again in “Paradiso,” canto ii. 49, speaking of the moon, he asks--

“Ma detemi, che sono i segni bui Di questi corpo, che laggiuso in terra Fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?”[442]

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 unwelcome 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 Roxburghe Ballads (i. f., 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’ll smoake with y^{e} Man in y^{e} Moon?” 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[443] that are above the Man in the Moon there; the strangeness of their motion will quit your labour.”--DECKER’S Gull’s Hornbook.

[402] Coryatt’s Crudities, London, 1776, p. 15, reprinted from the edition of 1611.

[403] 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 à reciter. L’on crie vin nouveau et vieux, Duquel l’on donne à tater.”

These touters had their statutes and privileges granted to them by Philip Auguste in 1258, some of which are very curious.

[404] 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 Desiré quaintly inveighs against this practice in his “Loyaulté Consciencieuse des Tavernières:”--

“Semblablement toutes leurs chambres painctes, Où il n’y a qu’ordure et ivrognise, Portent les noms de benoistz sainctz et sainctes Contre l’honneur de Dieu et son Eglise. L’une s’apelle, à leur mode et devize, Le Paradis et l’autre Sainct Clement. Et quant quelqu’un rabaste fermement, L’hostesse crie André, 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 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.”)

[405]

“This is Saint Crispin, but my name is Kit, I make boots, shoes, and slippers.”

[406]

“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”

[407] So were Crispin and Crispian, and hence the trade is called the “Gentle Craft.”

[408] The gayest city in Europe three centuries ago.

[409]

“You have said St Julian’s prayer this morning, Either in French or in Latin, Now you are sure to be well lodged.”

[410]

“We are entirely at your service. By S. Peter the good apostle You shall have St Julian inn (or welcome.)”

[411]

“Often good wine makes them say, That they have the inn of St Martin.”

[412]

“Thus they had at his expense the inn of St Martin.”

[413]

“Whosoever sees the image of St Christopher, Shall that day not feel any sickness.”

[414]

“The day that you see St Christopher’s face, That day shall you not die an evil death. 1423.”

[415] Aubrey, Remains of Judaism and Gentilism. Lansdowne MSS., No. 231.

[416] Memoirs of Roger Earl of Orrery, by Rev. Mr Th. Morris, (Earl of Orrery’s State Letters,) 1742, fol. 15.

[417] Strype, B. ii., p. 162.

[418] Tottenham High Cross.

[419] The first library sold by auction in this country was that of Dr Seaman, of Warwick Court, Warwick Lane, in 1676.

[420] “If your potations overnight do not agree with you, take another glass of wine in the morning, and it will cure you.”

[421] Skinker, an old English word, synonymous to tapster, drawer.

“Bacchus the win him skinketh all about.”--CHAUCER, Marchant’s Tale, 9696

[422]

“Apollo and you, band of Muses, Bacchus, god of wine and grapes, Ceres, goddess of bread and beer, You all must share our sorrow. Weep 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, O miracle! thanks to the Devil.”

[423] Ned Ward’s “London Spy,” 1703.

[424] La Tête Noire, (the Moor’s head,) another famous tavern in that locality.

[425]

“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 head I would never come near you.”

[426] St Justin, another martyr, after his head was struck off, picked it up, and, holding in his hand, conversed with the bystanders.

[427] Cunningham’s London.

[428] 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 for 2000 horses.

[429] “Rutland Papers,” reprinted for Camden Society.

[430] Epistle Dedicatory to “Have at you to Saffron Walden,” 1596.

[431] “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.”

[432] St Catherine was beheaded after having been placed between wheels with spikes, from which she was saved by an angel descended from heaven.

[433] Several of the old carriers and coaching inns still remain in Bishopsgate Street, under their old names, as the Black Bull, the Green Dragon, the Four Swans, and (until a few months ago) the Flowerpot, &c.

[434] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842.

[435] It is said that this sign, put up in French somewhere as the cœur doré, was Englished into the “queer door.”

[436] Note in Gifford’s Ben Jonson, vol iv., p. 174.

[437] 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 removed to Milan, and thence in 1164 to Cologne, where they are still kept as sacred and miracle-working relics.

[438] Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193.

[439]

“Jasper brings myrrh, 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 Galley, excisemen of Chichester, 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.

[440]

“Three kings brought three gifts to the King of Kings. They gave myrrh to him as man, gold as king, and frankincense as God.”

[441]

“But come now, for already hovers Cain with his bundle of thorns On the confines of the two hemispheres, and touches the Waves beneath Seville.”

[442]

“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!”

[443] Paul’s Jacks were the little automaton figures that struck the hours in old St Paul’s. Similar puppets, or figures, were also on other London churches.Return to passage