Chapter X: Dignities, Trades, and Professions (1)

Tools and utensils, as emblems of trade, were certainly placed outside houses at an early period, to inform the illiterate public of the particular trade or occupation carried on within. Centuries ago the practice, as a general rule, fell into disuse, although a few trades still adhere to it with laudable perseverance: thus a _broom_ informs us where to find a sweep; a _gilt arm_ wielding a hammer tells us where the gold-beater lives; and a _last_ or _gilt shoe_ where to order a pair of boots. Those houses of refreshment and general resort, which sought the custom of particular trades and professions, also very frequently adopted the tools and emblems of those trades as their distinguishing signs. At other houses, again, signs were set up as tributes of respect to certain dignities and functions. Amongst the latter, the KING’S HEAD and QUEEN’S HEAD stand foremost, and none were more prominent types than Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, even for more than two centuries after their decease. Only fifty or sixty years ago, there still remained a well-painted, half-length portrait of bluff Harry, as a sign of the King’s Head, before a public-house in Southwark. His personal appearance, doubtless, more than his character as a king, were at the bottom of this popular favour. He looked the personification of jollity and good cheer, and when the evil passions, expressed by his face, were lost under the clumsy brush of the sign-painter, there remained nothing but a merry, “beery-looking” Bacchus, eminently adapted for a public-house sign.

A very respectable folio might be filled with anecdotes connected with the various KING’S HEAD inns and taverns up and down the country and in London--some connected with royalty, others with remarkable persons. Thus, for instance, when the Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth came forth from her confinement in the Tower, November 17, 1558, she went into the church of All Hallows, Staining, the first church she found open, to return thanks for her deliverance from prison. As soon as this pious duty was performed, the princess and her attendants went to the King’s Head in Fenchurch Street to take some refreshment, and there her Royal Highness dined on pork and peas. A monument of this visit is still preserved at the above house in an engraving of the princess, from a picture by Hans Holbein, hung up in the coffee-room; and the dish from which she ate her dinner still remains, it is said, affixed to the kitchen dresser there. There is a tradition that the bells of All Hallows were rung on this occasion with such energy, that the queen presented the ringers with silken ropes.

A more painful association is connected with another King’s Head:--

“In a secluded part of the Oxfordshire hills, at a place called
Collins End, situated between Hardwicke House and Goring Heath, is a
neat little rustic inn, having for its sign a well-executed portrait
of Charles I. There is a tradition that this unfortunate monarch,
while residing as a prisoner at Caversham, rode one day, attended by
an escort, into this part of the country, and hearing that there was a
bowling-green at this inn, frequented by the neighbouring gentry,
struck down to the house, and endeavoured to forget his sorrows for a
while in a game at bowls. This circumstance is alluded to in the
following lines, written beneath the signboard:--

“Stop, traveller, stop, in yonder peaceful glade,
His favourite game the royal martyr play’d.
Here, stripp’d of honours, children, freedom, rank,
Drank from the bowl, and bowl’d for what he drank;
Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,
And changed his guinea ere he lost his crown.”[444]

The sign, which seems to be a copy from Vandyke, though much faded from exposure to the weather, evidently displayed an amount of artistic skill not usually met with on the signboard; but the only information the people of the house could give was, that they believed it to have been painted in London. His son, Charles II., is also connected in an anecdote with a King’s Head Tavern, in the Poultry, for it is reported that he stopped at this inn on the day of his entry at the Restoration, at the request of the landlady, who happened just then to be in labour, and wished to salute his majesty. Mrs King, the lady so honoured, was aunt to William Bowyer, “the learned printer of the eighteenth century.” In Ben Jonson’s time there was a famous King’s Head Tavern in New Fish Street, “where roysters did range.” It is this tavern, probably, that is alluded to in the ballad of “The Ranting Wh----’s Resolution:”--

“I love a young Heir
Whose fortune is fair,
And frollick in _Fish Street dinners_,
Who boldly does call,
And in private paies all,
These boyes are the noble beginners.”[445]

At the King’s Head, the corner of Chancery Lane, Cowley the poet was born in 1618; it was then a grocer’s shop kept by his father. Subsequently it became a famous tavern, of which tokens are extant. It was at this house that Titus Oates’s party met, and trumped up their infamous story against the Roman Catholics, trying to implicate the Duke of York in the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. In the reign of William III., it was a violent Whig club. The distinction adopted by the members was a green ribbon worn in the hat. When these ribbons were shown, it was a sign that mischief was on foot, and that there were secret meetings to be held. North gives an amusing and lively description of this club:--

“The house was double balconied in front, as may be yet seen, for the
clubsters to issue forth, _in fresco_, with hats and no perruques,
pipes in their mouths, merry faces and diluted throat for vocal
encouragement of the canaglia below, at bonfires, on unusual and usual
occasions.”

Here the Pope-burning manifestations were got up, the Earl of Shaftesbury being president. In opposition to this Green Ribbon Club, the Tories wore in their hat a scarlet ribbon, with the words, _Rex et Haeredes_. Ned Ward, with his usual humour, describes a breakfast given in 1706 by the master of this house to his customers, consisting of an ox of 415 lb., roasted whole, and at the same time embraces the opportunity of praising the landlord as “the honestest vintner in London, at whose house the best wine in England is to be drunk.” This was probably Ned’s way of settling an old score.

Another King’s Head is mentioned by Pepys, 26th March 1663/4:--

“Thence walked through the ducking-pond fields, but they are so
altered since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the old
man’s at the Kings-head, to eat cakes and ale (his name was Pitts,)
that I did not know which was the ducking-pond, nor where I was.”

It was a very different “ducking” in which the landlady of the QUEEN’S HEAD ale-house was concerned, as shown by the following newspaper paragraph:--

“Last week, a woman that keeps the Queen’s Head ale-house at Kingston,
in Surrey, was ordered by the Court to be ducked for scolding, and
was accordingly placed in the chair and ducked in the river Thames,
under Kingston Bridge, in the presence of 2000 or 3000
people.”--_London Evening Post_, Ap. 27, 1745.

Full particulars of such an operation are given by Misson:--

“They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two strong beams, twelve or
fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other. The chair hangs upon a
sort of axle, on which it plays freely, so as to remain in the
horizontal position. The scold being well fastened in her chair, the
two beams are then placed as near to the centre as possible, across a
post on the water side, and being lifted up behind, the chair of
course drops into the cold element. The ducking is repeated according
to the degree of shrewdness possessed by the patient, and generally
has the effect of cooling her immoderate heat, at least for a time.”

At the King’s Head, Strutton, near Ipswich, about ten years ago, there was the following inscription:--

“Good people, stop, and pray walk in,
Here’s foreign brandy, rum, and gin,
And, what is more, good purl and ale,
Are both sold here by old Nat Dale.”

Old Nat had lived for a period of eighty years under the shadow of the King’s Head.

Combinations with the King’s Head are not very frequent. The KING’S HEAD AND LAMB, an ale-house in Upper Thames Street, is evidently a quartering of two signs. The TWO KINGS AND STILL, sign of Henry Francis in Newmarket, 1667,[446] representing a still between two kings crowned, holding their sceptres, may have originated from the distillers’ arms, the two wild men, serving as supporters, being refined into two kings, the garlands on their heads into crowns, and their clubs into sceptres.

That Queen Elizabeth was for more than two centuries the almost unvarying type of the QUEEN’S HEAD need not be wondered at when we consider her well-deserved popularity. A striking instance of the veneration and esteem in which she was held, even through all the tribulations and changes of the Commonwealth, is exhibited in the fact of the bells ringing on her birthday, as late as the reign of Charles II.:--

“The Earl of Dorset coming to court, one Queen Elisabeth’s birthday,
the king [Charles II.] asked him what _the bells rung for_? which
having answered, the king farther asked him, ‘how it came to pass that
her holiday was still kept, whilst those of his father and grandfather
were no more thought of than William the Conqueror’s?’ ‘Because,’ said
the frank peer to the frank king, ’she being a woman, chose men for
her counsellors; and men, when they reign, usually chuse women.’”[447]

During the queen’s lifetime, however, the sign-painters had to mind how they represented “Queen Bess,” for Sir Walter Raleigh says that portraits of the queen “made by unskilful and common painters” were, by her own order, “knocked in pieces, and cast into the fire.”[448] A proclamation had been issued to that effect, in the year 1563, saying that:--

“Forasmuch as thrugh the natural desire that all sorts of subjects and
people, both noble and mean, have to procure the portrait and picture
of the Queen’s Majestie, great nomber of Paynters, and some Printers
and Gravers have allredy, and doe daily, attempt to make in divers
manners portraictures of hir Majestie, in paynting, graving, and
pryntyng, wherein is evidently shewn, that hytherto none hath
sufficiently expressed the naturall representation of hir Majesties
person, favor, or grace, but for the most part have also erred
therein, as thereof daily complaints are made amongst hir Majesties
loving subjects, in so much, that for redress hereof hir Majestie hath
lately bene so instantly and so importunately sued by the Lords of hir
Consell, and others of hir nobility, in respect of the great disorder
herein used, not only to be content that some special coning payntor
might be permitted by access to hir Majestie to take the naturall
representation of hir Majestie, whereof she hath been allwise of hir
own right disposition very unwillyng, but also to prohibit all manner
of other persons to draw, paynt, grave, or pourtrayit hir Majesties
personage or visage for a time, until by some perfect patron and
example the same may be by others followed.

“Therfor hir Majestie, being herein as it were overcome with the
contynuall requests of so many of hir Nobility and Lords, whom she can
not well deny, is pleased that for thir contentations, some coning
persons, mete therefore, shall shortly make a pourtraict of hir person
or visage, to be participated to others, for satisfaction of hir
loving subjects; and furdermore commandeth all manner of persons in
the mean tyme to forbear from payntyng, graving, printing, or making
of any pourtraict of hir Majestie, untill some speciall person that
shall be by hir allowed, shall have first fynished a pourtraicture
thereof, after which finished, hir Majestie will be content that all
other painters, printers, or gravers that shall be known men of
understanding, and so thereto licensed by the hed officers of the
plaices where they shall dwell, (as reason it is that every person
should not without consideration attempt the same,) shall and maye at
their pleasures follow the sayd patron or first portraicture. And for
that hir Majestie perceiveth that a grete nomber of hir loving
subjects are much greved and take grete offence with the errors and
deformities allredy committed by sondry persons in this behalf, she
straightly chargeth all her officers and ministers to see to the
observation hereof, and, as soon as may be, to reform the errors
allredy committed, and in the mean tyme to forbydd and prohibit the
shewing and publication of such as are apparently deformed, until they
may be reformed which are reformable.”[449]

That there were signboards, however, representing her Majesty’s “person, favour, and grace,” during her lifetime, is evident from the fact that an ancestor of Pennant, the London topographer, made his fortune as a goldsmith at the sign of the QUEEN’S HEAD, in Smithfield, during the reign of good Queen Bess.

The irascible Mr Boursault, whose bile was so often deranged by signboard irregularities, took also sycophantic exception at royal heads being represented in that way:

“Je souffre impatiemment que le portrait du Roy, celuy de la Reine, de
Monseigneur et des autres Princes et Princesses, servent d’enseignes
de boutiques; eux qui ne devroient faire l’ornement que des plus
célèbres galeries et des plus illustres cabinets. Monsieur d’Argenson
et Vous même, Monsieur le Commissaire, n’auriez-vous pas juste raison
de vous facher de voir vôtre portrait servir d’enseigne à, la Maison
d’un cabaretier, ou à la boutique d’un Fripier; et pourquoi donc ne
vous fachez-vous pas de ce que celui du Roy y est?”[450]

Of celebrated Queen’s Heads we must begin with the highly respectable inn of that name, in which, before the reign of Queen Elizabeth, lived the canonists and professors of spiritual and ecclesiastical law. It was situated in Paternoster Row, where its name is still preserved in Queen’s Head Alley. From this place the lawyers removed to Doctors’ Commons.

Nearly as ancient a building was the old Queen’s Head, Lower Street, Islington, at the corner of Queen’s Head Lane, one of the most perfect specimens of ancient domestic architecture in the vicinity of London. It is said that it was built by Sir Walter Raleigh, after he had obtained “lycense for keeping of taverns and retayling of wynes throughout Englande,” and that it was called by him the Queen’s Head in compliment to his royal mistress. Essex is also said to have resided there, and to have been visited by the queen. The same tradition is current about the Lord Treasurer Burleigh. In the reign of George II. it was used as a playhouse, and bills are still extant of plays acted there at that period.

It was a strong wood and plaster building, three lofty stories high, projecting over each other, and forming bay windows supported by brackets and caryatides. Inside it was panelled with wainscot, and had stuccoed ceilings, adorned with dolphins, cherubims, and acorns, bordered by a wreath of flowers. The porch was supported by caryatides of oak, crowned with scroll-capitals.[451] This time-honoured structure was pulled down in October 1829, and nothing of it remains in the new building erected on its site but the name, the carved oak panels of the parlour, and a bust of Queen Elizabeth at the top front. A carved mantelpiece, (formerly in the parlour of the old house,) with the history of Dian and Actæon on it, (a favourite subject with the virgin queen,) was sold for more than £60 at the sale of the building materials, most of which were bought by antiquaries.

There used to be a large pewter tankard in this house, with an inscription engraved on it, which is much too highly spiced to be given here. It was signed John Cranch, and bore date 1796.

At the Queen’s Head, Duke Court, Bow Street, the English language was enriched with two new terms, though one of them seems to have been still-born. This tavern was once kept by a facetious individual of the name of Jupp. Two celebrated characters, Annesley Shay and Bob Todrington--the latter a sporting man--meeting late in the day at the above place, went to the bar and asked for half a quartern each, with a little cold water. In the course of the evening they drank twenty-four, when Shay said to the other, “Now we’ll go.” “Oh no,” replied his companion, “we’ll have another, and then go.” This did not satisfy the Hibernian, and they continued drinking on till three in the morning, when they both agreed to _go_; so that under the idea of _going_ they made a long _stay_, and this was the origin of drinking _goes_; but another preferring to eke out the measure his own way, used to call for a quartern at a time, and these in the exercise of his humour he called _stays_.[452]

In the beginning of this century, when Marylebone consisted of “green fields, babbling brooks,” and pleasant suburban retreats, there was a small but picturesque house of public entertainment, yclept the QUEEN’S HEAD AND ARTICHOKE, situated “in a lane nearly opposite Portland Road, and about 500 yards from the road that leads from Paddington to Finsbury”--now Albany Street. Its attractions chiefly consisted in a long skittle and “bumble puppy” ground, shadowy bowers, and abundance of cream, tea, cakes, and other creature comforts. The only memorial now remaining of the original house is an engraving in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, November 1819. The queen was Queen Elizabeth, and the house was reported to have been built by one of her gardeners, whence the strange combination on the sign.

Besides Crowns (see p. 101) other royal paraphernalia are occasionally used as signboard decorations. The SCEPTRE is not uncommon; the SCEPTRE AND HEART was the sign of Samuel Grover, chirurgical instrument maker, on London Bridge, in the latter end of the seventeenth century. It is engraved on his shop-bill, and represents a circle surrounded by fruit and foliage, having two Cupids standing at the upper corner, and containing in the centre two palm branches enclosing a sceptre surmounted by a heart. Round the whole are suspended lancets, trepans, saws, &c. In all probability it is simply a quartering of two signs.

The ROYAL HAND AND GLOBE was the loyal sign of a stationer at the corner of St Martin’s Lane, in 1682.[453] It doubtless refers to the royal hand holding the golden orb, surmounted by a cross. It is still the sign of an ale-house near the Soho Theatre. The same orb or globe seems to be alluded to in the sign of the SWORD AND BALL, on Holborn Bridge, in the seventeenth century. What stands in the way of this explanation, however, is that on the token of this house the sword is represented piercing the ball; but this may merely have been a fancy of the sign-painter, who did not understand its meaning. As for the SWORD AND MACE, the meaning is perfectly clear; it is the sign of a public-house in Coventry.

The Church is almost as abundantly represented as royalty. Even long after the Reformation the POPE’S HEAD was still very common. Nash’s “Anatomie of Absurdities” was printed by T. Charlwood for Thomas Hacket, and was “to be sold at his shop in Lumbard Street, vnder the signe of the Popes Heade, 1590.” Taylor, the Water poet, in his “Travels through London,” 1636, mentions four Pope’s Head taverns; but the most famous of all was the Pope’s Head tavern in Cornhill.

“I have read[454] of a countryman that, having lost his hood in
Westminster Hall, found the same in Cornhill hanged out to be sold,
which he challenged, but was forced to buy, or go without it, for
their stall they said was their market. At that time also the wine
drawers at the Pope’s Head tavern (standing without the door in the
High Street,)[455] took the same man by the sleeve, and said, ’Sir,
will you drink a pint of wine?’ Whereunto he answered, ‘A penny spend
I may,’ and so drank his pint, for bread nothing did he pay, for that
was allowed free.[456] This Pope’s Head tavern, with other houses
adjoining, strongly built of stone, hath of old time been all in one,
pertaining to some great estate, or rather to the king, as may be
supposed both by the largeness thereof, and by the arms, to wit, three
leopards passant gardant, which were the whole arms of England before
the reign of Edward III., that quartered them with the arms of France
three flower de lys. Some say this was King John’s house, which might
be, for I find in a written copy of ‘Matthew Paris’s History’ that in
the year 1232, Henry III. sent Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent, to
Cornehill in London, there to answer all matters objected against
him: when he wisely acquitted himself. The Pope’s Head tavern hath a
footway through from Cornhill into Lumbard Street.”--_Stow’s Survey_,
p. 75.

In this tavern, in the fourth of Edward IV. (1464,) a trial of skill was held between Oliver Davy, goldsmith of London, and White Johnson, “Alicante Strangeour,” also of London,--the London goldsmiths being divided into native and “foren” workmen. These last, though they might be Englishmen, were so named merely as a distinction with respect to the work they produced, which consisted frequently in counterfeit articles and bad gold. The trial consisted in making, in four pieces of steel the size of a penny, a cat’s face in relief, and another cat’s face engraved, a naked man in relief, and another engraved, which work was to be performed in five weeks. Oliver Davy, the native goldsmith, won the wager, as White Johnson, the foreign workman, after six weeks could only produce the two “inward engraved” objects. The forfeit was a crown, and a dinner to the wardens, the umpires, and all those concerned in the wager. The works were kept in Goldsmith’s Hall, “to y^{at} intent that they be redy iff any suche controursy herafter falls, to be shewede that suche traverse hathe be determyn’d aforetymes.”[457] In Pepys’s time this tavern, like many others of that period and later, had a painted room. “18 January 1668.--To the Pope’s Head, there to see the fine-painted room which Rogerson told me of, of his doing, but I do not like it at all, though it be good for such a publick room.” Here in 1718 Quin killed his brother actor Bowen. “On Thursday s’ennight at night, Mr Bowen and Mr Quin, two comedians, drinking at the Pope’s Head tavern in Cornhill, quarrelled, drew their swords, and fought, and the former was run into the guts; he languished till Sunday last, and then died. Bowen, before he expired, desired that Mr Quin might not be prosecuted, because what had happened to him was his own seeking.”[458] The jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter, and Quin for the offence was burned in the hand.[459] The quarrel was rather a foolish one, arising out of a wager which of the two was the honester man, which had been decided in favour of Quin; _inde iræ_. This tavern seems to have continued in existence till the latter part of the last century.

The emblem of another class of high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church, the CARDINAL’S HAT or CAP, was at one time common in England. Bagford says: “You have not meney of them, they war set up by sume that had ben saruants to Tho. Wolsey.”[460] But we find the sign long before Wolsey’s time, for in 1459, Simon Eyre

“Gave the Tavern called the Cardinal’s Hat in Lumbard Street, with a
tenement annexed on the East part of the tavern, and a mansion behind
the East tenement, together with an alley from Lumbard Street to
Cornhill, with the appurtenances, all which were by him new built,
towards a brotherhood of our Lady in St Mary Woolnots.”--_Stow_, p.
77.

This tavern and another of the same name, also in Lombard Street, were still extant in the seventeenth century. It was also the sign of one of the Stairs on the Bankside, the name of which is still preserved to that locality in Cardinal Cap’s Alley.

“But at the naked stewes
I understands howe that
The sygne of the Cardinall’s hat
That inne is now shit up.”

SKELTON’S _Whye come ye not to Courte_.

These houses, by proclamation of 37, Henry VIII., were “whited and painted with signes on the front for a token of the said houses;” they were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, whence Pennant makes some sly remarks upon the sign of the Cardinal’s Cap:--

“I will not give into scandal so far as to suppose that this house was
peculiarly protected by any coeval member of the sacred college.
Neither would I by any means insinuate that the Bishops of Winchester
and Rochester, or the abbots of Waverley, or of St Augustine in
Canterbury, or of Battel, or of Hyde, or the Prior of Lewis, had there
their temporary residences for them or their trains, for the sake of
these conveniences, in that period of cruel and unnatural
restriction,” &c.[461]

The BISHOP’S HEAD was, in 1663, the sign of J. Thompson, a bookseller and publisher in St Paul’s Churchyard. At this house, in 1708, was published Hatton’s “New View of London;” it was then in the occupation of Robert Knaplock.

More general, however, was the MITRE, which was the sign of several famous taverns in London in the seventeenth century. There was one in Great Wood Street, Cheapside, (called on the trades token of the house the MITRE AND ROSE,) mentioned by Pepys as “a house of the greatest note in London.”[462] The landlord of this house, named Proctor, died at Islington of the plague in 1665, in an insolvent state, though he had been “the greatest vintner for some time in London for great entertainments.” There was another Mitre near the west end of St Paul’s, the first music-house in London. The name of the master was Robert Herbert _alias_ Forges. Like many brother-publicans, he was, besides being a lover of music, also a collector of natural curiosities, as appears by his

“Catalogue of many natural rarities, with great industrie, cost, and
thirty years’ travel into foreign countries, collected by Robert
Herbert, alias Forges, Gent., and sworn servant to his Majesty; to be
seen at the place called the Musick house _at the Mitre_, near the
West End of S. Paul’s Church, 1664.”

This collection, or at least a great part of it, was bought by Sir Hans Sloane. It is conjectured that the Mitre was situated in London House Yard, at the north-west end of St Paul’s, on the spot where, afterwards, stood the house known by the sign of the GOOSE AND GRIDIRON. Ned Ward[463] describes the appearance of another music-house of the same name in Wapping, which he calls “the Paradise of Wapping,” though more probably it was in Shadwell, where there is still a Music House Court, which seems to point to some such origin. His description of this prototype of the Oxford and Alhambra music-halls is not a little amusing. The music, consisting of fiddles, hautboys, and a humdrum organ, he compares to the grunting of a hog added as a base to a concert of caterwauling cats in the height of their ecstacy. The music-room was richly decorated with paintings, (Hornfair was one of the pictures,) carvings, and gilding; the seats were like pews in a church, and the orchestra railed in like a chancel. The musicians occasionally went round to collect contributions, as they still do in the Cafés Chantants of the Champs Elysées, Paris. The other rooms in the house were “furnished for the entertainment of the best of companies,” all painted with humorous subjects. The kitchen, used at that period in many taverns as a sitting room by the customers, was railed in and ornamented in the same gaudy style as the rest of the houses; a quantity of canary birds were suspended on the walls. Underground was a tippling sanctuary painted with drunken women tormenting the devil, and other somewhat quaint subjects. The wine of the establishment was good. Here, then, we may imagine our great-great-grandfathers listening to the woeful fiddles scraping “Sillenger’s Round,” “John, come kiss me,” “Old Simon the King,” or other old tunes, until flesh and blood could stand it no longer, and a dance would be indulged in to the music of “Green Sleeves,” “Yellow Stockings,” or some other equally comic dance and tune; after which everybody went home, through the dirty dark streets, doubtless “highly pleased with the entertainment.”

Older than either of these was the Mitre in Cheap, which is mentioned in the vestry books of St Michael’s, Cheapside, before the year 1475.[464] In “Your Five Gallants,” a comedy by Middleton, about 1608, Goldstone prefers it to the Mermaid:--“The Mitre in my mind for neat attendance, diligent boys and--push, excels it [the Mermaid] far.” But the most famous of the inns with this name, was the Mitre in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, one of Doctor Johnson’s favourite haunts, “where he loved to sit up late,”[465] and where Goldsmith, and the other celebrities, and minor stars that moved about the great doctor, used to meet him. This house is named in the play of “Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks,” in 1611. It was one of those houses which, for more than two centuries, was the constant resort of all the wits about town; even the name of Shakespeare throws its halo around this place:--

“Mr Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street,” says Mr J.
P. Collier, “is in possession of a MS. full of songs and poems in the
handwriting of a person of the name of Richard Jackson; all prior to
the year 1631, and including many unpublished poems by a variety of
celebrated poets. One of the most curious is a song of
five-seven-lines stanzas thus headed: ’Shakespeare’s Rime which he
made at the Mytre in Fleete Street.’ It begins--‘From the rich
Lavinian shore,’ and some few of the lines were published by Playford,
and set as a catch. Another shorter piece is called in the margin:
’Shakespeare’s Rime:’--

‘Give me a Cup of rich Canary Wine,
Which was the Mitre’s (drink) and now is mine;
Of which had Horace and Anacreon tasted
Their lives as well as lines till now had lasted.’

I have little doubt that the lines are genuine, as well as many other
songs.”

In this same tavern Boswell supped, for the first time, with his idol, and the description of the biographer’s delight on that grand occasion has a festive air about it that cannot fail to make a lively impression on his readers:--

“He agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I called on him,
and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper, and port wine, of
which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox high church sound
of the Mitre,--the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel
Johnson--the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation and
the pride from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a
variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I
had ever experienced.”

There, also, that amusing scene with the young ladies from Staffordshire took place, which would make an excellent companion picture to Leslie’s “Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman.”

“Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present to
consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined.
Come (said he) you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the
Mitre, and we will talk over that subject, which they did; and after
dinner, he took one of them on his knees and fondled them for half an
hour together.”

Hogarth, too, was an occasional visitor at this tavern. A card is still extant, wherein he requested the company of Dr Arnold King to dine with him at the _Mitre_. The written part is contained within a circle, (representing a plate) to which a knife and fork are the supporters. In the centre is drawn a pie with a Mitre on the top of it, and the invitation--

_Mr Hogarth’s compliments to Mr King, and desires the honour of his
company to dinner, on Thursday next, to_ η. β. π. [Eta beta py.][466]

In this tavern the Society of Antiquaries used to meet, before apartments were obtained in Somerset House.

“The Society hitherto having no house of their own, meet every
Thursday evening, about seven o’clock, at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet
Street, where antiquities are produced and considered, draughts and
impressions thereof taken, dissertations read, and minutes of the
several transactions entered, and the whole economy under such
admirable regulations, that probably in a short time they may apply
for a royal power of incorporation.”[467]

In the bar of the Mitre Tavern in St James’ Market, which was kept by her aunt, (Mrs Voss, formerly the mistress of Sir Godfrey Kneller,) Captain Farquhar overheard Miss Nancy Oldfield read the play of “The Scornful Lady,” and was so struck with the proper emphasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage. Captain (afterwards Sir John) Vanbrugh, a friend of the family, recommended her to Rich, and shortly after she made her _debut_ at Covent Garden, with an allowance of fifteen shillings a week.

Though a dozen other famous Mitre Taverns might be mentioned, these are sufficient to show how general a sign it was; the partiality of tavern-keepers for it is somewhat accounted for in the following stanza of the “Quack Vintners,” 1712:--

“May Smith, whose prosperous mitre is his sign,
_To shew the church no enemy to wine_;
Still draw such Christian liquor none may think,
Tho’ e’er so pious, ’tis a sin to drink.”[468]

The Mitre also is found in a few combinations, as the MITRE AND DOVE, _i.e._, the Holy Ghost, in King Street, Westminster; the MITRE AND KEYS, in Leicester--evidently the Cross Keys, which are a charge in the arms of several bishoprics; and the MITRE AND ROSE, which, from trades tokens, appears to have been the sign of a tavern in the Strand, as well as in Wood Street, Cheapside.

That the friars were also honoured on the signboard appears from “Fryar Lane, on the south side of Thames Street, near Dowgate. It was formerly called Greenwich Lane, but of later years Fryar’s Lane, from the sign of a Fryar sometime there.”[469] Probably it was a BLACK FRIAR, or Dominican Monk, for that order, above all others, had the reputation of being great topers, and therefore were not out of place on a signboard. There is a prayer extant of the holy fathers, addressed to St Dominic:--

“Sanctus Dominicus sit nobis semper amicus
Qui canimus nostro jugiter præconia rostro,
De cordis venis, siccatis ante lagenis;
Ergo tuas laudes si tu nos pangere gaudes,
Tempore paschali, fac ne potu puteali
Conveniat uti; quod si fit, undique muti
Semper erunt patres qui, non curant nisi fratres.”[470]

And an old French couplet gives the following gradations of the potatory capacities of the different orders, in which the Franciscans only are said to beat the Dominicans:--

“Boire à la Capucine,
C’est boire pauvrement;
Boire à la Célestine,
C’est boire largement;
Boire à la Jacobine,
C’est chopine à chopine;
Mais boire en Cordelier,
C’est vider le cellier.”[471]

Tokens are extant of a music-house, with the sign of the Black-friar, dated 1671. In Paris also, the Bacchic propensities of the Black-friars made a tavern-keeper of the seventeenth century choose ST DOMINIC as the patron saint of his tavern. His principal customers, who formed a sort of club, were called Dominicans; a contemporary song thus gives the rule of this order:--

“Nous sommes dix, tous grands buveurs;
Bons ivrognes et grands fumeurs,
Qui ne cessant jamais de boire,
Et de remuer la machoire,
Méprisons d’amour les faveurs.”[472]

Nuns also figured on the signboard as the THREE NUNS, which was constantly used by drapers; not exactly, as Tom Brown says, “very dismally painted to keep up young women’s antipathy to popery and” single blessedness, but because the holy sisterhoods were generally very expert in making lace embroidery, and other fancy work--as the handkerchiefs made by the nuns of Pau, and sold by our drapers, fully prove even at the present day. In the seventeenth century, the _Three Nuns_ was the sign of a well-known coaching and carriers’ inn in Aldgate, which gave its name to Three Nuns’ Court close at hand; near this inn was the “dreadful gulf, for such it was rather than a pit,” in which, during the Plague of 1665, not less than 1114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from the 6th to the 20th of September.[473] Not improbably this sign, after the Reformation, was occasionally metamorphosed into the THREE WIDOWS: Peter Treveris, a foreigner, erected a press and continued printing until 1552 at the THREE WIDOWS in Southwark; he printed several books for William Rastell, John Reynor, R. Copeland, and others in the city of London. It is still the sign of a cap and bonnet shop in Dublin. The MATRONS, also, may have originally represented Nuns; this last hung, in the seventeenth century, at the door of John Bannister, crutch and bandage maker, near the hospital, (Christ’s Hospital School,) Newgate Street.[474]

MERCURY AND FAN.

(Banks’s Collection, 1810.)

NOBODY.

(From an old print, circa 1600.)

RUNNING FOOTMAN.

(Charles Street, Berkeley Square, circa 1790.)

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

(Banks’s Collection.)]

At the present day the CHURCH is a very common ale-house sign, either on account of the esteem in which good living has been held by churchmen in all ages, “superbis pontificum potiore cœnis,” or, from the proximity of a church to the ale-house in question; thus, one inn in the town would be known as the “Market House,” whilst another might be known as the “Church Inn.” It has been said the name was given that topers might equivocate and say that they “frequently go to church.” Be this as it may, there is generally an ale-house close to every church, (in Knightsbridge the chapel of the Holy Trinity is jammed in between two public-houses,) whereby a good opportunity is offered to wash a dry sermon down. In Bristol, at the beginning of the present century, it was still worse--a Methodist meeting-room was immediately over a public-house, which gave rise to the following epigram:--

“There’s a spirit above and a spirit below,
A spirit of joy and a spirit of woe--
The spirit above is the spirit divine;
But the spirit below is the spirit of wine.”

Other signs connected with the church are the CHAPEL BELL, at Suton, in Norfolk, and the CHURCH STILE or CHURCH GATES, which is very common. The origin of this last comes from an old custom of drinking ale on the parish account, on certain occasions, at the church stile. Pepys mentions this when he was at Walthamstow, April 14, 1661:--“After dinner we all went to the church stile, and there eat and drank.” To this a correspondent in the _Gent. Mag._ (Nov. 1852, p. 442) makes the following note:--“In an old book of accounts belonging to Warrington parish, the following minute occurs:--“Nov. 5, 1688. Paid for drink at the church steele, 13s.;” and in 1732, “It is ordered that hereafter no money be spent on ye 5th of November or any other State day on the parish account, either at the church stile or any other place.” Though certainly the parish now does not pay for any ale drunk at the church stile, the sign is evidently set up in remembrance of the good old time when such things were.

Belonging to the church was also the sign of the THREE BRUSHES, or Holy Water Sprinklers, which was that of an old house near the White Lion prison, Southwark, in which there was a room with panelled wainscoting and ceiling ornamented with the royal arms of Queen Elizabeth. Probably it had been the court-room at the time the White Lion Inn was a prison. Amongst the Beaufoy trades tokens there is one of “Rob. Thornton, haberdasher, next the Three Brushes in Southwark, 1667.”

Innumerable signs were borrowed from the army and navy; thus, at the present day, every uniform in the service is represented near barracks or in other haunts of soldiers. The RECRUITING SERGEANT is generally the sign of the public-house, where that worthy spreads his nets. CROSS GUNS, CROSS LANCES, CROSS SWORDS, and CROSS PISTOLS, respectively, are meant to allure artillerymen, lancers, and various cavalry men. But above all the STANDARD, the BANNER, or the WAVING FLAG--“the glorious rag that for a thousand years has stood the battle and the breeze,” is of common occurrence, not only in the neighbourhood of military quarters, but everywhere in towns and villages. At the Standard Tavern in the Strand, Edmund Curll the bookseller used to meet the mysterious Rev. Mr Smith, who sold him Pope’s correspondence.

“I am just going to the Lords to finish Pope,” writes Curll to this
person. “I desire you to send me the sheets to perfect the first fifty
books, and likewise the remaining three hundred books, and pray be at
the Standard Tavern this evening and I will pay you £20 more.”

The KETTLEDRUM is a sign at St George-in-the-East; the DRUM and the TRUMPET are both of frequent occurrence, and the last is of old standing. One of the characters in “The Ball,” a play by Shirley, 1633, thus commends the beer of the Trumpet:--

“Their strong beere is better than any I
Ever drunke at the Trumpet.”--_The Ball_, Act v.

Possibly this was the Trumpet in Shire Lane, immortalised in the _Tatler_, and one of the favourite haunts of merry good-natured Dick Steele. Bishop Hoadley was once present at one of the meetings in this tavern, when Steele rather exposed himself in his efforts to please, a double duty devolving upon him, as well to celebrate the “glorious memory” of King William III., it being the 4th of November--as to drink up to conversation pitch his friend Addison, the phlegmatic constitution of whom was hardly warmed for society by the time Steele was no longer fit for it. One of the company, a red hot Whig, knelt down to drink the health with all honours. This rather disconcerted the bishop, which, Steele seeing, whispered to him--“Do laugh, my lord, pray laugh; it is humanity to laugh.” Shortly after Steele was put into a chair and sent home. Next morning he was much ashamed, and sent the Bishop this distich:--

“Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons though he none commits.”

Some trades tokens are extant of houses with the sign of the Trumpet in King Street, Wapping, and in the Minories. At the same period there was a sign of the TRUMPETER in Trump Alley, probably suggested by the name of the thoroughfare.

The BUCKLER is a very old sign, and occurs in “Cocke Lorell’s Bote:”--

“Here is Saunder Sadeler of Froge Street Corner, With Jelyan Joly at
signe of the _Bokeler_.”

More general was the sign of the SWORD AND BUCKLER, which was frequently set up by haberdashers for the following reason:--

“And whereas, until about the twelve or thirteenth yeere of Queene
Elisabeth, the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was only
had in use, the bucklers then being only a foot broad, with a pike of
four or five inches long; then they beganne to make them full half ell
broad, with sharpe pikes 10 or 12 inches long, wherewith they meant
either to breake the swordes of their enemies, if it hitte uppon the
pike, or else sodainely to runne within them and stabbe, and thrust
their buckler with the pike into the face, arme, and body of their
adversary, but this continued not long;[475] _every haberdasher then
sold bucklers”_.--_Stow’s Chronicle._

The great prevalence of this sign originated in the so-called sword and buckler _play_, once so common in England. Misson, who visited this country in the beginning of the eighteenth century, says:--

“Within these few years you should often see a sort of gladiators
marching through the streets, in their shirts to the waste, their
sleeves tucked up, sword in hand, and preceeded by a drum to gather
spectators. They give so much a head to see the fight, which was with
cutting swords and a kind of buckler for defence. The edge of the
sword was a little blunted, and the care of the prize fighters was not
so much to avoid wounding one another, as to avoid doing it
dangerously; nevertheless as they were obliged to fight till some
blood was shed, without which nobody would give a farthing for the
show, they were sometimes forced to play a little roughly. The fights
are become very rare within these eight or ten years.”[476]

In the seventeenth century it was not a _little_ rough play, which is evident from those matches at which Pepys was present, and which he describes at large. Jouvin, another Frenchman who visited England in 1672, gives a detailed account of these _divertisements_, which, at that period, at all events, were anything but play; and Maitland was right when he designated them as “a barbarous performance, by those whom necessity (occasioned by a scandalous laziness and indolence) induces to expose themselves to be horribly mangled for a little money, while the bloodily-minded spectators satiate themselves with human gore to the great reproach of religion.”

In the _Spectator_, No. 436, there is an amusing essay on those “Hockley-in-the-Hole Gladiators,” and in No. 449 a letter appears, in which the deceits of the champions are shown:--

“I overheard two masters of the science agreeing to quarrel on the
next opportunity. This was to happen in the company of a set of the
fraternity of the basket hilts who were to meet that evening. When
this was settled, one asked the other: ‘Will you give cuts or
receive?’ The other answered, ‘Receive.’ It was replied, ‘Are you a
passionate man?’ ‘No, provided you cut no more, nor no deeper than we
agree.’”

A few other instances of the Sword occur on signs, as the SWORD AND CROSS, a sort of emblem of the Church militant, or perhaps an inversion of the CROSS SWORDS: this was a sign “next door to the Savoy Gate in 1711.” The SWORDBLADE, a coffee-house in Birchen Lane in 1718, and the SWORD AND DAGGER, a combination of arms that evokes the phantom of many a desperate duel amongst the ruffling gallants of the reign of James I. This sign of ill omen was, in the seventeenth century, in St Catherine Lane, Tower, as appears from the traded tokens issued there.

The DAGGER was once common in London--

“My lawyer’s clerk I lighted on last night
In Holborn at the _Dagger_,”

says Captain Face, in Ben Jonson’s “Alchymist,” and various trades tokens testify the prevalence of the sign. Probably this arose from its being a charge in the city arms, which was supposed to represent the dagger Sir William Walworth used in slaying Wat Tyler. This at least was asserted in the inscription below the niche in which Sir William’s statue was erected in Fishmonger’s Hall:--

“Brave Walworth knyght Lord Mayor yt slew
Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes--
The king therefore did give in lieu
The Dagger to the Cytyes armes.”

Stow says that this is erroneous, as, when in the 4 Richard II. a new seal was made for the city, “the armes of this city were not altered, but remayne as afore; to witte, argent, a playne cross gules a _sword of Saint Paul_ in the first quarter and no dagger of William Walworth as is fabuled.”[477] The DAGGER AND PIE was in the seventeenth century the sign of a celebrated pie-shop in Cheapside, the Pie being added to the original sign; but from the trades tokens of this house we see that this was represented by a rebus of a dagger with a magpie on the point. Dagger-pies are frequently mentioned in the plays of that period; for instance, in Decker’s “Satyro-Mastrix:”--“I’ll not take thy word for a dagger-pie;” and in Prynne’s “Histrio-Mastrix,” “and please you, let them be dagger-pies.” The London apprentices appear to have been good customers to this house. Whenever, for example, old Hobson, the merry haberdasher, went abroad, “his prentices wold ether bee at the Taverne filling their heds with wine or at the Dagger in Cheapside cramming their bellies with minced pyes.”[478] And in Heywood’s comedy of “If you Know not me you Know Nobody,” the worthy citizen bitterly inveighs against the temptations held out to apprentices by the dainties of this house:--

“Ten pounds a morning! Here is the fruit
Of Dagger-pies and Ale-house guzzling.”--Act i. sc. i., 1606.

A rather curious sign was that of the RED M AND DAGGER. The letter M was the initial of Mrs Milner’s name, who, at this sign in Pope’s Head Alley, “over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhill,” sold the “Grand Restorative,” which cured consumption, stone, dropsy, and all evils flesh is heir to. The sign occurs among the Bagford bills; there is a similar one amongst the Banks bills, the PISTOL AND C, the sign of John Crook, a razor-maker at the Great Turnstile, Holborn, _circa_ 1787: the bill represents a renaissance scutcheon with a pistol, above it a C, and surgical instruments disseminated on the field.

Though we have the authority of Cicero that _cedant arma togæ_, yet booksellers, who flourish by the arts of peace, choose the HELMET for their sign. Humphrey Joy, a bookseller and printer in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1550, and another, celebrated in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary, Rowland Hall by name, had both a HELMET for their sign. This Hall changed his sign more frequently than is generally the custom; thus, besides the Helmet, he is known to have traded at the signs of the CRADLE, in Lombard Street; the HALF EAGLE AND KEY, in Gutter Lane; and the THREE ARROWS, in Golden Lane, near Cripplegate. There is still a stone carving of the helmet fixed in the front of a house in London Wall, with the date 1668 and the initials H. M. Ned Ward mentions the Helmet in Bishopsgate; he says at the battles without bloodshed of the Trainbands in Moorfields, the gallant warriors wish

“For beer from the Helmet in Bishopsgate.
And why from the Helmet? Because that sign
Makes the liquor as welcome t’ a soldier as wine.”

Trades tokens are extant of the BLUE HELMET in Tower Street. From the same source we learn that there was, in the seventeenth century, a sign of the PLATE, _i.e._, the Breastplate, in Upper Shadwell; and a HANDGUN in Shadwell. This weapon was a sort of musket of early times, fired in the hand without a rest; “gunners with handguns or half-hakes” are named by Stow in his enumeration of the troops marching in the city watch on St John’s night.

A few other old weapons remain to be mentioned, as the ARROW, once a great favourite when this weapon made the English name terrible whenever our troops took the field. In the last century there was a beer-house at Knockholt, in Kent, the sign an Arrow, with the following poetical effusion beneath:--

“Charles Collins liveth here,
Sells rum, brandy, gin, and beer;
I make this board a little wider,
To let you know I sell good cyder.”

The CROSS-BULLETS, a name puzzling at first sight, was a sign in Thames Street in the seventeenth century, representing two bar-shot crossed, which the trades token elucidates by the equally puzzling legend, “at the Crose bvlets;” this was an instrument of destruction formerly used in naval engagements, and for that reason set up in the neighbourhood of the shipping.

If we may believe a jocular article on a quack handbill in the _Spectator_, No. 444, there was a CANNON-BALL in Drury Lane; for he mentions that--

“In Russell Court, over against the Canonball, at the Surgeons’ Arms,
in Drury Lane, is lately come from his travels a surgeon who has
practised surgery and physic both by sea and land these twenty-four
years. He (by the blessing) cures the Yellow Jaundice, Green sickness,
Scurvey, Dropsy, Surfeits, Long sea voyages, Campaigns, and women’s
miscarriages, lyings in, etc., as some people that has been lamed
these thirty years can testify; in short he cureth all diseases
incident on man, women, or children.”

Undoubtedly this bill had been slightly touched up in passing through the hands of the _Spectator_, who, like the mythological king, “_quodcunque tetigit inaurat_,” for it is rather “too good to be true.”

The HALBERT AND CROWN was, in 1791, the sign of Paul Savigne, a cutler in St Martin’s Churchyard; whilst the SPEAR IN HAND is at the present day the sign of a public-house at Norwich, being undoubtedly a popular version of some family crest.