Chapter X: Dignities, Trades, and Professions (3)

“Lawful objections being made to this, a riotous assembly met the
night before the day of the Mayor’s Proclamation at the public-house
within Cloth Fair, in which the Court of Piepoudre was held,[509] the
_Hand and Shears_--now transformed into a tall brick gin-palace--and
at midnight sallied forth, bearing along, in later years, the effigy
of a woman to represent Lady Holland, (who must have been instigator,
and it would seem, first leader of the mob,) and the mob--knocking at
doors, ringing bells, clamouring and rioting, some five thousand
strong, during three hours of the middle of the night--proclaimed for
itself, in its own way, that Bartholomew Fair was open. The first
irregular proclamation was for many years made by a company of
tailors, who met the night before the legal proclamation at the Hand
and Shears, elected a chairman, and as the clock struck twelve went
out into Cloth Fair, each with a _pair of shears in his hand_. The
chairman then proclaimed the Fair to the expectant mob, who all sped
on their errand of riot, to arouse with the news of it the sleepers in
the neighbourhood of Smithfield.”[510]

The THREE CROWNED NEEDLES looks also like a tailor’s sign, and from the evidence of a trades token of 1669 we know that it was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate. Hatton thinks that a similar sign may have given its name to Threadneedle Street, (Three Needle Street.) Three Crowned Needles was a charge in the needle-makers’ company’s arms. It is a curious fact that all the needles used in England up to the time of Queen Elizabeth were of foreign make; those sold in Cheapside in the reign of Queen Mary were made by a Spanish negro, who carried the secret of their manufacture with him to the grave. In 1566 they were manufactured under the direction of a German, Elias Grause, and after that time only it seems that we had learned how to make them.

Among agricultural signs, the PLOUGH leads the van, sometimes accompanied by the legend “Speed the Plough.” Of two inscriptions on the sign of the Plough that have come under our observation, both contain sound advice. That of the Plough at Filey might well be remembered by “afternoon” farmers: it says:--

“He who by the Plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive;”

whilst on the Plough Inn, Alnwick, the following is cut in stone:--

“That which your father old
Hath purchased and left you to possess,
Do you dearly hold
To shew your worthiness. 1717.”

In the inventory of church goods made at Holbeach, in Lincoln, at the time of the Reformation:--

Wm. Davy bought the sygne whereon the plowghe did stond for xvj^{d}.

This probably refers to the signs or badges exhibited by the religious guilds in the middle ages over the altars and as decorations in their churches, which were in some measure of the nature of other signs, in pointing out certain fraternities or trades, besides possessing a secondary and religious meaning.

The PLOUGH AND HORSES is a sign at Branston, Lincoln. The PLOUGH AND HARROW is very common. Two doors west from the Harrow Inn lived Isaac Walton, about 1624, carrying on the business of “milliner and sempster,” or what we should now call a linen-draper. He afterwards resided at a house in Chancery Lane, until he left London, for fear of having his morals corrupted--as he himself asserted. Goldsmith’s tailor, who lived at the sign of the Harrow, has gained immortality by the bad taste of poor Goldy. On one occasion--

“Goldsmith strutted about, bragging of his dress, and, I believe, was
seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such
impressions. ‘Come, come,’ said Garrick, ‘talk no more of that, you
are perhaps the worst--eh, eh.’ Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to
interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, ‘Nay, you
will always _look_ like a gentleman, but I am talking of being _well_
or _ill drest_.’ ‘Well, let me tell you,’ said Goldsmith, ‘when my
tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, “Sir, I have a
favour to beg of you. When anybody asks you who made your clothes, be
pleased to mention, _John Filby, at the Harrow in Water Lane_.”’
JOHNSON. ‘Why, sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would
attract crowds to gaze at it, and then they might hear of him, and see
how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.’”[511]

Near Bagshot there is a public-house called the JOLLY FARMER, a corruption of the GOLDEN FARMER, a nickname obtained by one of the former possessors on account of his wealth, and his custom of paying his rent always in guineas, which--so says the legend--he obtained as a footpad on Bagshot Heath. That some such thing happened is evident from the _Weekly Journal_, March 29, 1718, where allusion is made to “Bagshot Heath, near the Gibbet where the _Golden Farmer_ hanged in chains.” The use of this word _Jolly_, on the signboard, formerly so common in our “Merry England,” is now gradually dying away. Whatever be the opinion of our workmen upon the subject of national good humour, they no longer desire to be advertised as _Jolly_; it is vulgar, and they prefer _Arms_ like their betters--hence those heraldic anomalies of the GRAZIERS’ ARMS, the FARMERS’ ARMS, the CHAFF-CUTTERS’ ARMS, the PUDDLERS’ ARMS, the PAVIORS’ ARMS, and so forth.

The SHEPHERD AND SHEPHERDESS is one of those signs reminding us of--

“The tea-cup days of hoop and hood
And when the patch was worn.”

calling up pictures of rouged shepherdesses with jaunty straw hats on the top of powdered hair a foot high, short quilted petticoats and high-heeled boots, courted in madrigals by shepherds dressed in the height of the elegance of the New Exchange gallants, with ribboned crooks and flowered-satin waistcoats. It was the sign of a pleasure resort in the City Road, Islington, much frequented in the eighteenth century for amusement, and by invalids for the pure, healthy, country air of Islington, which was then a charming village, more rural in the midst of its meadows and rivulets than Richmond is now. Cakes, cream, and furmity were its great attractions:--

“To the _Shepherd and Shepherdess_ then they go
To tea with their wives for a constant rule,
And next cross the road to the _Fountain_ also,
And there they sit so pleasant and cool,
And see in and out
The folks walk about,
And gentlemen angling in Peerless Pool.”[512]

BRAZEN SERPENT.

(Reynold Wolfe, circa 1550.)

GREEN MAN.

(Banks’s Collection, 1760.)

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.

(Banks’s Collection, 1780.)

ASS PLAYING ON THE HARP.

(Chartres Cathedral, circa 1420.)]

More business-like is the sign of the SHEPHERD AND DOG; he, too, wears _patches_, but not on his face; so with the SHEPHERD AND CROOK, and the CROOK AND SHEARS. All these may be found in most villages, and refer to the inferior farm-labourer, to whom the care of the flock is intrusted, and not the elegant Corydon or Alexis.

The merry, thirsty time of haymaking is commemorated in the usual signs of a LOAD OF HAY and the CROSS SCYTHES. There is a LOAD OF HAY tavern on Haverstock Hill, a favourite place for Sunday afternoon excursionists in the summer time. Many years ago the eccentricity of Davies the landlord was one of the attractions of the place. Lately the house has been re-built, and it is now only a suburban gin-palace. The MATTOCK AND SPADE, and the SPADE AND BECKET, refer to field labour; the first is very general, the second less so; but an example occurs at Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. The PEAT SPADE, Longstock, Hants, tells its own tale. The DAIRY MAID was in great favour with the London cheesemongers of the seventeenth century. Akerman gives a trades token of such a sign in Catherine Street, in 1653, which is an amusing specimen of the liberties the token engravers took with the king’s English, the country Phillis being transformed into a “_Deary Made_.” The Dutch in the seventeenth century used the sign for a rather heterogenous trade: it seems that the process of sucking or inhaling the tobacco smoke carried back their ideas to tender years of innocence and milk diet, and so the Dairy Maid became the sign, _par excellence_, of tobacco shops. Even at the present day that idea is not quite forgotten; tobacco boxes or other smoking implements are sometimes seen amongst that nation, with the words, “Troost voor Zuigelingen,” “consolation for sucklings.” The inscriptions under these signs were occasionally very curious:--

“Toebak dat edel kruyt soveel daarvan getuygen
Al die lang zyn gespeent beginnen weer te zuygen.”[513]

On the GOUDSCHE MELKMEID in Amsterdam:--

“Goede Waar en goed bescheid
Krygt gy hier in de GOUDSCHE MELKMEID
Puyk van Verinas en Virginia Tabac
Kunt gy hier rooken op uw gemak.”[514]

Another had:--

“Leckere Neusen, eele baasen,
Die by ’t klinken van de glaasen
Tot het smooken zyt bereyt;
Zoek je ’t beste van den acker
Puyk verynis? komt dan wacker
By de walsse mellik-meid.”[515]

HARVEST-HOME, the pleasant time of congratulation and feasting, must be an alluring sign for the villagers, calling up recollections of all the festivities yearly celebrated on that grand occasion, when--

“the harvest treasures all
Are gather’d in beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain.”--_Thomson._

One of the misfortunes of the “nimium fortunati sua si bona norint” is pictured in the CART OVERTHROWN, which is a public-house sign at Lower Edmonton; though how it came to be such is difficult to guess. On Highgate Hill there is an old roadside inn, the Fox and Crown, which displays on its front a fine gilt coat of arms with the following inscription underneath:--

+--------------------------------- +
| 6TH JULY 1837. |
| |
| THIS COAT OF ARMS IS A GRANT |
| FROM QUEEN VICTORIA, FOR SER-|
| VICES RENDERED TO HER MAJESTY |
| WHEN IN DANGER TRAVELLING |
| DOWN THIS HILL. |
+--------------------------------- +

The carriage conveying Her Majesty was proceeding down the hill without a skid on the wheel, when something started the horses, and the occurrence above narrated took place. The late landlord died in distressed circumstances, and he stoutly asserted to the last, that although he made repeated applications to the Government for recompense, he having imperilled his own life to save that of Her Majesty, all he ever received for his pains was permission to display the royal arms on his house front.

The WOODMAN is another very common sign, invariably representing the same woodman copied from Barker’s picture, and evidently suggested by Cowper’s charming description of a winter’s morning in the “Task.” The DROVER’S CALL is still seen on many roadsides, though the profession that gave rise to it is well-nigh extinct; the herds of steaming, fierce-looking oxen, formerly driven from all parts of the kingdom, along the main roads leading to London, there to be devoured, being now nearly all sent here by rail. A yet older practice produced the sign of the STRING OF HORSES, which may still be seen on many a highroad in the North, and dates from times before mail coaches and stage waggons existed, when all the goods-traffic inland had to be performed by strings of packhorses, who carried large baskets, hampers, and bales slung across their backs, and _slowly_, though far from _surely_, wound their way over miles and miles of uninhabited tracts, moors, and fens, which lay between the small towns and straggling villages.

Many signs still recall those bygone days: the OLD COACH AND SIX may yet be seen in some places. There is one, for instance, in Westminster, but it is no longer a “sign of the times,” for alas!--

“No more the coaches shall I see
Come trundling from the yard,
Nor hear the horn blown cheerily
By brandy-bibbing guard.”

The names of the coaches were often adopted by inns on the road; for instance, the MAIL, the TELEGRAPH, the DEFIANCE, the BALLOON, the TALLY-HO, the BANG-UP, the EXPRESS, &c., &c.; but alas! the modern railroad has swept away the signs as well as the coaches.

In London, there are not less than fifty-two public-houses known as the COACH AND HORSES, exclusive of beer-houses, coffee-houses, and similar establishments. Stow says, in his “Summary of English Chronicles,” that in 1555, Walter Ripon made a coach for the Earl of Rutland, “which was the first that was ever used in England.” But in his larger Chronicle he says:--

“In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen’s
coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into
England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jalousy of
the queen’s displeasure, made them coaches, and rid up and down the
country in them, to the great admiration of all the beholders, but
then by little they grew usual among the nobility and others of sort,
and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking.”

Taylor the Water poet, who, as a waterman of course, bore a grudge to coaches, said, “It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought _tobacco_ into England in a _coach_, for both appeared at the same time.” How common they became in a short time appears from all the satirists of that period; not only the nobility, but even the citizens could no longer do without them, after they were once introduced. Not forty years after their first appearance Pierce Pennyless, speaking of merchants’ wives, says: “She will not go unto the field to coure on the green grasse, but she must have a coach for her convoy.”[516] No wonder, then, that, according to the “Coach and Sedan,” a pamphlet of 1636, there were then in London, the suburbs, and four miles’ compass without, coaches to the number of 6000 and odd. These were nearly all private carriages, for the hackney coaches were only established in 1625 by one Captain Bailey. Their first stand was at the Maypole in the Strand. They numbered about twenty, and were attached to the principal inns. In 1636, the number of hackney coaches was confined to 50; in 1652, to 200; in 1654, to 300; in 1662, to 400; in 1694, to 700; in 1710, to 800; in 1771, to 1000; in 1802, to 1100; but in 1833 all limitation of number ceased. Besides cabs of various kinds, there are now above a thousand omnibusses regularly employed in the Metropolis, and the commissioners of stamps are authorised to license all such carriages _without limitation as to number_; the proprietor paying the duty of £5 for the licence, and 10s. per week during its continuance. What a difference just two centuries ago, when by proclamation of the “Merry Monarch:”--

“The excessive number of hackney coaches [about 400] and coach horses
in London, are found to be a common nuisance to the public damage of
our people, by reason of their rude and disorderly standing, and
passing to and fro, in and about our cities and suburbs; the streets
and highways being thereof pestered and much impassable, the pavement
broken up, and the common passages obstructed and made dangerous.”
Hence orders are given, that “henceforth none shall stand in the
street, but only within their coach-houses, stables, and yards.”

At the Coach and Horses, Bartholomew Close, some vestiges of the ancient buildings of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Convent still remain--viz., a clustered column in the beer cellar, walls of immense thickness, and an early English window in the taproom, &c. This building occupies the site of the north cloister.[517] Another Coach and Horses, in Ray Street, Clerkenwell, is also built on classic ground, for it occupies the site of the once famous Hockley-in-the-Hole of bear-baiting memory. A comical alehouse keeper in Oswestry has travestied the sign of the Coach and Horses into the COACH AND DOGS.

The WHEEL, an object sometimes seen on signboards, may have been derived from the CATHERINE WHEEL, (the name of a favourite old coaching inn in Bishopsgate Street,) or from the wheel of fortune; the SADDLE and the SPUR are both very general on roadside inns, owing to the ancient mode of travelling on horseback; the WHIP occurs in Briggate, Leeds.

In Norwich there was (and we believe is still) a curious combination, the WHIP AND EGG, which existed in that locality as early as the year 1750,[518] and which is enumerated in London, under the name of the WHIP AND EGGSHELL, amongst the taverns in the black letter ballad of “London’s Ordinarie, or Everie Man in his Humour,” whilst a still earlier mention occurs in Mother Bunch’s Merriment, (1604,) when the transformation of pigs into fowls, whereby one of the gulls was so “sweetly deceyved,” is laid at the Whip and Eggshell. It has been explained as a corruption of the Whip and Nag, but the combination of these two would be so obvious that a corruption would scarcely be possible. In “Great Britain’s Wonder, or London’s Admiration,” a ballad on the frost of 1685, when the Thames was frozen over, and a fair held upon it, the following lines occur:--

“In this same street, before the Temple made,[519]
There seems to be a brisk and lively trade,
When ev’ry booth hath such a cunning sign
As seldom hath been seen in former time;
The FLYING P---- POT is one of the same,
The WHIP AND EGGSHELL, and the BROOM by name.”

The Whip and Egg, therefore, figured on the ice, and may have been brought together from the _whipping_ of _eggs_, in making egg-punch, egg-flip, and similar beverages, much drunk on the ice in Holland; and as there were always crowds of Dutchmen on the ice, whenever the river was frozen over, they may have introduced their favourite drink as well as their Dutch whirlings, whimsies, and flying boats, and the sign have been invented in order to indicate the sale of those liquors.

The THREE JOLLY BUTCHERS used to be seen in the neighbourhood of markets and shambles, either in allusion to the three merry north-country butchers, who killed nine highwaymen, according to the ballad, or simply that favourite combination of three which is of such frequent recurrence. The CLEAVER seems also to be in compliment to this profession, as well as the MARROWBONES AND CLEAVER. This last is a sign in Fetter Lane, originating from a custom, now rapidly dying away, of the butcher boys serenading newly married couples with these professional instruments. Formerly, the band would consist of four cleavers, each of a different tone, or, if complete, of eight, and by beating their marrowbones skilfully against these, they obtained a sort of music somewhat after the fashion of indifferent bell-ringing. When well performed, however, and heard from a proper distance, it was not altogether unpleasant. A largesse of half-a-crown or a crown was generally expected for this delicate attention. The butchers of Clare market had the reputation of being the best performers. The last public appearance of this popular music was at the marriage of the Prince of Wales, when small bands of them perambulated the town, playing “God Save the Queen.” This music was once so common that Tom Killigrew called it the national instrument of England. In 1759 a burlesque Ode on St Cecilia’s day, written by Bonnell Thornton, was performed at Ranelagh. Amongst the instruments employed in this there was a band of marrowbones and cleavers, whose endeavours were admitted by the _cognoscenti_ to have been “a complete success.”

As the use of coaches gave rise to the sign of the Coach and Horses, so the Sedan produced some signs, as the SEDAN CHAIR, Broad Quay, Bristol; North Searle, Newark; the TWO CHAIRMEN, &c., Warwick Street, Cockspur Street, and other parts of London; and the THREE CHAIRS in the seventeenth century, a famous tavern in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden. The Sedan, says Randle Holme, “is a thing in which sick and crazy persons are carried abroad, which is borne up by the staves by two lusty men.”[520] The first sedan chair used in England was one that the Duke of Buckingham had received as a gift from Charles I., when Prince of Wales, on his return from that romantic “Jean-de-Paris” expedition to Spain.[521] The use of it got the Duke into trouble, and he was accused of “degrading Englishmen into slaves and beasts of burden.” Lysons, in his “Magna Britannia,” gives another origin for them; speaking of Duncombe at Battlesden, in Bedfordshire, he says:--

“It was to one of this family, Sir Saunders Duncombe, a gentleman
pensioner to King James and Charles I., that we are indebted for the
accommodation of the sedans or close chairs, the use of which was
first introduced by him in this country in the year 1634, when he
procured a patent which vested in him and his heirs the sole right of
carrying persons up and down in them for a certain time.”

Sir Saunders hereupon got forty or fifty sedans made, and sent them about town, but differences soon arose between the chairmen and the coachmen. Pamphlets were written,[522] ballads were sung on the occasion, and the public sided with one or the other, according to individual taste. A ballad in favour of the sedan said:--

“I love sedans, cause they do plod
And amble everywhere,
Which prancers are with leather shod,
And neere disturb the care.
Heigh downe, dery, dery, downe,
With the hackney coaches downe,
Their jumpings make
The pavement shake,
Their noyse doth mad the towne.”[523]

De Foe, in 1702, says, “We are carried to these places [coffee-houses] in chairs, which are here very cheap--a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour--and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice.” The chairmen of the aristocracy wore gaudy liveries and plumed hats, and their chairs were richly gilt and painted, and provided with velvet cushions. They used to be kept in the halls of their large mansions. As for the chairmen, we may infer from Gay’s “Trivia” that they were an insolent set of fellows:--

“Let not the chairman with assuming stride
Press near the wall and rudely thrust thy side,
The laws have set him bounds; his servile feet
Should ne’er encroach where posts defend the street.
Yet, who the footman’s arrogance can quell,
Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall Mall,
When in long rank a train of torches flame,
To light the midnight visits of the dame.”

The trumpet-like instruments in which these torches were extinguished, when arrived at their place of destination, are still seen attached to the area railings of most of the houses in Grosvenor and St James’ Squares, and various other parts of the town fashionably inhabited at that period.

Another creature of this class, now as completely extinct as the Plesiosaurus and the Megatherion, or any other monster of the pre-Adamite world, was the RUNNING FOOTMAN. We cannot say that there is not a “sign” of him left, for there is one in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, representing a man in gaudy attire, running, with a long cane in his hand--under it, “I AM THE ONLY RUNNING FOOTMAN.” This was a class of servants used by rich families in former days to run before the carriage, to clear the way, bear torches at night, pay turnpikes, and serving also in a great measure for pomp. Generally their livery was very rich, being somewhat of the Jockey dress, with a silk sash round the waist; sometimes, instead of breeches, they wore a sort of silk petticoat with a deep gold fringe. They carried long sticks with silver heads, which have now descended to their successors the footmen. The Duke of Queensberry was one of the last noblemen who kept running footmen. A good story is told of him in connexion with one of these servants. Whenever his grace wanted to engage one it was his custom to make him put on his livery and run up and down Piccadilly, whilst he, from his balcony, watched their paces; and so it happened on a time, that after one of those fellows had gone through all his evolutions and presented himself under the balcony, the Duke said: “That will do; you will suit me very well.” “And so your livery does me,” was the answer, and off the fellow went running like a deer and was never heard of afterwards. Another feat on record, somewhat more to the credit of the fraternity, was that one of them ran for a wager to Windsor against the Duke of Marlborough in a phaeton with four horses, and lost only by a short distance; but it cost the poor fellow his life, for he died very soon after. Most of these running footmen were Irish, hence Decker[524] says--“The Devil’s footeman was very nimble of his heeles, for no wild Irishman could outrunne him,” and Brathwaite remarks:--

“For see those thin-breech’d Irish lackies run.”[525]

St Patrick’s day was generally given to them as a holiday, which they invariably celebrated by purging themselves. In various country places the sign of the Running Footman has been corrupted into the RUNNING MAN.

Another “domestic” sign is the TRUSTY SERVANT at Minstead, Hants:--

“A trusty servant’s portrait would you see,
This emblematic figure well survey;
The porker’s snout not nice in diet shows,
The padlock shut, no secret he’ll disclose.
Patient the ass his master’s rage will bear,
Swiftness in errand the stag’s feet declare.
Loaden his left hand apt to labour saith,
The vest his neatness: open hand his faith.
Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm,
Himself and master he’ll protect from harm.”

The origin of this sign is a picture on the wall of one of the rooms, near the kitchen of Winchester College, where it is accompanied by the above verses in English and Latin.

Further, there is the STAVE-PORTER, Dockhead, London; the TICKET-PORTER, near London Bridge; the PORTER’S LODGE, Leicester; and the PORTER AND GENTLEMAN in three different places in London.

The HUNTSMAN is common in the hunting districts. To the hunt, also, we must refer such signs as--HARK TO BOUNTY, Staidburn, Clitheroe; HARK UP TO NUDGER, Dobcross, Manchester; HARK THE LASHER, near Castleton, Derby; HARK UP TO GLORY, Rochdale, and the CHASE INN in Leamington. In Cambridge there are two signs of the BIRDBOLT, an implement formerly used to shoot birds; consequently it must be a sign of some antiquity. In Nightingale Lane, East Smithfield, there is an EXPERIENCED FOWLER, who, no doubt, well knows the value of “a bird in the hand,” and at Oldham and Rochdale there is an equally satirical sign, that of the TRAP. The ANGLER is common enough in the neighbourhood of trout streams and other fishing resorts frequented by the disciples of Isaak Walton.

Many professions are only represented by one or two objects relating to them. The TALLOW CHANDLER, very common among the trades tokens, was always represented by a man dipping candles. To that trade also seems to belong the BOWLS AND CANDLE POLES, which occurs in the following rambling advertisement:--

“STOLEN,
_Lost_, or _Mislaid_,

A Promissory Note for one hundred and twenty Pounds, signed by John
Smallwood and indorsed by John Addams. Whoever will bring the same
note to the House known by the Bowls and Candlepoles in Duke Street,
in the Park, Southwark, shall receive five Guineas Reward; and if
offered to be paid away or any Writ to be taken out for payment of the
said Note, pray stop it and the party, and you shall have the same
Reward.

⁂ THE HOUSE is in Tenements, and some part thereof being a
Pawnbroker’s, was broke open and several things of value missing.
Note, This mischief arrises from a country Butcher, who did strike and
kick an old Gentleman at London Bridge, about three quarters of a year
ago. And all persons who did see the said Assault and will speak the
truth, (for Christ’s sake,) are desired to send their Names and Place
of Abode to the Bowls and Candlepoles and the favour shall be
thankfully acknowledged.”[526]

The SCALES is a common sign referring to various trades: one of the engraved bill-heads in the Bagford Collection gives the HAND AND SCALES--viz., a hand holding a pair of scales; this antiquated mode of representing a hand issuing from the clouds to perform some action, has given name to a great many signs--all combinations of the hand with some other object. The SPINNING WHEEL was formerly much more common than now; there is still a public-house with this sign at Hamsterley near Darlington. The WOOLSACK was originally a wool-merchant’s sign; it is often accompanied by the Black Boy. Machyn mentions this sign in 1555: “The xx day of July was cared to the Toure in the morning erlee iiij men; on was the goodman of the Volsake with-owt Algatt.” It seems to have been one of the leading taverns in Ben Jonson’s time, who often alludes to it in his plays; like the Dagger, it was famous for its pies.

“And see how the factors and prentices play there
False with their masters, and geld many a full pack,
To spend it in pies at the Dagger and the _Woolpack_.”

_The Devil is an Ass_, act i., sc. 1.

“Her Grace would have you eat no more _Woolsack_ pies nor Dagger
furmety.”--_Alchymist_, act v., sc. 2.

In the year 1682, the Woolsack Tavern in Newgate Market attracted great attention, owing to a wonderful phenomenon there exhibited, and set forth in the following handbill from the Sloane Collection, No. 958:--

“At the sign of the Woolpack in _Newgate Street_, is to be seen a
strange and wonderful thing, which is, an elm-board, being touch’d
with a hot iron, doth express itself, as if it was a man dying, with
grones and trembling, to the great admiration of all the hearers. It
has been presented before the King and his nobles, and hath given them
great satisfaction. _Vivat Rex._”

Such a curiosity could not fail to prove an object of immense attraction with our wonder-loving ancestors, particularly after the house had been visited by his Majesty, and thus acquired additional respectability. Very soon, however, numerous London taverns claimed public attention for similar wonders. It was as if the wood used in their construction had been cut from the myrtle-tree which conversed with Æneas near the river Hebrus, (“Æneid,” lib. iii. 19,) or from the “fiera selvaggia” Dante saw in the second circle of Hades, where he

“sentia da ogni parte tragger guai
E non vedea persona che’l facesse.”[527]

_Inferno_, canto xiii.

The mantel-piece at the BOWMAN TAVERN, Drury Lane, expressed its aversion of a red hot poker as unequivocally as the elm-board at the Woolsack, and the dresser at the Queen’s Arms in St Martin’s Lane was evidently a “chip of the same block.” Indeed, boards were cauterised and groaned all over London.

The BLOCK was a hatter’s sign, or as that trade was sometimes called, _Bever-cutter_, the block being the mould on which the hat is formed. Beatrix, in “Much Ado about Nothing,” says: “He wears his faith, but as the fashion of his hat it ever changes with the next block.” And Decker, in the “Gull’s Hornbook:” “John, in Paul’s Churchyard, shall fit his head for an excellent block.” The word was also often used as a synonym for “hat.”

The POSTBOY was the sign of a fishmonger’s shop in Sherborne Lane, where in 1759 Green-native Colchester oysters were sold at 3s. 3d. a barrel, and exceeding fine “Pyfleet oysters” at 4s. 3d. a barrel. The UP AND DOWN POST used to be, in the good old coaching times, a thriving inn on the now deserted highway between Birmingham and Coventry. The picture represented an erect and a prostrate pillar, which after all was only a rebus or a misunderstanding. In former times, before the mail-coaches were instituted, the equestrian letter-carriers of the _up and down mail_ used to meet at this house, exchange their bags and each return whence they came, thus effecting a considerable saving of time and trouble. Even washerwomen have been exalted to the signboard, for in Norwich there was the sign of the THREE WASHERWOMEN in 1750. And one of the implements of their trade, the GOLDEN MAID, (better known as “the Dolly,”) may still be seen at a turner’s shop in Dudley.

A few others remain, which cannot, strictly speaking, be called professions, yet are they--or at least they were--means of making a living, as the THREE MORRIS-DANCERS, once a very common sign, but now, like the custom that gave rise to it, almost extinct. There is one still left, however, at Scarisbrook, Lancashire, and in a few villages a remnant of the dance is also kept up on certain occasions. They were called Morris, or Moors, from the Spanish _Morisco_. Black faces were required for the dance:--

“Nam faciem plerumque inficiunt fuligine et peregrinum vestium cultum
assumunt, qui ludicris talibus indulgent ut Mauriesse videantur, aut e
longius remota patria credantur advolasse atque insolens recreationis
genus advenisse.”[528]

There is a painted glass window at Betley, in Staffordshire, on which the characters performing the dance in the early part of the sixteenth century are represented; to these afterwards others were added. The earliest performers appear to have been called Robin Hood and Little John, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the May queen, the fool, the piper, and the plain rank and file of dancers variously dressed. To these afterwards were added a dragon, a hobby-horse, and other quaint types. Among the characters represented on the painted window are also a franklein, a churl, or peasant, and a nobleman. The hobby-horseman occupies the middle of the window, and is said to represent a Moorish king: he has two swords thrust into his cheeks, which seem to represent a feat of dexterity performed by Indian and Egyptian jugglers of throwing a somersault with two swords balanced on each side of the cheek. The horse (merely a frame covered with long trappings, and only showing the neck and limbs of a horse, in which the man capered about) held a ladle in his mouth for collecting money.

The fool was one of the features of the pageant, and on him rested a great deal of the duties to amuse the public, particularly when the hobby-horse was not present; hence Ben Jonson:--

“But see the Hobby-Horse is forgot,
Fool, it must be your lot
To supply your wont with faces
And some other buffoon graces.
You know how.”

On May-day, which in those merry days was the merriest of all the year, they came out in full force, and, along with the milkmaids dancing with piles of plate on their heads, contributed not a little to give the streets and thoroughfares a merry aspect. The May-dance of the sweeps is perhaps the “last stage of decomposition” of this amusement of our forefathers; their sooty complexions, their clowns, their Lord and Lady and Jack in the Green, may be all that remain of the morris-dance, the fool, the Lord and Lady, the hobby-horse, and the rest.

In treating of games, we may advert to a rendering of the FLYING HORSE, overlooked on a former occasion. Besides its mythological and heraldic origin, there was another reason which sometimes prompted the choice of this sign. It was the name of a popular amusement, which consisted in a swing, the seat of which formed a wooden horse. This the flying equestrian mounted, and as he was swinging to and fro he had to take with a sword the ring off a quintain. If he succeeded, his adroitness was no doubt rewarded either with a number of swings gratis, or a _quotum_ of beer. Such a Flying Horse served for a sign to an ale-house of that denomination in Moorfields, in the time of Queen Anne. Swings, round-abouts, and such-like amusements, were in those days the usual appendages of suburban ale-houses, and to a certain extent have even come down to our time.

Oil and colour-shops generally, and some public-houses--mostly near theatres--adopt the sign of the HARLEQUIN. One of the most noted amongst the latter was kept in the beginning of this century in Drury Lane, by the eccentric Richardson, the showman, or, rather, the “Prince of Showmen,” as he called himself. In this tavern he saved some money, which enabled him to fit up a travelling theatre, by which he realised so much, that when he died in 1836, he left £20,000. It used to be one of his boasts that he had brought out Edmund Kean, and several other eminent actors. He desired in his will to be buried at Marlow, in Bucks, (where he was born in the workhouse,) in the same grave with the “Spotted Boy,” a natural phenomenon which had been one of his luckiest hits, and brought him a considerable amount of money.

It is curious to observe how the same simple thing has made mankind laugh for nearly thirty centuries, and that is a black face. In our age a large proportion of the public seem to find inexhaustible pleasure in pseudo-negroes, their songs and antics. The Greeks on their stage had a young satyr, dressed in goat or tiger-skin, with a short stick in his hand, _a white hat on his head, his hair cut short, and a brown mask_. This satyr performed some antics, and was the prototype of the harlequin. The Romans adopted a somewhat similar character under the name of _planipes_, because he did not wear the tragic cothurna; he also wore a variegated dress, for Apuleius, in his “Apology,” speaks of the “mimus centunculus.” From the Romans it descended to the Italians, and as early as the sixteenth century we find the whole troop complete, playing in Spain, namely, Harlequin, Pantaloon, Pagliacico, the Doctor, &c. At a masked ball at the court of Charles IX., in 1572, the king represented Brighella; the Cardinal of Lorraine, Pantaloon; Catherine de Medici, Columbine; and the Duke of Anjou, (afterwards Henry III.,) Harlequin. At that time, or shortly after, the troop of the Gelosi played the Italian pieces in Paris, in which these characters were introduced.

For the sign of the GREEN MAN there is a twofold explanation. 1^{o}. That it represents the green, wild, or wood men of the shows and pageants, such as described by Machyn in his Diary on Lord Mayor’s Day, October 29, 1553:--“Then cam ij grett wodyn with ij grett clubes all in grene and with skwybes [squibs] bornyng . . . . with gret berds and ryd here and ij targets a-pon their bake.” This green in which they were dressed consisted of green leaves. When Queen Elizabeth was at Kenilworth Castle, in 1575, “on the x of Julee met her in the Forest as she came from hunting one clad like a savage man all in ivie,”[529] who made a very neat speech to the queen, in which he was kindly assisted by the echo. Besides wielding sticks with crackers in pageants, these green men sometimes fought with each other, attacked castles and dragons, and were altogether a very favourite popular character with the public. One of their duties seems to have been to clear the way for processions. In one of the Harleian MSS., entitled “The maner of the showe, that is, if God spare life and health, shall be seen by all the behoulders upon St Georges Day next, being the 23 of Aprill, 1610,” we see amongst the requirements:--

“It. ij men in greene leaves set with work upon their other habet with
black heare & black beards very owgly to behould, and garlands upon
their heads with great clubs in their hands with fireworks to scatter
abroad to maintaine way for the rest of the show.”[530]

This interpretation is also given as the origin of the Green Man by Bagford:--

“They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou’ at thes day we in ye signe
call them Green Men, couered with grene bones: and are used for singes
by stillers of strong watters and if I mistake not are y^{e}
sopourters of y^{e} king of Deanmarks armes at thes day; and I am abpt
to beleve that y^{e} Daynes learned us hear in England the use of
those tosticatein lickers [intoxicating] as well as y^{e} breweing of
Aele and a fit emblem for those that use that intosticating licker
which berefts them of their sennes.”[531]

The WILD MAN, therefore, on a sign at Quarry Hill, Ladybridge, Leeds, is the same as the Green Man.

2^{o}. The second version of this sign is, that it is intended for a forester, and in that garb the Green Man is now invariably represented; even as far back as the seventeenth century, it is evident from the trades tokens that the Green Man was generally a forester, and, in many cases, Robin Hood himself, which may be inferred from the small figure frequently introduced beside him, and meant for Little John. The ballads always described Robin and his merry men as dressed in green, “Lincoln green.” When Robin meets the page who brings him presents from Queen Katherine:--

“Robin took his mantle from his backe,
It was of the _Lincoln greene_
And sent that by this lovely page
For a present unto the queene.”[532]

And in the same ballad, when he is going to court, “he clothed his men in _Lincolne greene_,” &c. Drayton, in his “Polyolbion,” says:--

“An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
_All clad in Lincoln green_ which caps of red and blue.”

Sometimes it is called Kendal green:--

“All the woods
Are full of outlaws, that in _Kendal green_
Follow the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon.”

Richard, Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, (_i.e._, Robin Hood)

It was, in fact, the ordinary dress of foresters and woodmen, and is so still in Germany.

“All in a woodman’s jacket he was clad,
Of _Lincoln Green_, belayed with silver lace.”

SPENSER’S _Faery Queene_.

One of the most noted Green Man taverns was that on Stroud Green, Islington, formerly the residence of Sir Th. Stapleton, of Gray’s Court, Bart., whose initials, with those of his wife, and the date 1609, were to be seen on the façade. It was one of the suburban retreats frequented by the fashion in the days of Charles I., when it had been converted into a tavern. A century ago the sign bore the following inscription:--

“Ye are wellcome all
To Stapleton Hall.”

A club used to meet annually at this place, styling themselves the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation of Stroud Green.[533] At Dulwich, in the reign of George II., there was another Green Man, a place of amusement for the Londoners during the summer season; it is enumerated, with other similar resorts, in the following stanza:--

“That Vauxhall and Ruckholt and Ranelagh too,
And Hoxton and Sadlers both Old and New,
My Lord Cobham’s Head and the Dulwich Green Man
May make as much pastime as ever they can.[534]
Derry Down,” &c.

_Musick in Good Time, a new Ballad_, 1745.

The MERRY ANDREW was a card-maker’s sign; in the Banks Collection there is a shopbill of the time of Queen Anne, of Edward Hall, card-maker to her Majesty at the Merry Andrew, in Piccadilly. The playing-cards at that time used to have certain heads on the wrapper, according to which they were denominated. Merry Andrew was one of them. Other sorts had the Great Mogul, Henry VII., Henry VIII., and the Duke of Savoy, (Prince Eugene;) second-class cards had the Queen of Hungary, the Spaniard, the beau, and the Merry Andrew. The original Merry Andrew is said to have been a certain Doctor Andrew Borde, born at Pevensey in the fifteenth century, and educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, but who obtained his doctor’s degree at Montpellier. His writings abound with witticisms, which are reported also to have pervaded his speech. He is said to have frequented fairs, markets, and other “busy haunts of men,” haranguing the people in order to increase his practice in physic. He had many followers and imitators, whence it came that those who affected the same language and gestures were called Merry Andrews. Notwithstanding all this mirth and animal spirits, he professed himself a Carthusian, lived in celibacy, drank water three days in the week, wore a hair shirt, and nightly hung his shroud at the foot of his bed. He is said to have been physician to King Henry VIII., and member of the College of Physicians in London. He died a prisoner in the Fleet in 1549. More celebrated than his works on physic are his “Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham,” and the “Merry History of the Miller of Abingdon.”

Lower down still in the sphere of callings and professions the signs will take us. At Oswald Wistle, Accrington, we meet with the TINKER’S BUDGET. The budget is the tinker’s bag of instruments; we see the word thus used in Randle Holme:[535]--“A Tinker with his _budget_ on his back, having always in his mouth this merry cry:--‘Have you any work for a Tinker?’” And Shakespeare, in the “Winter’s Tale:”

“If tinkers may have leave to live
And bear the sowskin _budget_.”

This inn, then, is certainly very modest in its pretensions; but we shall descend lower still. Even “poor Tom’s flock of wild geese,” otherwise TOM OF BEDLAM, we have now to introduce. We find him at Balsall, Warwick, and no doubt it was formerly not an uncommon sign, since he was such a favourite in ballads; the MERRY TOM, at Kirkcumbeck, Cumberland, evidently refers to the same individual. Notwithstanding all the fantastic ballads that went under Tom’s name, he was but a sorry rogue. Randle Holme[536] says:--

“The Sow gelder and Tom of Bedlam are both wandering knaves alike, and
such as are seldom or never out of their way, having their home in any
place. The first is described as carrying a long staff, with a head
like a spear or a half pike, and a horn hung by his side from a broad
leather belt or girdle cross his shoulders. Tom of Bedlam is in the
same garb, with a long staff, and a Cow or Ox Horn by his side, but
his cloathing is more fantastic or ridiculous, for being a mad man he
is madly decked and dressed all over with Rubins, Feathers, cuttings
of cloth and what not; to make him seem a madman or one distracted,
when he is no other but a dissembling knave.”

“The Canting Academy,” 1674, gives them a similar attire and character:--

“Abram-men, otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely
and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their
hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down a long
stick, with ribands streaming and the like; yet for all their seeming
madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.”[537]

Aubrey says:--

“Before the Civil Warre, I remember Tom o’ Bedlams went about a
begging. They had been such as had been in Bedlam and there recovered
and come to some degree of soberness, and when they were licensed to
goe out they had on their left arme an armilla of tinne (printed)
about three inches breadth, which was sodered on.”[538]

This permission, if ever it was granted, was retracted after the Restoration, for in the year 1675 the _London Gazette_ contained in several numbers the following advertisement:--

“Whereas several Vagrant Persons do wander about the city of London
and countries, pretending themselves to be Lunaticks under cure in the
Hospitall of Bethlem, commonly called Bedlam, with brass plates upon
their arms and inscriptions thereon, These are to give notice that
there is no such liberty given to any Patients kept in the Hospital
for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put
upon any Lunatick during their being there or when discharged thence.
And that the same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and
begging and deceive the people to the dishonour of the Government of
that Hospital.”

Not only men but also women of a roving disposition, adopted poor Tom’s horn, and went wandering, begging, and pilfering under the name of BESS OF BEDLAM, which is still seen as a sign in Oak Street, Norwich. Bess was an old companion of poor Tom, for in the play of King Lear, Tom sings a snatch of a song with the words, “Come over the bourn, Bessy, to me,” and in the jollities of Plough Monday the fool and Bessy are two of the principal personages.[539]

A third class of beggars called _Mumpers_, is also found on the signboard under the name of the THREE MUMPERS.

Thus, after having gone through all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage, and from the sceptre to Tom’s staff with a fox-tail, we now come to the great leveller Death, who also was represented on the signboard. There were the THREE DEATH’S-HEADS in Wapping, of which house trades tokens are extant; probably it was an apothecary’s, though it was a ghastly sign for his customers. Undertakers were also strictly professional in their choice. In the eighteenth century there were the FOUR COFFINS over against Somerset House,[540] and another in Fleet Street, the sign of Stephen Roome,[541] whose son was the unfortunate author whom Pope has “gibbeted” in the Dunciad, as afflicted with a “funereal frown.” Savage, one of Pope’s literary _sicarii_, calls Roome “a perfect town-author,”[542] and has drawn his portrait in “An Author to be let, by Iscariot Hackney:”--

“Had it not been more laudable for Mr Roome, the son of an undertaker,
to have borne a link and a mourning staff, in the long procession of a
funeral--or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms according
to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the
_Jovial Crew or Merry Beggars_ into a wicked imitation of the Beggars’
Opera?”

Another undertaker, James Maddox, clerk and coffin-maker of St Olave’s, had for a sign the SUGAR-LOAF AND THREE COFFINS. The addition of the sugar-loaf has, of course, nothing to do with his profession, for when death calls, the sweets of life are past. It was simply the sign of a former tenant, suspended in front or fixed in the wall of the house. Although the undertakers of the present day do not display signs as of old, they advertise their calling quite as effectually. The men who in their handbills solicit us to try their “economic funerals,” or to test one of their “three guinea respectable interments,--one trial only asked,” are commercial with the rest of the age, although we might wish that they would force themselves a little less upon our attention. One undertaker recently hit upon what he deemed a brilliant method of advertising his cheap funerals. He selected some good names from the “Court Guide,” and sent out hundreds of telegrams announcing the low prices at which a “body” could be interred. Some reached their destination just as the lady or gentleman “body” was sitting down to dinner, others as the “parties” were dressing, or in the act of leaving home; but although the scheme failed, the name of the undertaker and his prices were firmly fixed in people’s memories, and he received, instead of orders, numerous cautions not to telegraph in that way again.

An undertaker in Islington, some years ago, exhibited in his window some pleasing artistic efforts of his children, which must have greatly comforted the father. “Master A., aged 12 years,” had produced a grinning skeleton, garnished with worms and cross-bones; and “Miss B., aged 10,” had painted in colours a section of a vault, with coffin heads, skulls, and sexton’s tools, neatly arranged right and left. The drawings were framed and glazed, and parental pride had placed them in the best spot in the windows.

[444] Notes and Queries.

[445] Roxburghe Ballads, iii., fol. 253.

[446] Akerman’s Trades Tokens.

[447] “Richardsoniana,” London, 1776, p. 159.

[448] Preface to his “History of the World.”

[449] Archæologia, ii., p. 169. In an article in “Notes and Queries,” No. 150, a document is quoted by which George Gower was appointed “the Queen’s Sargeant Paynter,” and Nicolas Hilliard her miniature portrait painter. No portraits of the queen painted by Gower appear, however, to be known.

[450] Lettre à M. Bizotin. “I cannot bear to see the portraits of the king, of the queen, of the dauphin, and of the other princes and princesses used as signs for shops; they whose portraits ought to be reserved for the most celebrated galleries and the most famous collections only. Would not M. d’Argenson, and you as well, M. le Commissaire, have very serious reason to be annoyed if you were to see your portrait as a sign to a public-house or to a rag-shop? Why, then, are you not annoyed in seeing the king’s portrait in such places?” Mr Boursault’s flattery is much more evident than his logic.

[451] There is a print of it in _Gentleman’s Magazine_, June 1794.

[452] “Memoirs of J. Decastro, comedian,” London, 1824. See under “Go,” (as “a go of gin,” “a go of rum,”) in the “Slang Dictionary,” 3d edition: John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, London.

[453] _London Gazette_, Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, 1682.

[454] In Lydgate’s ballad of “London Lyckpenny,” _temp._ Henry VI.