Chapter XVI: Miscellaneous Signs (2)

Pepys was a frequent visitor at this house, and, in fact, all the pleasure-seekers of that mad reign patronised it; the profligate Duke of Buckingham, in particular, was a constant customer. Simon Wadloe, the landlord, had made his fortune at the Devil in St Dunstan’s, whereupon he went to live in the country, and spent his money in a couple of years. He then “choused” Nick Colbourn out of the Sun, and Nick, who had amassed a handsome competence in the house, was easily persuaded to retire, and left it “to live like a prince in the country,” says Pepys. During the reign of Charles II., the house appears to have had an excellent custom, and was from morning till night full of the best company. The Sun Tavern, in Clare Street, was one of the haunts of the witty Joe Miller, and is often given as the locality of his jokes:--

“Joe Miller, sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, Clare
Street, a fish woman and her maid passing by, the woman cried: ‘Buy my
soals, buy my maids!’ ‘Ah! you wicked old creature,’ cry’d honest Joe,
‘what, are you not content to sell your own soul, but you must sell
your maid’s too?’”

A stereotype joke of the publican connected with the Sun is the motto, “the best liquor [generally beer] under the Sun,” which, of course, must be believed, for _Solem quis dicere falsum audeat?_ Sometimes the sign is called the SUN IN SPLENDOUR, as at Nottinghill, the “splendour” having reference simply to the golden beams or rays usually drawn by the painter. There is still a carved stone sign of the Sun, now gilt, dating from the seventeenth century, walled in the front of a house in the Poultry.

The GOLDEN SUN was the sign of Ulrich Gering, in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, printer of the first Bible in France, in 1475. At the end of the volume the Bible thus addresses the reader:--

“Jam tribus undecimus lustris Francos Ludovicus
Rexerat; Ulricus, Martinus, itemque Michael
Orti Teutonia, hanc mihi composuere figuram
Parisii arte sua; me correctam vigilanter
Venalem in vico Jacobi _Sol Aureus_ offert.”[703]

Their successor, Berthold Rumbold, on removing the business to another house in the same street, opposite the Rue Fromentel, kept the same sign, and there it continued as late as 1689, having constantly been in the hands of booksellers. Not improbably the first printers, both in England and abroad, adopted the sign of the Sun, as an emblem of the new era opened to the world by the invention of printing, which, when they reflected on their discovery, they saw would, at no distant period, spread an intellectual light over the world, as brilliant and as vivifying as that of the radiant sun.[704]

The sign of the Sun occurs in endless combinations, often capricious, without any other reason than a whim, and an alliteration, as the SUN AND SAWYERS; the SUN AND SWORD; the SUN AND SPORTSMAN; or quartered with other signs, as the SUN AND ANCHOR; DIAL; FALCON; LAST; HORSESHOE, &c. All these, and innumerable others of the same sort, occur among the London public-house signs of the present day. The SUN AND HARE is a stone carved sign, walled up in the façade of a house in the High Street, Southwark. Were it not for the initials H. N. A., it might be taken for a rebus on the name Harrison; as it is, it may be a jocular corruption of the Sun and Hart, the badge of Richard II. (See p. 109.)

The RISING SUN is nearly as common as the sun in his meridian; perhaps on account of the favourable omen it presents for a man commencing business. In 1726 it was the sign of a noted tavern in Islington, where some merry doings went on occasionally:--

“ON TUESDAY NEXT, being Shrove Tuesday, will be a fine hog barbygu’d
whole at the house of Peter Brett, at the _Rising Sun_, in Islington
Road, with other diversions. It is the house where the ox was roasted
whole at Christmas last.”--_Mist’s Journal_, February 9, 1726.

To barbecue a hog, was a West Indian term for roasting a whole pig, stuffed with spice, and basted with Madeira wine.

The RISING SUN AND SEVEN STARS was the very appropriate sign, at which was printed a work on “Astrological Optics;” but better still, it was printed for R. _Moon_, whose shop was “in Paul’s Churchyarde, in the New Building, between the two North Doors. 1655.” An old jest-book says that an Irishman, seeing the sign of the Rising Sun was kept by A(nthony) Moon, accused the said Moon of having made a bull, for saying that the Sun was kept by the Moon.

One of the learned questions propounded by Hudibras to that cunning man, Sidrophel, the Rosicrucian, was:--

“Tell me but what’s the natural cause
Why on a sign no painter draws
The _full moon_ ever, but the _half_.”--_Hudibras_, part iii., c. 3.

This might be true in Butler’s time, but is no longer so; at Leicester, for instance, there are two signs of the FULL MOON, and it occurs in many other places. The Crescent, or HALF-MOON, was the emblem of the temporal power, as the Sun was the distinction of the spiritual.

Ben Jonson once desiring a glass of sack, went to the Half-Moon Tavern, in Aldersgate Street, but found it closed, so he adjourned to the Sun Tavern, in Long Lane, and wrote this epigram:--

“Since the Half Moon is so unkind,
To make me go about,
The Sun my money now shall have,
And the Moon shall go without.”

The Half-Moon, Upper Holloway, was famous in the last century for excellent cheesecakes, which were hawked about the streets of London, by a man on horseback, and formed one of the London cries. This circumstance is noticed in a poem in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1743, entitled “A Journey to Nottingham.” In April 1747, the following advertisement appeared in the same magazine:--

“HALF-MOON TAVERN, Cheapside, April 13. His Royal Highness the _Duke
of Cumberland_ having restored peace to Britain, by the ever memorable
Battle of Culloden, fought on the 16th of April 1745, the _choice
spirits_ have agreed to celebrate that day annually by A GRAND JUBILEE
in the MOON, of which the Stars are hereby acquainted and summoned to
shine with their brightest Lustre by 6 o’clock on Thursday next in the
Evening.”

The CRESCENT AND ANCHOR is a sign at Norton-in-Hales, near Market Drayton; the HALF-MOON AND SEVEN STARS at Aston Clinton, near Tring; and the SUN, MOON, AND SEVEN STARS at Blisworth, in Northampton. These SEVEN STARS have always been great favourites; they seem to be the same pleiad which is used as a Masonic emblem--a circle of six stars, with one in the centre; but to tell to ears profane, what this emblem means, would be disclosing the sacred arcana. The SEVEN STARS was the sign of Richard Moone, before he was so ambitious as to place the whole firmament on his sign: in 1653 he printed--

“The first addresses to his Excellence the Lord General, &c., by John
Spittlehouse, a late Member of the Army, and a servant to the Saints
of the Most High God, &c. London, printed by J. C., for himself and
Richard Moon, at the Seven Stars, in Paul’s Churchyard, near the great
North Door. 1653.”

As a change upon the Seven Stars, a publican at Counterslip, Bristol, has put up the FOURTEEN STARS.

We have seen (p. 492) that the sign of the STAR was “calculated for every lewd purpose;” a great change certainly from mediæval times, when a star was the emblem of the Holy Virgin, who was thus styled _Maris Stella_ (star of the sea)--the signification of the name Miriam in Hebrew--or _Stella Jacobi_, (star of Jacob,) _Stella Matutina_, (morning star,) _Stella non erratica_, (fixed star, unerring star,) &c.; a star being always painted either on her right shoulder, or on her veil, as may be readily observed in the works of the early Italian masters in our National Gallery. A star of sixteen rays is the crest of the Innholders’ Company. Oliver Cromwell used to meet some of his party at the Star in Coleman Street, as was deposed by one of the witnesses in the trial of Hugh Peters:--

“_Gunter._ My Lord, I was servant at the Star in Coleman Street, with
one Hildesley. That house was a house where Oliver Cromwell and
several of that party did use to meet in consultation.”

John Bunyan died in 1682 at the Star, on Snowhill, in the house of his friend, Mr Strudwick, a grocer.

The POLE STAR is now a not uncommon sign. To make this device more intelligible, tavern-keepers ought to attach to it the motto it bore in the middle ages, when it was a symbol of the Church: “_qui me non aspicit errat_.” (He who does not look at me goes astray.) The STAR AND CROWN was the sign of a haberdasher in Princes Street, Coventry Street, 1785, who, among other things, sold “dress and undress hoops.”

The signs of the zodiac appear occasionally to have been adopted by conjurors and astrologers. Ned Ward describes them as figuring, in his time, on the door of “a star-peeper,” in Prescot Street.[705]

The TWO TWINS, or NAKED BOYS, was the sign of a quack in Moorfields, “near the steps going out of the Lower Field into the Middle Field. There is a door above the steps, and another below the steps, with the Twins, and the name Langham on both doors;--keep the bill to prevent mistaking the house or being sent to a wrong place.”[706] To such lengthy explanations our ancestors were compelled to resort in the absence of numbers on their houses. Either this quack had adopted the Two Twins on account of his obstetrical pretensions, or he was an astrologer as well as a quack, for Moorfields was the head-quarters of

“Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers,
Diviners, and interpreters of dreams.”

In the last case he might have chosen it as being the ascendant of the city of London, which “stands in a benign and temperate climate, in the latitude of 52° and longitude of 19° 15´,--having (as artists reckon) the _celestial twins_, the house of Mercury, patron of merchandise and ingenious arts, for her ascendant.”[707]

The RAINBOW, in Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane, is the oldest coffee-house in London:--

“I find it recorded that one James Farr, a barber, who kept the
coffee-house, which is now the Rainbow, by the Inner Temple gate, (one
of the first in England,) was, in the year 1657, presented by the
inquest of St Dunstan’s in the West, for making and selling a sort of
liquor called Coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice to the
neighboorhood, &c., and who would have thought London would ever have
had near three thousand such nuisances, and that coffee would have
been (as now) so much drank by the best of quality and
physicians.”[708]

The presentation here alluded to is still preserved among the records of St Sepulchre’s Church. It says:--

“We present James Farr, Barber, for making and selling a drink called
coffee, whereby, in making the same, he annoyeth his neighboors by
evill smells, and for keeping of fire the most part night and day,
whereby his chimney and chamber has been set on fire, to the great
danger and affreightment of his neighboors.”

This danger of fire was so much the greater, as a bookseller, Samuel Speedal, had his shop in the same house. In 1682, the Phœnix Fire Office, one of the first in this country, was established at this place.

The THUNDER STORM is the sign of a public-house at Framwellgate Moor, Durham; and the HAILSTONE, at Knowle, Staffordshire; both these houses may have taken their names from a severe storm, which visited the neighbourhood at or about the time of their opening, just as the HAYLIFT, at Wansforth, Northampton, is said to owe its origin to the fact of a man floating a long way down the river on a haycock, during an inundation, and landing near that place.

As for the WILD SEA, the sign of John Horton, over against Parson’s Brewhouse, Croydon,[709] in 1718, no more plausible explanation occurs to us than that John Horton might have been a sailor in his younger days.

The HOLE-IN-THE-WALL is believed to have originated from the hole made in the wall of the debtors’ or other prison, through which the poor prisoners received the money, broken meat, or other donations of the charitably inclined. The old sign of the Hole-in-the-Wall (see our illustrations) shows such an opening in a square piece of brickwork. Generally, it is believed to refer to some snug corner, perhaps near the town walls; but at the old public-house in Chancery Lane the legend is as we have given it. Hard by, in Cursitor Street, prisoners for debt found a temporary lodging up to a very recent date. Trades tokens are extant of this house, which, about 1820, was kept by Jack Randall, _alias_ Nonpareil, a famous member of the P.R.; on one occasion some verses were made containing the following lines:--

“Then blame me not, swells, kids, or lads of the fancy,
For opening a lush crib in _Chancery_ Lane,
An appropriate spot ’tis, you doubtless all can see,
Since _heads_ I’ve oft placed there, and let out again.”

The poet, Thomas Moore, in the fast days when George IV. was king, and when pugilism and gin drinking were fashionable accomplishments, used to visit Mr Randall’s parlour. It was here that he picked up his materials for those rhyming satires on the politics and general topics of his time:--“Tom Crib’s Memorials to Congress, by one of the Fancy;” “Randall’s Diary of Proceedings at the House of Call for Genius;” “A Few Selections from Jack Randall’s Scrap Book, with Poems on the late Fight for the Championship.”

At the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos Street, Claude Duval the highwayman was taken prisoner; whilst the Hole-in-the-Wall in Baldwin’s Gardens was the citadel in which Tom Brown used to intrench himself from duns and bailiffs, with Henry Purcell the musician, as his companion in revelry and merriment. Tom Brown’s introductory verses, prefixed to Playford’s “Musical Companion,” 1698, are dated “from Mr Stewart’s at the Hole-in-the-Wall, in Baldwin’s Gardens.” Another Hole-in-the-Wall still exists in Kirby Street, Hatton Garden. It is a curious fact that the refreshment-room, or liquor-bar, attached to the House of Representatives at Washington, is known to most thirsty American politicians as _The Hole-in-the-Wall_.

Anciently, instead of being a painted board, the object of the sign was carved and hung within a hoop, hence (as we had occasion to remark on a former page) nearly all the ancient signs are called the “---- ON THE HOOP.” In the Clause Roll, 43 Edward III., we find the GEORGE ON THE HOOP; 26 Henry VI., the HART ON THE HOOP; 30 Henry VI., the SWAN, the COCK, and the HEN ON THE HOOP. Besides these we find mentioned the CROWN ON THE HOOP, the BUNCH OF GRAPES ON THE HOOP, the MITRE ON THE HOOP, the ANGEL ON THE HOOP, the FALCON ON THE HOOP, &c. In 1795, two of these signs were still extant, for a periodical of the time says:--“A sign of this nature is still preserved in Newport Street, and is a carved representation of a Bunch of Grapes within a Hoop. The COCK ON THE HOOP may be seen also in Holborn, painted on a board, to which, perhaps, it was transferred on the removal of the sign-posts.”[710] These hoops seem to have originated in the highly ornamented bush or crown, which latterly was made of hoops, covered with evergreens. In France, the HOOP (_le Cerceau_) was used as a sign. Jacques Androuet, a celebrated architect, and author of a work entitled “Les plus excellents Batiments de France,” lived at the sign of the Hoop, whence he adopted the surnames of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. In 1570 he published a book on metal-work, containing several designs for ornamental iron frames and posts to suspend signboards from. That names in this country also were occasionally derived from signboards, has been stated in our introduction. Of this practice, Sir Peter Lely, the portrait painter, was an illustrious example. He belonged to a Dutch family named Van der Vaas. His grandfather was a perfumer, and lived at the sign of the Lily, (perhaps a _vase_ of lilies, with a pun on his name.) When his son entered the English army he discarded his Dutch name, and from the paternal sign, adopted the more euphonious one of Lilly or Lely; and this name he and his children afterwards retained. The famous Rothschild family is another case in point. From the RED SHIELD (the _roth schild_) above the door of an honest old Hebrew, in the Juden-gasse, (or Jews’ Alley,) at Frankfort, has been derived the name of the richest family in the world.

The HOOP AND BUNCH OF GRAPES was the sign of a public-house, in St Albans Street, (now part of Waterloo Place,) kept at the beginning of the present century, by the famous Matthew Skeggs, who obtained his renown from playing, in the character of Signor Bumbasto, a concerto on a broomstick, at the Haymarket Theatre, adjoining. His portrait was painted by King, a friend of Hogarth, engraved by Houston, and published by Skeggs himself. The HOOP AND GRIFFIN was a coffee-house in Leadenhall Street, _circa_ 1700;[711] and the HOOP AND TOY is a public-house in Thurloe Place, Brompton. Here the original meaning of the hoop seems entirely lost, as its combination with the toy seems to allude to the hoop trundled by children.

The TOY at Hampton used to be a favourite resort with the Londoners till 1857, when it was pulled down to make room for private houses. Trades tokens of this house of the seventeenth century are extant. “In the survey of 1653 (in the Augmentation office) mention is made of a piece of pasture ground near the river, called the _Toying_ place, the site, probably, of a well-known inn near the bridge now called the Toy.”[712]

Cardmakers usually took a card for their sign, as the QUEEN OF HEARTS AND KING’S ARMS, which was the sign of a cardmaker in Jermyn Street in 1803.[713] One of the Bagford Bills has: “At the OLD KNAVE OF CLUBS at the Bridgefoot, in Southwark, liveth Edward Butling, who maketh and selleth all sorts of hangings for rooms,” &c.[714] Possibly he sold also playing-cards. These knaves, however, seem at one time to have been a badge, for at the creation of seventeen knights of the Bath by Richard III., the Duke of Buckingham was “richely appareled, and his horse trapped in blue velvet embroudered with the _knaves of cartes_ burnyng of golde, which trapper was borne by foteman from the grounde.”[715] The QUEEN OF TRUMPS is a public-house sign at West Walton, near Wisbeach.

The HEART AND TRUMPET is a somewhat curious sign at Pentre-wern near Oswestry, perhaps a corruption of Hearts and Trumps. Other games have produced the sign of the GOLDEN QUOIT, in Whitehaven, and the CORNER PIN, which is so common that it figures in a Seven Dials ballad, a parody on the Low-back Car:--

“When first I saw Miss Bailey,
’Twas on a Saturday,
At the _Corner Pin_ she was drinking gin,
And smoking a yard of clay,” &c.

All bowlers know that the corner pins are the most difficult to strike, and that from their fall with the rest depends whether the throw counts double or not.

Formerly the merriest day of the year in “Merry England” was certainly the first of May, but of its many festivities scarcely a trace is left except the dance of the sweeps and the sign of the MAYPOLE. Stubbe, with puritanical horror, thus describes the Maypole:--

“They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen, every one having a sweet
nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen
draw home this Maie pole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is
couered all ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with
stringes, from the toppe to the bottome, and sometyme painted with
variable colours with two or three hundred men, women, and children
following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up with
handkerchiefs and flagges streaming on the toppe they strawe the
ground aboute, binde green boughes aboute it, sett up sommer houses,
Bowers, and Arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and
feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the Heathen people did at the
dedication of their Idolles, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or
rather the thing itself.”[716]

The same author also reports that it was customary for lads and lasses to go the night before May-day to the hills and woodlands to gather branches and flowers to deck the houses with on that day, and that they used to “spende all the night in pastymes” to the great detriment of female virtue; Featherstone, another sulky puritan, scandalised the fair sex by the assertion that “of tenne maydens which went to fetch May, nine of them came home with childe.”[717] The consequence of all this grumbling was that the Maypole was abolished in the godly times of the Commonwealth, and as a matter of course, revived at the Restoration--but its prestige was gone. At present it is only commemorated by hundreds of signboards. There is one on the outskirts of Hainault Forest, immortalised in “Barnaby Rudge,” which has all the regulations of the house laid down in rhyme; part of these have been quoted on p. 449. There is on the stable door:--

“Whosoever smokes tobacco here
Shall forfeit sixpence to spend in beer.
Your pipes lay by, when you come here,
Or fire to me may prove severe.”

An old, and not uncommon sign, is the WHEEL OF FORTUNE, which may be seen at Alpington, Norwich, and in other places. This wheel is sometimes represented with four kings, one on each quadrant. In the middle ages it was a very common symbol, as well in England as on the continent, being frequently painted in churches; there is one still to be seen among the half obliterated frescoes of Catfield church in Norfolk. Other instances occur in the church of St Etienne, at Beauvais; in St Martin, at Basle; in San Zeno, at Verona; and in the beautiful pavement of the Duomo, at Sienna. Not only in those countries, but all over Europe, this device occurs as a sign. Peacham thus accounts for the wheel being chosen as the emblem of Fortune:--

“For like ourselves, the spoke that was on high
Is to the bottom in a moment cast,
As fast the lowest riseth by and by,
All human things thus find a change at last.”

_Peacham’s Minerva Brittana_, p. 76.

The MONSTER, at one period an inn of some resort in Willow Walk, Chelsea, now a starting-point for the Pimlico omnibuses, is perhaps a corruption of the Monastery. Robert de Heyle in 1368 leased the whole of the manor of Chelsea to the abbot and convent of Westminster for the term of his own life, for which they were to allow him a certain house within the convent for his residence, to pay him the sum of £20 per annum, to provide him every day two white loaves, two flagons of convent ale, and once a year a robe of esquire’s silk. At this period, or shortly after, the sign of the Monastery may have been set up, to be handed down from generation to generation, until the meaning and proper pronunciation were forgotten, and it became “the Monster.” In still older times, viz., during the Norman rule, Chelsea appears to have been one of the manors of Westminster, so that the connexion between the village of Chelsea and the monastery of Westminster had been of very old standing. This tavern, we believe, is the only one with such a sign. Ned Ward mentions a GREEN MONSTER tavern in Prescott Street, but that may have been one of Ned’s jokes on the very common Green Dragon. The tavern in question was a very unlucky house, and not less than three or four landlords had failed in it, which was not to be wondered at, for the street appears at that time to have been one of the soberest in London. According to Ned, one “would walk by forty or fifty houses and not an alehouse.”[718]

The MILLION GARDENS, Strutton Ground, Westminster, was the singular name of the house where tickets might be obtained for a lottery of plate in 1718.[719] The name in reality refers to the “Melon Gardens,” which fruit was pronounced after the signboard orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Pepys, on the 3d of August 1660, informs us that he dined at an ordinary called the QUAKER, a somewhat unusual godfather for a sinful tavern. This house was situated in the Great Sanctuary, Westminster, and was only pulled down in the beginning of the present century to make way for a market-place, which in its turn has made room for a new sessions-house. Tull, the last landlord, opened a new public-house in Thieving Lane, and adorned the doorway of this house with twisted pillars decorated with vine-leaves, brought from the old Quaker tavern. J. T. Smith presents us with a view of this house in the additional plates to his “Antiquities of Westminster.”

The PILGRIM has been mentioned incidentally (on p. 434) as a sign at Coventry. There is another public-house of this name in Kew Lane. In 1833 a figure of a pilgrim was placed upon the roof of this house, which by concealed machinery moved to and fro like the Wandering Jew, doomed to wander up and down until the end of the world; it was, however, of contemptible workmanship, and very soon got out of order.

The GIPSY’S TENT occurs at Hagley, Stourbridge; the GIPSY QUEEN at Highbury and other places; and the QUEEN OF THE GIPSIES was the sign of the so-called gipsy house near Norwood. The queen alluded to was Margaret Finch, who died at the great age of 109 years; Norwood was her residence during the last years of her life, and there she told fortunes to the credulous. She was buried October 24, 1760, in a deep square box, as from her constant habit of sitting with her chin resting on her knees, her muscles had become so contracted that she could not at last alter her position. This woman, when a girl of seventeen, may have been one of the dusky gang pretty Mrs Pepys and her companions went to consult, August 11, 1668, which her lord duly chronicled in the evening: “This afternoon my wife and Mercer and Deb went with Pelling to see the gypsies at Lambeth, and have their fortunes told, but what they did I did not enquire.” A granddaughter of Margaret Finch, also a so-styled queen, was living in an adjoining cottage in the year 1800.

The TRUE LOVER’S KNOT is a sign at Uxbridge, the only example of it we have met with. In the North of England and in Scotland it is still the custom with betrothed lovers of the lower class to present each other with a curious kind of knot called “a true lover’s knot.” Brand says the word is not derived from true love, but from trulofa, Danish for _fidem do_. It was formerly a common present between lovers of all stations of life in England.

The FOLLY is not unusual; it is generally applied to a very ambitious, extravagantly furnished, or highly ornamented house; in such a sense it was already used in Queen Elizabeth’s reign:--

“Kirby Castle and _Fisher’s Folly_
Spinola’s Pleasure and Megse’s Glory.”

One of the most notorious “Follies” was an edifice of timber divided into sundry rooms, with a platform and balustrade on the top, which in the reign of Charles II. floated in the Thames above London Bridge. At first it was very well frequented, and the beauty and fashion of the period (Pepys amongst them, April 13, 1668,) used to go there on summer evenings, partake of refreshments on the platform, and enjoy the breeze on the river (then guiltless of the modern sewers and filth.). On one occasion Queen Mary honoured it with a visit, accompanied by some of her courtiers. Gradually, however, it took to evil courses; loose and disorderly females were admitted, and unrestrained drinking and dancing soon gave it an unenviable notoriety. In this condition it was visited by Tom Brown, who describes it with his usual coarse vigour: “This whimsical piece of Architecture was designed as a musical Summer-house for the entertainment of quality where they might meet and ogle one another; but the Ladies of the Town finding it as convenient a rendez-vous, overstock’d the place with such an inundation of harlotry, that dashed the female quality out of countenance, and made them seek some more retired conveniency.” He next describes the company in very glowing colours, but found it such a confused scene of folly, madness, and debauchery, that he--no very bashful person--was compelled to return to his boat “_without drinking_!”[720] At length the place became so scandalous that it had to be closed; it went to decay, and at last was sold for firewood.

The sign of the BLUE-COAT BOY, usually chosen by toy-shops, printsellers, and colourmen, was either in compliment to the scholars of King Edward VI.’s foundation, Christ’s Hospital,--commonly called “the Blue Coat School,” from the blue tunic of the lads, or was named after the Bridewell Boys, _i.e._, foundlings and deserted children, who wore a blue coat and trousers, with a white hat. Until the end of the last century they used to attend at all the fires with the Bridewell engine, but on the whole they were an unruly mischievous set. There was a BLUE COAT coffee-house in Sweeting’s Alley, near the Exchange, in 1711.[721] At present it is generally called the BLUE BOY, as at Old Swinford, Stourbridge; Minchinhampton, Gloucester, and in a few other places. In Islington there is still such a sign, and in Aldersgate Street, if we remember rightly, there is an ironmonger with such a decoration.

A very strange sign occurs amongst the Banks Bills. On a shop-bill dated 1698, is the following inscription: “At the signe of the TARE lives one Mr Grenier who makes all sorts of good rasors, lancets, sisers, very well, and all other sorts of instruments for chirugeons.” The engraving represents two angels holding a _tear_ by a string, surrounded by a quantity of surgical instruments, after the true meat-axe type, and vicious-looking enough to “draw tears of molten brass from the eyes of Pluto himself.”

The WEARY TRAVELLER occurs at Sutton Road, Kidderminster; the TRAVELLER’S REST in a great many places, sometimes accompanied by the phrase REST AND BE THANKFUL, which last advice serves as a sign to two public-houses at Whitehaven. Finally the FINISH was the sign of a notorious night-house in Covent Garden, kept at the beginning of the present century by a Mrs Butler. Here, according to “Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress,” the gentlemen of the road used to divide their spoil in the gray dawn of the morning, when it was time for the night-birds to fly to their roost. Crib (in reality Thomas Moore the poet, see p. 503) says that the congress is:--

“Some place that’s like the _Finish_, lads,
Where all your high pedestrian pads
That have been _up_ and _out_ all night,
Running their rigs amongst the rattlers,[722]
At morning meet, and, honour bright,
Agree to share the blunt and tatlers.”

This house was originally named the Queen’s Head, but was nicknamed the _Finish_ from its being the place where the fast men of the day generally “finished off.” Ned Shuter was at one time a drawer in this house, but, inspired by the neighbourhood of the theatres, he left the pots and bottles and took to the stage. Down to a recent date it was a gloomy disreputable coffee-house, kept by one Smith, and here, in interdicted hours, beer and spirits could be obtained when all the public-houses were closed. It was pulled down very recently. These last four signs have in a measure been the expression of the authors’ minds: who, weary of their long task, and fearful of having fatigued their readers, will now betake themselves to _rest_, and _be thankful_ if they have given a few hours’ entertainment upon the subject of signboards. They now take their leave in the words of an old ballad:--

“Then faire fall all good tokens,
And well fare a good heart,
For by all _signs_ and _tokens_
’Tis time for to depart.”

[671] Burnet’s Own Times, vol. ii., p. 426, ed. 1823.

[672] Harl. MSS., 5931. Bagford Bills.

[673] See _Craftsman_, Sept. 30, 1738.

[674] Archæologia, xviii., p. 198.

[675] “To all true Christian people to whom this present writing shall come: John Frenssh, eldest son of John Frenssh, gentleman, late citizen and goldsmith of London, sends greeting in our Lord. Know ye that I have given, granted, and by this my present writing confirmed to Joan Frenssh, widow, my mother, all that tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, called Savage’s Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in the parish of St Bride, in Fleet Street, London, to have and to hold the aforesaid tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, to the said Joan, for the term of her life, without impeachment of waste. In witness whereof,” &c. (here follow the names of six witnesses.) Dated at London the 5th day of February, in the thirty-first year of the reign of King Henry VI. after the conquest.

[676] Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent. 1576.

[677] See Bosom’s or Blossoms Inn, under “Legendary and Biblical Signs,” p. 297.

[678] Speciall Passages from Westminster, London, York, &c., June 26-July 5, 1642.

[679] Pamphlet in the Harleian Miscellany. Index, vol. x. This dreadful storm is said to have caused more damage than the fire of 1666. Bishop Kedder and his wife were killed in it by the fall of a house in which they were sleeping. Admiral Beaumont was shipwrecked and lost with nearly the whole of his ship’s company. The Eddystone lighthouse was blown down and swallowed by the sea, with its architect, Mr Henry Winstanley. A sermon is still yearly preached at Little Wild Street Baptist Chapel, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in memory of this fearful storm, a Mr John Taylor, bookseller of Paternoster Row, having left £40 to it as a thank-offering for his miraculous preservation at the time of the occurrence.

[680] After having been for a long time one of the most secure strongholds of the devil, a godly garrison was sent into Moorfields at the end of the last century. The _Gazetteer_, 10th September 1790, has the following paragraph:--“So numerous are become the _Gospel shops_ in the vicinity of Moorfields, that like Monmouth Street, the proprietors employ “pluckers in” on Sundays to inveigle customers. The cant phrase at the door is, “Good sound doctrine here in perfection.””

[681] _Postboy_, Jan. 1, 1711-12.

[682] Advertisements in the _Weekly Journal_ for that year.

[683] Both named in the _Daily Courant_ for 1718.

[684] _London Gazette_, Nov. 18-21, 1700.

[685] Tour to London, vol i., p. 84. “A perfectly fair judge, and writing in the true spirit of a philosopher,” says his translator. Grosley remarks that the foreigners would be in the wrong to complain of the rude insults of the lower classes, since even “the better sort of Londoners” liberally show their hatred to the French whenever they can find an opportunity.

[686] Banks Bills, dated 1787.

[687] “New View of London.” 1708, p. 9.

[688] Dr Lardner’s Arithmetic, p. 44.

[689] Allen’s History of Lambeth.

[690] Siege of Carlaeverock, c. 11:--

“--on li respont
De grosses pierres et _cornues_.”

[691] _London Gazette_, April 29-May 2, 1700.

[692] Printed in Nichols’s Illustrations of Manners and Expenses in Ancient Times, 1797.

[693] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, p. 71.

[694] _Country Journal or Craftsman_, Feb. 1, 1734-5.

[695] _Postman_, 1711.

[696] Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme. Lansdowne MSS., No. 231.

[697] _The Intelligencer_, Sept. 4, 1665.

[698] Spence’s Anecdotes, ed. by Singer, p. 337.

[699] “On the roads near large towns and in the country, you will not find one house in twelve but it does exhibit the sign of the Sun or the Moon. They all sell wine, each of them to his own neighbourhood.”

[700] Henry Peacham’s Art of Living in London, 1642.

[701] Taylor’s Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630.

[702] Luttrell Ballads, ii., fol. 92.

[703] “Already had Louis XI. reigned fifteen years over the French when Ulrich and Martin [Crantz] and Michel [Friburger,] all natives of Germany, produced me in this shape at Paris by their art; carefully corrected, I am now offered for sale in the Rue St Jacques, at the Golden Sun.”

[704] This idea is in a measure set forth in some lines on the titlepage of “Gasparini Pergamensis Epistolarium opus per Joannem Lapidarium Sorbonensis Scholæ Priorem multis vigiliis ex corrupto integrum affectum ingeniosa arte impressoria in luce redactum,” 1470, beginning:--

“Ut sol lumen sic doctrinam fundis in Orbem.”

[705] _London Spy_, part xiii., p. 319, 1706.

[706] Handbill in Harleian Collection, p. 5964.

[707] A Compleat Description of London, Harl. MSS., 5953, vol. i.

[708] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, p. 30.

[709] _Weekly Journal_, Sept. 27, 1718.

[710] _Looker-On_, Jan. 1795.

[711] _London Gazette_, Dec. 9-12, 1700.

[712] Lyson’s Historical Account of Parishes in Middlesex, p. 75.

[713] Banks Bills.

[714] Harleian MSS., 5962.

[715] Grafton’s prose continuation of John Harding’s Chronicle, p. 189.

[716] Stubbe’s Anatomy of Abuses, London, 1585, p. 94.

[717] Featherstone’s Dialogue against Light and Lascivious Dancing.

[718] _London Spy_, part xiii., p. 320, 1706.

[719] _Weekly Journal_, Jan. 18, 1718.

[720] Tom Brown’s Walk round London.

[721] _Daily Courant_, Jan. 27, 1711.

[722] Carriages.