BIRDS AND OTHER SCULPTURED SIGNS.
‘Emblems of Christ and immortality.’
THE next group of sculptured signs I should like to consider is that in
which birds are represented.
Several of them clearly had an heraldic origin; but I am not aware
that this was the case with the Crane--a pretty sign empanelled in a
delicate moulding of small cut-brick, which stood over the entrance to
Crane Court, Lambeth Hill.
[Illustration]
It is said to have been destroyed in the year 1871. One is reminded of
the Three Cranes in the Vintry, not far off, mentioned by Stow, Ben
Jonson, and others, the site of which is still marked by Three Cranes
Wharf, Upper Thames Street. The ‘Annals of John Stow,’ continued by
Howes, were ‘imprynted at the Three Cranes, in the Vintrie.’
A sign of the same description was the Four Doves, which, forty years
ago, was to be seen in front of a modern house in St. Martin’s le
Grand. Archer, who drew it, suggests that it was a rebus on the joint
owners of the property. The four doves had the initial letters W. G. I.
J. Beneath was the inscription--
‘This 4 DOVE Ally 1670.’
Four Dove Alley is marked in Horwood’s map a short distance south
of Angel Street, King’s Court intervening. It is now covered by the
buildings of the General Post Office.
Yet another sculptured sign indicating the name of a court was the
Heathcock--in a handsome shell canopy, which formerly graced the
entrance to Heathcock Court, Strand. It was removed in July, 1844, in
spite of the remonstrance of Mr. Peter Cunningham, who wrongly supposed
it to be the last sign of its class in London. Two picturesque old
houses fronting this court still remain. A heathcock with wings
expanded forms the crest of the Coopers’ Company; but it does not
appear that they ever owned property in this neighbourhood.
As late as 1866 a stone bas-relief of an Ostrich was to be seen in
Bread Street, together with the arms of the Tallowchandlers’ Company.
Soon afterwards the house was destroyed, and the sign disappeared for
many years, till it came, by chance, into the hands of Mr. M. Pope,
F.S.A., who has kindly presented it to the Guildhall Museum. The beak
is a modern restoration. A rough drawing, which, however, quite serves
to identify it, appeared in the _Illustrated London News_ for December
13, 1856, when it was suggested that it might have served as the sign
of a feather-dresser. Mrs. Palliser[45] tells us that Mattei Girolamo,
captain of the guard to Clement VII., placed on his flag an ostrich
swallowing an iron nail, with the motto, ‘Spiritus durissima coquit,’
‘Courage digests the hardest things’; that is, the brave man is not
easily daunted. Sir Thomas Browne wrote a paper on the ostrich, for the
use of his son.
The Spread Eagle or ‘Eagle with two heads displayed’ was, like
the Ostrich, bought by Mr. Pope some time since, and has also been
presented to the Guildhall Museum; he wrote a description of these
signs in the ‘London and Middlesex Notebook.’ Both signs were sold by
the same person; they had been in the possession of his family for
many years, and he believed that his father had obtained them from the
same neighbourhood in the City. The Spread Eagle is in fair condition,
though the sinister head has been badly restored with cement. It
has on it the initials RM and the date 1669. I have no proof as to
the original position of this sign, but in the absence of fuller
information one can, I think, fairly hazard the conjecture, that after
the Great Fire it may have been put up in Bread Street to perpetuate
the memory of the house in which John Milton, the poet, was born.
We know that his father, a scrivener, but a man of good family, had
adopted his own coat of arms as a sign. Aubrey, a contemporary, says
he had another house in Bread Street, called the Rose. In Masson’s
Life of Milton there is a transcript of a volume in the British Museum
containing miscellaneous notes, which relate to the affairs of John
Sanderson, a Turkey merchant, in the early part of the seventeenth
century. Among other things there is a copy of a bond dated March 4,
160-2/3, in which Thomas Heighsham, of Bethnal Green in Middlesex,
and Richard Sparrow, citizen and goldsmith of London, engage to pay
Sanderson a sum of money on May 5 following, the payment to be made _at
the new shop of John Milton, scrivener, at the Spread Eagle in Bread
Street_. The signature of John Milton, scrivener, is appended.
Some years since there existed in Bread Street a Black Spread
Eagle Court, at the first turning on the left hand as one entered
from Cheapside, with, as Strype tells us, a very good house at the
upper end; in several directories of the eighteenth century it is
called Spread Eagle Court. This is considered to have been on the
site of Milton’s birthplace; the ground is now covered by modern
warehouses--Nos. 58 to 63, occupied by one firm. The Church of All
Hallows, Bread Street, in which Milton[46] had been baptized, was
swept away in 1878. Its site is marked by a bust of the poet with an
inscription, set up in the wall of a new building. The Spread Eagle was
by no means an uncommon London sign; to the one in Gracechurch Street
I shall presently refer. Collet,[47] in his ‘Common-place Book,’ gives
it as his opinion that, ‘the eagle with two necks in the imperial
arms, and in the arms of the King of Spain, depicted on signboards as
the Spread Eagle, signified the east and west empire, the extension of
their power from the east to the west.’ During a great tempest at sea
in January, 1506, Philip, King of Castile and his Queen were weather
driven, and landed at Falmouth. The same storm blew down the eagle of
brass off the spire of St. Paul’s Church in London, and in falling the
same eagle broke and shattered the black eagle that hung for a sign in
St. Paul’s Churchyard, as related in Stow’s ‘Annals,’ p. 484.
An interesting sign of the Pelican is let into the string course above
a corner first-floor window of No. 70, Aldermanbury. It was the crest
of two merchants who formerly occupied the house. Their monument is
in the neighbouring church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, the inscription
being as follows:--
‘Here lyeth the body of Richard Chandler,
Citizen and Haberdasher of London, Esquire,
Who departed this life November 8th, 1691, aged 85.
Also the body of John Chandler, Esqre, his brother,
Citizen and Haberdasher of London,
Who died October 14th, 1686, aged 69 years.’
Above is the Pelican as a crest, corresponding with the sign. The busts
of these two worthy citizens in flowing periwigs appear on each side
of the inscription; their names are in the Little London Directory
for 1677. The church was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt by
Sir Christopher Wren, the parishioners subscribing liberally; Richard
Chandler gave the font in 1675. The notorious Judge Jeffreys, who
died in the Tower of London and was buried in the chapel there, was
afterwards, on petition of his family, reinterred in the church of St.
Mary, Aldermanbury. Here also Milton was married to his second wife,
Catherine Woodcock. In 1890 the churchyard was opened to the public as
a recreation ground.
The pelican[48] in her piety, or feeding her young with her blood,
was often represented in the Mediæval Church, being considered a
mystical emblem of Christ, and a type of the Holy Eucharist. Several
representations of it are to be seen in St. Mary Abchurch, the living
of which is in the gift of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It
was the device of the famous Bishop Foxe, to whom I have alluded
in my account of the Three Kings (_ante_); and as such appears on
the woodwork of the banqueting hall of Durham Castle, with his usual
motto, ‘Est Deo gracia;’ and on the string course of the choir of St.
Saviour’s, Southwark. He died anno 1528. Heywood in his play of Edward
IV. (4to. 1600), mentions a pelican sign in Lombard Street:--
‘Here’s Lombard Street, and here’s the Pelican;
And here’s the Phœnix in the Pelican’s nest.’
And by a curious coincidence, at the present day there are the signs
of a Pelican and a Phœnix in Lombard Street, both belonging to famous
insurance offices. The house[49] occupied by the latter was built for
Sir Charles Asgill, Lord Mayor in 1757.
A bas-relief, similar in style to that last described, is the Swan
with collar and chain, inserted below a second-floor window of No. 37,
Cheapside, which stands at the north-east corner of Friday Street.
This is on the site of the Nag’s Head tavern, whose projecting sign
appears in a well-known print of the procession of Mary de Medici on a
visit to her daughter, Queen Henrietta Maria--an interesting record of
the appearance of Cheapside before the Great Fire. The sign was almost
opposite Cheapside Cross. The Nag’s Head was the supposed scene of the
consecration of Archbishop Parker, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth
in 1559. This story is refuted in Strype’s Life of Parker; it probably
arose from a fact mentioned by Fuller, that the commissioners who
confirmed Parker’s election (at St. Mary le Bow Church ten days before
the consecration), afterwards dined together at the Nag’s Head close
by. The present building must have been erected soon after the Great
Fire, for a staircase, to which there is access from Friday Street,
evidently dates from that century. Indeed, in the Creed Collection
at the British Museum (vol. xiii.) there is a newspaper cutting said
to be from the _Builder_, but without a date, in which it is, no
doubt erroneously, asserted that the house was there before the year
1666, and remained standing when all around was swept away, and that
inside traces of the fire may be observed on the massive beams. The
Chained Swan is undoubtedly of heraldic origin. Ritson says it was not
customary to use the English language at court till King Edward III.
on the occasion of a celebrated tournament, held at Canterbury in 1349,
placed on his shield the device of a white swan, with the legend:
‘Hay, hay the wythe Swan,
By Gode’s soule I am thy man.’
The Mandevilles, Earls of Essex, bore as their arms, gules, a swan
argent, ducally collared and chained or, which the Bohuns, who were
descended from them, adopted; and for this reason, no doubt, it became
a badge of King Henry IV., who was a Bohun on the mother’s side. It
is represented in the central spandrel of the canopy of the brass in
Westminster Abbey to Eleanora de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, who died
in 1399. From such high beginnings the Chained Swan gradually came, as
we see, to be used as a tavern sign. Another specimen, carved in stone,
was the sign of a house in Eastcheap, not far from the Boar’s Head. It
is mentioned by Pennant, and by J. T. Smith, but disappeared early in
this century.
Here I am tempted to say a few words about the Swan with Two Necks,
because, though now only represented by modern bas-reliefs at No. 65,
Gresham Street, and in Aldermanbury, they recall the memory of a famous
inn, and the sign is one of the quaintest in London. The Swan with
Two Necks ‘at Milke Street end’ is noticed by Machyn in his ‘Diary,’
August 5, 1556. In 1637, as we learn from Taylor, the Water Poet,
carriers from Manchester and other places lodged at the Two-necked
Swan in Lad Lane. Towards the end of last century it became a great
coaching centre, and continued to flourish till steam drove the coaches
off the road, when it revived in a new form. Mr. Stanley Harris, in
his amusing book, ‘Old Coaching Days,’ says that ‘the gateway out of
the yard of the Swan with Two Necks, through which the various coaches
passed, and Milk Lane and Lad Lane, was so narrow that it required some
horsemanship to drive out a fast team just started, and some care on
the part of the guard, that his horn or bugle basket, which was usually
hung on to the iron of the back seat of the coach nearest the roof, was
not jammed against the gate-post. Between four and five on an afternoon
was a time worth being in that same yard of the Swan with Two Necks
for anyone who took an interest in coaching.’ The proprietor of this
establishment was Mr. William Chaplin, who, originally a coachman,
became, perhaps, the greatest coach proprietor that ever lived.
‘Nimrod,’ writing about 1835, tells us that at that time Mr. Chaplin
occupied the yards of no fewer than five famous and important inns in
London, namely the Spread Eagle and Cross Keys, Gracechurch Street; the
Swan with Two Necks, Lad Lane; the White Horse, which still exists in
Fetter Lane, and the Angel, behind St. Clement’s. He had no fewer than
1,300 horses at work on various roads, and about that time horsed 14
out of the 27 coaches leaving London every night. When the railways
came he bowed to the inevitable, and, in partnership with Mr. Horne,
established the great carrying business, which still flourishes on the
site of the old Swan with Two Necks. In 1845 Lad Lane was absorbed by
Gresham Street.
The origin of the sign has been disputed, but it is generally
considered to have arisen as follows: The swans on the upper reaches
of the Thames are owned respectively by the Crown, and the Dyers’
and Vintners’ Companies of the City of London, and, according to
ancient custom, the representatives of these several owners make an
expedition each year up the river and mark the cygnets. The royal
mark used to consist of five diamonds, the dyers’ of four bars and
one nick, the vintners’ of the chevron or letter V and two nicks. The
word ‘nicks’ has been corrupted into necks, and as the vintners were
often tavern-keepers, the Swan with Two Necks became a common sign.
The swan-marks which I have described continued in use until the
year 1878, when the swanherds were prosecuted by the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, on the ground that they inflicted
unnecessary pain. Although the prosecution failed, the marks have since
been simplified. In August, 1888, the Queen’s swan-keeper and the
officials of the Vintners’ and Dyers’ Companies, during the process
of ‘swan-upping,’ as it is termed, captured and nicked 343 birds, of
which 178 were claimed by her Majesty, 94 by the Vintners’, and 71 by
the Dyers’ Company. To the constable of the Tower formerly belonged the
right of ‘lifting’ all swans which came below bridge. A swan not marked
is supposed to belong to the Crown. The earliest extant record giving
leave to the Vintners’ Company to keep a certain number of swans on the
river is dated 1509.
An inn with this sign painted in front is still to be seen on the south
side of Carter Lane; it has a yard at the back and some remains of old
galleries.
Not many years ago a curious sign was placed in front of No. 16,
Church Street, formerly Church Lane, Chelsea, having been dug up in
the small back garden which was built over a short time previously.
The material of this sign is cast iron; it is therefore not, strictly
speaking, a sculptured sign, but may, I think, be fairly included
in the same class. The design (see _ante_, 89) is like that of a
seventeenth-century fire-back, and represents a cock vigorously
attempting to swallow a snake which he has seized by the tail; a second
snake on the ground behind him rears its head as if to strike. Above
is the date 1652. When this sign first saw the light, Chelsea was a
detached village grouped near the old church, with fine villas of
noblemen in the immediate neighbourhood. On the east side of Church
Lane houses were continuous from the church to the parsonage; one of
them was doubtless known as the Cock, but I have no special information
about it. A curious fact has, however, come to light, tending to show
that signs of this description were kept in stock, and repeated again
and again. In 1874 a sign was dug up in the foundations of Messrs.
Smith, Payne, and Smith’s Bank, No. 1, Lombard Street, which, on
comparison, I find to be similar in all respects, and, as far as I can
judge, cast from the same mould. No. 1, Lombard Street is on the site
of the east end of the Stocks Market, cleared away in 1737 to make room
for the Mansion House. I find from the ‘Handbook of Bankers,’ by Mr.
F. G. Hilton Price, F.S.A., that in 1734 there was a house here with
the sign of the Cock in the occupation of Thomas Stevenson, fishmonger.
Later in the century the site was occupied by Messrs. Harley and Co.,
bankers. A sign of similar kind, perhaps really a decorated fire-back,
is to be seen at the entrance to a Cock Tavern near Billingsgate.
This appears to be considerably older. It has been very much damaged;
possibly, as the owner says, in the Great Fire of London.
[Illustration]
To the genuine Londoner a more interesting sign than either of the
above is the carved wooden figure of a cock, which is a relic of that
famous old tavern, the Cock in Fleet Street. A house so historic needs
no detailed description from me. The sign is quite worthy of Grinling
Gibbons, to whom--but without authority--it has often been attributed.
This formerly stood over the doorway. Some years ago it was stolen,
but shortly afterwards restored, and to prevent accidents it is now
kept inside[50] the house of entertainment, on the opposite side of
the street, to which, after the destruction of his old home, the
proprietor, the late Mr. Colnett, removed. He also with pious care
preserved the quaint Jacobean mantelpiece, which so many of us were
familiar with before it shifted its quarters. If the kind reader wishes
to refresh his memory with the sight of these and other relics, let
him pay a visit to the new Cock, where he will find excellent fare and
the utmost attention from Paul, who comes from the old house--a worthy
successor of ‘the plump headwaiter at the Cock,’ whom Lord Tennyson has
immortalized.
A newspaper paragraph has reminded me of a sign with a history,
which I once saw in the Minories. In the year 1719 a boy was born of
humble parentage in Whitechapel, who, as Benjamin Kenton, vintner and
philanthropist, achieved a considerable reputation. He was educated
at the charity school of the parish, and in his fifteenth year
apprenticed to the landlord of the Angel and Crown in Goulston Street,
Whitechapel. Having served his time, he became waiter and drawer at
the Crown and Magpie in Aldgate High Street, not long since pulled
down. The sign was a Crown of stone and a Magpie carved in pear-tree
wood, and the house was frequented by sea captains. Kenton’s master is
said to have been among the first who possessed the art of bottling
beer for warm climates. He, without reason, changed the sign to the
Crown; his custom fell off; he died, and the concern came into the
hands of Kenton, who restored the Magpie to its former position, and
so increased the bottled-beer business, that in 1765 he gave up the
tavern and removed to more commodious quarters which he built in the
Minories. His monogram is still to be seen over the door. Here he soon
developed an extensive wine trade, and having received excellent advice
as to investments from Mr. Harley, then alderman of Portsoken Ward,
he eventually realized between a quarter and half a million of money.
He was a large benefactor to various charities and to the Vintners’
Company, of which he had been master in 1776. An annual dinner in their
hall takes place to his memory, the funds being provided under his
will. Members of the company also attend an annual sermon in memory
of his benefactions at Stepney Church, where he was buried. The wine
business is still carried on at the house built by him in the Minories,
and here the Magpie sign has found a fitting home. The stone Crown has
unfortunately crumbled to pieces.
A few sculptured signs are classed together, because, though they have
nothing special in common, they cannot well be fitted in elsewhere. I
shall begin with a stone bas-relief of an Anchor, which has found its
way into the Guildhall Museum, where it is described as having been
presented by the executors of James Bare. It has on it the initials
B H E and the date 1669; no record has been kept of its original
position. The anchor--the emblem of true faith--is associated with St.
Clement, who, according to tradition, was cast into the sea with an
anchor round his neck, by order of the Emperor Trajan, on account of
his firm adherence to Christianity. An anchor forms the vane of the
church of St. Clement Danes, Strand; it also appears on various parts
of the church, and on the tablets which show the boundaries of the
parish--in fact, the parish marks, one or two of which are as old as
the seventeenth century. A specimen on the house numbered 11 on the
west side of New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, is dated 1693.
Sir George Buc, writing in 1615, tells us that ‘an anchor without a
stocke,’ with a capital C couchant upon it, ‘was graven in stone, over
the gate of St. Clement’s Inn.’ A good old-fashioned carving of an
anchor was on the front of Clement’s Inn Hall, lately destroyed.
A common sign in the seventeenth century was the Bell; but long
before this it had been immortalized. Chaucer, when he describes the
gathering place of his pilgrims to Canterbury, tells us that it was ‘in
Southwark, at this gentil hostelrie, that highte, the Tabard, faste by
the Belle,’ the Bell being apparently at that time a better known inn.
It was on the west side of the Borough High Street, and still existed
when Rocque published his map in 1746. The site is now occupied by
Maidstone Buildings. Another famous Bell Inn is recorded in the list of
expenses of Sir John Howard: ‘Nov 15, 1466. Item my mastyr spent for
his costes at the Belle at Westemenstre iijs. viijd.’ There are still
two capital stone bas-reliefs of this sign. One I happened by chance
to observe below a second-floor window, in a courtyard which once was
attached to the Red Lion Inn, the house in front being numbered 251,
High Holborn; it has on it the initials A T A and date 1668, and is
evidently not in its original position; the date would lead one to
suppose that it comes from a house in the City.
A sign of more interest, at least from its associations, has lately
found a home in the Guildhall Museum. It is in high relief, and was
formerly placed between the first and second floor windows of No. 67,
Knightrider Street; on the keystones of the three first-floor windows
were the initials M T A and the date 1668. The house was swept away
three years ago; I know nothing about it, except that it was a fair
specimen of the plain brick buildings commonly put up after the Great
Fire. There was, however, a hostelry with the same sign hard by, which
had a proud distinction.
[Illustration: ‘THE BELL’ IN KNIGHTRIDER STREET.]
From the Bell Inn, Carter Lane, Richard Quyney wrote in 1598 to his
‘loveing good ffrend and contreyman, Mr. Will^m Shackespere,’ the only
letter addressed to our greatest poet which is known to exist. It is
now preserved at Stratford-on-Avon. The Bell is also mentioned in
that quaint guide-book to taverns, the ‘Vade Mecum for Malt-worms,’
written, it is supposed, in 1715; and a seventeenth-century trade-token
was issued from Bell Yard, not yet destroyed, a passage through which
connects Knightrider Street with Carter Lane. Adjoining it, there is
now a modern Bell tavern, where Dickens is said to have often rested
when making notes for ‘David Copperfield.’
That the Bell should be a common sign is natural enough, from its
connection with the worship of the Christian Church, and the popularity
of bell-ringing in England. A gold or silver bell was often used as a
prize at horse-races; hence the expression, to ‘bear away the bell.’
Fine specimens of these bells were to be seen in the Sports Exhibition,
at the Grosvenor Gallery, a few years since. One from Carlisle had on
it the date 1599, and the following distich:
‘The Sweftes horse the bel to tak
For mi Lade Daker sake.’
In Dudley, Lord North’s ‘Forest of Varieties,’ p. 175, occur the
following lines:
‘Jockey and his horse were by their masters sent,
To put in for the bell--
They are to run, and cannot miss the bell.’
A sign which has disappeared and left no trace was the bas-relief of a
Bible and Crown, formerly at the corner of Little Distaff (now Distaff)
Lane, within the precincts of St. Paul’s; it disappeared some time
after the year 1856. Larwood thinks that this sign came into fashion
among the Royalists during the political troubles of Charles I.’s
reign. A more probable suggestion seems to be, that forming part of the
arms of Oxford University, it indicated one of the presses licensed
to sell the Authorized Edition of the Bible. A wooden carving of a
Bible and Crown, painted and gilt, was, till 1853, let into the string
course above a window of the house of Messrs. Rivington and Co., in
Paternoster Row. It then moved westward to Waterloo Place, and is now
in the possession of Messrs. Longmans, whose sign was the Ship and
Black Swan, and who have absorbed the older firm. Messrs. Rivington
were originally established in St. Paul’s Churchyard in the year
1711, when, on the death of Richard Chiswell the elder, his house and
business passed into their hands. He has been called the ‘metropolitan
bookseller of England,’ and published many important works, of which
a list is given in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. His sign--the Rose and
Crown--was changed by Charles Rivington, his successor, into the Bible
and Crown. Messrs. Longmans date, it is said, from 1725.
[Illustration]
On a level with the fourth-floor windows of a shop at the corner of
Canon Alley and No. 63, St. Paul’s Churchyard, is a sculptured sign of
the Prince of Wales’s feathers, with the motto ‘Ich Dien,’ and date
1670; being a handsome work of art, we give it as an illustration.
The property belonged to the Dean and Chapter, but is now vested in
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. An advertisement in the _Kingdom’s
Intelligencer_, No. 11, March 10, 1661-2, shows that there was a
Feathers Tavern in St. Paul’s Churchyard. This, however, was at the
west end; a seventeenth-century trade-token was issued from it. The
heraldic origin of the feather badge, and its connection with Edward
the Black Prince, has been fully traced by various authorities; the
motto is usually pronounced to be low German, or old Flemish, as
well as the word ‘Houmout,’ meaning high mood or courage, which the
Prince also wrote in a letter. His crest or badge was sometimes three
feathers, sometimes one, argent. They are placed separately on his
tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. An ostrich feather was one of the badges
of King Edward III., and John of Gaunt used three or one. The old
belief--that this crest was won by Edward the Black Prince from the
blind King John of Bohemia, at the battle of Cressy, is contradicted
by modern research; for King John’s crest was not a plume of ostrich
feathers, but a vulture’s wing expanded. It has been thought probable
that the Prince assumed it out of deference to his mother, Queen
Philippa of Hainault.
The carved sign of a Helmet was to be seen, not long since, over the
entrance to Helmet Court, which was on the south side of London Wall,
between Basinghall and Coleman Streets, and close to the Armourers’
and Braziers’ Hall, in whose arms the helmet is a charge. The date on
it was 1686, with initials H M. In the seventeenth century there was a
Helmet Inn not far off. Messrs. Larwood and Hotten quote lines from Ned
Ward, who says that the trainbands, after practising in Moorfields, long
‘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.’
In 1550, a helmet was the sign of Humphrey Joy, bookseller in St.
Paul’s Churchyard.
On each side of the spot where Bishopsgate once stood, are stone
bas-reliefs of mitres, with inscriptions recording the fact. I learn
that the gate was sold by the Commissioner of City Lands, on Wednesday,
December 10, 1760, for immediate demolition. It had been rebuilt in
1731, at the expense of the City; when almost finished, the arch fell
down, but luckily no one was hurt. The rooms in the ancient gatehouse
were appropriated to one of the Lord Mayor’s carvers; he afterwards had
a money allowance in lieu thereof.
Another carving of a mitre surmounts a tablet, with initials T F
and the date 1786, which is built into the front of that well-known
tavern, the Goose and Gridiron, and indicates that this property is
or was attached to the See of London, or that near this site stood
the residence of the Bishops of London, before the Great Fire, which
destroyed it. This mitre, by a coincidence, also suggests the supposed
former sign. Within the memory of man, the Goose and Gridiron was a
celebrated house-of-call for coaches to Hammersmith, and the villages
west of London. Its sign, a sculptured goose standing by a veritable
gridiron, still appears on a lamp in front. Before the Great Fire,
there was a house with the sign of the Mitre hereabouts, perhaps on
this very spot, where in the year 1642 were to be seen, among other
curiosities, ‘a choyce Egyptian with hieroglyphicks, a Rémora, a
Torpedo, the Huge Thighbone of a Giant,’ etc., as advertised in the
_News_; and again, in 1644, Robert Hubert, _alias_ Forges, ‘Gent., and
sworn servant to his Majesty,’ exhibited a museum of natural rarities.
The catalogue describes them as ‘collected by him with great industrie;
and thirty years’ travel into foreign countries; daily to be seen at
the place called the Musick-house at the Mitre, near the west end of
St. Paul’s Church.’
Concerts were, no doubt, among the attractions the house afforded, till
the Great Fire in September, 1666, destroyed all. It has been suggested
that on the rebuilding of the premises, the new tenant, to ridicule the
character of the former business, chose as his sign a goose stroking
the bars of a gridiron with her foot, and wrote below, ‘The Swan and
Harp.’ Larwood and Hotten think that it was a homely rendering of a
charge in the coat of arms of the Musicians’ Company. That the Swan and
Harp was an actual sign, I learn from the _Little London Directory_ of
1677, where one is mentioned in Cheapside.
At the Goose and Gridiron, Sir Christopher Wren presided over the
St. Paul’s Lodge of Freemasons for upwards of eighteen years.[51]
It is said that he presented the Lodge with three carved mahogany
candlesticks, and the trowel and mallet which had been used in laying
the first stone of the Cathedral. In the ‘Vade Mecum for Malt-worms,’
there is a rude drawing of the sign, and we are told in doggerel as
rude that,
‘Dutch carvers from St. Paul’s adjacent dome,
Hither to whet their whistles daily come.’
Also that ‘the rarities of the house are; 1, the odd sign; 2, the
pillar which supports the chimney; 3, the skittle ground upon the top
of the house; 4, the watercourse running through the chimney; 5, the
handsome maid, Hannah.’ Foote mentions the Goose and Gridiron in his
‘Comedy of Taste.’
[Illustration]
Yet another Mitre sign exists in London, probably far older than any of
those I have described. In Mitre Court, a narrow passage between Hatton
Garden and Ely Place, stands a comparatively modern public-house,
let into the front wall of which is a Mitre carved in bold relief;
on it is cut or scratched the date 1546, which, however, appears to
be a modern addition. This is said to have formed part of the town
residence of the Bishops of Ely, the remains of which, with the ground
attached to it, were conveyed to the Crown in 1772. The site was
afterwards sold to an architect named Cole, who levelled everything
except the chapel. This last building stands hard by, and is dedicated
to St. Etheldreda. The Rev. W. J. Loftie considers that it is the most
complete relic of the fourteenth century in London. Since he wrote,
however, the restorer has, alas! been busy. In 1772 it stood in an
open space of about an acre, planted with trees and surrounded by a
wall; at that time the hall, seventy-two feet long, and a quadrangular
cloister existed. Over the chief entrance the sculptured arms of the
see, surmounted by a mitre, were still visible, and it is likely that
this mitre was afterwards converted into the sign I am considering.
The rural character of the neighbourhood in early days may be judged
by the records of it which have come down to us. In 1327 Bishop Hotham
purchased a house and lands, including vineyard, kitchen-garden
and orchard contiguous to his manor of Holborn, which, with other
properties, he settled on the church of Ely, dividing them between his
successors the Bishops, and the convent. Again, as late as 1576, when
Sir Christopher Hatton, Queen Elizabeth’s handsome Lord Chancellor,
became tenant of part of the house and garden, the rent was a red
rose, ten loads of hay and £10 a year; Bishop Cox, on whom the bargain
was forced by the Queen, reserving to himself and his successors the
right of walking in the gardens and gathering twenty bushels of roses
annually. Shakespeare, too, praises the quality of the strawberries
in Ely Garden, though little more than sixty years afterwards we have
John Evelyn complaining in his ‘Fumifugium’ that smoke is ‘suffering
nothing in our gardens to bud, display themselves, or ripen; so as our
anemones and many other choycest flowers, will by no industry be made
to blow in London or the precincts of it.’ Ely Place seems to have been
let by the see to John of Gaunt, ‘time-honoured Lancaster,’ and here in
1399 he breathed his last. The present town residence of the Bishops of
Ely, No. 37, Dover Street, has been occupied by them since 1772. It has
a mitre carved over one of the first-floor windows; Sir Robert Taylor,
R.A., was the architect.
At No. 10, Bow Churchyard a square brick house was lately standing,
which dated from immediately after the Great Fire. The office windows
on the ground-floor, with their shutters to match, had an air of
old-fashioned quaintness. The pediment of the doorway contained the
Royal Arms and supporters carved in wood; the quarterings showed that
they were put up in the time of the early Georges; let into the western
part of the house, which from the arrangement of the windows seemed to
have been originally divided into two, was a sign of spherical form,
projecting from a square stone, at the corners of which one could with
difficulty decipher the figures 1669. In the kitchen there was a leaden
tank with initials and date, T. S. 1670, supplied by water from the New
River. This house was pulled down two years ago; the sign came into
the hands of the City authorities, and is now in the Guildhall Museum,
where it has been christened the Pill.
No. 10, Bow Churchyard was at the time of its destruction occupied by
Messrs. Sutton and Co., who there carried on a very old-established
business for the sale of patent medicines, among others that which
has been known for more than two hundred years as Elixir Salutis, or
Daffey’s Elixir. It was stated that the house had formerly been known
by the sign of the Boar’s Head, which, together with the Royal Arms,
appeared on the bill-heads of the firm. If so, there must have been
frequent changes here, for in the early part of the eighteenth century
it seems to have been called the Maidenhead, to judge from various
advertisements in my possession: for instance, the following from a
London journal of 1728, which is adorned by a portrait of a typical
maiden, appropriately framed:
‘At the Maidenhead, behind
Bow Church, in Cheapside, is sold for
Two shillings the Bottle, that admirable
Cordial, Daffey’s Elixir Salutis,
It has been in great Use these 50 years.’
Confirming this statement there is a notice of the medicine dating
from 1673. It occurs in Martindale’s autobiography (printed by the
Chetham Society), where we are told of his daughter, who seems to
have fallen into a decline: ‘That which seemed to do her most good
was Elixir Salutis, for it gave her much ease (my Lord Delamer having
bestowed upon her severall bottles that came immediately from Mr.
Daffie himselfe) and it also made her cheerful; but going forth and
getting new cold, she went fast away. I am really perswaded that if she
had taken it a little sooner, in due quantities, and beene carefull of
herselfe, it might have saved her life. But it was not God’s will.’
[Illustration]
[Illustration]