destructive fire commenced at a peruke-maker's, named Eldridge, in
Exchange Alley, Cornhill; and within twelve hours totally destroyed
between 90 and 100 houses, besides damaging many others. The flames
spread in three directions at once, and extending into Cornhill,
consumed about twenty houses there, including the London Assurance
Office; the Fleece and the Three Tuns Taverns; and Tom's and the
Rainbow Coffee-houses. In Exchange Alley, the Swan Tavern, with
Garraway's, Jonathan's and the Jerusalem Coffee-houses, were burnt
down; and in the contiguous avenues and Birchin-lane, the George and
Vulture Tavern, with several other coffee-houses, underwent a like
fate. Mr. Eldridge, with his wife, children, and servants, all
perished in the flames. The value of the effects and merchandise
destroyed was computed at 200,000_l._, exclusive of that of the
numerous buildings.
In the above fire was consumed the house in which was born the poet
Gray; and the injury which his property sustained on the occasion,
induced him to sink a great part of the remainder in purchasing an
annuity: his father had been an Exchange broker. The house was within
a few doors of Birchin-lane.
THE TZAR OF MUSCOVY'S HEAD, TOWER-STREET.
Close to Tower-hill, and not far from the site of the Rose tavern, is
a small tavern, or public-house, which received its sign in
commemoration of the convivial eccentricities of an Emperor, one of
the most extraordinary characters that ever appeared on the great
theatre of the world--"who gave a polish to his nation and was himself
a savage."
Such was Peter the Great, who, with his suite, consisting of
Menzikoff, and some others, came to London on the twenty-first of
January, 1698, principally with the view of acquiring information on
matters connected with naval architecture. We have little evidence
that during his residence here Peter ever worked as a shipwright in
Deptford Dockyard, as is generally believed. He was, however, very
fond of sailing and managing boats and a yacht on the Thames; and his
great delight was to get a small decked-boat, belonging to the
Dockyard, and taking only Menzikoff, and three or four others of his
suite, to work the vessel with them, he being the helmsman. Now, the
great failing of Peter was his love of strong liquors. He and his
companions having finished their day's work, used to resort to a
public-house in Great Tower-street, close to Tower-hill, to smoke
their pipes, and drink beer and brandy. The landlord, in gratitude for
the imperial custom, had the Tzar of Muscovy's head painted, and put
up for his sign, which continued till the year 1808, when a person of
the name of Waxel took a fancy to the old sign, and offered the then
occupier of the house to paint him a new one for it. A copy was
accordingly made from the original, as the sign of "The Tzar of the
Muscovy," looking like a Tartar. The house has, however, been rebuilt,
and the sign removed, but the name remains.
ROSE TAVERN, TOWER-STREET.
In Tower-street, before the Great Fire, was the Rose tavern, which,
upon the 4th of January, 1649, was the scene of a memorable explosion
of gunpowder, and miraculous preservation. It appears that
over-against the wall of Allhallows Barking churchyard, was the house
of a ship-chandler, who, about seven o'clock at night, being busy in
his shop, barreling up gunpowder, it took fire, and in the twinkling
of an eye, blew up not only that, but all the houses thereabout, to
the number (towards the street and in back alleys) of fifty or sixty.
The number of persons destroyed by this blow could never be known, for
the next house but one was the Rose tavern, a house never (at that
time of night) but full of company; and that day the parish-dinner was
at the house. And in three or four days, after digging, they
continually found heads, arms, legs, and half bodies, miserably torn
and scorched; besides many whole bodies, not so much as their clothes
singed.
In the course of this accident, says the narrator (Mr. Leybourne, in
Strype), "I will instance two; the one a dead, the other a living
monument. In the digging (strange to relate) they found the mistress
of the house of the Rose tavern, sitting in her bar, and one of the
drawers standing by the bar's side, with a pot in his hand, only
stifled with dust and smoke; their bodies being preserved whole by
means of great timbers falling across one another. This is one.
Another is this:--The next morning there was found upon the upper
leads of Barking church, a young child lying in a cradle, as newly
laid in bed, neither the child nor the cradle having the least sign of
any fire or other hurt. It was never known whose child it was, so that
one of the parish kept it as a memorial; for in the year 1666 I saw
the child, grown to be then a proper maiden, and came to the man that
kept her at that time, where he was drinking at a tavern with some
other company then present. And he told us she was the child so found
in the cradle upon the church leads as aforesaid."
According to a tablet which hangs beneath the organ gallery of the
church, the quantity of gunpowder exploded in this catastrophe was
twenty-seven barrels. Tower-street was wholly destroyed in the Great
Fire of 1666.
THE NAG'S HEAD TAVERN, CHEAPSIDE.
As you pass through Cheapside, you may observe upon the front of the
old house, No. 39, the sign-stone of a "Nag's Head:" this is presumed
to have been the sign of the Nag's Head Tavern, which is described as
at the Cheapside corner of Friday-street. This house obtained some
notoriety from its having been the pretended scene of the consecration
of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, at that critical period when the English Protestant or
Reformed Church was in its infancy. Pennant thus relates the
scandalous story. "It was pretended by the adversaries of our
religion, that a certain number of ecclesiastics, in their hurry to
take possession of the vacant see, assembled here, where they were to
undergo the ceremony from Anthony Kitchen, alias Dunstan, bishop of
Landaff, a sort of occasional conformist who had taken the oaths of
supremacy to Elizabeth. Bonner, Bishop of London, (then confined in
the Tower,) hearing of it, sent his chaplain to Kitchen, threatening
him with excommunication, in case he proceeded. The prelate therefore
refused to perform the ceremony: on which, say the Roman Catholics,
Parker and the other candidates, rather than defer possession of their
dioceses, determined to consecrate one another; which, says the story,
they did without any sort of scruple, and Scorey began with Parker,
who instantly rose Archbishop of Canterbury. The refutation of this
tale may be read in Strype's _Life of Archbishop Parker_, at p. 57. A
view of the Nag's Head Tavern and its sign, is preserved in La Serre's
prints, Entrée de la Reyne Mère du Roy, 1638, and is copied in
Wilkinson's _Londina Illustrata_.
The Roman Catholics laid the scene in the tavern: the real
consecration took place in the adjoining church of St. Mary-le-Bow. As
the form then adopted has been the subject of much controversy, the
following note, from a letter of Dr. Pusey, dated Dec. 4, 1865, may be
quoted here:
"The form adopted at the _confirmation_ of Archbishop
Parker was carefully framed on the old form used in the
_confirmations_ by Archbishop Chichele" (which was the point
for which I examined the registers in the Lambeth library).
The words used in the _consecrations_ of the bishops
confirmed by Chichele do not occur in the registers. The
words used by the consecrators of Parker, "_Accipe Spiritum
Sanctum_," were used in the later Pontificals, as in that of
Exeter, Lacy's (_Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia_, iii. 258).
Roman Catholic writers admit that _that_ only is essential
to consecration which the English service-book
retained--prayer during the service, which should have
reference to the office of bishops, and the imposition of
hands. And in fact Cardinal Pole engaged to retain in their
orders those who had been so ordained under Edward VI., and
his act was confirmed by Paul IV. (_Sanders de Schism.
Angl._, L. iii. 350).
THE HUMMUMS, COVENT GARDEN.
"Hammam" is the Arabic word for a bagnio, or bath, such as was
originally "The Hummums," in Covent Garden, before it became an hotel.
There is a marvellous ghost story connected with this house, where
died Parson Ford, who makes so conspicuous a figure in Hogarth's
_Midnight Modern Conversation_. The narrative is thus given in
Boswell's _Johnson_ by Croker:--
"_Boswell._ Was there not a story of Parson Ford's ghost having
appeared?
"_Johnson._ Sir, it was believed. A waiter at the Hummums, in which
house Ford died, had been absent for some time, and returned, not
knowing that Ford was dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the
story, he met him; going down again, he met him a second time. When
he came up, he asked some people of the house what Ford could be doing
there. They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in which
he lay for some time. When he recovered, he said he had a message to
deliver to some woman from Ford; but he was not to tell what or to
whom. He walked out; he was followed; but somewhere about St. Paul's
they lost him. He came back and said he had delivered it, and the
women exclaimed, 'Then we are all undone.' Dr. Pallet, who was not a
credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said the
evidence was irresistible. My wife went to the Hummums; (it is a place
where people get themselves cupped.) I believe she went with intention
to hear about this story of Ford. At first they were unwilling to tell
her; but after they had talked to her, she came away satisfied that it
was true. To be sure, the man had a fever; and this vision may have
been the beginning of it. But if the message to the women, and their
behaviour upon it, were true, as related, there was something
supernatural. That rests upon his word, and there it remains."
ORIGIN OF TAVERN SIGNS.
The cognisances of many illustrious persons connected with the Middle
Ages are still preserved in the signs attached to our taverns and
inns. Thus the White Hart with the golden chain was the badge of King
Richard II.; the Antelope was that of King Henry IV.; the Feathers was
the cognisance of Henry VI.; and the White Swan was the device of
Edward of Lancaster, his ill-fated heir slain at the battle of
Tewkesbury.
Before the Great Fire of London, in 1666, almost all the liveries of
the great feudal lords were preserved at these houses of public
resort. Many of their heraldic signs were then unfortunately lost: but
the Bear and Ragged Staff, the ensign of the famed Warwick, still
exists as a sign: while the Star of the Lords of Oxford, the
brilliancy of which decided the fate of the battle of Barnet; the Lion
of Norfolk, which shone so conspicuously on Bosworth field; the Sun of
the ill-omened house of York, together with the Red and White Rose,
either simply or conjointly, carry the historian and the antiquary
back to a distant period, although now disguised in the gaudy
colouring of a freshly-painted sign-board.
The White Horse was the standard of the Saxons before and after their
coming into England. It was a proper emblem of victory and triumph, as
we read in Ovid and elsewhere. The White Horse is to this day the
ensign of the county of Kent, as we see upon hop-pockets and bags; and
throughout the county it is a favourite inn-sign.
The Saracen's Head inn-sign originated in the age of the Crusades. By
some it is thought to have been adopted in memory of the father of St.
Thomas à Becket, who was a Saracen. Selden thus explains it: "Do not
undervalue an enemy by whom you have been worsted. When our countrymen
came home from fighting with the Saracens, and were beaten by them,
they pictured them with huge, big, terrible faces (as you still see
the sign of the Saracen's Head is), when in truth they were like other
men. But this they did to save their own credit." Still more direct is
the explanation in Richard the Crusader causing a Saracen's head to be
served up to the ambassadors of Saladin. May it not also have some
reference to the Saracen's Head of the Quintain, a military exercise
antecedent to jousts and tournaments?
The custom of placing a Bush at Tavern doors has already been noticed;
we add a few notes:--In the preface to the _Law of Drinking_, keeping
a public-house is called the trade of the ivy-bush: the bush was a
sign so very general, that probably from thence arose the proverb
"good wine needs no bush," or indication as to where it was sold. In
_Good Newes and Bad Newes_, 1622, a host says:--
"I rather will take down my bush and sign
Than live by means of riotous expense."
The ancient method of putting a bough of a tree upon anything, to
signify that it was for disposal, is still exemplified by an old besom
(or birch broom) being placed at the mast-head of a vessel that is
intended for sale. In Dekker's _Wonderful Yeare_, 1603, is the passage
"Spied a bush at the end of a pole, the ancient badge of a countrey
ale-house." And in Harris's _Drunkard's Cup_, p. 299, "Nay, if the
house be not with an ivie bush, let him have his tooles about him,
nutmegs, rosemary, tobacco, with other the appurtenances, and he knows
how of puddle ale to make a cup of English wine." From a passage in
_Whimzies, or a new Cast of Characters_, 1631, it would seem that
signs in alehouses succeeded birch poles.
It is usual in some counties, particularly Staffordshire, to hang a
bush at the door of an ale-house, or mug-house. Sir Thomas Browne
considers that the human faces depicted on sign-boards, for the sun
and moon, are relics of paganism, and that they originally meant
Apollo and Diana. This has been noticed in Hudibras--
"Tell me but what's the nat'ral cause
Why on a sign no painter draws
The full moon ever, but the half."
A Bell sign-stone may be seen on the house-front, No. 26, Great
Knight-Rider-street: it bears the date 1668, and is boldly carved;
whether it is of tavern or other trade it is hard to say: the house
appears to be of the above date.
The Bell, in Great Carter-lane, in this neighbourhood, has been taken
down: it was an interesting place, for, hence, October 25, 1598,
Richard Quiney addressed to his "loveing good ffrend and countryman,
Mr. Wm. Schackespere," (then living in Southwark, near the
Bear-garden), a letter for a loan of thirty pounds; which letter we
have seen in the possession of Mr. R. Bell Wheler, at Stratford-upon-Avon:
it is believed to be the only existing letter addressed to Shakspere.
The Bull, Bishopsgate, is noteworthy; for the yard of this inn
supplied a stage to our early actors, before James Burbadge and his
fellows obtained a patent from Queen Elizabeth for erecting a
permanent building for theatrical entertainments. Tarleton often
played here. Anthony Bacon, the brother of Francis, lived in a house
in Bishopsgate-street, not far from the Bull Inn, to the great concern
of his mother, who not only dreaded that the plays and interludes
acted at the Bull might corrupt his servants, but on her own son's
account objected to the parish as being without a godly clergyman.
Gerard's Hall, Basing-lane, had the fine Norman crypt of the ancient
hall of the Sisars for its wine-cellar; besides the tutelar effigies
of "Gerard the gyant," a fair specimen of a London sign, _temp._
Charles II. Here also was shown the staff used by Gerard in the wars,
and a ladder to ascend to the top of the staff; and in the
neighbouring church of St. Mildred, Bread-street, hangs a huge
tilting-helmet, said to have been worn by the said giant. The staff,
Stow thinks, may rather have been used as a May-pole, and to stand in
the hall decked with evergreens at Christmas; the ladder serving for
decking the pole and hall-roof.
Fosbroke says, that the Bell Savage is a strange corruption of the
Queen of Sheba; the Bell Savage, of which the device was a savage man
standing by a bell, is supposed to be derived from the French, Belle
Sauvage, on account of a beautiful savage having been once shown
there; by others it is considered, with more probability, to have been
so named in compliment to some ancient landlady of the celebrated inn
upon Ludgate-hill, whose surname was Savage, as in the Close-rolls of
the thirty-first year of the reign of Henry VI. is an entry of a grant
of that inn to "John Frensch, gentilman," and called "Savage's Ynne,"
_alias_ the "Bell on the Hoof."
The token of the house is--"HENRY YOVNG AT YE. An Indian woman
holding an arrow and a bow.--Rx ON LVDGATE HILL. In the field, H. M.
Y."
"There is a tradition [Mr. Akerman writes] that the origin of this
sign, and not only of the inn, but also of the name of the court in
which it is situate, was derived from that of Isabella Savage, whose
property they once were, and who conveyed them by deed to the Cutlers'
Company. This, we may observe, is a mistake. The name of the person
who left the Bell Savage to the Cutlers' Company was Craythorne, not
Savage."
In Flecknoe's _Ænigmatical Characters_, 1665, in alluding to "your
fanatick reformers," he says, "as for the signs, they have pretty well
begun the reformation already, changing the sign of the Salutation of
the Angel and our Lady into the Shouldier and Citizen, and the
Catherine Wheel into the Cat and Wheel, so that there only wants their
making the Dragon to kill St. George, and the Devil to tweak St.
Dunstan by the nose, to make the reformation compleat. Such ridiculous
work they make of their reformation, and so zealous are they against
all mirth and jollity, as they would pluck down the sign of the Cat
and Fiddle, too, if it durst but play so loud as they might hear it."
The sign In God is our Hope is still to be seen at a public-house on
the western road between Cranford and Slough. Coryatt mentions the Ave
Maria, with verses, as the sign of an alehouse abroad, and a street
where all the signs on one side were of birds. The Swan with Two
Nicks, or Necks, as it is commonly called, was so termed from the two
nicks or marks, to make known that it was a swan of the Vintners'
Company; the swans of that company having two semicircular pieces cut
from the upper mandible of the swan, one on each side, which are
called nicks. The origin of the Bolt-in-Tun is thus explained. The
bolt was the arrow shot from a cross-bow, and the tun or barrel was
used as the target, and in this device the bolt is painted sticking in
the bunghole. It appears not unreasonable to conclude, that hitting
the bung was as great an object in crossbow-shooting as it is to a
member of a Toxophilite Club to strike the target in the bull's eye.
The sign of the Three Loggerheads is two grotesque wooden heads, with
the inscription "Here we three Loggerheads be," the reader being the
third. The Honest Lawyer is depicted at a beershop at Stepney; the
device is a lawyer with his head under his arm, to prevent his telling
lies.
The Lamb and Lark has reference to a well-known proverb that we should
go to bed with the lamb and rise with the lark. The Eagle and Child,
_vulgo_ Bird and Baby, is by some persons imagined to allude to
Jupiter taking Ganymede; others suppose that it merely commemorates
the fact of a child having been carried off by an eagle; but this sign
is from the arms of the Derby family (eagle and child) who had a house
at Lambeth, where is the Bird and Baby.
The Green Man and Still should be a green man (or man who deals in
_green herbs_) with a bundle of peppermint or pennyroyal under his
arm, which he brings to be distilled.
Upon the modern building of the Bull and Mouth has been conferred the
more elegant name of the Queen's Hotel. Now the former is a corruption
of Boulogne Mouth, and the sign was put up to commemorate the
destruction of the French flotilla at the mouth of Boulogne harbour in
the reign of Henry VIII. This absurd corruption has been perpetuated
by a carving in stone of a bull and a human face with an enormous
mouth. The Bull and Gate, palpably, has the like origin; as at the
_Gate_ of Boulogne the treaty of capitulation to the English was
signed.
The Spread Eagle, which constitutes the arms of Austria and Russia,
originated with Charlemagne, and was in England introduced out of
compliment to some German potentate.
The oddest sign we know is now called The Mischief, in Oxford-street,
and our remembrance of this dates over half a century, when the street
was called Oxford-road, then unpaved, is truly Hogarthian. It was at
that time called the Man loaded with Mischief, _i.e._ a wife, two
squalling brats, a monkey, a cat, a jackdaw, etc. The perpetrator of
this libel on the other sex, we suppose, was some poor henpecked
individual.[59]
On the subject of sign combinations, a writer in _Notes and Queries_
says:--"This subject has been taken up by a literary contemporary, and
some ingenious but farfetched attempts at explanation have been made,
deduced from languages the publican is not likely to have heard of.
The following seem at least to be undoubtedly English: The Sun and
Whalebone, Cock and Bell, Ram and Teazle, Cow and Snuffers, Crow and
Horseshoe, Hoop and Pie,--_cum multis aliis_. I have some remembrance
of a very simple solution of the cause of the incongruity, which was
this: The lease being out of (say) the sign of The Ram, or the tenant
had left for some cause, and gone to the sign of The Teazle; wishing
to be known, and followed by as many of his old connexion as possible,
and also to secure the new, he took his old sign with him, and set it
up beside the other, and the house soon became known as The Ram and
Teazle. After some time the signs required repainting or renewing, and
as one board was more convenient than two, the 'emblems,' as poor Dick
Tinto calls them, were depicted together, and hence rose the puzzle."
There have been some strange guesses. Some have thought the Goat and
Compasses to be a corruption of "God encompasseth us," but it has
been much more directly traced as follows, by Sir Edmund Head, who has
communicated the same to Mr. P. Cunningham: "At Cologne, in the church
of Santa Maria in Capitolio, is a flat stone on the floor, professing
to be the Grabstein der Brüder und Schwester eines ehrbaren Wein- und
Fass-Ampts, Anno 1693; that is, I suppose, a vault belonging to the
Wine Coopers' Company. The arms exhibit a shield with a pair of
compasses, an axe, and a dray, or truck, with goats for supporters. In
a country, like England, dealing so much at one time in Rhenish wine,
a more likely origin for such a sign could hardly be imagined."
The Pig in the Pound might formerly be seen towards the east end of
Oxford-street, not far from "The Mischief."
The Magpie and Horseshoe may be seen in Fetter-lane: the ominous
import attached to the bird and the shoe may account for this
association in the sign: we can imagine ready bibbers going to houses
with this sign "for luck."
The George, Snow-hill, is a good specimen of a carved sign-stone of--
"St. George that swing'd the dragon,
And sits on horseback at mine hoste's door."
FOOTNOTE:
[59] Communicated to the _Builder_ by Mr. Rhodes.
INDEX
TO THE FIRST VOLUME.
Alfred Club, the, 237.
Allen, King, his play, 287.
Almack's Assembly Rooms, 86-89.
Almack's, by Capt. Gronow, 316.
Almack's Club, 83-86.
Almack's Rooms, 88.
Anacreontic _Ad Poculum_, by Morris, 150.
Angling Club Anecdotes, 301.
Antiquarian Club, 306.
Army and Navy Club, 278.
Apollo Club, 10.
Arms for White's, 115.
Arnold and the Steaks, 145, 146.
Arthur's Club, 107.
Athenæum established, 212.
Athenæum Club, the, 241-247.
Athenæum Club-house described, 242, 243.
Barry's Reform Club-house, 267.
Barry's Travellers' Club-house, 233, 234.
Beef-steak Club, the, 123.
Beef-steak Club, Ivy-lane, 159.
Beef-steak Clubs, various, 158.
Beef-steak Society, History of the, 123-149.
Beef-steaks, Ward's Address to, 129.
Bell Tavern Beef-steak Club, 159.
Betting, extraordinary, at White's, 111, 116, 117.
Bibliomania, what is it?, 192.
Bickerstaffe and his Club, 64, 65.
Bishops and Judges at the Alfred, 239.
Blasphemous Clubs, 44.
Blue-stocking Club, at Mrs. Montague's, 199.
Blue-stocking Clubs, ancient, 198.
Bolland at the Steaks, 146.
Boodle's Club, 121.
Boodle's Club-house and Pictures, 122.
Bowl, silver, presented by the Steaks to Morris, 154.
Box of the Past Overseers' Society, Westminster, 193-196.
Brookes's Club, 19, 20, 22, 23, 89-102.
Brookes, the Club-house proprietor, 89, 90.
Brougham, Lord, at the Steaks, 146.
Brummel and Alderman Combe at Brookes's, 101, 102.
Brummel and Bligh at Watier's, 168.
Buchan, Dr., at the Chapter, 181.
Burke and Johnson at the Literary Club, 208.
Burke at the Robin Hood, 197.
Busby, Dr., at the Chapter, 184.
Byron and Dudley, Lords, at the Alfred, 208.
Calves' Head Club, 25-34.
Calves' Head Club Laureat, 30,
Calves' Head Club, Origin of, 27, 28, 32.