the sign of the FRENCH ARMS, a tavern name sufficiently common also in
London at that period to attract the travellers from across the Channel.
Thus James Johnson was a goldsmith, “that kept running cash,”--_i.e._, a
banker,--in Cheapside, in 1677, living at the sign of the THREE FLOWER
DE LUCES.[158] In the fifteenth century, Gascon merchants and other
strangers in London were allowed to keep hostels for their countrymen,
and, in order to get known, they most likely put up the arms of those
countries as their signs. No doubt the THREE FROGS, London Road,
Wokingham, is a travesty of _Johnny Crapaud’s Arms_.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.
HEDGEHOG.
(Bynneman’s sign, 1560.)
BLUE BOAR.
(Banks’s Collection, 1765.)
THE VALIANT LONDON APPRENTICE.
(From an old chapbook, 17th cent.)
THE SUN.
(Sign of Wynkyn de Worde, 1497.)
THREE PHEASANTS AND SCEPTRE.
(Banks’s Bills, 1795.)]
Boursault,[159] in his letter to Bizotin, has a burst of indignation at
a “_fournisseur_” of something or other to the royal family, who had
adopted as his sign the ENGLISH ARMS, with the arms of France in the
first quarter, and endeavours to call down the ire of the Parisian
police upon the head of the unfortunate shopkeeper who had committed
this act of treason:--
“Laissons l’Angleterre se repaître de chimères,” saith he, “et
s’imaginer que ses souverains sont Rois de France, mais que des
Français soyent assez ignorants, ou assez mauvais sujets, pour mettre
les armes de France écartelés dans celles d’Angleterre, c’est ce que
des sujets aussi zélez que Monsieur d’Argenson et les autres officiers
préposez pour la police ne doivent nullement souffrir.”[160]
He next, in a threatening manner, reminds the poor shopkeeper how,
according to “Candem [_sic_] Historien Angloys,” Queen Mary Stuart was
beheaded for having quartered the English arms with those of Scotland,
though she was the heir-presumptive of the English throne; and if such
was the fate of that queen, what then did the man deserve who quartered
the arms of his sovereign with those of a foreign king? Indeed he
deserved the same fate as the arms.
Another sign, apparently of French origin, is the DOLPHIN AND CROWN, the
armorial bearing of the French Dauphin, and the sign of R. Willington, a
bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard _circa_ 1700. Some years after, this
house seems to have been occupied by James Young, a famous maker of
violins and other musical instruments, who lived at the west corner of
London House Yard, St Paul’s Churchyard. On this man the following
catch appeared in the _Pleasant Musicall Companion_, 1726:--
“You scrapers that want a good fiddle well strung,
You must go to the man that is old while he’s Young;
But if this same fiddle you fain would play bold,
You must go to his son, who’s Young when he’s old.
There’s old Young and young Young, both men of renown:
Old sells and young plays the best fiddle in town.
Young and old live together, and may they live long--
Young to play an old fiddle, old to sell a new song.”
This Young family afterwards removed to the QUEEN’S HEAD Tavern in
Paternoster Row, where in a few years they grew rich by giving concerts,
when they removed to the CASTLE in the same street. The Castle concerts
continued a long time to be celebrated.
Many signs are exceedingly puzzling under the name by which they pass
with the public. Such was that of “Rowland Hall, dwelling in Guttur
Lane, at the sygne of the HALF EAGLE AND KEY.” This quaint sign is no
other than the arms of Geneva, described in the non-heraldic language of
the mob. Rowland Hall, a bookseller and printer, lived as a refugee in
Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary; hence on his return to London he
set up the arms of that town for his sign, as a graceful compliment to
the hospitality he had received, and as a tribute of admiration to
stanch Protestantism. Hall, at other periods of his life, lived at the
CRADLE in Lombard Street, and at the THREE ARROWS in Golden Lane,
Cripplegate. In 1769 there was again the GENEVA ARMS among the London
signs, before the shop of Le Grand, a “pastery-cook and cook,” as he
styled himself, in Church Street, Soho. Formerly most pastry-cooks and
confectioners were Swiss, and many from that country still follow those
professions in Italy, Spain, and recently in England. This last sign has
found imitators in Soho; for at the present day it figures at a
public-house in Hayes Court, where it is put up, no doubt, in honour of
the spirit which many call Geneva, but which we may name Gin. The origin
of this name, as applied by publicans, is not a little curious. In
Holland the juniper-berry is used for flavouring the gin or hollands
which they distil there, and this, with the vulgar in that country, has
gradually become corrupted from Juniper to Jenever, the latter term
being still further corrupted here to _Geneva_, and _Gin_.
The CROSS KEYS are the arms of the Papal See, the emblem of St Peter and
his successors:--
“Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain;
The golden opes, the iron shuts amaine.”
MILTON.
This sign was frequently adopted by innkeepers and other tenants of
religious houses, even after the Reformation; for the Cross Keys figure
in the arms of the Bishops of York, Cashel, Exeter, Gloster, and
Peterborough. At the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, where Tarlton,
the comic actor, went to see fashions, Banks used to perform with his
wonderful bay horse before a crowded house. This was in the days of
Queen Elizabeth, when the inn consisted of a large court with galleries
all round, which, like many other old London inns, was often used as an
extempore theatre by our ancestors. It is named in 1681[161] amongst the
carriers’ inns, and is in existence at the present day. The Cross Keys
was the sign of a tavern near Thavies Inn in 1712:--
“May the Cross Keys near Thavies Inn succeed,
And famous grow for choicest white and red;
That all may know, who view that costly sign,
Those golden keys command celestial wine.”
_The Quack Vintners. A Satire._ 1712.
Besides, it is famous as the sign of Bernard Lintot, 1736, the publisher
of Gay’s works, and many other popular books of that day. His shop was
situated between the Temple Gates, in Fleet Street. The CROSS KEYS AND
BIBLE was the sign of J. Bell, in Cornhill, 1711.
Most numerous among heraldic signs were the crests, arms, and
badges[162] of private families. The causes which dictated the
choice of such subjects were various. One of the earliest was this:--
“In towns the hospitality of the burghers was not always given gratis,
for it was a common custom even amongst the richer merchants to make a
profit by receiving guests. These letters of lodgings were
distinguished from the innkeepers or _hostelers_ by the name of
_herbergeors_, or people who gave harbour to strangers, and in large
towns they were submitted to municipal regulations. The great barons
and knights were in the custom of taking up their lodgings with those
herbergeors rather than going to the public hostel, and thus a sort of
relationship was formed between particular nobles or kings and
particular burghers, on the strength of which the latter _adopted the
arms of their habitual lodgers as their sign_.”[164]
This, again, led to the custom of prefixing to inns the arms of men of
note who had sojourned in the house, as may be seen in Machyn’s
Diary:--“The xxv day of January [1560] toke ys gorney into Franse,
inbassadur to the Frenche kyng, the yerle of Bedford and he had iij
dozen of _logyng skochyons_,” (lodging escutcheons). Thus, on the road
from London to Westchester the coats of arms of several of the
lord-lieutenants of Ireland might formerly have been observed, either as
signs to inns or else framed and hung in the best rooms. That this was a
general custom with ambassadors appears from Sir Dudley Digge’s
“Compleat Ambassador,” 1654; who, alluding in his preface to the reserve
of English ambassadors, observes:--“We have hardly any notion of them
but their arms, which are hung up in inns where they passed.” Montaigne
also mentions this practice as usual in France:--“A Plombières il me
commanda à la faveur de son hostesse, _selon l’humeur de la nation_, de
laisser un escusson de ses armes en bois, qu’un peintre dudict lieu fist
pour un escu; et le fist l’hostesse curieusement _attacher à la muraille
pas dehors_.”[165]
But the feudal relations between the higher and lower classes
contributed above all to the adoption of this description of signs. A
vassal, for instance, would set up the arms or crest of his feudal
lord; a retired soldier the arms of the knight under whose banneret he
had gathered both glory and plunder; an old servant the badge he had
worn when he stood at the trencher, or followed his master in the chase;
and, doubtless, many publicans adopted for their sign the badge of the
neighbouring wealthy noble, in order to court the custom of his
household and servants.
Bagford, in his MS. notes about the art of printing,[166] has jotted
down a list of signs originated from badges, which we will transcribe in
all the unrestrained freedom of Bagford’s spelling, in which, as well as
in bad writing, he surpassed all his contemporaries, (_see_ note, p.
102:)--
“Then for ye original of signes used to be set over ye douers of
tradesmen, as Inkepers, Taverns, etc., thay hauing been domestic
saruants to some nobleman, thay leauing ther Masters saruis toke to
themselves for ther signes ye crest, bag,[167] or ye arms of ther Ld.,
and thes was a destincsion or Mark of one Mannes house from anouther,
and [not] only by printers but all outher trades: and these seruants
of kinges, queenes, or noblemen, being ther domestick saruants, and
wor ther Leuirs[168] and Bages, as may be sene these day ye maner of
the Leuirs and Bagges by ye wattermen:--
The ANTELOP was ye bag of Kg. Henery ye 8, as wel as ye
porculouses[169] and ye Rose and Crown.
ANCOR, Gould, ye Ld. of Lincolne and ye Lord High Admirall.
BULL, Black, with gould hornes, ye House of Clarence.
BULL, Dun, ye Lord Nevill, Westmoreland, Burgayne, Latimer, and
Southamton.
BOUR: White, ye Lord Winsor; _Blew_ with a Mullit, ye Earle of Oxford.
BUCKET AND CHANE, ye Lord Wills.
BARE AND RAGGED STAFFE, ye Earle of Lester.
BARE, Black, ye Earle of Warwicke.
BARE, White, ye Earle of Kent.
BEARS HEAD Muscled, ye Lord Morley.
ROE BUCK, ye Lord Montacute.
BULLS HEAD erased: White, ye Ld. Wharton; Red, ye Lord Ogle.
CRESCENT or HALFE MOUNE, ye Earle of Northumberland and ye
Temporalati.
CONDY, black, ye Ld. Bray.
CAT, ye Lord Euers; Cat of Mount and Leper,[170] Mar. of Worster and
ye Ld. Buckhurst.
CROSSES and MITTERS, and CROSS KEYES, Archbishop and Bishopes,
Abbots.
CARDINALES CAPES or HAT, you have not meney of them, the war set up
by sume that had ben seruants to Tho. Wollsey.
DRAGON: Black, Wilsher[171] and Clifford; Red, Cumberland; Greene, ye
Earle of Pembrocke.
EAGLE, ye Earle of Cambridge; EAGEL AND CHILDE, ye Earle of Derby;
Black, ye Lord Norris.
EAGLE, sprede, ye Emperour.
ELEPHANT, Sr. Ffrances Knowles, (and Henery Wyke, a printer, liuing in
Fletstrete, 1570, was saruant to Sr. Ffr. Knowles, gaue ye Elephant
for his signe,) and likwise it was ye bag of ye Lord Beamont and ye
Ld. Sandes.
PHENIX, ye Lord Hertford, and ye sign that ---- Mansell [set up,]
Copper, etc.[172]
FFOX, Red, Gloster and ye Bishop of Winchester.
FFALCOLNE, ye Marquess of Winchester; armed and collered, ye Ld. St.
John and Ld. Zouch.
GRIPES FFOOT, ye Ld. Stanley.
GOTTE, ye Earle of Bedford.
GRAYHOND, ye Ld. Clenton, Druery, and ye Lord Rich.[173]
GRIFFEN, ye Ld. Wintworth.
HARPE, for Irland.
HEDGE-HOG, Sr. Henery Sidney; Will. Seeres was his printer.
HIND, Sr. Christopher Haton; Hen. Beneyman his printer.
LOCK, ye House of Suffolcke. Such a sign without Temple Bar.
LION, _Bleu_, Denmarke.
LION, _Red_, Rampant, Scotland.
LION, _White_, Pasant, ye Earl of March.
LION, _White_, Rampant, Norfolk and all ye Hawardes.
MAIDEN HEAD, ye Duck of Buckingam.
PORTCULLIS, ye Earle of Somerset, Wayles, and ye Lord of Worster.
THE PYE, ye Ld. Reuiers.[174]
PELICAN, ye Lord Cromwell.
PECOCKE, ye Earle of Rutland.
PLUM OF FFEATHERS, ye Earle of Lincolne; azure, ye Lord Sorope.
RAUEN, _White_, ye Earle of Comberland.
RAUEN, _Blacke_, ye King of Scots.
SWANE, ye Ducke of Buckingham, Gloster, Hartford, Hunsdon, Stafford.
SUNE, ye Spirituallaty, ye Lord Willoby and York.
STAFFE: _White Ragged_, Warwick; Black, Kent.
STARRE, ye Earle of Sussen and ye Lord Ffitzwalter.
SARASON HEAD, ye Ld. Audley and ye Ld. Cobham.
TALBOT, ye Earl of Shrewsbury and ye Lord Mountagew.
TIGER’S HEAD, Sr. Ffrancis Walsingam.
WHETE-SHEAFE, ye Earle of Exeter, ye Lord Burley, etc.
APE, _clogged_, ye House of Suffolcke.
BUTTERFLIE, _white_, ye Lord Audle.
CAMEL, ye Earle of Worster.
YE 3 FLUER DE LUSES, ye King of France.
FOOLES HEAD, ye Earle of Bath.
GRAYHOND, ye Ld. Clinton; white, ye fameley of ye Druries.
GRAYHONDES HEAD, ye Lord Rich.
HART, _White_, Kg. Richard ye 2 and Sir Walter Rowley.[175]
HORSE, _White_, ye Earle of Arondele.
HORNES, _2 of seluer_,[176] ye Ld. Cheney.
MILSALE or WINDMIL, ye Lord Willobe.
ROSE IN YE SUNBEAMS, ye Ld. Wardon of ye 8 ports.
SPEARHEAD, Pembroke.
VNICORNE, _White_, ye Ld. Windsor.”
The arms of the lord of the manor were often put up as a sign,--a custom
that has continued to our day, particularly in villages, where the inn
invariably displays the name or coat-armour of the ground-landlord,
whose steward once or twice in the year meets at the house the tenantry
with their rents and land dues. Should the estate pass into other hands,
the inn will most probably change its sign for the arms of the new
purchaser. The house, as it were, wears the livery of the master,
although, so far as heralds’ visitations are concerned, this may be as
unauthorised as many other advertisements of noble descent, or gentle
extraction, in use amongst the wealthy and the proud.
In ancient times, as we have seen, the great landowners performed the
duties of innkeepers, and their arms were hung or carved at the
entrances to the castles, as indications to wayfarers who was the lord
and master in those parts. The keep in those days was rarely without a
stranger or two, either travelling mechanics or persons acquainted with
mysteries,--as trades and professions were termed in those days,--or
vagabond soldiers on the tramp for a new master to fight under. Greater
people were admitted further in the castle, but the common sort fared
with the servants. According to the good-nature of the all-powerful lord
was the fare good or bad, plentiful or meagre. It was, however,
generally the custom in those early times to be profuse in all matters
of food-bounty. The house-steward made charges for any extras, and the
comfort obtainable generally depended on the liberality or greediness of
these personages. As population increased, travellers became too
numerous for the accommodation provided. Stewards also became old, and
detached premises were given or built for them to carry on the business
away from the castle or great house. The arms of the landlord were of
course put up outside the house, and on occasion of predatory excursions
or family fights, when other nobles joined their troops with those of
the landlord, the soldiers were usually quartered at the inn outside
the castle. As in all cases of public resort, people soon began to have
fancies, and this Red Lion and that Greyhound became famous through the
country for the good entertainment to be had there. In this manner Red
Lions and Greyhounds found their way on to the signboards of the inns
within the walled cities. The men of the castle, too, used those houses
bearing their master’s arms when they visited the town. It will be
readily seen that the name of a favourite tavern would quickly suggest
its adoption elsewhere, and in this way the heraldic emblem of a family
might be carried where that family was neither known nor feared.
Latterly, however, as all traces of the origin and meaning of these
“Arms” have died out, or become removed from the understanding of
publicans and brewers, the uses to which the word has been applied are
most absurd and ridiculous. Not only do we meet constantly with arms of
families nobody ever heard of, nor cares to hear about, but all sorts of
impossible “Arms” are invented, as JUNCTION ARMS, GRIFFIN’S ARMS,
CHAFFCUTTER’S ARMS, UNION ARMS,[177] GENERAL’S ARMS, ANTIGALLICAN ARMS,
FARMERS’ ARMS, DROVERS’ ARMS, &c., (_see_ Introduction.)
In tavern heraldry the ADAM’S ARMS ought certainly to have the
precedence: the publicans generally represent these by a pewter pot and
a couple of crossed tobacco pipes, differing in this from Sylvanus
Morgan, a writer on heraldry, who says that Adam’s arms were “Paly
Tranchy divided every way and tinctured of every colour,”[178] The
shield was in the shape of a spade, which was used
“When Adam delved and Eve span,”
whilst from the spindle of our first mother the female lozenge-shaped
shield is said to be derived.
One of the most popular heraldic signs is the BEAR AND RAGGED STAFF, the
crest of the Warwick family:--
“_War._ Now, by my father’s badge, old Nevil’s crest,
The rampant bear chain’d to the ragged staff,
This day I’ll wear aloft my burgonet.”
_Henry VI._, Part II. a. v. s. 1.
Arthgal, the first Earl of Warwick, in the time of King Arthur, was
called by the ancient British the Bear, for having strangled such an
animal in his arms; and Morvidius, another ancestor of this house, slew
a giant with a club made out of a young tree; hence the family bore the
Bear and Ragged Staff.
“When Robert Dudley was governor in the Low Countries with the high
title of his Excellencie, disusing his own coat of the Green Lion[179]
with two tails, he signed all instruments with the crest of the Bear and
Ragged Staff. He was then suspected by many of his jealous adversaries
to hatch an ambitious design to make himself absolute commander (as the
lion is king of beasts) over the Low Countries. Whereupon some--foes to
his faction and friends to the Dutch freedom--wrote under his crest set
up in public places:--
‘Ursa caret cauda, non queat esse leo.’
‘The Bear he never can prevail
To lion it for lack of tail.’
Which gave rise to a Warwickshire proverb, in use at this day,--_The
Bear wants a tail and cannot be a Lion._”[180]
The Bear and Ragged Staff is still the sign of an inn at Cumnor, to
which an historic interest is attached owing to its connexion with the
dark tragedy of poor Amy Robsart, who in this very house fell a victim
to that stony-hearted adventurer, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Sir
Walter Scott has introduced the house in the first chapter of
“Kenilworth.” The power the Warwick family once enjoyed gave this sign a
popularity which has existed to the present day, though the race of old
Nevil, and the kings he made and unmade, have each and all passed away.
Its heraldic designation has been better preserved than is the case of
some other signs; only in one instance, at Lower Bridge Street, Chester,
it has been altered into the BEAR AND BILLET. Sometimes the sign of the
Bear and Ragged Staff, we may inform the reader, is jocularly spoken of
as the Angel and Flute.
The RAGGED STAFF figures also in single blessedness. A carriers’ inn in
West Smithfield possessed this sign in 1682.[181] In the wall of a house
at the corner of Little St Andrew Street and West Street, St Giles,
there is still a stone bas-relief sign of two ragged staves placed
salterwise, with the initials S. F. G., and the date 1691. It was
doubtless put there as a compliment to Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester,
who in the reign of Charles II. built Leicester House, which gave a name
to Leicester Fields, now the site of Leicester Square. Stow mentions
that the king-maker, Richard Warwick, came to town for the convention of
1458, accompanied by 600 men, all in red jackets, “embroidered with
ragged staves before and behind.”
Equally well known with the last sign is that of the EAGLE AND CHILD,
occasionally called the BIRD AND BANTLING, to obtain the favourite
alliteration. It represents the crest of the Stanley family, and the
following legend is told to account for its origin:--In the reign of
Edward III., Sir Thomas Latham, ancestor of the house of Stanley and
Derby, had only one legitimate child, a daughter named Isabel, but at
the same time he had an illegitimate son by a certain Mary Oscatell.
This child he ordered to be laid at the foot of a tree on which an eagle
had built its nest. Taking a walk with his lady over the estate, he
contrived to bring her past this place, pretended to find the boy, took
him home, and finally prevailed upon her to adopt him as their son. This
boy was afterwards called Sir Oscatell Latham, and considered the heir
to the estates. Compunction or other motive, however, made the old
nobleman alter his mind and confess the fraud, and at his death the
greater part of the fortune was left to his daughter, who afterwards
married Sir John Stanley. At the adoption of the child, Sir Thomas had
assumed for crest an eagle looking backwards; this, out of ill feeling
towards Sir Oscatell, was afterwards altered into an eagle preying upon
a child. How matters were afterwards arranged may be seen in “Memoirs
containing a Genealogical and Historical Account of the House of
Stanley,” p. 22. _Manchester_, 1767. Bishop Stanley made an historical
poem upon the legend, which is not without parallel, and seems to be
either a corruption of or suggested by the fable of Ganimede. Edward
Stanley, in his “History of Birds,” (vol. i. p. 119,) cites several
similar stories. But the Stanley family is not the only one that bears
this crest. Randle Holme (b. iii. p. 403) gives the arms of the family
of Culcheth of Culcheth as “an infant in swaddling-clothes proper,
mantle gules, swaddle band or, with an eagle standing upon it, with its
wings expanded sable in a field argent.” “The fause fable of the Lo.
Latham” is also told at length, with slight variations from the usual
story, in a MS. in the College of Arms;[182] in this version the
foundling is made the son of an Irish king. The Eagle and Child occurs
as the sign of a bookseller, Thomas Creede, in the old Exchange, as
early as 1584. Taylor the water-poet also names some instances of the
sign among inns and taverns, and particularly extols one at
Manchester:--
“I lodged at the Eagle and the Child,
Whereas my hostesse (a good ancient woman)
Did entertain me with respect not common,
She caused my linnen, shirts, and bands be washt,
And on my way she caused me be refresht;
She gave me twelve silke points, she gave me baken,
Which by me much refused at last was taken.
In troath she proued a mother unto me,
For which I ever more will thankefull be.”[183]
Another crest of the Derby family also occurs as a sign--namely, the
EAGLE’S FOOT, which was adopted in the sixteenth century by John
Tysdall, a bookseller at the upper end of Lombard Street.
The frequency of eagles in heraldry made them very common on the
signboard, although it is now impossible to say whose armorial bearings
each particular eagle was intended to represent. The SPREAD EAGLE occurs
as the sign of one of the early printers and booksellers, Gualter Lynne,
who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, had two shops with that
sign,--one on Sommer’s Key, near Billingsgate, and another next St
Paul’s Wharf. In 1659 there was a BLACK SPREAD EAGLE at the west end of
St Paul’s, which shop was also a bookseller’s, one Giles Calvert. As the
signs in large towns and cities were generally not altered when the
house changed hands, it is not improbable but that this may be the same
Black Eagle mentioned by Stow in the following words:--
“During a great tempest at sea, in January 1506, Philip, King of
Castille, and his queen, were weather-driven at Falmouth. The same
tempest blew down the Eagle of brass off the spire of St Paul’s Church
in London, and in the falling the same eagle broke and battered the
Black Eagle that hung for a sign in St Paul’s Churchyard.”
Milton’s father, a scrivener by trade, lived in Bread Street,
Cheapside, at the sign of the Spread Eagle, which was his own coat of
arms, and in this house the great author of “Paradise Lost” was born,
December 9, 1608. When the poet’s fame had gone forth, strangers used to
come to see the house, until it was destroyed by the fire of 1666.
Perhaps its memory is preserved in Black Spread Eagle Court, which is
the name of a passage in that locality.
Another Spread Eagle was a noted “porter-house” in the Strand at the end
of the last century:--
“And to some noted porter-house repair;
The several streets or one or more can claim,
Alike in goodness and alike in fame.
The Strand her Spreading Eagle justly boasts.
* * * * *
Facing that street where Venus holds her reign,
And Pleasure’s daughters drag a life of pain,[184]
There the Spread Eagle, with majestic grace,
Shows his broad wings and notifies the place.
* * * * *
There let me dine in plenty and in quiet.”[185]
The GRASSHOPPERS on the London signboards were all descendants of Sir
Thomas Gresham’s sign and crest, which is still commemorated by the
weather-vane on the Royal Exchange, of which he was the first founder.
The original sign appears to have been preserved up to a very recent
date.
“The shop of the great Sir Thomas Gresham,” says Pennant, “stood in
this [Lombard] street: it is now occupied by Messrs Martin, bankers,
who are still in possession of the original sign of that illustrious
person--the Grasshopper. Were it mine, that honourable memorial of so
great a predecessor should certainly be placed in the most
ostentatious situation I could find.”[186]
The ancients used the grasshopper as a _fascinum_, (fascination,
enchantment;) for this purpose Pisistratus erected one as a καταχηνη
before the Acropolis at Athens; hence grasshoppers, in all sorts of
human occupations, were worn about the person to bring good luck. The
grasshopper sign certainly seems to have been a lucky one. Charles
Duncombe and Richard Kent, goldsmiths, lived at the Grasshopper in
Lombard Street, (no doubt Gresham’s old house,) in 1677,[187] and throve
so well under its _fascinum_ that Duncombe gathered a fortune large
enough to buy the Helmsley estate in Yorkshire from George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham. The land is now occupied by the Earl of Feversham,
(Duncombe’s descendant,) under the name of Duncombe Park.
It is impossible to determine whether the MAIDENHEAD was set up as a
compliment to the Duke of Buckingham, to Catherine Parr, or to the
Mercers’ Company, for it is the crest of the three. But at all events
the Mercers’ crest had the precedence as being the oldest. Amongst the
badges of Henry VIII. it is sometimes seen issuing out of the Tudor
Rose:--
“This combination,” Willement says, “does not appear to have been an
entire new fancy, but to have been composed from the rose-badge of
King Henry VIII., and from one previously used by this queen’s family.
The house of Parr had before this time assumed as one of their devices
a maiden’s head couped below the breast, vested in ermine and gold,
the hair of the head and the temples encircled with a wreath of red
and white roses; and this badge they had derived from the family of
Ros of Kendal.”
It was a sign used by some of the early printers. On the last page of a
little work entitled “Salus Corporis, Salus Animæ,” we find the
following imprint:--
“Hos cme Richardus quos Fax impressit ad unguem calcographus summa
sedulitate libros.
Impressum est presens opusculum londiniis in divi pauli semiterio sub
virginei capitis signo. Anno millesimo quin getesimo nono. Mensis vero
Decembris die xii.”[188]
Thomas Petit, another early printer, also lived “at the sygne of the
Maydenshead in Paulis Churchyard,” 1541. He was probably a successor of
Richard Fax.
An amusing anecdote is told of old Hobson, the Londoner, with regard to
this sign:--
“Maister Hobson having one of his Prentices new come out of his time,
and being made a free man of London, desired to set up for himself;
so, taking a house not far from St Laurence Lane, furnished it with
store of ware, and set up the signe of the Maydenhead; hard by was a
very rich man of the same trade, had the same signe, and reported in
every place where he came, that the young man had set up the same
signe that he had onely to get away his customers, and daily vexed the
young man therewithall, who, being grieved in his mind, made it known
to Maister Hobson, his late Maister, who, comming to the rich man,
said, ‘I marvell, sir,’ (quoth Maister Hobson,) ‘why you wrong my man
so much as to say he seketh to get away your customers.’ ‘Marry, so he
doth,’ (quoth the other,) ‘for he has set up a signe called the
Maidenhead, and mine is.’ ‘That is not so,’ (replied Maister Hobson,)
‘for his is the widdoe’s head, and no maydenhead, therefore you do him
great wrong.’ The rich man hereupon, seeing himself requited with
mocks, rested satisfied, and never after that envied Maister Hobson’s
man, but let him live quietly.”[189]
This sign occurs occasionally as the MAID’S HEAD, but since Queen
Elizabeth’s reign it has doubtless frequently referred to the virgin
queen.
THE CROSS FOXES--_i.e._, two foxes counter saliant--is a common sign in
some parts of England. It is the sign of the principal inn at Oswestry
in Shropshire, and of very many public-houses in North Wales, and has
been adopted from the armorial bearings of Sir Watkin Williams Wynne,
Bart., whose family hold extensive possessions in these parts. The late
baronet, too, made himself very popular as a patron of agricultural
improvements. Old Guillim, the heraldic writer’s remarks upon this coat
of arms, which he says belongs to the Kadrod Hard family of Wales, are
quaint:--
“These are somewhat unlike Samson’s foxes that were tied together by
the tails, and yet these two agree in _aliquo tertio_: They came into
the field like to enemies, but they meant nothing less than fight, and
therefore they pass by each other, like two crafty lawyers, which come
to the Bar as if they meant to fall out deadly about their clients’
cause; but when they have done, and their clients’ purses are well
spunged, they are better friends than ever they were, and laugh at
those geese that will not believe them to be foxes, till they (too
late) find themselves foxbitten.”[190]
The TIGER’S HEAD was the sign of the house of Christopher and Robert
Barker, Queen Elizabeth’s booksellers and printers, in Paternoster Row:
it was borrowed from their crest; their shop exhibited the sign of the
_Grasshopper_, in St Paul’s Churchyard. They came of an ancient family,
being descended from Sir Christopher Barker, knight, king-at-arms, in
the reign of Henry VIII. Barker is said to have printed the first series
of English news-sheets, or, as we now call them, newspapers. The
earliest of those which remain (copies are preserved among Dr Birch’s
Historical Collections in the British Museum, No. 4106) relate to the
descent of the Spanish Armada upon the English coasts; but as they are
numbered 50, 51, and 54 in the corner of their upper margins, it has
been not improbably concluded that a similar mode of publishing news had
been resorted to considerably earlier than the date of that event,
though, as far as we know, none of the papers have been preserved. The
title is:--
“THE ENGLISH MERCURIE, published by authoritie, for the prevention of
false reports;”
and the last number contains an account of the queen’s thanksgiving at
St Paul’s for the victory she had gained over the enemies of England. It
is probable that when the great alarm of the Armada had subsided, no
more numbers were published. The colophon runs:--
“Imprinted by Christopher Barker, her highnesse’s printer, July 23,
1588.”
It must not however be concealed that doubt is entertained of the
genuineness of these papers. Two of them are not of the time, but
printed in modern type; and no originals are known: the third is in
manuscript of the eighteenth century, altered and interpolated with
changes in old language, such only as an author would make.
The punning device, or printer’s emblem, of Barker was a man barking a
tree, representations of which may be seen on the titles and last leaves
of many of the old folio and quarto Bibles and New Testaments issued
from his press. His descendants continued booksellers to the royal
family until January 12, 1645, when Robert Barker, the last of the
family, died a prisoner for debt in the King’s Bench. His misfortunes
were probably occasioned by the embarrassments of his royal master, who
for three years had been at war with the Parliament and a majority of
his subjects.
Various other booksellers sold their books under the sign of the Tiger’s
Head in St Paul’s Churchyard: apparently they succeeded each other in
the same house. Thus we find Toby Cook, 1579-1590; Felix Kingston, 1599;
and Henry Seile, 1634.
At Nortwich and Altringham, Chester, there is a sign called the BLEEDING
WOLF, which has not been found anywhere else. Its origin is difficult to
explain, and the only explanation that can be immediately offered for it
is the crest of Hugh Lupus and Richard, first and second Earls of
Chester, which was a wolf’s head erased; the neck of the animal being
_erased_ may, by primitive sign-painters, have been represented less
conventionally than is done now, and probably exhibited some of the torn
parts, whence the name of the _Bleeding_ Wolf. As for the use of the
term “wolf,” instead of “wolf’s head,” we have a parallel instance in
one of the gates of Chester, which, from this crest, was called
Wolfsgate instead of Wolfshead Gate. There is another equally puzzling
sign, peculiar to this county and to Lancashire--namely, the BEAR’S PAW.
Of this sign, it must be confessed that no explanation can be offered;
it certainly looks heraldic, and lions jambs erased are the crest of
many families.
Easy enough to explain is the sign of PARTA TUERI, (Cellarhead,
Staffordshire,) which is the motto of the Lilford family: this is the
only instance as yet met with of a family motto standing for a sign;
though in Essex a public-house sign, representing a sort of Bacchic coat
of arms, with the motto, IN VINO VERITAS, may be seen. The OAKLEY ARMS,
at Maidenhead, near Bray, deserves passing mention, on account of some
amusing verses _connected with the_ place. As it is frequently the
custom with publicans to choose for their sign the name or picture of
some real or imaginary hero connected with the locality in which their
house stands, the following verses were written on the Oakley Arms, near
Bray:--
“Friend Isaac, ’tis strange you that live so near Bray
Should not set up the sign of the Vicar.[191]
Though it may be an odd one, you cannot but say
It must needs be a sign of good liquor.”
Answer:
“Indeed, master Poet, your reason’s but poor,
For the Vicar would think it a sin
To stay, like a booby, and lounge at the door,--
’Twere a sign ’twas bad liquor within.”
The WENTWORTH ARMS, Kirby Mallory, Leicestershire, may also be mentioned
on account of its peculiar inscription, which has a strange moral air
about it, as if a pious Boniface drew beer and uncorked wine, and wished
to compromise matters on high moral grounds, and limit with puritanical
rigidity the government regulation above his door, “to be Drunk on the
Premises”:--
“May he who has little to spend, spend nothing in drink;
May he who has more than enough, keep it for better uses.
May he who goes in to rest never remain to riot,
And he who fears God elsewhere never forget him here.”
Other heraldic animals, different from those just mentioned, belong to
so many various families, that it is utterly impossible to say in honour
of whom they were first set up: such, for instance, is the GRIFFIN, the
armorial bearing of the Spencers, and innumerable other houses. Besides
being an heraldic emblem, the griffin was an animal in whose existence
the early naturalists firmly believed. Its supposed eggs and claws were
carefully preserved, and are frequently mentioned in ancient inventories
and lists of curiosities. “They shewed me,” [in a church at Ratisbonne,]
says Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in one of her letters, “a prodigious
claw, set in gold, which they called the claw of a griffin; and I could
not forbear asking the reverend priest that shewed it, whether the
griffin was a saint? The question almost put him beside his gravity, but
he answered, ‘They only kept it as a curiosity.’” The supposed eggs (no
doubt ostrich eggs) were frequently made into drinking cups. The
Tradescants had one in their collection, kept in countenance by an egg
of a dragon, two feathers of the tail of a phœnix, and the claw of a
ruck, “a bird able to trusse an elephant.” Sir John Mandeville gives the
natural history of the griffin, in his “Right Merveylous Travels,” chap.
xxvi. From him we learn that the body of this dreadful beast was larger
and stronger than “8 lions or 100 eagles,” so that he could with ease
fly off to his nest with a great horse, or a couple of oxen yoked
together, “for,” says he, “he has his talouns so large and so longe, and
so gret upon his feet as thowghe thei weren hornes of grete oxen, or of
bugles or of kijgn.”
In the original edition of the _Spectator_, No. xxxiii.,[192] the
griffin is mentioned as the sign of a house in Sheer Lane, Temple Bar.
The advertisement begins oddly enough:--“Lost, yesterday, _by a Lady in
a velvet furbelow scarf_, a watch,” &c. The GOLDEN GRIFFIN was a famous
tavern in Holborn, of which there are trades tokens extant of the
seventeenth century. Tom Brown talks of a “fat squab porter at the
Griffin Tavern, in Fulwood’s rents,” which is the same house, as appears
from Strype:--“At the upper end of this court is a passage into the
Castle Tavern, a house of considerable trade, as is the Golden Griffin
Tavern, on the west side, which has a passage into Fulwood’s rents,”
(Book iii., p. 253.)
The variously-coloured lions come under the same category of heraldic
animals. Amongst them the GOLDEN LION stands foremost. A public-house
with that sign in Fulham ought not to be passed unnoticed; it is one of
the most ancient houses in the village, having been built in the reign
of Henry VII. The interior is not much altered; the chimney-pieces are
in their original state, and in good preservation. Formerly there were
two staircases in the thick walls, but they are now blocked up.
Tradition says that the house once belonged to Bishop Bonner, and that
it has subterraneous passages communicating with the episcopal palace.
When the old hostelry was pulled down in 1836, a tobacco-pipe of ancient
and foreign fashion was found behind the wainscot. The stem was a
crooked bamboo, and a brass ornament of an Elizabethan pattern formed
the bowl of the pipe. This pipe Mr Crofton Croker[193] tries to identify
as the property of Bishop Bonner, who, on the 15th June 1596, died
suddenly at Fulham, “while sitting in his chair and smoking tobacco.” If
Mr Croker be right, this inn should also have been honoured by the
presence of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Henry Condell, (Shakespeare’s fellow
actor,) John Norden, (author of A Description of Middlesex and
Hertfordshire,) Florio, the translator of Montaigne, and divers other
notabilities.
The BLUE LION is far from uncommon, and may possibly have been first put
up at the marriage of James I. with Anne of Denmark. The PURPLE LION
occurs but once--namely, on a trades token of Southampton Buildings.
Signs borrowed from Corporation arms form the last subdivision of this
chapter. Such, for instance, is the THREE COMPASSES, a change in the
arms of both the carpenters and masons. This sign is a particular
favourite in London, where not less than twenty-one public-houses make a
living under its shadow. Perhaps this is partly owing to the compasses
being a masonic emblem, and a great many publicans “worthy brethren.”
Frequently the sign of the compasses contains between the legs the
following good advice:--
“Keep within compass,
And then you’ll be sure,
To avoid many troubles
That others endure.”
Three Compasses were a frequent sign with the French, German, and Dutch
printers of the sixteenth century. The Three Compasses, Grosvenor Row,
Pimlico, a well-known starting point for the Pimlico omnibuses, was
formerly called the GOAT AND COMPASSES, for which Mr P. Cunningham
suggests the following origin:--
“At Cologne, in the church of S. Maria di Capitolio, is a flat stone
on the floor, professing to be the ‘Grabstein der Bruder und Schwester
eines Ehrbahren Wein und Fass Ampts, Anno 1693.’ That is, as I
suppose, a vault belonging to the Wine Cooper’s 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.”
Others have considered the sign a corruption of a puritanical phrase,
“God encompasseth us.” But why may not the Goat have been the original
sign, to which mine host added his masonic emblem of the compasses, a
practice yet of frequent occurrence.
The GLOBE AND COMPASSES seems to have originated in the Joiners’ arms,
which are a chevron between two pairs of compasses and a globe. It
occurs, amongst other instances, as the sign of a bookseller, in the
following quaint title:--
“Sin discovered to be worse than a Toad; sold by Robert Walton, at the
_Globe and Compasses_, at the West end of Saint Paul’s Church.”
The THREE GOATSHEADS, a public-house on the Wandsworth Road, Lambeth,
was originally the Cordwainers’ (shoemakers) arms, which are azure, a
chevron or, between three goats’ heads, erased argent. Gradually the
heraldic attributes have fallen away, and the goats’ heads now alone
remain. As there were rarely names under the London signs, the public
unacquainted with heraldry gave a vernacular to the objects represented.
Thus the THREE LEOPARDS’ HEADS is given on a token as the name of a
house in Bishopsgate; yet the token represents a chevron between three
leopards’ heads, the arms of the Weavers’ Company. The sign of the
Leopard’s Head was anciently called the _Lubber’s Head_. Thus in the
second part of Henry IV., ii. 1, the hostess says that Falstaff “is
indited to dinner at the Lubbar’s Head in Lumbert Street, to Master
Smooth’s the silkman.” “Libbard,” _vulgo_ “lubbar,” was good old English
for “leopard.”
The GREEN MAN AND STILL is a common sign. There is one in White Cross
Street, representing a forester drinking what is there called “drops of
life” out of a glass barrel. This is a liberty taken with the
Distillers’ arms, which are a fess wavy in chief, the sun in splendour,
in base a still; supporters two Indians, with bows and arrows. These
Indians were transformed by the painters into wild men or green men, and
the green men into foresters; and then it was said that the sign
originated from the partiality of foresters for the produce of the still
The “drops of life,” of course, are a translation of _aqua vitæ_.
The THREE TUNS were derived from the Vintners, or the Brewers’ arms. On
the 9th of May 1667, the Three Tuns in Seething Lane was the scene of a
frightful tragedy:--
“In our street,” says Pepys, “at the Three Tuns Tavern, I find a great
hubbub; and what was it but two brothers had fallen out, and one
killed the other. And who should they be but the two Fieldings. One
whereof, Bazill, was page to my Lady Sandwich, and he hath killed the
other, himself being very drunk, and so is sent to Newgate.”[194]
There seems to have been a kind of fatality attached to this sign, for
the _London Gazette_ for September 15-18, 1679, relates a murder
committed at the Three Tuns, in Chandos Street, and in this same house,
Sally Pridden, _alias_ Sally Salisbury, in a fit of jealousy stabbed the
Honourable John Finch in 1723. Sally was one of the handsomest “social
evils” of that day, and had been nicknamed Salisbury, on account of her
likeness to the countess of that name. For her attempt on the life of
Finch she was committed to Newgate, where she died the year after,
“leaving behind her the character of the most notorious woman that ever
infested the hundreds of old Drury.”[195] Her portrait has been painted
by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
Sometimes the sign of the ONE TUN may also be seen. It occurs in the
following newspaper item:--
“Last Thursday four highwaymen drinking at the One Tun Tavern near
Hungerford Market in the Strand, and falling out about dividing their
booty, the Drawer overheard them, sent for a constable, and secured
them, and next day they were committed to Newgate.”--_Weekly Journal_,
December 6, 1718.
That these fellows meant mischief is evident from a subsequent article.
They had a complete arsenal about them, viz., two blunderbusses, one
loaded with fifteen balls, the other with seven, and five pistols loaded
with powder and shot.
The GOLDEN CUP, from the form in which it was generally represented,
seems to have been derived from the Goldsmiths’ arms, which are
quarterly azure, two leopards’ heads _or_, (whence the mint mark,) and
two golden cups covered between two buckles _or_. It was a sign much
fancied by booksellers, as: Abel Jeff’s in the Old Bailey, 1564; Edward
Allde, Without Cripplegate, from 1587 until 1600; and John Bartlet the
Elder, in St Paul’s Churchyard; whilst the THREE CUPS was a famous
carriers’ inn in Aldersgate in the seventeenth century.
The RAM AND TEAZEL, Queenshead Street, Islington, is a part of the
Clothworkers’ arms, which are sable, a chevron ermine between two
habicks in chief _arg._, and a teasel in base _or_. The crest is a ram
statant _or_ on a mount vert.
The HAMMER AND CROWN appears from a trades token to have been the sign
of a shop in Gutter Lane, in the seventeenth century. It was a charge
from the Blacksmiths’ arms: sable, a chevron between three hammers
crowned _or_. The LION IN THE WOOD was a tavern of some note a hundred
years ago in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. It seems originally to have
been the Woodmongers’ arms, whose crest is a lion issuing from a wood.
At the present day it is the sign of a public-house in the same
locality, namely, in Wilderness Lane, Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
To these Corporation arms we may add two belonging to companies. During
the South Sea mania the SOUTH SEA ARMS was a favourite sign; in 1718,
the very year that Queen Anne had established the company and granted
them arms, they appeared as the sign of a tavern near Austin Friars:
they are a curious heraldic compound. “Azure, a globe representing the
Straights of Magellan and Cape Horn, all proper. On a canton the arms of
the United Kingdoms of Great Britain, and in sinister chief two herrings
salterwise _arg._, crowned _or_.”
The SOL’S ARMS, Sol’s Row, Hampstead Road, immortalised by Dickens in
“Bleak House,” derives its name from the Sol’s Society, who were a kind
of freemasons. They used to hold their meetings at the Queen of
Bohemia’s Head, Drury Lane, but on the pulling down of that house the
society was dissolved.
[121] History of Musick.
[122] Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i. fol. 193. The reader will be amused with
the spelling of this extract from the original manuscript, written when
Addison was penning “Spectators,” and many classic English compositions
were issuing from the press. Old Mr Bagford was a genuine antiquary, and
despised new hats, new coats, and anything approaching the new style of
spelling, with other changes then being introduced.
[123] Misson’s Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England.
London, 1719.
[124] England is the country, _par excellence_, for gigantic dinners,
amongst which agricultural repasts stand foremost; even that nuptial
dinner of Camacho, at which honest Sancho Panza did such execution,
would scarcely rank as a lunch beside the Homeric dinners of our
farmers. In our times we have seen Soyer roast a whole ox for the
Agricultural Society at Exeter; the details of this culinary feat are
somewhat interesting: it was called a “baron with saddle back of beef _à
la magna charta_, weighing 535 lbs., the joints being the whole length
of the ox, rumps, rounds, loins, ribs, and shoulders to the neck. It was
roasted in the open air within a temporary enclosure of brick work, the
monster joint steaming and frizzling away over 216 jets of gas from
pipes of an inch diameter, the whole being covered in with sheet iron;
when in 5 hours the beef was dressed for 5 shillings.”--_Hints for the
Table._
[125] Various examples of it occur in the Banks Bills.
[126] Original Weekly Journal, March 29 to April 3, 1718.
[127] Banks Bills.
[128] Historical and Topographical Account of the Parish of Fulham,
1813, p. 271.
[129] Boswell’s Johnson, vol. iv. p. 60.
[130] Hawkins’s Life of Dr Johnson, p. 433.
[131] This corncutter was probably the antique statue of the boy picking
a thorn out of his foot, and was usual with pedicures. See under the
sign “Old pick my toe.”
[132] Diary of the Rev. John Ward, M.A., 1648-1679. London, 1839.
[133] Diary of Rev. John Ward, M.A., 1648-1679, p. 122.
[134] Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Esq. By J. F. Kirkman. Vol. ii. p.
419.
[135] “A dragon in the manner of a banner, of a certain red silk
embroidered with gold; its tongue like a flaming fire must always seem
to be moving; its eyes must be made of sapphire, or of some other stone
suitable for that purpose.”
[136] Peter Langtoffe’s Chronicle of Robert of Brunne, p. 217.
[137] “The king’s place was between the Dragon and the standard.”
[138] Caxton’s Chronicle at the end of Polychronicon, lib. ult. chap.
vi.
[139] Hist., lib. ix. cap. vi.
[140] Nat. Hist., lib. viii. cap. ii.
[141] Chronicle of the Grey Fryars, Camden Society, p. 19.
[142] _Grub Street Journal_, Sept. 2, 1736.
[143] Badges of Cognizance of Richard, Duke of York, written on a blank
leaf at the beginning of Digby MS. 82. Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Archæologia xvii. 1814.
[144] The Cat, William Catesby; the Rat, Sir Richard Ratcliffe; Lovell
our dog, Lord Lovel.
[145] Sir Roger Twisden’s Commonplace Books, 1653, as quoted _in
extenso_ in _Notes and Queries_, Aug. 8, 1857. Mr James Thompson, in his
“History of Leicester,” informs us that one man was hanged and a woman
burned for this crime, and not seven persons capitally executed,
according to the popular tradition.
[146] Harl. MS. 5910; of this printer Bagford says: “I do not find he
prented many books, or at lest few of them have come to my hand.”
[147] Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft, b. xii. ch. xviii. p.
268, 1584.
[148] Archæologia. vol. xxix. 1840.
[149] Aubrey, iii. 438.
[150] Owen Glendower also bore a lion rampant sable, “the black lion of
Powyss;” his arms were Paly of eight, arg. and gules, over all a lion
sable. The black lion was the royal ensign of his father Madoc ap
Meredith, last sovereign prince of Powyss; he died at Winchester in
1160. The black lion consequently might sometimes be set up by Welshmen.
[151] _Daily Courant_, January 1, 1711.
[152] “And observe that such a white feather was borne on his crest by
Edward the eldest son of K. Edward; and this feather he conquered from
the King of Bohemia whom he killed at Cressy in France, and so he
assumed the feather, called the ostrich feather, which that most noble
king had formerly worn on his crest.”--_Sloane MSS._ No. 56.
[153] Added to this were two vultures, sprinkled all over with
finely-gilt linden leaves. Therefore I know this is King John of
Bohemia.
[154] See the engraving in Pennant’s History of London, vol. i. p. 100.
[155] Lyson’s Berkshire, vol. i. p. 442.
[156] _London Gazette_, Sept. 18-21, 1682.
[157] _London Gazette_, March 12, 1672-3.
[158] Little London Directory for 1677, the oldest printed lists of
bankers and merchants in London, reprinted, with historical introduction
by John Camden Hotten, 1863.
[159] A very amusing French author of the time of Louis XIV., celebrated
for his witty letters.
[160] “Let England amuse herself with idle fancies, and imagine that her
kings are kings of France; but that there be Frenchmen who are ignorant
enough, or bad subjects enough, to quarter the arms of France with those
of England, that is a thing which such zealous subjects as M.
d’Argenson, and the other police magistrates, ought by no means to
permit.”
[161] Thos. Delaune’s Present State of London, 1681.
[162] These badges consisted of the master’s arms, crest, or device,
either on a small silver shield or embroidered on a piece of cloth, and
fastened on the left arm of servants. A ballad in the Roxburgh
collection thus alludes to this custom:[163]--
“The nobles of our Land
were much delighted then,
To have at their command
a Crue of lustie Men,
Which by their Coats were knowne,
of Tawnie, Red, or Blue;
With crests on their sleeves showne
when this old cap was new.”
[163]
“Time’s alteration;
or,
The old man’s rehearsall what brave days he knew
A great while agone, when his old cap was new.”
Rox. Ball., i. fol. 407.
Stow gives us a good picture of a great nobleman’s retinue in the good
old time, before the nobility took to hotel-keeping:--“The late Earl of
Oxford, father to him that now liveth, has been noted within these forty
years, to have ridden into this city and so to his house by London
Stone, with eighty gentlemen, in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains
of gold about their necks, before him, and one hundred tall yeomen in
the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his
cognisance of the _blue boar_ embroidered on their left shoulder.” These
badges fell into disuse in the reign of James I.
[164] Wright’s Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the
Middle Ages, p. 333.
[165] “At Plombières he ordered me to leave with his hostess, according
to the fashion of the country, an escutcheon of his arms in wood, which
a painter of that town made for a crown and the hostess had it carefully
hung upon the wall outside the house.”
[166] Harl. MSS., 5910, vol. ii. p. 167.
[167] Badge.
[168] Liveries.
[169] Portcullises.
[170] Leopard.
[171] Wiltshire.
[172] A transcript adds to these the names of Archbishop Parker and
Jugge.
[173] This statement is modified lower down.
[174] Rivers.
[175] Raleigh.
[176] Silver.
[177] The UNION ARMS in Panton Street, Haymarket, was the public-house
of Cribb, the pugilist champion, a fact commemorated by a poet of the
prize ring, in all probability a better “fist” at smashing than at
“wooing the Muses:”--
“The champion I see is again on the list,
His standard--the UNION ARMS.
His customers still he will serve with his fist,
But without creating alarms.
Instead of a floorer, he tips them a glass,
Divested of joking or fib;
Then, ‘lads of the fancy,’ don’t Tom’s house pass,
But take a hand at the game of _Cribb_.”
[178] Sylvanus Morgan’s Sphere of Gentry. London, 1661.
[179] There is a sign of the GREEN LION in Short Street, Cambridge, the
only one I have ever seen.
[180] Fuller, _in voce_ Warwickshire.
[181] Delaune’s Present State of London, 1682.
[182] Printed in the Journal of Brit. Archæolog. Assoc., vol. vii. p.
71.
[183] Taylor’s Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630.
[184] Catherine Street, in the Strand, was a disreputable thoroughfare
in the last century. Gay alludes to it in his “Trivia:”--
“Oh, may thy virtue guard thee through the roads
Of Drury’s mazy courts and dark abodes!
The harlots’ guileful path, who nightly stand
Where Catherine Street descends into the Strand.
With empty bandbox she delights to range,
And feigns a distant errand from the ‘Change.
Nay, she will oft the Quaker’s hood profane,
And trudge demure the rounds of Drury Lane.”
Tom Brown describes, _con amore_, the wickedness of that part of the
town. Catherine Street at present is not quite so bad as formerly, but
the hundred of Drury Lane cannot by any means be called the most
virtuous part of London.
[185] Art of Living in London. Printed for William Griffin, at the
Garrickshead, in Catherine Street, in the Strand, 1768.
[186] Pennant’s Account of London, 1813, p. 618.
[187] Little London Directory for 1677, the oldest list of London
merchants.
[188] “Buy these books, which Richard Fax the printer has printed with
the wedge, with the greatest care. This little book was printed at
London, in St Paul’s Churchyard, at the Maidenhead, in the year 1509, on
the 12th of December.” The printing with the wedge was the first attempt
of the art, whence the books produced in this manner are sometimes
called _incunables_.
[189] Pleasant Conceits of old Hobson the Londoner, 1607. Hobson’s
answer proves the truth of Misson’s remark, that there were no
inscriptions on the London signs to tell what they represented,
otherwise the maid could not have been passed off as a widow.
[190] Guillim’s Display of Heraldry, folio, p. 197.
[191] The Vicar of Bray, the hero of Butler’s comic poem, appears to
have been a certain Simon Aleyn, _ob._ 1583; he was by turns, and as the
times suited, Roman Catholic and Protestant, in the times of Henry
VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth.
[192] The original edition of the _Spectator_ contained _bona fide_
advertisements like any other newspaper.
[193] In 1847, Mr Crofton Croker read a paper at a meeting of the Brit.
Arch. Assoc. at Warwick, “On the probability of the Golden Lion Inn at
Fulham having been frequented by Shakespeare about the year 1595 and
1596,” in which the possible genealogy of this pipe is given.
[194] Pepys here makes a mistake, for he tells as afterwards, July 4,
when he went to the Session House to hear the trial, that Basil was the
murdered man.
[195] Caulfield’s Memoirs of Remarkable Persons. A curious epitaph upon
her occurs in the _Weekly Oracle_, February 1, 1735; unfortunately it is
too highly spiced to be introduced here.