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 LONDON SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS.
 
 FISH SHOP IN CHEYNE WALK.
 
 LONDON 
 SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP NORMAN, F.S.A. 
 
 WITH MANY ILL USTRA TIONS. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A., 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' LONDON PAST AND PRESENT,' ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1897.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I HAVE been asked to write a short introduction 
 to this volume of the series in which it appears, 
 and I do so with great pleasure. 
 
 The subject of sculptured signs is one of con- 
 siderable interest, to which too little attention 
 has hitherto been devoted, and the treatment of 
 this important section of London antiquities could 
 not have fallen into better hands than into those 
 of Mr. Philip Norman, who has devoted many 
 years of patient labour to the search for these 
 signs, which are often found in very out-of-the- 
 way localities. Mr. Norman possesses one most 
 important qualification for the task he has under- 
 taken, in that he is an accomplished artist. He 
 is thus doubly well equipped both as an antiquary 
 and as an artist. 
 
 It will, I think, surprise many readers to learn 
 that so much is still left to us, and I hope that the 
 attention drawn to some of the signs which have 
 
 2039080
 
 viii Introduction. 
 
 disappeared of late years may result in the dis- 
 covery of their present hiding-places. Some years 
 ago there was a curious sculptured sign over the 
 entrance to Bull Head Court, Newgate Street. 
 This represented William Evans, Charles I.'s 
 gigantic porter, and Jeffrey Hudson, the Queen's 
 dwarf. When King Edward Street was widened 
 this sign disappeared. If it be still in existence, 
 we may hope that, in course of time, it may find 
 a home in the Guildhall Museum, where so many 
 interesting relics of old London are preserved. 
 
 Painted signs, which were once almost universal, 
 were suddenly cleared away by the Act of 
 Parliament of 1762, but these sculptured signs 
 remained because they were a part of the houses 
 to which they were attached, and they only pass 
 away when the houses are rebuilt. 
 
 As the reader casually turns over the pages or 
 this book, he cannot fail to be struck by the 
 variety of objects which have been represented on 
 the signs. Many of these may be considered as 
 marks of ownership, and the crests and coats of 
 arms of the City Companies are frequently found 
 as signs. 
 
 In connection with the aesthetic revival there 
 has been a considerable reappearance of signs in 
 different parts of London, mostly of artistic iron- 
 work ; but although this helps to relieve the dull 
 monotony of many streets it is not a custom that
 
 Introduction. ix 
 
 would be popular if it became universal. There 
 can, however, be no objection to the more general 
 adoption of artistic sculpture on the fronts of 
 houses. When an old house is rebuilt, its story 
 (if it have a story) may with advantage be 
 graphically represented on the front of the new 
 one. This has been done in some cases, and 
 an extension of the custom would add to the 
 beauty of the streets, and increase the interest 
 of the passer-by in the almost forgotten history 
 of his own town. 
 
 It is a satisfactory thing that the relics of former 
 fashions of decoration should be registered for the 
 information of those who desire to keep them- 
 selves in touch with the history of the past. 
 Even in this materialistic age 'there are many who 
 love to live in imagination in a former age, and a 
 sculptured sign or inscription on an old house 
 will often help them to do this. 
 
 For centuries London was remarkable for its 
 gardens, but this has been changed at the end of 
 the nineteenth century. Considering the great 
 value of land in ' the City,' I suppose it cannot be 
 a matter of surprise that almost every bit of 
 garden or green place has been swept out of exist- 
 ence, but I think every lover of London will 
 sympathize with the protest against this tendency 
 which concludes Mr. Norman's book. 
 
 I do not, however, wish to keep the reader longer
 
 x Introduction. 
 
 from learning what the author has to say, and I 
 will only add that this volume will form a most 
 useful and agreeable addition to the extensive litera- 
 ture which is gradually growing up in connection 
 with the ever-increasing world of houses and men 
 which is known as London. 
 
 HENRY B. WHEATLEY. 
 
 OPPIDANS ROAD, N.W., 
 March, 1893.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 T T NTIL the beginning of this century, I may 
 \^J almost say till the development of our 
 railway system some fifty years ago, though 
 London was continually spreading in all directions, 
 its heart the City remained very much as Wren 
 had left it. Here many a well-to-do trader was 
 content to dwell in the substantial house in which 
 his business was carried on, and to pray in the 
 neighbouring parish church where his father had 
 prayed before him. Now the church has, likely 
 enough, disappeared, the monuments of his ances- 
 tors are bundled off" no one knows where ; perhaps 
 the very street in which he lived is changed out 
 of all power of recognition. In short, to meet 
 our modern requirements, the City has become a 
 mere mass of offices, warehouses, and gigantic 
 railway - stations, whence issue each morning 
 myriads of human beings who spend the day in
 
 xii Preface. 
 
 struggling for wealth or a livelihood, and at night 
 return to their homes, which are spread over an 
 area some sixty miles in diameter, leaving the 
 centre to be protected by a few porters and care- 
 takers. The decrease in the resident population 
 has now extended a considerable distance west. 
 
 To the observing eye, however, traces of a 
 former state of things are still to be seen, not only 
 in important buildings such as the City halls, the 
 parish churches and the old merchants' houses still 
 existing ; but in objects less conspicuous, for in- 
 stance, the sculptured house and street signs which 
 came into fashion after the Great Fire. These 
 have no little artistic merit, and almost all are 
 interesting from their associations. The greater 
 part of my book- is devoted to a careful description 
 of such signs ; not only the existing ones, but all 
 of which I can find any mention. This descrip- 
 tion I have tried to make as complete as possible, 
 and I have allowed myself some latitude, recording 
 not only facts which appeared to me of interest 
 concerning the particular house, court, or alley to 
 which the sign belonged, but also its probable 
 origin, and any story or legend that might be con- 
 nected with it. 
 
 Sculptured signs are often heraldic, and from 
 them the transition is natural to still existing 
 crests and coats of arms carved on buildings in 
 various parts of the town. A cognate subject is
 
 Preface. xiii 
 
 that of old dates and inscriptions, suggestive as 
 they are of the former ownership of property, of 
 changes in the names of streets, sometimes even 
 giving us glimpses of family history ; as in the 
 inscription to Denzil Lord Holies. 
 
 My researches naturally led me into the Guild- 
 hall Museum, where the need of a suitable cata- 
 logue (soon, I hear, to be supplied), induced me 
 to put together a few suggestive notes on the 
 curiosities relating to London which there find a 
 home. I have added a short account of some 
 half dozen of the painted signs still existing in the 
 Metropolis which seemed to have more than 
 common interest. 
 
 I have already referred to the extraordinary 
 decrease of City inhabitants. On the other hand, 
 in outlying districts the converse process has 
 taken place. The little towns and villages of 
 three hundred years ago, then some distance from 
 London, and numbering among their inhabitants 
 people of high birth unconnected with trade, 
 became by degrees half rural suburbs, where well- 
 to-do citizens sought amusement and repose. 
 Folks of this class have now gone further afield, 
 and for many years the speculative builder has been 
 at work, providing for a humbler and far more 
 numerous population. The space is covered with 
 miles upon miles of dull monotonous streets ; plea- 
 sant gardens have disappeared, hills are levelled,
 
 xiv Preface. 
 
 valleys filled up, wells choked, the clear streams 
 turned into sewers, nothing remaining to remind 
 us of what has gone before except the names, and 
 here and there an old house, a carving or inscrip- 
 tion. The existence of a few of these mementoes 
 has attracted me to Islington and Clerkenwell, and 
 must be my excuse for describing in detail several 
 of the spas and places of entertainment with which 
 in the eighteenth century this region abounded. 
 Thence I make my way back to the City, and 
 while exploring the picturesque districts of Great 
 St. Helen's and Austin Friars, I give an account 
 of two remarkable old City mansions lately de- 
 stroyed, which may fairly claim a place ; for 
 one was distinguished by an elaborate coat of 
 arms, and the other by an interesting date and 
 initials. This latter was of no small architectural 
 merit, while both were the homes of eminent 
 citizens. 
 
 Perhaps I should add that the subject of sculp- 
 tured signs has been briefly treated by me in the 
 pages of the Antiquary, and that for the English 
 Illustrated Magazine ', of Christmas, 1891, I wrote 
 and illustrated an article on old City mansions, 
 including those which are here more completely 
 described. 
 
 In the course of the text I have indicated 
 sources of information, and have acknowledged
 
 Preface. xv 
 
 help from several good friends. I wish here in an 
 especial manner to thank Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, 
 F.S.A. As I am indebted to him for an intro- 
 duction to this volume, it would perhaps not be 
 becoming to dwell over-much on the merits of his 
 great work, ' London Past and Present,' based on 
 Peter Cunningham's Handbook ; I find myself 
 constantly referring to it, and always with advan- 
 tage. Lord Tennyson has kindly allowed me to 
 quote four lines dictated by his illustrious father, 
 which have not before appeared in print. 
 
 The illustrations I venture to commend, for 
 few of them are the work of my hand. They 
 have at least one great merit, that of being 
 scrupulously accurate. 
 
 Allusion is made in the text to Mr. Tarbolton's 
 valuable contribution. There is a fine drawing by 
 Mr. F. E. Cox ; while Mr. E. M. Cox contributes 
 a whole series, the merits of which speak for 
 themselves. The Three Kings, the Bell, and 
 the Boar's Head may be named as specimens. 
 Mr. Fletcher did the charming little sketch of an 
 inscription formerly over the entrance to Bagnigge 
 Wells, with its grotesque head ; and the editors 
 of the Strand Magazine and the Builder have 
 allowed me the use of blocks from their respective 
 publications. 
 
 In conclusion, let me express a hope that the
 
 xvi Preface. 
 
 kind reader will not class this volume in the cate- 
 gory of ' books which are no books,' as Charles 
 Lamb puts it, or even as one ' which no gentle- 
 man's library should be without,' but that he will 
 find here some useful and curious information, put 
 together in a form sufficiently agreeable to make 
 him wish for more.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HUMAN SIGNS 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THREE KINGS ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY - 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY (continued} 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BIRDS AND OTHER SCULPTURED SIGNS - 
 
 26 
 
 4 6 
 
 6 7 
 
 8 9
 
 xviii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VARIOUS CRESTS AND COATS OF ARMS - - - 121 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS, DATES, AND INSCRIPTIONS, ETC. I $6 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A FEW SUBURBAN SPAS l8o 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TWO OLD CITY MANSIONS - - - 2OO
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FISH SHOP IN CHEYNE WALK 
 
 BOY AND PANYER, PANYER ALLEY 
 
 NAKED BOY, PIE CORNER - 
 
 THREE KINGS, LAMBETH HILL 
 
 HALF MOON, HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK 
 
 HALF MOON, HOLYWELL STREET - 
 
 BOAR'S HEAD, EASTCHEAP 
 
 DOG AND DUCK, ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS, SOUTHWARK 
 
 MARKS FOUND ON OLD LONDON BRIDGE 
 
 HARE AND SUN, HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK 
 
 COCK AND SNAKES, CHURCH STREET, CHELSEA 
 
 COCK, FLEET STREET 
 
 BELL, KNIGHTRIDER STREET 
 
 FEATHERS, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD 
 
 MITRE, HATTON GARDEN - 
 
 LEOPARD, BUDGE ROW 
 
 ROYAL ARMS, NEWCOMEN STREET, SOUTHWARK 
 
 INSCRIPTION, DENZELL STREET - 
 
 - frontispiece 
 
 4 
 8 
 
 - 27 
 4i 
 45 
 
 - 5i 
 
 - 73 
 
 - 78 
 
 - 89 
 
 - 103 
 
 - 108 
 
 - in 
 
 - 116 
 
 - 125 
 
 - 136 
 
 - 150
 
 XX 
 
 List of Illustrations. 
 
 TABLET, GREAT JAMES STREET - 
 TABLET, MOUNT PLEASANT 
 TABLET, UNION STREET, SOUTHV/ARK 
 TABLET, WALBROOK 
 INSCRIPTION, KING'S CROSS ROAD 
 NOS. 8 AND 9 GREAT ST. HELEN'S 
 
 PAGE 
 I6 3 
 164 
 I6 5 
 
 1 66 
 195 
 
 201 
 
 PART OF THE OLD HOUSE IN GREAT ST, HELEN'S, 
 
 FROM A MEASURED DRAWING - - - 204
 
 SIGNS AND INSCRIPTIONS OF 
 HISTORIC LONDON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HUMAN SIGNS. 
 
 ' Be sure observe the signs, for signs remain 
 Like faithful landmarks to the walking train.' 
 
 GAY : Trivia. 
 
 T NTIL the early part of the eighteenth 
 \^_) century, when the plan of numbering 
 came into vogue, not only inns and taverns, but 
 shops and other houses, were distinguished by 
 signs. The wholesale traders, indeed, were as a 
 rule sufficiently well known not to require this 
 distinctive mark. In the ' Little London Direc- 
 tory ' for the year 1677 the oldest printed list of 
 the kind hardly any of the merchants have signs. 
 The reverse is the case with the bankers, who, 
 as 'goldsmiths that keep running cashes,' had
 
 2 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 then hardly emerged from the shopkeeper class. 
 Nevertheless, signs were exceedingly common ; on 
 the rebuilding of the city, immediately after the 
 Great Fire, many of them, instead of being 
 painted and hung out though this continued 
 to be the more usual method were carved in 
 stone and built into the plain brick fronts of 
 the new houses, generally above or below a 
 first-floor window. In some cases also, the 
 name of a court or alley was thus indicated 
 a useful method when a large number of the 
 population could neither read nor write. It is 
 curious that signs of a very similar description 
 were used by the Romans ; for instance, the 
 well-known terra-cotta bas-relief of two men 
 carrying an amphora, and a figure of a goat, 
 both found at Pompeii ; the former almost 
 identical in design with our conventional repre- 
 sentation of the Two Brewers. These, however, 
 were cast in a mould which was probably used 
 again and again. They therefore, perhaps, indi- 
 cated a trade rather than a particular house ; like 
 our modern pawnbrokers', tobacconists', and gold- 
 beaters' signs. I shall presently call attention to 
 a London seventeenth-century sign repeated in the 
 same way. 
 
 Our plan seems to have been adopted from the 
 Continent, where many stone signs are still to be 
 found. They are commonest in Holland and the
 
 Human Signs. 3 
 
 Low Countries. Here, perhaps ever since the 
 Roman occupation, certainly since the days of 
 Charlemagne, brick has been the usual building 
 material, for it must have been that which was 
 most easily available. Fortunately many of the 
 old Dutch houses still survive ; they hang together 
 with wonderful pertinacity in spite of bad founda- 
 tions, and beautiful specimens of picturesque 
 architecture they are, with their step gables and 
 stone ornamentation. The Dutch signs are often 
 spirited and elaborate in design ; they are to be 
 found of all ages from about the year 1550 till 
 near the end of the eighteenth century, but as 
 might be expected, the earlier ones, which are 
 often historical, are the best. They were placed 
 like those in London, and generally had an orna- 
 mental border. Sometimes in place of a sign 
 there was a pious distich or inscription, sometimes 
 merely a date. A capital book on Dutch signs by 
 J. Van Lennep and J. Ter Gouw has lately been 
 published. Many of these signs from buildings 
 now destroyed are to be seen in an annexe of the 
 fine modern picture-gallery in Amsterdam. I am 
 glad to say that our City authorities have shown a 
 like respect for similar relics of old London, and 
 some interesting specimens have found a home in 
 the Guildhall Museum. Others have disappeared, 
 and a certain number are still more or less in their 
 original positions.
 
 4 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 In the following pages I shall try to describe all 
 the London sculptured signs of which we have any 
 record; for convenience I have classified them, and 
 naturally begin with those in which human beings 
 are represented. One of the most interesting and 
 best known is the sign of the Boy and Panyer, 
 
 which is still to be seen, its base resting on the 
 ground, and let into the wall between two houses 
 on the eastern side of Panyer Alley, a narrow 
 passage leading from Paternoster Row to Newgate 
 Street. It represents a naked boy seated on a 
 pannier or basket, and holding what, in Strype's 
 time, appeared to be a bunch of grapes between
 
 Human Signs. 5 
 
 his hand and foot, ' in token perhaps of plenty,' 
 as he suggests. Within an ornamental border, 
 apparently on a separate stone below, is the follow- 
 ing inscription : 
 
 'When ye have sought the Citty round, 
 Yet still this is the highest ground. 
 
 August the 27, 1688.' 
 
 Height fifty-two inches, breadth in the broadest 
 part twenty-six inches. It is now much dilapidated, 
 and seems to be in some danger of destruction, 
 for one of the houses against which it stands is 
 shortly to be pulled down.* However, I am 
 assured that proper steps will be taken for its 
 preservation. The property belongs by right 
 to the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, having 
 been left in 1620 by Sir John Leman and Cornelius 
 Fishe for parochial uses, but it is now handed over 
 to the Trustees of City Parochial Charities. 
 
 The sign no doubt dates from after the Great 
 Fire ; it seems, however, to represent a previous 
 one. Stow, writing in 1598, says that Panyer 
 Alley was ' so called of such a sign,' and confirm- 
 ing his statement, a Panyer, Paternoster Row, 
 appears in a list of taverns of about the year 1430, 
 which Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., lately dis- 
 covered among the documents of the Brewers' 
 Company, the landlord, John Ives, having been 
 a member of that company. From ' Liber Albus,' 
 
 * In November, 1892, this house was demolished.
 
 6 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 which relates to the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries, one learns that in those days the sale 
 of bread was not allowed to take place in the 
 bakers' houses, but only in the King's markets. 
 It was sold in bread-baskets or ' panyers/ and, 
 the coarser kinds at any rate, occasionally in boxes 
 or hutches. 
 
 Mr. H. T. Riley in his introduction to ' Liber 
 Albus ' (p. Ixviii.) stated it as his opinion that the 
 child is handing out a loaf, and that at a period 
 somewhat later than the date of that volume (1419) 
 Panyer Alley was noted as a standing place for 
 bakers' boys with their panniers. If, as seems not 
 unlikely, this was the case, the sign would be 
 similar to the Baker and Basket, still existing in 
 Whitechapel and in Finsbury. Another idea that 
 the pannier is in point of fact a fruit-basket seems 
 to arise from Strype's statement that the boy has in 
 his hand a bunch of grapes. Fruit and vegetables 
 were doubtless landed from the river in the neigh- 
 bourhood of St. Paul's. Porters carrying such 
 produce may have passed through, and rested them- 
 selves in this short passage on their way to Newgate 
 Market, which, originally for corn and meal, was 
 after the Fire used for poultry, fruit, and vegetables,* 
 before it became exclusively a meat market. 
 
 Mr. Kerslake, in a passage since referred to 
 with approval by Professor Earle in his work on 
 
 * Matron's 'New View of London,' 1708, vol. i., p. 59.
 
 Human Signs. 
 
 * Land Charters and Saxonic Documents' (i 
 tries to connect the sign with a far more remote 
 antiquity. He argues that it may have been 
 placed there to transmit the tradition of a wheat- 
 maund-stone (maund being a basket or pannier), 
 mentioned in a grant of King Alfred, A.D. 889, 
 which indicated the site of the ancient corn market, 
 and was, in point of fact, a place where a porter 
 carrying a load of wheat could rest it, or the base 
 of a market cross. * It seems that the question of 
 a town house for the Bishop of the Mercians having 
 come before Alfred, he gave to Bishop Werfrith a 
 mansion or court, ' aet hwaet mundes stane ' thus it 
 is spelt in the document and probably granted him 
 a toll on the neighbouring market. I am not aware 
 of any further evidence in support of this theory. 
 The church of St. Michael-le-Querne, ad 
 Bladum, or at the Corne, which was destroyed in 
 the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, stood close to 
 Panyer Alley, at the extreme end of Paternoster 
 Row, and Stow says it was so called ' because in 
 place thereof was sometime a corn market, stretch- 
 ing by west to the shambles.' The Rev. W. J. 
 Loftie tells us that at present the sign of the Boy 
 and Panyer is not on the highest point in the City, 
 
 * In later times there was a cross at the east end of the 
 church of St. Michael-le-Querne, replaced by a water conduit, 
 in the mayoralty of William Eastfield, A.D. 1429, as I learn 
 from Stow. The site of this cross is considerably east of 
 Panyer Alley.
 
 8 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 being fifty-nine feet, while the site of the Standard 
 in Cornhill is sixty feet above sea-level. Certainly 
 it is not on the highest point of Panyer Alley. 
 A writer in Notes and Queries has lately suggested 
 that the highest point in the City was at or near 
 Leadenhall Market, or the chancel of the primitive 
 St. Peter's Church on Cornhill. 
 
 A statuette, also representing a naked boy, not 
 sculptured in stone, but carved in wood, is placed 
 on a pedestal affixed to the wall of a public-house, 
 at the corner of (jiltspur Street and Cock Lane, 
 called the Fortune of War. The spot was com-
 
 Human Signs. 9 
 
 monly known as Pie Corner : it is hardly necessary 
 to add that here ended the Great Fire of London. 
 The figure in question was put up after that event ; 
 an engraving of it in Pennant's account of London 
 shows the following inscription on the breast and 
 arms : 
 
 ' This boy is in Memory Put up for the late Fire of 
 London, occasioned by the Sin of Gluttony, 1666.' 
 
 Burn tells us that its propriety was on one occasion 
 thus supported by a Nonconformist preacher on 
 the anniversary of the Fire. He asserted that 
 the calamity could not be occasioned by the sin of 
 blasphemy, for in that case it would have begun in 
 Billingsgate ; nor lewdness, for then Drury Lane 
 would have been first on fire ; nor lying, for then 
 the flames had reached them from Westminster 
 Hall. ' No, my beloved ; it was occasioned by 
 the sin of gluttony, for it began at Pudding Lane 
 and ended at Pie Corner.' 
 
 The inscription has long been obliterated, and 
 no trace is to be seen of the little wings with which, 
 in Pennant's illustration, the boy is furnished ; 
 in 1816, however, they were still conspicuous, 
 and were painted bright yellow. In that curious 
 work the ' Vade-Mecum for Malt-worms ' 
 which was written about the year 1715, the For- 
 tune of War is mentioned as a well-known tavern. 
 Within the memory of man it had the unpleasing 
 reputation of being a house of call for resurrec-
 
 io London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 tionists, who supplied the surgeons of St. Bartholo- 
 mew's Hospital with subjects for dissection. It 
 was here that John Bishop, the body-snatcher, met 
 his accomplice Williams, before the murder of the 
 Italian boy Ferrari, for which and similar crimes 
 they were hanged in 1831. 
 
 Our quaint old chronicler, John Stow, says that 
 Pie Corner was ' a place so called of such a sign, 
 sometime a fair inn for receipt of travellers, 
 but now divided into tenements.' Strype in 
 1720 describes it as noted chiefly for 'Cooks' 
 Shops and Pigs drest there during Bartholomew 
 Fair.' There are several allusions to it in Ben 
 Jonson's ' Alchemist ' and other plays. The 
 sign of the Pie probably implied the bird now 
 usually called a magpie, but it might have been 
 derived from the Pye,* or rules for finding out 
 the service of the day in the Roman Breviary, 
 or from the good cheer provided in this immediate 
 neighbourhood. Larwood and Hotten mention 
 
 * Pye, i.e., parti-coloured, as in the bird. It is said to have 
 been so called because the initial and principal letters of the 
 rubrics were printed in red, and the rest in black. At the 
 beginning of the Church of England Prayer-Book, in that 
 section which relates to the service of the Church, mention 
 is made of ' the number and hardness of the rules called the 
 Pie.' Shakespeare, in the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' says, 
 ' By cocke and pie you shall not choose, sir ; you shall not 
 choose, but come.' In this asseveration cock is supposed to 
 be a euphemism for God, and pie the above-named ordinal.
 
 Human Signs. 1 1 
 
 a stone sign of a Naked Boy with the date 1633 
 at Skipton-in-Craven. 
 
 A stone bas-relief of that mythical person, Guy, 
 Earl of Warwick, is still preserved on a house at 
 the corner of Warwick Lane and Newgate Street. 
 The figure is represented standing on a pedestal in 
 chain armour, with a conical helmet, a sword in 
 his right hand, and on his left arm a shield 
 chequy, or and azure, with a bend sinister ermine. 
 This seems to be wrongly copied from Guy's 
 shield in the Rows Roll, which has a chevron 
 ermine, but one arm of the chevron is, from the 
 position of the shield, so foreshortened that it can 
 hardly be seen ; hence the mistake. Above is the 
 date 1668, on one side the letters G. C., standing, I 
 suppose, for GUIDO COMES ; on the other a coat 
 of arms, three mascles on a bend, to whom be- 
 longing I cannot say, so many families have this 
 charge. Below is the inscription: 'Restored 1817. 
 J. Deakes, Archt.' 
 
 The general design somewhat resembles that of 
 a large figure in the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen 
 at Guy's Cliff, near Warwick, which, as we learn 
 from a modern inscription in Latin, was hewn 
 out of the living rock by order of Richard de 
 Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign of 
 Henry VI., to mark the spot where Guy was 
 thought to have ended his days. This Richard 
 de Beauchamp obtained license to found here a
 
 12 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 chantry for two priests, and annexed land thereto 
 to the value of twenty-four marks per annum. It 
 had before been a hermitage. Stow tells us that 
 ' Eldernesse lane, which stretcheth north to the 
 high street of Newgate market, is now called 
 Warwicke lane, of an ancient house there, built 
 by an Earl of Warwicke, and since called War- 
 wicke Inn.' Elsewhere he says: 'In the 36th 
 of Henry VI. the greater estates of the realm 
 being called up to London, Richard Nevill Earl 
 of Warwick came with six hundred men all in 
 jackets embroidered with ragged staves before and 
 behind, and was lodged in Warwicke Lane, in 
 whose house there were oftentimes six oxen eaten 
 at breakfast, and every tavern was full of his 
 meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that 
 house might have there so much of sodden and 
 roast meat as he could prick and carry away upon 
 a long dagger.' At the beginning of this century 
 the house to which the statuette belonged was 
 occupied by a Mr. Parry ; an inscription over the 
 door stated that it had been a tobacconist's shop 
 since 1660, no doubt rebuilt. 
 
 A well-modelled bas-relief of a woman's head, 
 probably intended to represent Minerva, is on a 
 house belonging to the Leathersellers' Company, 
 at the corner of Old Jewry and Gresham Street. 
 She has a helmet or diadem, and on her breast 
 the Gorgon's head ; an aegis also seems to be
 
 Human Signs. 13 
 
 suggested. On each side are festoons of fruit and 
 flowers ; the material I believe to be terra-cotta, 
 but it is so thickly coated with paint that one 
 cannot be sure. Archer, who drew this sign, 
 thought it was a fragment of sculpture from a 
 building of the early part of the sixteenth century, 
 and it seems to have something in common with 
 Italian terra-cotta work of that period; for instance 
 the medallions* executed by Joannes Maiano for 
 Cardinal Wolsey, and still existing at Hampton 
 Court. Before the house was modernized, on the 
 brick wall, below the head of Minerva, there was 
 a carving of the Leathersellers' Arms ; and so, 
 being used as a tavern during the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries, until 1871 it was known by 
 the sign of the Leathersellers' Arms, or latterly the 
 Three Bucks' Heads. Of the sculptured head of 
 Minerva no record exists. This property seems 
 to have belonged to the Leathersellers' Company 
 ever since the year 1565, when Edward Taylor, 
 who had been its master, left by will to the 
 company two messuages in St. Olave's, Jewry, to 
 distribute among the poorest people in the Poultry 
 Compter a kilderkin of beer and twelve penny- 
 worth of bread, and the same to Wood Street 
 Compter, Newgate, the Fleet, King's Bench, and 
 the Marsha] sea. In 1878 all arrears of these 
 
 * On the Holbein gateway at Whitehall there were also 
 medallions of terra-cotta, as large or larger than life.
 
 14 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 payments to each prison at ^i is. per quarter, 
 viz. for a kilderkin of beer 1, and for bread is., 
 having been paid to this date, and the full pay- 
 ment being 25 43. a year, the company transferred 
 to the official trustees of charities stock sufficient 
 to produce that amount. The name of Cateaton 
 Street was in 1845 changed to Gresham Street, 
 no one knows why. Here, in the days of John 
 Taylor the water-poet, there was an important inn 
 called the Maidenhead, but this, I imagine, -had for 
 its sign the arms of the Mercers' Company, whose 
 headquarters were in its immediate neighbourhood. 
 Later a seventeenth-century trade token was issued 
 from the Roxalana's Head in Cateaton Street, 
 the sign no doubt commemorating Elizabeth 
 Davenport the actress, whose favourite part 
 was Roxalana in the ' Siege of Rhodes.' Her 
 sham marriage with the last Earl of Oxford of 
 the de Vere family, who deceived her by dis- 
 guising a trumpeter of his troop as a priest, is 
 told in ' Gramont,' and in the ' Countess Dunois' 
 Memoirs.' Pepys saw her in i66, in the chief 
 box at the Duke's theatre, ' in a velvet gown, as 
 the fashion is, looking very handsome.' 
 
 The Woman's Head, dated 1671, which was on 
 a house in Paternoster Row, and has been lately 
 added to the Guildhall Museum, was hardly a sign. 
 Similar heads are still on the keys of a first and 
 second floor window belonging to the old-fashioned
 
 Human Signs. 15 
 
 house of Messrs. W. and R. Chambers, 47, Pater- 
 noster Row. Another bas-relief in the Guildhall 
 Museum represents a gardener holding a spade in 
 his right hand, with the date 1670 ; it is rudely 
 designed. This is a street rather than a house 
 sign ; as late as the year 1856 it was in Gardiner's 
 Lane, Upper Thames Street, near Broken Wharf. 
 Mr. J. T. Smith, who drew it, in 1791, for his 
 ' Antiquities of London,' adds this description : 
 ' Against Mr. Holyland's stables, Gardiner's Lane, 
 the corner of High Timber Street, is this sculp- 
 ture, but why put up I cannot learn. Tradition 
 says the site was once gardens.' Perhaps it was a 
 rebus on the name of Gardiner. 
 
 Two bas-reliefs of St. George and the Dragon 
 were erected as signs in London soon after the 
 Great Fire, and, on the principle Detur digniori, 
 should be described in this chapter. It was only 
 natural that the figure of St. George should 
 become one of our most popular inn signs ; for 
 he was regarded as the patron saint and special 
 protector of this our realm of England. Shake- 
 speare speaks of 
 
 ' St. George that swindg'd the Dragon, and e'er since 
 Sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door.' 
 
 'King John,' Act i., Scene I. 
 
 A capital specimen of such a sign, though un- 
 fortunately in bad condition, is at the Guildhall 
 Museum presented by Mr. W. Hayward, C.E.
 
 1 6 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 It came from a house 81, Snow Hill which had 
 formed part of a famous old galleried inn. Snow 
 Hill was the thoroughfare between Holborn and 
 the City, till in 1 802 it was superseded by Skinner 
 Street, named after Alderman Skinner, which has 
 now in its turn ceased to exist. Snow Hill is 
 called in Stow's ' Survey ' Snor or Snore Hill, 
 and by Howell Sore Hill, perhaps from the steep- 
 ness and difficulty of the ascent. Strype, in 1720, 
 speaks of the George Inn as ' very large and of a 
 considerable trade, the passage to the yard being 
 through Cow Lane.' In Sampson's * History of 
 Advertising/ an advertisement is given from the 
 British Chronicle of January 18 to 20, 1762, 
 which informs us that 
 
 THE READING MACHINE 
 
 Is removed from the Three Kings, Piccadilly, to the George 
 Inn, Snow Hill, London ; sets out from the Broad Face,* 
 Reading, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at seven 
 o'clock in the morning, and from the George Inn, 
 Snow Hill, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 
 at seven o'clock in the morning ; carries passengers to 
 And from Reading, at 6s. each ; children in lap 
 and outside passengers at 33. 
 
 T, f j u f Thomas Moore and 
 Performed by < D . , , ,,. , 
 
 1 \ Richard Mapleton. 
 
 N.B. Takes no charge of Writings, Money, Watches, 
 or Jewels, unless entered and paid for as such. 
 
 * The Broad Face, Reading, is noticed by Pepys as an odd 
 sign, when he visited the town on June 16, 1668. 
 
 t .
 
 Human Signs. 17 
 
 A second representation of the subject of the 
 George and Dragon was formerly to be seen on 
 Bennet Hill, opposite the Heralds' College, and 
 stood over the entrance to a small court, to which 
 it gave a name. On it were the initials R ^, and 
 date 1667. In * Remarks on London,' by W. Stow, 
 1722, mention is made of ' George Court, against 
 the Heralds' Office at Paul's Chain.' The ' Con- 
 stitutions of the Order of the Garter' (c. iii.) 
 ordain that * the Sovereign shall put upon his (the 
 knight elect's) neck a collar, or little chain or lace, 
 having pendant therefrom a massive golden image 
 of an armed knight (/.<?., St. George) sitting on 
 horseback.' 
 
 A relic of a most interesting old building is 
 the figure of Gerard the Giant,* ' carved from a 
 twisted block of timber, distorted and ill at ease,' 
 which stood in the niche between the first- 
 floor windows of Gerard's Hall Hotel, on the 
 south side of Basing Lane. It is about 6 feet 
 high, and painted more or less to imitate life. 
 Gerard's Hall is described by Stow as ' one great 
 house, of old time built upon arched vaults, with 
 
 * In style it reminds one somewhat of the Guildhall 
 giants, Gog and Magog, or, as Fairholt would call them, 
 Corineus and Gogmagog. These appear to have been made 
 in 1708, by Richard Saunders, a captain of trained bands and 
 carver in King Street, Cheapside, to replace giants of paste- 
 board and wickerwork, which had been carried in City pro- 
 cessions.
 
 1 8 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 gates of stone from Caen in Normandy. The same 
 is now a common hostrey for receipt of travellers, 
 commonly and corruptly called Gerrardes Hall, of 
 a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high- 
 roofed hall of this house sometime stood a large 
 fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and 
 was said to be one of the staves that Gerrarde 
 the giant used in the wars to run withal. John 
 Gisors, mayor of London in the year 1245, was 
 owner thereof, and Sir John Gisors, mayor and 
 constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of 
 that name and family since that time, owned it. 
 So it appeareth that this Gisor's Hall, of late time 
 by corruption, hath been called Gerrard's Hall.' 
 The upper part of the building was destroyed in 
 the Great Fire of 1666, but the crypt remained,* 
 and on this was built a brick house, with no re- 
 markable feature except the above-named gro- 
 tesque wooden figure, by way of sign. This house 
 
 * Part of a similar crypt is to be seen at 43, Lawrence 
 Pountney Hill ; it belonged to a house called the Manor of 
 the Rose, built originally in the reign of Edward III. Such 
 crypts would doubtless be useful to mediaeval merchants for 
 the storage of goods. There are great cellars under Crosby 
 Hall. I am reminded that in the thirteenth century houses 
 furnished usually belonged to Kings or the higher nobility at 
 least, this is implied by Matthew Paris, in his ' Lives of the 
 Abbots of St. Albans.' His words are : 'Aula nobilissima 
 picta cum conclavibus et camino et atrio et subaula, quas 
 palatium regium (quia duplex est et criotata) dic ; norest.'
 
 Human Signs. 19 
 
 was destroyed in April, 1852, when the new 
 Cannon Street was being formed. For some 
 months the crypt a fine specimen of thirteenth- 
 century Gothic continued in existence ; but as 
 the crown of the arched roof stood 2 feet or 
 more above the roadway, it was also pulled down. 
 Mr. Wheatley tells us that the stones were 
 carefully numbered, and presented to the Crystal 
 Palace Company, with a view to its re-erection. 
 After a time, however, they were used in making 
 the foundations for a new engine-house. Some of 
 the stones are even said to have found their way 
 to Kensington, to be broken up for mending the 
 roads. There is a good view of the crypt of 
 Gerard's Hall in Burn's ' Catalogue to the Beau- 
 foy Trade Tokens,' and a descriptive article in the 
 Builder for April 10, 1852, which also gives 
 drawings of several devices of the nature of 
 merchants' marks, and an unfinished inscription, 
 cut on the wall of the entrance. 
 
 A curious sculptured sign, representing King 
 Charles I.'s gigantic porter and dwarf, used to 
 stand over the entrance to Bull Head Court, 
 Newgate Street, but disappeared some years ago 
 on the widening of King Edward Street, formerly 
 Butcher Hall Lane. This part of Newgate Street 
 was in Strype's time named Blowbladder Street, 
 and before that Stinking Lane, on account of the 
 smell which arose from slaughter-houses and
 
 2O London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 poultry-shops there. Pennant has an illustration 
 of the sign, but wrongly describes it as being over 
 Bagnio Court, farther east, which was afterwards 
 Bath Street, and has now been ridiculously called 
 Roman Bath Street, though the ' Royal Bagnio,' 
 whence the court derived its name, was not erected 
 till 1679. The house to which the bas-relief be- 
 longed was No. 80, occupied in 1816 by Mr. 
 Payne, a hatter ; at that time the figures were 
 painted, their coats being red, the King's livery, 
 and their waistcoats white. Not unlikely, the 
 sign may still be in existence. 
 
 The two persons represented were William 
 Evans and Jefferey Hudson. Evans, the porter, 
 a Monmouth man, was 7 feet 6 inches high. 
 On one occasion, at a Court masque, he drew the 
 dwarf out of his pocket, ' to the amazement 
 and amusement of all present.' There is an 
 allusion to him in the contemporary ballad of 
 ' The Little Barleycorn.' JefFerey Hudson, the 
 dwarf, was born at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. 
 His father, a butcher, kept and baited bulls for 
 George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. At 
 nine years of age he was scarcely 1 8 inches high, 
 and, according to Fuller, ' without any deformity, 
 wholly proportionable.' Having entered the ser- 
 vice of the Duchess of Buckingham, at an enter- 
 tainment given by her husband to Charles I. and 
 Henrietta Maria, he was brought to table con-
 
 Human Signs. 21 
 
 cealed in a large pie, from which he emerged 
 before the company. The Queen took a fancy 
 to him, so he became her page, and in 1630 
 was sent to France to fetch a midwife for his royal 
 mistress, but fell into the hands of a Flemish pirate, 
 and was taken to Dunkirk. By this misfortune he 
 was said to have lost about 2,500. Sir William 
 Davenant makes a supposed combat between the 
 dwarf and a turkey-cock the subject of a burlesque 
 poem called ' Jeffreidos,' published in 1638, the 
 scene of which is laid at Dunkirk. How Hudson 
 bore the insult is not recorded ; but we shall see 
 that he was quite capable of holding his own. 
 During the Civil Wars the dwarf appears to have 
 been a captain of horse, and he followed the 
 Queen into exile. One of his adventures in 
 France is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in 
 ' Peveril of the Peak.' This was his duel' with 
 Crofts, a young gentleman of the Court, who had 
 provoked him. The duel was fought on horse- 
 back with pistols. Crofts came on the ground 
 armed with a syringe only ; but a more serious 
 weapon being substituted, he was killed at the first 
 discharge. It seems to have been later that Hudson 
 was again taken prisoner at sea, this time by Turkish 
 pirates, and brought to Barbary, where he was 
 sold as a slave. He asserted that his sufferings in 
 captivity made him grow taller. After many 
 vicissitudes he found his way back to England,
 
 22 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 probably before the year 1658. In 1679, being a 
 Roman Catholic, he was confined in the Gatehouse 
 at Westminster, for supposed complicity with the 
 Popish Plot. Mr. Inchbold points out, in the 
 ' Dictionary of National Biography,' that he did 
 not die there, as Scott and others have affirmed ; 
 for, 'in June, 1680, and April, 1681, "Captain" 
 Jefferey Hudson received respectively 50 and 
 ^20 from Charles II. 's secret service fund.' He 
 died in 1682. Three portraits of him were 
 painted by Mytens, and he also figures in a 
 portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke, 
 at Petworth. His waistcoat, breeches and stock- 
 ings are, it is said, preserved. 
 
 The sculptured stone sign of the Three Morris 
 Dancers was formerly in front of a public-house 
 numbered 36, Old Change, which is said to have 
 been pulled down about the year 1801. An illus- 
 tration of the sign exists : the central figure is a 
 woman. A seventeenth - century trade - token 
 issued from here reads thus : 
 
 O. IOHN. LISLE . AT. THE = Three Morris Dancers. 
 
 R. IN . Y E OLD . CHANGE = I. A. L. 
 
 The word ' morris ' is derived from the Spanish 
 ' morisco,' and is equivalent to Moorish. The 
 Morris or Moorish pike was a weapon much 
 used in England in the reign of Henry VIII. ; 
 Shakespeare refers to it in the ' Comedy of Errors,' 
 Act iv., Scene 3. Elsewhere he uses the word in
 
 Human Signs. 23 
 
 its commoner sense ; thus, in ' All's Well that 
 Ends Well ' he speaks of a morris for May Day, 
 and in * King Henry V.,' Act ii., Scene 4, the 
 Dauphin is made to say : 
 
 'And let us do it with no sign of fear ; 
 No, with no more than if we heard that England 
 Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance.' 
 
 According to Brand, the Spanish morris was 
 danced at puppet shows by a person habited like a 
 Moor. Strutt, in his ' Sports and Pastimes of the 
 English People,' connects it with the fandango. 
 Some curious dancing figures carved in wood once 
 formed part of the decorations in the mediaeval 
 town-hall of Munich ; the series was known as 
 the Maurscha tanntz. In England the dance 
 derived from the Moors seems to have been 
 grafted on to the rustic May games and sports, 
 which perhaps were falling into disuse. The 
 characters in the English morris - dance were 
 usually Maid Marian (a boy dressed up in girl's 
 clothes), Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, the Fool, Tom 
 the piper with pipe and tabor, and the hobby- 
 horse. A rare pamphlet* of 1609 tells us about 
 a morris-dance in Herefordshire, where the united 
 ages of the twelve dancers were supposed to amount 
 to twelve hundred years ; but, unfortunately, it 
 
 * ' Old Meg of Hereford Towne for a Morris Daunce, or 
 Twelve Morris Dancers in Herefordshire, of twelve hundred 
 years old.' Printed for John Bridge, 1609.
 
 24 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 does not give details of the performance. Wal- 
 dron, in his edition of the 'Sad Shepherd/ 1783, 
 p. 255, mentions seeing a company of morris- 
 dancers from Abington, at Richmond in Surrey, 
 in the summer of 1783. They appeared to be 
 making a kind of annual circuit. Even so late as 
 the time of the Queen's coronation, there was 
 morris-dancing of a kind in Hyde Park, as re- 
 corded by a writer in Notes and Queries. 
 
 One still sees occasionally on May Day, in the 
 less-frequented streets of London, a dance per- 
 formed by two or three sweeps to the sound of 
 fife and drum. They are dressed fantastically; 
 one of them is, as a rule, half concealed in a 
 frame covered with leaves and flowers, and is 
 called a Jack-in-the-green. They are generally 
 accompanied by a woman. These may be con- 
 sidered to a certain extent descendants of the 
 morris-dancers, and their black faces happen to 
 carry out the old idea. 
 
 Over the doorway of No. 13, Clare Street, at 
 the corner of Vere Street, Clare Market, is a stone 
 sign carved in low relief, which represents Two 
 Negroes' heads facing each other, with the date 
 1715 and initials W S M . The house is occupied 
 by a baker; its destruction is imminent, should 
 Government adopt the plan of the London 
 County Council for a new street from the Strand 
 to Holborn. The neighbourhood is now squalid,
 
 Human Signs. 25 
 
 and many of the buildings have lately been cleared 
 away, but we know that in the seventeenth century 
 it was well inhabited. I may remark, as a curious 
 coincidence, that the continuation of Clare Street 
 towards Drury Lane is called Blackmoor in old 
 maps Blackamore Street. Seventeenth-century 
 trade-tokens with signs of negro heads are in 
 existence ; one was issued from Drury Lane, and 
 is thus described by Boyne : 
 
 O. THOMAS . HAYTON . IN . DRVRY = A negro's head. 
 R. LANE . HIS . HALFE . PENNY = An arched crown. 
 
 The following advertisement, which appeared in 
 a London Gazette for 1695, has a distinctly local 
 flavour : 
 
 'A Black boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run 
 away the 8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his 
 neck, with this inscription : " The Lady Bromfield's black, 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields."' 
 
 Black attendants were common in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. In more than one cele- 
 brated portrait a black boy serves to enhance the 
 charm of a fair lady's complexion. Sir John 
 Hawkins, after his voyage of 1564, which was 
 partly for slave-trading purposes, was authorized 
 to have as his crest the half-length figure of a 
 negro prisoner called heraldically a demi-Moor, 
 bound and captive. The Black Boy was a fre- 
 quent tobacconists' sign, still sometimes seen.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THREE KINGS ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS. 
 
 ' Caspar and Melchior and Balthazar . 
 Came to Cologne on the broad-breasted Rhine, 
 And founded there a temple, which is yet 
 A fragment, but the wonder of the world.' 
 
 LORD TENNYSON: MS. 
 
 AN interesting group of City signs is that con- 
 nected with the Three Kings, showing as 
 it does what a hold the sacred legend, handed 
 down to us from a remote past, continued to have 
 on popular imagination till comparatively recent 
 years. In the Guildhall Museum there is a stone 
 bas-relief of the Three Kings, brought from 
 No. 7, Bucklersbury when the house was rebuilt 
 some years ago. The figures are represented 
 standing in similar attitudes ; they have sceptres 
 in their right hands, the left arm being in each 
 case folded across the breast. The figure to the 
 spectator's left has flowing hair; that in the centre 
 is of negro type ; the one to the right is distin-
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 27 
 
 guished by a large moustache. A bas-relief from 
 Lambeth Hill, also in the Guildhall Museum, is 
 somewhat similar in design ; the king on the left 
 has a crown, the others diadems ; it is dated 
 1667. Another sign from Lambeth Hill the 
 Three Crowns was also put up in 1667, and 
 may possibly have belonged to the same house. 
 
 The sign of the Three Kings was an appro- 
 priate one for inns, because on account of their 
 journey they were considered the patron saints of 
 travellers : it is also said to have been used in 
 England by mercers, because they imported fine 
 linen from Cologne. Bearing on this is a passage
 
 28 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 to be found among the Harleian manuscripts, 
 No. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193, which, though already 
 quoted by Larwood and Hotten in their ' History 
 of Sign-boards,' is so much to the point that I 
 venture to give it again : 
 
 ' Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Mar- 
 chantes and traded in all sortes of Rich Goodes, 
 besides those of scelckes [silks] as they do nou at 
 this day ; but they brought into England fine 
 Leninn thered [linen thread] gurdeles [girdles] 
 finenly worked from Collin [Cologne]. Collin, 
 the city which then at that time of day florished 
 much and afforded rayre commodetes, and these 
 merchats that vsually traded to that citye set vp 
 their singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the 
 three kinges of Collin, with the Armes of that 
 Citye, which was the THREE CROUENS of the 
 former kings in memorye of them, and by those 
 singes the people knew in what wares they deld 
 in.' 
 
 This was written by Bagford, the antiquary and 
 ' biblioclast,' whose spelling was original, to say 
 the least. 
 
 Innumerable traditions, myths, and allegories, 
 have by degrees been grafted on to the brief 
 Gospel narrative of the Three Magi ; St. Matthew, 
 the only Evangelist who mentions them,""" gives no 
 authority for fixing their number at three, nor for 
 * St. Matt. ii. i.
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 29 
 
 assigning to them a higher rank than that of Magi, 
 or disciples of Zoroaster ; but we may with reason 
 hold that they are referred to in Ps. Ixxii. TO, 1 1 : 
 ' The Kings of Tharsis and of the Isles shall give 
 presents, the Kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring 
 gifts.' This passage is recited in the Roman 
 Catholic offices of the Epiphany, and on it no 
 doubt is founded their claim to kingly rank. It 
 has been generally said that to Leo the Great, or 
 to St. Maximus of Turin, may be ascribed the 
 traditional number ; Dr. Northcote,* however, 
 considers that Origen, who was born at Alexandria, 
 A.D. 185, had the same idea. St. Augustine 
 taught that they were three in number, from the 
 three kinds of gifts that they offered gold, frank- 
 incense, and myrrh. 
 
 Few subjects have been oftener treated in 
 Christian art than that of these astronomer kings 
 who, guided by a star from the East, came to 
 worship the infant Saviour at Bethlehem. The 
 early Christians painted the scene, but, follow- 
 ing literally the words of St. Matthew, they 
 varied their number, and showed no signs of 
 royalty. De Rossi in his ' Roma Sotteranea,' 
 speaks of upwards of twenty representations 
 of the subject in the Catacombs. The Virgin 
 Mother is, in these paintings, generally repre- 
 
 * ' Roma Sotteranea,' by the Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, 
 D.D., and W. R. Brownlow, M.A., 1869.
 
 30 London Signs ana Inscriptions. 
 
 sented sitting at the side, v/ith the Child in 
 her lap and the three Magi before her, but 
 sometimes she is in the middle ; and here, in 
 order, perhaps, to keep the balance of the com- 
 position, the number of Magi is either increased or 
 diminished ; there are four, as in the cemetery of 
 St. Domitilla, or only two, as in that of SS. Peter 
 and Marcellinus. In Harper's New Monthly 
 Magazine for January, 1888, an illustration is 
 given of this latter painting.* The two Magi 
 approach from either side ; they are plainly 
 dressed with short tunics, cloaks, and Phrygian 
 caps, and bear their gifts on golden' trays or 
 dishes. De Rossi assigns it to the second half of 
 the third century ; that of St. Domitilla is supposed 
 to be somewhat earlier. 
 
 Let us see how the subject was treated in early 
 mosaics. A very famous one is that in the 
 Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome, dating, 
 it seems, from about A.D. 432-440. Here the 
 Child sits alone on a large chair or pedestal, His 
 hand raised in benediction ; a nimbus surmounted 
 by a cross marks His divine origin. The mosaic 
 is said to have been altered in the time of Pope 
 Benedict XlV.f ; the Magi would appear to have 
 
 * Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle suggest that these two 
 figures may possibly be intended to represent the prophets 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah. 
 
 t ' Historical and Monumental Rome,' by C. J. Hcmans, 
 chap. xv.
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 31 
 
 been originally three in number, and without the 
 insignia of royalty. In the great mosaic of St. 
 Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, they approach 
 with measured steps, and bending in attitudes of 
 reverence : on their heads were crowns, since ex- 
 changed for baronial caps. The Virgin sits en- 
 throned in state, the Child on her lap; two angels 
 on either side attend them. According to the 
 'Liber Pontificalis' of Ravenna, this work was exe- 
 cuted A.D. 553-556, under the direction of Bishop 
 Agnellus. 
 
 The legend as it has come down to us gradually 
 assumed concrete form. Our first detailed account 
 of the appearance of the Three Kings is from the 
 pen of a Western writer the Venerable Bede 
 who founded it, probably, on reports from Italy or 
 the East. In his treatise 'De Collectaneis,' he names 
 and describes them thus : * ' The first is said to 
 have been called Melchior, an old man gray-headed, 
 with flowing beard and locks ; he presented gold 
 to the Lord, the King. Caspar, the second, was 
 young, beardless, and ruddy ; he with frankincense, 
 as an oblation worthy of God, honoured God. 
 
 * ' Primus dicitur fuisse Melchior, qui senex et canus, 
 barba prolixa et capillis, aurum obtulit Regi Domino. Se- 
 cundus nomine Caspar, juvenis imberbis, rubicundus, thure 
 quasi Deo oblatione digna, Deum honoravit. Tertius fuscus, 
 integre barbatus, Baltassar nomine, per myrrham Filium 
 hominis moriturum professus.'
 
 32 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 The third, by name Baltassar, was dark-com- 
 plexioned,* and had a full beard ; he by means of 
 myrrh signified that the Son of Man should die.' 
 He then describes their dresses. 
 
 It has been saidf that this account may probably 
 be traced to early quasi-dramatic representations. 
 ' In any such performance, names of some kind 
 would become a matter of necessity, and were 
 probably invented at random.' Though the 
 names given in the above passage are those with 
 which we are familiar, many others have, perhaps 
 with equal authority, been applied to them. 
 
 The nationality of the Three Kings has been as 
 much discussed as the time taken on their journey. 
 The natural inference would appear to be that 
 they belonged to the priestly caste of Persia ; 
 Cornelius a Lapide considers that they were 
 Eastern Arabians. He says : ' The more common 
 opinion of the Fathers and Doctors is that the 
 Magi came on the thirteenth day from the first 
 
 * In fourteenth and fifteenth century paintings, especially 
 among the Germans, Balthazar was often a Moor or negro, 
 the tradition being that he was King of Ethiopia or Nubia. 
 Ghirlandajo, in a picture at the Pitti Gallery, gives him, not 
 a black complexion, but a black page. The difference of race 
 indicated in the representations of the Three Kings implies 
 the wideness of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. 
 On this account the three sons of Noah have been looked 
 upon as typical of them. 
 
 f Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible.'
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 33 
 
 appearance of the star and the birth of Christ, 
 whence the Church celebrates the mystery on the 
 twelfth day after Christmas.'* In their old age 
 they were said to have been baptized by St. 
 Thomas, and to have associated with him in 
 preaching the Gospel. Lastly, some have asserted 
 that they were slain by idolaters ; L. Dexter in 
 his chronicle, under A.D. 70, adds: 'In Arabia 
 Felix, in the City of Sessania, took place the 
 martyrdom of the three royal Magi ; Caspar, 
 Balthazar, Melchior.' 
 
 We are told that early in the fourth century 
 their bodies were discovered, and moved to 
 Constantinople by the pious Empress Helena. 
 Thence they found their way to Milan, being 
 enshrined in the church of San Eustorgio. A few 
 years later their fame was increased by the insti- 
 tution of the Feast of the Three Kings, which 
 has been ascribed to Pope Julius, the first of 
 that name. After the taking of Milan f by the 
 
 * Commentary of Cornelius a Lapidc, translated by 
 Mossman, vol. i. Others have extended the period of their 
 arrival at Bethlehem even to some time in the second year 
 after the birth of Christ, as an inference from Matt. ii. 1 6. 
 According to a tradition of the Eastern Church, the Magi 
 arrived at Jerusalem with a retinue of 1,000 men, having left 
 an army of 7,000 on the further bank of the Euphrates. 
 
 t The Milanese afterwards consoled themselves by forming 
 a confraternity, which showed their veneration for the Three 
 Kings by a special annual performance. 
 
 3
 
 34 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, in the year 1162, 
 the precious relics were granted to Reinaldus, 
 Archbishop of Cologne, who brought them to that 
 city, which proved to be their final resting-place. 
 Cologne, proud of the honour, adopted as her arms, 
 argent, on a chief gules, three royal crowns or; 
 and so we have an interesting heraldic record of 
 this event. 
 
 In course of time, however, each of these Three 
 Kings'' has had a shield of arms assigned to him. 
 Perhaps the earliest examples yet known are on the 
 roof of Norwich Cathedral. Here we find three 
 bosses which date from the time of Bishop Lehart, 
 who ruled that see from 1446 to 1472 ; on one is 
 a blazing star, the next has seven stars, the third 
 a star and crescent moon. The first and last 
 of these appear on bosses at Winchester, placed 
 there in the days of Richard Foxe, successively 
 Bishop of Exeter, Durham and Winchester, and 
 founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He 
 also gave relics of the three Epiphany Kings to 
 Portchester Old Church.f Lord Ashburnham's 
 picture of the Adoration, exhibited at Burlington 
 House in 1891, may be considered one of the 
 
 * For these references to the heraldry of the Three Kings, 
 I have to thank my valued friend, Mr. Everard Green, F.S.A., 
 whose knowledge of the subject is unique. 
 
 t Foster's Chapel, Bristol, founded in 1504, is dedicated to 
 the Three Kings. In Winchester Cathedral are traces of a 
 painting of the Adcration.
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 35 
 
 most noteworthy examples illustrating this branch 
 of the subject. It is attributed to Mabuse, 
 and in Mr. Weale's opinion was evidently painted 
 about the year 1509, under strong Franciscan 
 influence. In it are three processions in the back- 
 ground, of the Three Kings meeting at the Jordan. 
 Each procession has an azure banner ; on one is a 
 blazing star, on another seven stars, and on the 
 third a star and crescent moon. These same 
 charges are embroidered on their robes in the 
 foreground of the picture, and as on two of the 
 Kings the names of Jasper* and Balthazar appear, 
 we see that the star and crescent are assigned 
 to Jasper, the blazing star to Balthazar, and the 
 seven stars to Melchior. Different versions of 
 the arms exist ; for instance, those in a manuscript 
 book of heraldry, which Sir David Lyndsay of the 
 Mount, Lyon King of Arms in Scotland, caused 
 to be executed in the year 1522, and of which 
 Mr. David Laing published a facsimile in 1878. 
 Here Balthazar is called King of Saba, whose 
 assigned shield of arms is, or, on a mount vert an 
 Ethiopian proper, habited in a tunic per pale, 
 azure and gules, holding in the dexter hand 
 a spear with a pennon per pale, gules and azure, 
 and wreathed round the temples, argent and azure. 
 Jasper is called King of Tarshish; his shield is 
 azure, with an estoile on the dexter, and a large 
 * The names of the Kings are variously spelt.
 
 36 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 crescent moon on the sinister, both proper. Mel- 
 chior is called King of Araby, and on his azure 
 shield are six estoiles proper. In the British 
 Museum, on a superb jug of stoneware, made at 
 Raaren near Achen, about 1590, are the three 
 shields of arms of the Three Kings of Cologne. 
 On this jug, Balthazar has the star and crescent 
 moon ; Casper, as he is here called, the seven 
 stars; and the Ethiopian is assigned to Melchior. 
 A work of art truly delightful, but conveying no 
 heraldic lesson, is the long fresco of the journey 
 of the Three Kings by Bennozzo Gozzoli, in the 
 Riccardi Palace at Florence, wherein the rich caval- 
 cade is shown, winding about by rock and river 
 and wooded landscape, on which the painter has 
 lavished all his poetry of invention and feeling for 
 fresh nature. 
 
 In England the story of the Three Kings was 
 often introduced into plays and pageants.* In the 
 ninth report Hist. MSS. Com., Part I., is a full 
 description, dated 1501, of a pageant given at the 
 Guildhall, entitled ' The 3 Kyngs of Coleyn.' It 
 
 * A pageant was originally the structure on which the per- 
 formance took place. Archdeacon Rogers, who saw the per- 
 formance at Chester in 1594, says that ' Every company had 
 its pagiant, or parte, whiche pagiants weare a high scafolde 
 with 2 roomes, a higher and a lower, upon 4. wheeles. In the 
 lower they apparelled themselves, and in the higher they 
 played, being all open on the tope, that all behoulders mighte 
 heare and see them.'
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 37 
 
 seems that managers of sacred plays were fined if 
 they failed to give satisfaction, for in the records 
 of the town of Beverley, under the year 1519, 
 occurs the following entry: 'Also 2s. received 
 of Richard Trollop, Alderman of the Painters, 
 because his play of the Three Kings of Cologne 
 was badly and disorderly performed.' Mr. Thomas 
 Wright, F.S.A., in his edition of the Chester 
 Mysteries, shows that they took place on Monday, 
 Tuesday, and Wednesday of Whitsun week. To 
 each City company was assigned a play, twenty-four 
 in all ; to the Vintners the journey of the Three 
 Kings, and to the Mercers their offerings and return. 
 The lives of the Three Kings were printed by 
 Tresyrel in Paris in 1498, and by Wynkyn de 
 Worde in 1516. The gifts of these Kings were 
 recorded in the following Latin verses, which, if 
 written with blood from the little finger of a 
 person troubled with falling sickness, and hung 
 about the neck, were according to an old book 
 'The Myrrhour of a Glasse of Healthe' an infal- 
 lible cure ; it will be observed that they do not 
 quite agree with the description given by the 
 Venerable Bede : 
 
 ' Jaspar fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazur aurum, 
 Hsec tria, qui secum portabit nomina regum, 
 Solvitur a morbo, Christ! pietate, caduco.' 
 
 A mediasval ring was found some time ago at 
 Dunwich, whereon the above lines were inscribed ;
 
 38 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 it is figured in Fairholt's ' Rambles of an Archaeo- 
 logist,' 1871. In 1794 Mr. Craven Ord, F.S.A., 
 described a bas-relief of alabaster, in the church of 
 Long Melford, Suffolk, representing the offerings 
 of the Magi. It still exists in good condition ; an 
 illustration of it appeared as frontispiece to a mono- 
 graph on the church printed in 1887. Another 
 interesting memento was a leaden box found in the 
 Thames, and drawn for Mr. Roach Smith's ' Col- 
 lectanea Antiqua,' i. 115; on which, in six compart- 
 ments, are delineated the story of the Salutation 
 of the Virgin and the offerings of the Three Kings. 
 In the Gentleman s Magazine for February, 
 1749, vol. xix., p. 88, it is stated that the fol- 
 lowing prayer for protection was found in the 
 linen purse of William Jackson a smuggler, who 
 had been condemned to death for taking part in 
 the murder of Galley and Chater, two Custom- 
 house officers, but was so struck with horror on 
 being measured for his irons that he died (a 
 Roman Catholic) in Chichester Gaol a few hours 
 after the sentence was pronounced upon him : 
 
 ' Sancti tres Reges, 
 Caspar Melchior Balthazar, 
 Orate pro nobis nunc et in hora 
 Mortis nostras. 
 
 Ces billets ont touche" aux trois testes de SS. Roys a Cologne. 
 [Is sont pour les voyageurs centre les malheurs de chemins, 
 maux de teste, mal caduque, fievres, forcellerie, toute sorte de 
 malefiee, mort subite.'
 
 'Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 39 
 
 This paper had a rude illustration : Mr. Roach 
 Smith gives a copy of it from a drawing by Fair- 
 holt. A similar prayer is still distributed at the 
 shrine of the Three Kings. 
 
 Throughout Christendom the feast of the 
 Epiphany, or Twelfth Day, holds an honoured 
 place, as commemorating the appearance or mani- 
 festation of Christ to the Gentiles, more especially 
 to the Kings or Wise Men, who came from the 
 East to do Him homage. In Spain it is called 
 Fiesta de los Reyes, in France La Fete de Rois. 
 In the year 1792 it was there pronounced an anti- 
 civic feast which made every priest that kept it a 
 Royalist, and the name was for a time changed to 
 Fete de Sans- Culottes. 
 
 It is hard to say whether the sign of the 
 Seven Stars had its origin from the shield of 
 an Astronomer King, Caspar or Melchior, or 
 from the seven bright stars of the constellation 
 
 D 
 
 usually called the Great Bear,* or whether it 
 was suggested by the mystic pages"! of the 
 Apocalypse ; but from whatever source derived, it 
 was common in London about the time of the 
 Great Fire. A fine sculptured specimen wiih 
 ornamental border was to be seen in Cheapside as 
 
 * One is reminded of Falstaff's words (i Henry IV. Act i., 
 Scene 2) : ' For we, that take purses, go by the moon and 
 seven stars ; and not by Phoebus, he, that wandering knight 
 so fair.' Again, Pistol says ; ' Sweet knight, I kiss thy nief. 
 What ! we have seen the seven stars.'
 
 4O London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 late as the year 1851, when Archer drew it. A 
 cognate sign was the Sun,* a stone carving of 
 which was formerly imbedded in the front of a 
 house in the Poultry. It had at the corners the 
 date 1668. The neighbourhood was at one time 
 rich in astronomical signs. In 1532 Richard 
 Collier, citizen and mercer of London, left his 
 messuage called the Sun, in the parish of St. Mary 
 le Bow, to be sold, and the proceeds to be devoted 
 to the founding of a free school at Horsham in 
 Sussex, which still exists, and is in the hands of 
 the Mercers' Company. Other signs of this 
 description in Cheapside, were the Star, the Man 
 in the Moon, and the Half-Moon the sign of a 
 celebrated tavern on the north side, close to Gutter 
 Lane, rebuilt after the Great Fire. Here in 1682 
 Elias Ashmole presided at a dinner, given at the 
 charge of newly accepted Freemasons ; and, from 
 a rare print of the early part of the eighteenth 
 century, it seems that here one of their lodges was 
 
 * King Richard II. had two badges : the Sun in splendour, 
 and the White Hart. The former is shown on the mainsail 
 of the vessel in which he returned from Ireland, in an illu- 
 mination to a manuscript account of Richard, by a gentleman 
 of his suite (Harl. MS. 1319). It is also mentioned by the 
 poet Gower. The Sun in splendour, encircled with a cloud 
 distilling drops of rain, is a charge in the arms of the Dis- 
 tillers' Company. I may add that the Three Crowns appear 
 in the arms of the Skinners' Company, which according to 
 Strype were granted in the 4th year of Edward VI.
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 41 
 
 held. The following appeared in the General 
 Advertiser in 1748 : 
 
 ' HALF-MOON TAVERN, CHEAPSIDE. Saturday next, the 
 1 6 April, being the anniversary- of the Glorious Battle of 
 Culloden, the Stars will assemble in the Moon, at six in the 
 evening. Therefore, the choice spirits are desired to make 
 their appearance and to fill up the joy.' 
 
 The house belonged to the Saddlers' Company, 
 
 and was burnt down in 1821 ; No. 140 is said to 
 occupy the site. 
 
 A sculptured bas-relief of a Half-Moon still 
 appears to the left of a doorway, on the north 
 side of the Half-Moon Inn Yard, Borough High 
 Street. It is about four feet from the ground 
 and has on it the initials i T E, with date 1690 ; 
 the size is only 13 by io| inches. This, as far as 
 I know, is the only inn sign of the kind in 
 London which still remains in its original position
 
 42 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 and retains its use. The Half-Moon, though not 
 one of the most famous Southwark hostelries, has 
 a record of its own worth alluding to. In a 
 rough map of about the year 1542, now in the 
 Record Office, an inn appears to be marked on 
 this site, but the name cannot clearly be made out. 
 The great Southwark fire of 1676 did not extend 
 so far east. The first undoubted note I have of 
 it, is contained in a broadsheet printed at Fleet 
 Bridge, September, 1689, and now in the Guild- 
 hall Library, entitled ' A Full and True Account 
 of the Sad and Dreadful Fire that happened in 
 Southwark, September 22, 1689 ;' from which we 
 learn that houses were blown up, and the Falcon 
 and Half-Moon on opposite sides of the High 
 Street were on fire at the same time. Our sign 
 gives the date of rebuilding in the following year, 
 and the initials of the owner or landlord. In 
 1720 Strype speaks of the Half-Moon as 'a 
 pretty large inn and of a good trade.' It was then 
 in the thick of Southwark Fair, and is alluded to 
 in the following advertisement (September, 1729): 
 
 ' At Reynolds' Great Theatrical Booth, in the Half Moon 
 Inn, near the Bowling Green, during the Fair, will be pre- 
 sented the Beggar's Wedding, or the Sheep Shearing, an 
 opera called Flora, and the Humours of Harlequin.' 
 
 Hogarth introduced a hanging sign of the Half 
 Moon into his celebrated picture of Southwark 
 Fair, which represents the High Street looking
 
 Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 43 
 
 towards old St. George's Church, just before its 
 demolition. The foundation-stone of the present 
 church was laid April 23, 1734, this picture 
 having been painted in the previous year. In a 
 quaint little book of 1815, called the 'Epicure's 
 Almanack,' the Half-Moon is described as 'a large 
 establishment ; its convenient accommodations for 
 entertaining and lodging guests extend on either 
 side the inn yard, and are connected by a well- 
 contrived bridge from gallery to gallery,' which 
 still exists. 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne was of opinion that the 
 human face on alehouse signs, on coats of arms, 
 etc., for the sun and moon, are relics of paganism, 
 and that their visages originally implied Apollo 
 and Diana. Butler in ' Hudibras ' asks a shrewd 
 question, as yet not effectually answered : 
 
 ' Tell me but what's the nat'ral cause 
 Why on a sign no painter draws 
 The full moon ever, but the half?' 
 
 The crescent moon, as we have seen, appears 
 among the armorial bearings of the Three Kings 
 of Cologne. It was also a badge of the Percy 
 family ; Drayton in his ' Barons' Wars ' alludes to 
 one of them thus : 
 
 ' The noble Piercy, in this dreedful day, 
 With a bright crescent in his guidon came.' 
 
 Retainers of the Percies no doubt often adopted 
 it as a sign on this account.
 
 44 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 According to Burn, a mark shaped like a half- 
 moon represented sixpence in the alewife's un- 
 cancelled score. He points out that in ' Master 
 W. H., his Song to his Wife at Windsor/ printed 
 in Captain Llewellyn's ' Men-miracles, and other 
 Poems,' 1656, duod., p. 40, mention is made of 
 ' the fat harlot of the tap,' who 
 
 ' Writes at night and at noon, 
 For tester, half a moon ; 
 And great round O, for a shilling.' 
 
 The woodcut attached to the ballad of ' My 
 Wife will be my Master,' printed in J. P. Collier's 
 ' Booke of Roxburghe Ballads,' 1847, P- 89, 
 clearly indicates such an alewife's score. 
 
 Before I leave this branch of my subject, it will 
 be well to call attention to the Half-Moon sign 
 which projects over a shop numbered 36, about 
 half-way up Holywell Street on the south side. 
 This is the last still in situ of another class of 
 London house-signs, and will doubtless soon be 
 swept away together with the picturesque old 
 street to which it belongs. The material is wood, 
 boldly carved and gilt, with the conventional face 
 in the centre. One of the horns was damaged, 
 but has lately been repaired. Diprose* says it was 
 once the sign of a tradesman who was staymaker 
 to George III. About forty years ago the shop 
 
 * ' Some Account of the Parish of St. Clement Danes,' by 
 John Diprose. 1868. Vol. i., p. 257.
 
 'Three Kings Astronomical Signs. 45 
 
 was occupied by a mercer, and the bills made 
 out for the customers were adorned with this sign: 
 since then it has been a bookseller's. 
 
 The corner-post of an alley beside it, leading into 
 the Strand, used formerly to be decorated with a 
 carved lion's head and paws, painted red, and acting 
 as a corbel to support the old timbered house to 
 which it belonged. This may have been associated 
 with the neighbouring Lyons Inn, once a hostelry 
 with the sign of the Lion, demolished about twenty- 
 five years ago, and the site of which is occupied 
 by the Globe and Opera Comique Theatres. The 
 
 alley remains, and is now called, after the sign, 
 Half-Moon Passage, but might still be described 
 by the unsavoury name given to it in the old 
 maps, as Strype says, ' in contempt.' The old house 
 disappeared not long since, and the lion has found 
 a home in the Guildhall Museum.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 ' Lions, talbots, bears, 
 The badges of your famous ancestries.' 
 
 DRAYTON : Barons' Wars. 
 
 ONE or two of the signs to he dealt with 
 under this heading are purely heraldic ; 
 others are allied to nature, and have, as far I am 
 aware, no connection with heraldry. The stone 
 carving of an ape seated on its haunches and eating 
 an apple belonged to this class ; it had on it the 
 initials ^ with date 1670, and some years ago was 
 to be seen built into a wall on the west side of 
 Philip Lane, exactly opposite the Ward School of 
 Cripplegate Within. The space at the back was 
 occupied by a court, the whole being now 
 swallowed up in the premises of Messrs. Rylands 
 and Sons. This marked the site of an ancient 
 galleried inn of which it had been the sign. A 
 similar piece of sculpture is or was lately in a 
 street called the Sporrengasse at Basle. A little
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 47 
 
 further east in Philip Lane a modern sculptured 
 cock commemorates Cock Court, now destroyed, 
 where another ancient inn had once stood. Draw- 
 ings of both are preserved in the British Museum. 
 
 Not far from Philip Lane, at lya, Addle Street, 
 there is a fine bas-relief of a bear with collar and 
 chain ; it is above the first-floor window of a house 
 rebuilt about twelve years ago, and has on it the 
 initials T N E and date 1670 not 1610, as we are 
 told by Archer. Munday and Dyson, in the fourth 
 edition of Stow's 'Survey' (1633), assert that Addle 
 Street derived its name from Athlestane or Adle- 
 stane, whose house was supposed to have been hard 
 by, in Wood Street, with a door into Addle Street. 
 
 An interesting sculptured sign of a Bear was 
 dug up in 1882, when the house numbered 47. 
 on the south side of Cheapside, was being rebuilt. 
 It was found in a damaged state 7 or 8 feet 
 below the surface, and is now let into the wall 
 inside the shop of Messrs. Cow and Co., india- 
 rubber manufacturers. An old arched cellar or 
 undercroft of considerable height still exists in the 
 basement, and extends to a distance of some 30 
 feet below the street. This sign, which represents 
 a bear chained and muzzled,* and in heraldic 
 
 * Guillim intimates the reason for representing rhe bear 
 muzzled in heraldry : ' The beare by nature is a cruell beast, 
 but this here demonstrated unto you, is (to prevent the mis- 
 chief it might otherwise do, as you may observe) as it were,
 
 48 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 language contourne^ or facing to the right instead 
 of the left, has neither date nor initials. A 
 suggestion has been made that this is the White 
 Bear, the sign of Robert Hicks, a mercer at Soper's 
 Lane end, and father of Sir Baptist Hicks, born 
 there in 1551, who built Hicks Hall* and who, 
 says Strype, was one of the first citizens that after 
 knighthood kept their shops (eventually he became 
 Lord Campden). This, however, is by no means 
 probable ; the sign resembles others put up after 
 the Great Fire ; moreover, Soper's Lane, now 
 Queen Street, is some distance east of St. Mary-le- 
 Bow Church, while No. 47 is to the west, near 
 Bread Street. On the opposite side of the way 
 was a house with a similar sign, as appears from 
 the following advertisement in the London Gazette 
 of October 5, 1693 : 
 
 bound to the good behaviour with a muzle.' ' Heraldry,' 
 sec. iii,, chap, xv., p. 199. 1660. 
 
 * Hicks Hall was a session-house for Middlesex. At the 
 corner of St. John Street, Clerkenwell, and Peter's Lane, 
 affixed to the wall of the Queen's Head tavern, is a stone 
 tablet with the following inscription : 
 
 ' Opposite this Place Hicks Hall formerly stood, i mile 
 i furlong from the Standard in Cornhill, 4 furlongs 205 yards 
 from Holborn Barrs down Holborn, up Snow Hill, Cow Lane 
 and through Smithfield.' 
 
 A Jacobean chimney-piece from Hicks Hall, and a portrait 
 of Sir Baptist, are in the Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green. 
 See an amusing article on Suburban Milestones, in Knight's 
 ' London.'
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 49 
 
 ' Lost from the Brown Bear, next door to Mercers' Chapel, 
 in Cheapside, a large broken silver candlestick, having on 
 the bottom James Morris engraven ; also two double silver 
 scroles of sconces, and a small scrole of a silver sconce, &c.' 
 
 Yet another sculptured sign of a chained bear 
 exists in the City, more or less in its former 
 position. It has on it the initials M E with date 
 1670, and is to be found let into a modern wall 
 at the entrance to Messrs. Cox and Hammond's 
 quays, between Nos. 5 and 6, Lower Thames 
 Street, having fortunately escaped a fire which in 
 part destroyed the premises some years since. 
 A far more terrible fire occurred in the neighbour- 
 hood in January, 1714-15, when above 120 
 houses were said to have been either burnt or 
 blown up, and many persons perished. Jt was 
 caused by an explosion in a little gunpowder shop 
 near Bear Quay, and burned eastward as far as 
 Mark Lane. The sign belonged perhaps originally 
 to this Bear Quay, the site of which is now 
 covered by the Custom House, and which in the 
 eighteenth century was chiefly appropriated to the 
 landing and shipment of wheat. 
 
 A Great Bear Quay and a Little Bear Quay 
 are marked close together in Strype's map of the 
 Tower Ward. Beer Lane, further east, leading 
 from Great Tower Street to Lower Thames Street, 
 was in Stow's time called Beare Lane. From a 
 writ dated at Windsor, October 30, in the 
 
 4
 
 50 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 thirtieth year of Henry III., it appears that the 
 Sheriffs of London were commanded to^ provide 
 a muzzle, an iron chain, and a cord, for the King's 
 white bear in the Tower of London, and to use 
 him to catch fish in the water of the Thames ; and 
 six years afterwards, namely in 1252, the Sheriffs 
 were commanded to supply fourpence per diem 
 for the maintenance of the King's white bear and 
 his keeper in the Tower. Burnet tells us that 
 on May 29, 1542, the French Ambassadors, after 
 they had supped with the Duke of Somerset, went 
 to the Thames, and saw the bear hunted in the 
 river. Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, 
 and consort of Richard III., adopted the white 
 bear as a badge. In 1539 a * Manual of Prayers' 
 was printed by John Mayler, at the sign of the 
 White Bear in Botolph Lane. A seventeenth- 
 century trade token was issued by a grocer from 
 the sign of the White Bear, Thames Street. 
 Another trade token, ascribed by Boyne and 
 others to Southwark, is far more likely to have 
 been issued from here; it reads thus : 
 
 O. PHILIP STOWER . AT = a bear. 
 
 R. THE . BEARE . AT . BARE . KEY = P. S. S. 
 
 A curious stone bas-relief of Bel and the 
 Dragon is preserved by Messrs. Corbyn and Co., 
 the eminent chemists, at No. 7, Poultry, being let 
 into the wall of a back room ; the idol is repre-
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 5 i 
 
 sented by an actual bell. Larwood and Hotten 
 say that the sign was not uncommon, especially 
 among apothecaries ; it is alluded to in the 
 Spectator, No. 28. At Messrs. Corbyn's there 
 is also a very handsome mortar of bell-metal, said 
 to have been used by the firm in early days, with 
 an inscription in Flemish or old German, and the 
 date 1536. Messrs. Corbyn have had a copy of 
 the above sign inserted in the wall of their new 
 establishment, at the corner of Bond Street and 
 Oxford Street ; it came originally from their old 
 house of business in Holborn. 
 
 The stone sign of the house which succeeded 
 the Shakespearean Boar's Head has happily been 
 preserved, and is now in the Guildhall Museum. 
 It is well designed and tastefully coloured, that 
 fact having come to light when a thorough process 
 of cleansing took place some time since. Above
 
 52 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 the snout are the initials i. T., and date 1668 ; 
 size 1 8^ by 16 inches. The Boar's flead tavern 
 will be famous for all time, as the scene of the 
 revelries of Falstaff and Prince Hal; how far it 
 was really connected with Shakespeare's immortal 
 creation has been discussed at length by the late Mr. 
 Halliwell Phillipps. In the time of Henry V., 
 Eastcheap was noted for its cooks' shops, as ap- 
 pears from the ballad of London Lickpenny, by 
 John Lydgate, monk at Bury St. Edmunds, in 
 which, while giving a countryman's description of 
 London, he says : 
 
 ' Then I hyed me into Est-Chepe ; 
 One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye; 
 Pewter pottes they clattered on a heape. 
 There was harpe, pype, and minstralsye. 
 Yea, by cock ! nay, by cock ! some began crye ; 
 Some songe of Jenken and Julyan for there mede; 
 But for lack of mony I myght not spede.' 
 
 Stow, mentioning an affray in which King Henry 
 IV.'s sons Thomas and John were concerned, 
 adds in a note, ' there was no taverne then in East- 
 cheape.' 
 
 Curiously enough, there is also no distinct 
 authority in any of the early editions of Shake- 
 speare's plays for the name of the tavern in East- 
 cheap at which Falstaff and the Prince are supposed 
 to meet. Theobald was the first, in 1733, to place
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 53 
 
 the Boar's Head in the stage directions. Shake- 
 speare never mentions it at all, and his only 
 apparent allusion is in the second part of 
 ' Henry the Fourth,' where the Prince asks 
 (speaking of Falstaff) : ' Doth the old boar feed 
 in the old frank ?' and Bardolph answers : ' At the 
 old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.' A suggestion 
 of the house may also possibly be intended in 
 ' Richard the Second,' where the Prince is men- 
 tioned as frequenting taverns ' that stand in narrow 
 lanes.' In the play of the ' Famous Victories of 
 Henry the Fife,' 1594, on which Shakespeare's 
 drama was partly founded, the Castle tavern is 
 mentioned as the place of meeting in Eastcheap. 
 An allusion, however, to ' Sir John of the Boar's 
 Head in Eastcheap,' in Gayton's ' Festivous 
 Notes ' (1654, p. 277), may be considered to prove 
 that this was, in truth, the tavern to which Shake- 
 speare referred. His contemporary, Dekker, in 
 the play of ' The Shoemakers' Holyday, or, The 
 Gentle Craft,' has the following : Eyre. * Rip you 
 chitterling, avaunt, boy ; bid the tapster of the 
 Bores-head fill me a doozen cans of beere for my 
 journeymen.' 
 
 The earliest notice of the original house which 
 has been handed down to us occurs in the testa- 
 ment of William Warden, who, in the reign of 
 Richard II., gave all his tenement called the 
 Boar's Head, in Eastcheap, to a college of priests
 
 54 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 or chaplains, founded by Sir William Walworth, 
 Lord Mayor, in the adjoining Church of St. 
 Michael, Crooked Lane. The endowments of 
 this college were forfeited in the year 1 549, when 
 the house above alluded to is described as all the 
 said William Warden's tenement called the Boar's 
 Head, Eastcheap, ' worth by year ^4.' 
 
 The Boar's Head is first called a tavern in the 
 year 1537, when it is expressly described in a 
 lease, as ' all that tavern called the Bore Hedde, 
 cum sollariis et aliis suis pertinentiis in Estchepe, 
 in parochia Sancti Michaelis, prasdicti in tenura 
 Johanne Broke vidue/ An apparently genuine 
 memento was discovered about the year 1834 
 in moving away soil from Whitechapel Mount.* 
 It is a carved boxwood bas-relief of a boar's 
 head set in a circular frame formed by two 
 boar's tusks mounted in silver ; diameter, 4^ 
 
 * Whitechapel Mount was an elevation of ground gene- 
 rally thought to have been composed, in part at least, of 
 rubbish from the Great Fire : Lysons, however, denies this. 
 Another idea is, that it was a great burial-place for victims of 
 the Plague of 1665. A fort was built here in 1642, one of 
 the series then thrown round London. The Mount is 
 shown in Strype's map of 1720, and in a view of London 
 Hospital, by Chatelain. Towards the end of last century 
 it was a place of resort for pugilists and dog-fighters. Mount 
 Street and Mount Place, immediately west of the London 
 Hospital, Whitechapel Road, now occupy the ground, which 
 is still slightly raised.
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 55 
 
 inches. An inscription pricked on the back is as 
 follows : 
 
 ' William Brooke Landlord of the Bores Hedde Estchepc 
 I 566.' 
 
 This now belongs to Lady Burdett Coutts, and 
 was shown two years ago at the Tudor Exhibition. 
 In the year 1588, the inn was kept by Thomas 
 Wright, a native of Shrewsbury : ' Thear was 
 chosen with me at that time out of the school, 
 George Wrighte, son of Thomas Wrighte of 
 London, vintener, that dwelt at the Bores Hed in 
 Estcheap, who sithence, having good inheritance 
 descended to him, is now clerk of the king's stable, 
 and a knight, a very discreet and honest gentle- 
 man ;' as we learn from the ' Liber Famelicus ' 
 of Sir John Whitelocke, edited by J. Bruce (p. 12). 
 On March 31, 1602, the Lords of the Council 
 wrote to the Lord Mayor, granting permission to 
 the servants of the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of 
 Worcester to play at the Boar's Head in East- 
 cheap:* which seems to indicate that the house was 
 an important one, probably with a yard. In the 
 year 1623, 'John Rhodoway, vintner at the Bore's 
 Head.' was buried at St. Michael's, Crooked Lane. 
 This person may have kept the tavern in Shake- 
 
 * This letter is among the Remembrancia at the Guildhall, 
 and is noted on page 355 of the Analytical Index, published 
 in 1878.
 
 56 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 speare's time. Two seventeenth-century trade 
 tokens were issued from ' the Bore's Head, neere 
 London Stone,' as it is called in the rare tract 
 called ' Newes from Bartholomew Fayre.' These 
 tokens are undated, but it seems likely that they 
 were struck before 1666. One of them gives the 
 name of John Sapcott as the landlord. 
 
 The Boar's Head tavern was burnt in the Great 
 Fire, and rebuilt of brick four stories high, with 
 its door in the centre. Many allusions to this 
 second Boar's Head have been preserved ; one of 
 the quaintest was an inscription on a tombstone 
 in. the neighbouring churchyard of St. Michael's, 
 Crooked Lane, which I lately saw at the back of 
 St. Magnus Church, whither it migrated when its 
 first resting-place was covered by the approaches 
 to new London Bridge. The epitaph runs thus : 
 
 ' Here lieth the bodye of Robert Preston, late drawer at 
 the Boar's Head Tavern Great Eastcheap who departed this 
 life March 16 Anno Domini 1730, aged twenty-seven years.' 
 
 ' Bacchus to give the toping world surprise, 
 Produc'd one sober son, and here he lies. 
 Tho' nurs'd among full hogsheads, he defyd 
 The charm of wine, and every vice beside. 
 O reader, if to justice thou'rt inclined, 
 Keep honest Preston daily in thy mind. 
 He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots, 
 Had sundry virtues that outweighed his fauts (sic). 
 You that on Bacchus have the like dependence, 
 Pray copy Bob in measure and attendance.'
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 57 
 
 In the second edition of Maitland's ' London,' 
 1756, we are told that under the sign of the 
 Boar's Head, the following inscription was then to 
 be seen : ' This is the oldest tavern in London.' 
 Goldsmith was there in 1758, getting material 
 for his charming ' Reverie at the Boar's Head,' 
 in which, however, he assumed that he was in the 
 actual tavern immortalized by Shakespeare ; and 
 in 1 8 1 8 another gifted author Washington Irving 
 after a similar visit, wrote an essay as charming 
 and as inaccurate. During their tour to the 
 Hebrides in 1773, Boswell mentioned to Dr. 
 Johnson a club held at the Boar's Head, the 
 members of which all assumed Shakespearean 
 characters, one was Falstaff, another Prince Hal, 
 another Bardolph, and so on. Johnson's remark 
 on the occasion was : ' Don't be of it, sir. Now 
 that you have a name you must be careful to avoid 
 many things, not bad in themselves, but which 
 will lessen your character.' Scruples of this kind 
 do not seem to have troubled the great William Pitt, 
 at any rate when he was young. In the ' Life of 
 William Wilberforce,'* by his son, the following 
 anecdote is told by the philanthropist : ' I was one 
 of those who met to spend an evening in memory 
 of Shakespeare at the Boar's Head, Eastcheap. 
 
 * 'Life of William Wilberforce,' by his son Samuel Wilber- 
 force, Bishop of Oxford. Revised and condensed from the 
 original edition. 8vo., 1868.
 
 58 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Many professed wits were present, but Pitt was 
 the most amusing of the party, and the most apt 
 at the required allusions.' This social gathering 
 took place in the year 1780. 
 
 An interesting addition has lately been made to 
 the Guildhall Museum, a bequest of the late Dr. 
 Burgon, Dean of Chichester. It is a water-colour 
 drawing of a figure from the house in Eastcheap, 
 supposed to represent Falstaff, but so lean that it 
 by no means embodies the idea contained in his 
 words to the Lord Chief Justice : ' I would that 
 my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.' 
 The costume seems to be of the sixteenth century. 
 This was copied no doubt from the figure carved 
 in oak, 12 inches high, which was exhibited by 
 Mr. Kempe to the Society of Antiquaries in 
 December, 1833, and which once decorated the 
 portal of the tavern. The figure had supported an 
 ornamental bracket over one side of the door, a 
 corresponding figure of Prince Henry sustaining 
 that on the other. It was at that time the 
 property of Mr. Thomas Shelton, brazier, Great 
 Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop 
 he occupied since the time of the Great Fire. 
 He well remembered the last grand dinner-party, 
 which had taken place at the Boar's Head about 
 fifty years before. The guests came from the 
 west end of the town, and the long string of 
 carriages which conveyed them filled the street
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 59 
 
 at Eastcheap. Hutton, writing in 1785, gives a 
 somewhat different account of the figures. He 
 says,* * On each side of the entrance to the Boar's 
 Head there is a vine branch carved in wood rising 
 more than three feet from the ground, loaded 
 with leaves and clusters, and on the top of each a 
 little Falstaff eight inches high, in the dress of 
 his day.' 
 
 Peter Cunningham says that the Boar's Head 
 stood in Great Eastcheap, between Small Alley 
 and St. Michael's Lane, four taverns filling up the 
 intervening space the Chicken, near St. Michael's 
 Alley, the Boar's Head, the Plough, and the 
 Three Kings. The statue of King William IV. 
 is considered to be a few feet east of the site. 
 The house had ceased to be a tavern before 
 Pennant wrote in 1790. It was divided into two 
 tenements, and became Nos. 2 and 3, Great East- 
 cheap. Part was occupied by a gunsmith, when 
 in June, 1831, the building, having been bought 
 by the Corporation for ^3,544, was immediately 
 pulled down to make room for the approaches of 
 new London Bridge. It is a curious fact that, on 
 the opposite side of the river, at about an equal 
 distance, stood another famous old Boar's Head 
 Inn, the site of which is also now covered by the 
 approaches to London Bridge, and this had with- 
 out doubt once belonged to that notable man, Sir 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, January, 1834.
 
 60 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 John Fastolfe,* who must at least have furnished 
 the name to Shakespeare's matchless creation. 
 The back part of the City inn looked upon the 
 burial-ground of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, as 
 did the other on the Flemish burial-ground in 
 Southwark. Of this latter and of the man who 
 owned it, a rather full account is given in the 
 ' Inns of Old Southwark and their Associations,' 
 by Rendle and Norman. 
 
 From J. T. Smith and others I learn that in the 
 early part of this century, not far from the Boar's 
 Head in Eastcheap, and nearly facing Miles Lane, 
 there was a bold and animated figure of a Mer- 
 maid carved in relief, with her dishevelled hair 
 about her shoulders, and holding in her right hand 
 something resembling * a bundle of flax or a dis- 
 taff; more likely a looking-glass. I mention the 
 sign here for the sake of convenience, though I 
 own its classification is a difficulty, one writer 
 placing it with human signs, and another with 
 ' fishes and insects.' There still exists a Mermaid 
 carved in relief at No. 21, East Street, Gravesend. 
 The material seems to be cut brick or terra-cotta ; 
 it has an ornamental border with cleft pediment. 
 Seafaring people are always more or less attracted 
 by the supernatural, and so the sign has been a 
 favourite one here and in Holland, where also the 
 
 * It formed part of his benefactions, through Bishop Wayn- 
 flete, to Magdalen College, Oxford.
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 61 
 
 merman, with helmet, sword, and buckler, was not 
 uncommon. A merman and a mermaid are sup- 
 porters of the arms of the Fishmongers' Company, 
 a fine carving of which is to be seen at the back 
 of their present hall. The badge of the Byrons 
 was a mermaid argent, crined and finned or, hold- 
 ing in the left hand a comb, in the right a mirror. 
 It is recorded by Strype that ' Boniface Tatam of 
 London, vintner, buried in the parish of St. Peter's 
 Cornhill on the 3rd Feb., 1606, gave 405. yearly 
 to the parson for preaching 4 sermons every year 
 so long as the Mermaid, a tavern in Cornhill so 
 called, shall endure.' But the most famous Mer- 
 maid, perhaps the most famous of all Elizabethan 
 taverns, was that in Bread Street, Friday Street, 
 and Cheapside, for they were all one and the same 
 the house standing back from Bread Street, with 
 passage entrances from Cheapside and Friday 
 Street. 
 
 ' Souls of poets dead and gone, 
 What Elysium have ye known, 
 Happy field or mossy cavern, 
 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ?' 
 
 Another famous hostelry in old days was the 
 Bull, Bishopsgate Street Within, which stood on 
 the west side, opposite St. Helen's Place. This 
 was one of the inns used for theatrical purposes in 
 the sixteenth century. In 1594, Anthony Bacon, 
 brother of Francis, was lodging in Bishopsgate
 
 62 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Street, to the regret of his mother, because he 
 was near the Bull Inn, where plays and inter- 
 ludes were acted, which might corrupt his ser- 
 vants. It was the house frequented by old Hob- 
 son, the Cambridge carrier, on whom Milton 
 wrote his famous lines. Here, as the Spectator 
 tells us, there was a portrait of Hobson, with a 
 hundred-pound bag under his arm, having on it 
 the inscription : 
 
 ' The fruitful mother of a Hundred more.' 
 
 At the Bull Inn a mutiny broke out in a troop 
 of Whalley's regiment on April 26, 1649, for 
 which one of the troopers was shot in St. Paul's 
 Churchyard, and others were condemned but par- 
 doned. The inn was pulled down in 1866. A 
 curious relic then rescued from the ruins con- 
 sisted of a stone 9^ inches wide at the top, 7 
 inches at the bottom, and 10 inches deep, shaped 
 therefore like a keystone, and having a narrow 
 margin, within which was a carving of a bull with a 
 vine and its tendrils, and a bunch of grapes; it was 
 dated 1642. This stone had doubtless served as 
 a sign or commemorative decoration, and was the 
 oldest of its kind in London : I have not been 
 able to find out what -became of it. The Herts 
 Guardian for March n, 1865, records that 
 ' under the yew-tree, against the steeple of All 
 Saints' Church, Hertford, is a small ordinary-look-
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 63 
 
 ing gravestone having the following quaint inscrip- 
 tion : 
 
 4 Here lyeth Black Tom of the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate, 
 1696.' 
 
 From the Bull in Bishopsgate it is not a far cry 
 to the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate. There are 
 two versions of this sign, and though comparatively 
 modern they are worth describing, partly for their 
 quaintness, partly from their interesting associa- 
 tions ; they are both preserved in the Guildhall 
 Museum. One was placed over the front entrance 
 of the Queen's Hotel, St. Martin's - le - Grand, 
 formerly known as the Bull and Mouth, which was 
 built in 1830 on the site of the old coaching inn 
 with that sign. A statuette of a bull appears within 
 the space of a gigantic open mouth ; below are 
 bunches of grapes ; above, a bust of Edward VI. 
 and the arms of Christ's Hospital, to which 
 institution the ground belonged. Beneath is a 
 tablet, perhaps from the old inn, inscribed with 
 the following doggerel rhyme : 
 
 ' Milo the Cretonian an ox slew with his fist, 
 And ate it up at one meal, ye Gods what a glorious twist.' 
 
 Another version of the sign, which is said to have 
 been put up about the beginning of the century, 
 was over the entrance to the Great Northern Rail- 
 way receiving-house in Angel Street, formerly the 
 back entrance to the inn yard. This, together
 
 64 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 with the Queen's Hotel and all the ground as far 
 as Bull and Mouth Street north, has now been 
 taken by the Post-Office authorities ; the amount 
 of compensation paid to the Great Northern Com- 
 pany having been 31,350. 
 
 The Bull and Mouth was one of the most 
 famous coaching inns. Strype, writing in 1720, 
 describes it as ' large and well built, and of a 
 good resort by those that bring Bone Lace, 
 where the shopkeepers and others come to buy 
 it.' He also tells us that ' in this part of 
 St. Martin's is a noted Meeting House of the 
 Quakers, called the Bull and Mouth, where 
 they met long before the Fire.' The name is 
 generally supposed to be a corruption of Boulogne 
 Mouth, the entrance to Boulogne Harbour, that 
 town having been taken by King Henry VIII. 
 This elucidation is said to have originated with 
 George Steevens, who has been called a mis- 
 chievous wag in literary matters. Boyne thinks it 
 might have been originally the Bowl and Mouth, 
 both known London signs. A seventeenth-century 
 trade token was issued from a house with the sign of 
 the Mouth in Bishopsgate Street, and the Mouth 
 appears in the rhyming list of taverns, which is to 
 be found in Hey wood's ' Rape of Lucrece.' Stow 
 mentions the custom of presenting a bowl of 
 ale at St. Giles's Hospital to prisoners on their 
 way from the City to Tyburn, and according to
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 65 
 
 Parton there was a Bowl public-house at St. 
 Giles's. Bowl Yard, a narrow court on the south 
 side of High Street, St. Giles's, disappeared about 
 1 846. Mr. Wheatley, points out in * London 
 Past and Present ' that our inn is probably iden- 
 tical with 'the house called the Mouth, near 
 Aldersgate in London then the usual meeting 
 place for Quakers,' to which the body of John 
 Lilburne was conveyed on his death, August 29, 
 1657. Five years afterwards, namely on October 
 26, 1662, it appears from Ellwood's 'Auto- 
 biography ' that he was arrested at a Quakers' 
 meeting held at the Bull and Mouth, Aldersgate, 
 and confined till December in the old Bridewell, 
 Fleet Street. 
 
 The Bull and Mouth was at its zenith as a 
 coaching inn during the early part of this century, 
 just before the development of railroads. Mr. 
 Edward Sherman was then landlord, having suc- 
 ceeded Mr. Willans in the year 1823; he also 
 had the Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane. It was he 
 who rebuilt the old house, and made stabling 
 underground for a large number of horses. When 
 the business of coaching came to an end, the gate- 
 way from St. Martin's-le-Grand was partially 
 blocked up and became the main entrance to the 
 hotel, which, under a new name, flourished till its 
 final closing in the autumn of 1886. On Sep- 
 tember 28 of that year, the stock of wine, 
 
 5
 
 66 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 amounting to 750 dozen, was sold ; during the 
 winter the house was used as an adjunct of the 
 General Post-Office. In July, 1887, the Jubilee 
 fittings of Westminster Abbey were sold by 
 auction in the large coffee-room. They consisted 
 of Brussels carpets, hangings, cushions, etc., and 
 produced upwards of 2,000. In the space cleared 
 shortly afterwards for the new post-office, a large 
 piece of the City wall has been discovered. The 
 old Bull and Mouth Inn, destroyed in 1830, with 
 its three tiers of galleries, was 'very picturesque: 
 many illustrations of it exist. 
 
 A seventeenth century trade-token was issued 
 from a Bull and Mouth in Bloomsbury, still 
 represented by a modern public-house at No. 31, 
 Hart Street. 
 
 A wooden carving of a Civet Cat was some years 
 since the appropriate sign of an old-fashioned per- 
 fumer's shop in Cockspur Street. An illustration 
 of it appears in the Illustrated London News for 
 December 13, 1856.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY (Continued], 
 
 ' Figures strange and sweet, 
 All made out of the carver's brain.' 
 
 COLERIDGE: Cbristabe!,^*. I, 
 
 ~^HE sign of the Dog and Duck is to be found 
 
 X imbedded in the garden wall of Bethlehem 
 
 Hospital, in the district formerly called St. 
 
 George's Fields. Size, 4 feet by 2 feet 6 inches. 
 It is in two divisions, and is dated 1716 ; the part
 
 68 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 to the right represents a spaniel sitting on its 
 haunches with a duck in its mouth, and appears 
 to me a capital specimen of grotesque art. This 
 was the sign of the Dog and Duck public- 
 house. 
 
 In 1642, when London was threatened by 
 Charles I., the citizens hastily encircled it with a 
 trench and a series of forts. Among these was one 
 with four half bulwarks at the Dog and Duck, in 
 St. George's Fields. In 1651 a trade-token was 
 issued from the Dog and Duck ; it has the initials 
 EMS, and on the obverse is a design almost 
 identical with the one I have described. There 
 were, however, other houses with this sign in 
 Southwark : one in Deadman's Place near St. 
 Saviour's Park, and another in Bermondsey Square. 
 Till about the middle of the eighteenth century 
 the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields seems 
 to have been only a small public-house, doubtless 
 with a pond attached to it, in which was carried 
 on the cruel sport of duck-hunting, then dear to 
 cockneys. The amusement consisted in the duck 
 diving among the reeds with the dog in fierce 
 pursuit ; a good idea of it is given by Davenant in 
 the * Long Vacation in London/ p. 289, where 
 reference is made to another district famous for 
 ducking-ponds : 
 
 ' Ho ho to Islington ; enough ! 
 Fetch Job my son, and our dog Ruffe !
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 69 
 
 For there in Pond,* through mire and muck, 
 We'll cry hay Duck, there Ruffe, hay Duck.' 
 
 When this ceased to be an attraction in St. 
 George's Fields is not recorded, but towards the 
 middle of last century the place came into the 
 hands of a Mrs. Hedger, who had been a barmaid. 
 While she was landlady, Sampson, an equestrian 
 performer, who had previously ridden at the Three 
 Hats, Islington, set up his temporary circus in a 
 field opposite the Dog and Duck. Crowds fol- 
 lowed him, and caused a great increase in Mrs. 
 Hedger's business, so she sent for her son, after- 
 wards called ' the King of the Fields,' who was 
 
 * Pepys, the diarist, on March 27, 1664, writes as follows: 
 ' Walked through the Ducking Pond Fields ; but they are so 
 altered since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the 
 old man of the King's Head, to eat cakes and ale (his name 
 was Pitts), that I did not know which was the Ducking Pond, 
 or where I was.' What would he have said now ? There 
 were several ducking-ponds in this neighbourhood; the name 
 of Ball's Pond, near Newington Green, still survives. Howes 
 in his 'Chronicle ' says that the reservoir at the New River head 
 'was in former times an open idell pool, commonly called the 
 Ducking Pond.' Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, were also called 
 ' Ducking Pond Fields.' There was a public-house a little 
 west of the London Spa, with a ducking-pond attached. It 
 was taken down in 1770, and the Pantheon, in imitation of 
 the Oxford Street Pantheon, built on its site. This soon 
 became disreputable, and was eventually turned into Spa 
 Fields Chapel, demolished 1879. There was a ducking-pond 
 in Mayfair (Hertford Street is on the site), and another near 
 Mile End.
 
 jo London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 said to have been at the time a post-boy at Epsom, 
 and he shrewdly made the most of his chance. 
 The money as it came in was invested in building 
 and other improvements; soon a mineral spring 
 was discovered or invented and the place be- 
 came for a time a popular health resort. A corre- 
 spondent of the St. James's Chronicle in 1761 asks, 
 as a matter not admitting denial, ' Does Tunbridge 
 or Cheltenham or Buxton Wells come up to (inter 
 alia] the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields ?' 
 No less a man than Dr. Johnson recommended 
 the waters to his friend Mrs. Thrale. An adver- 
 tisement tells us of a bath there 200 feet long, 
 and nearly 100 in breadth, and old newspapers 
 record dinners, concerts, assemblies and all kinds 
 of gaiety at St. George's, or the Dog and Duck 
 Spa. It must already have begun to go downhill 
 when Garrick described it thus in his Prologue to 
 ' The Maid of the Oaks,' 1774 : 
 
 * St. George's Fields, with taste and fashion struck, 
 Display Arcadia at the Dog and Duck ; 
 And Drury misses, here in tawdry pride, 
 Are there Pastoras by the fountain side, 
 To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps, 
 With fauns half drunk, and dryads breaking lamps.' 
 
 Finally it was closed by the magistrates, and 
 after being occupied for a time by the School for 
 the Indigent Blind, was pulled down in 1811, 
 when, the Committee of the Bridge* House Estate 
 having, in the previous year, agreed to exchange
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 71 
 
 1 1 acres 3 roods here for the ground then covered 
 by Bedlam in Moorfields, which amounted to about 
 2^ acres, the erection of the present Bethlehem 
 Hospital was begun on the site.* It was then 
 or soon afterwards that our stone sign was built 
 into the new garden wall. Several illustrations 
 of the Dog and Duck Inn have been preserved. 
 A water-colour in the Grace collection by T. H. 
 Shepherd, purporting to be from a drawing of 
 1646, represents it as a gable-ended public-house, 
 with a gallery on one side, standing in the fields. 
 A view of the outside in Hedger's time shows a 
 brick building of considerable dimensions. Then 
 there is a rather indecent design called ' Beauty in 
 distress,' with the Dog and Duck in the distance. 
 Lastly, a rare stippled engraving of the interior, 
 dated 1789, shows us ladies frail and fair, with 
 their attendant beaux, walking about and seated 
 at tables in a long room, which has an organ at 
 the end ; the sign appears below. 
 
 Much might be written about the curious device 
 which appears in the left-hand division of the 
 stone sign imbedded in the wall of Bethlehem 
 Hospital. This is the mark of the Bridge House 
 Estate, and though in no sense heraldic, has been 
 described as an annulet ensigned with a cross 
 pattee, interlaced with a saltire conjoined in base. 
 
 * The ground in St. George's Fields was not absolutely 
 given, but a lease was granted for 865 years at the nominal 
 rent of one shilling a year.
 
 72 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 It is sometimes, but wrongly, called the Southwark 
 Arms, for arms cannot in truth be borne by any 
 public body, which has not received a charter of 
 incorporation, with a right to use a common seal ; 
 and Southwark was never more than a ward of the 
 City. The device resembles a merchant's mark, 
 but its origin has not hitherto been satisfactorily 
 explained. Perhaps a letter in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine for October, 1758, from Joseph Ames, 
 secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, may throw 
 some light on the subject. It seems that in 
 pulling down a part of old London Bridge, three 
 inscriptions were found engraved on stone tablets. 
 The oldest dated from 1497. The second, which 
 most concerns us, had perhaps been inserted in the 
 building on the completion of repairs, rendered 
 necessary by a great fire at the northern end of 
 the bridge which occurred in 1504, and has now 
 found a home in the Guildhall Museum. It 
 measures 10 inches by 13!, and is inscribed in 
 Gothic characters 'Anno Domini 1509.' At the 
 end of the date appears a cross* charged with a 
 
 * The cross had possibly some connection with the priory 
 of St. Mary Overy hard by, or with the rich and powerful 
 abbey, originally the priory of St. Saviour's, Bermondsey. 
 A chronicle, supposed to have been written by one of 
 the monks, is among the Harleian MSS. (No. 231). We 
 are here told that in the year 1117 'the cross of the Holy 
 Saviour was found near the Thames.' Apparently this
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 73 
 
 small saltire, which seems to suggest the present 
 mark, and was not unlikely the old device for the 
 estate of London Bridge. The third stone, dated 
 1514, had on it the City sword and the initials of 
 Sir Roger Achiley, draper and alderman of Bridge 
 ward ; they are represented below. 
 
 Here, perhaps, by way of illustration, a few 
 words may be introduced on the subject of 
 merchants' marks. These, as early as the be- 
 ginning of the fifteenth century, were adopted 
 instead of armorial bearings by traders, to whom 
 arms were not permitted.* They were used for 
 
 was the cross of Bermondsey, placed in the church, to which 
 pilgrimages were occasionally made. It was taken down in 
 1538, during the mayoralty of Sir Richard Gresham, and in 
 all likelihood destroyed; but Wilkinson, in his 'Londina 
 Illustrata,' gives a view, showing in front of the building, 
 attached to the chief or north gate of the abbey, a small 
 cross with zigzag ornament, which some have sought to 
 identify with this holy rood. It existed with the remains of 
 the building till comparatively recent times. On the way to 
 the abbey were famous roadside crosses : one north, the site 
 of which is at the junction of Tooley Street with Bermond- 
 sey Street ; the other south, in Kent Street. 
 
 * From the ' Archaeologia,' vol. 32, I learn that 'the seal of 
 Bartholomew Elys, of Great Yarmouth, 1 7 Rich. II., is remark-
 
 74 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 stamping goods, were engraved on rings, and often 
 placed on monuments as if they conveyed a 
 certain honourable distinction. Mr. J. G. Waller, 
 F.S.A.,*" has pointed out that these merchants' 
 marks have commonly one essential feature in 
 common a cross. A simple form of mark was a 
 cross surmounting a mast or staff, with streamers 
 or other devices, apparently taken from parts of a 
 ship ; it had a forked base. When after a time 
 initials of names were introduced, they at first 
 formed part of the mark, the letter A being often 
 made by crossing the forked base. The cross, 
 being an emblem of Christianity, was considered to 
 counteract the wiles of Satan ; merchants, therefore, 
 naturally placed a cross on their bales as a pre- 
 servative against the tempests, which it was thought 
 were caused by him. Mr. W. de Gray Birch, on 
 the other hand, suggests that the cross and 
 
 able as giving the family arms with the substitution of his 
 merchant's mark in place of the cinqfoil in base.' Mr. Waller 
 says that at Standon, in Herts, is the mark of John Feld, 
 alderman of London 1474 ; but his son, on the same brass, 
 an esquire in armour, has his shield of arms. 
 
 * ' Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries,' November 24, 
 1887. A highly interesting article in the ' Archasologia,' vol. 
 37, by Mr. B. Williams, shows that in early times simple 
 marks, not unlike merchants' marks, were used to distinguish 
 property, both here and in Germany. Our modern swan 
 marks are a survival.
 
 Animals Real and* Imaginary. 75 
 
 streamers so often incorporated in merchants' 
 marks, were derived from the banner of the Holy 
 Lamb, which was the usual emblem of St. John 
 Baptist, the patron saint of wool merchants that 
 is, merchants of the staple ; but it seems that such 
 devices were also used by the Merchant Adven- 
 turers, Salters, etc. ; moreover, the cross with 
 streamers is, in mediaeval art, a symbol of the 
 victory of Christ over death and the powers of 
 darkness, which seems to confirm Mr. Waller's 
 view. The Lamb and Flag, as I shall have occa- 
 sion to show, sometimes appeared on the seals of 
 the Knights Templars. 
 
 As to the Bridge House Estate, it is held in 
 trust by the corporation of the City of London, 
 and is, strictly speaking, intended for the support, 
 lighting and cleansing of the City bridges, and two 
 bridges over the Lea at Stratford, where the City 
 authorities hold some land. This property is 
 said to have originated in small offerings by pious 
 citizens to the Chapel of St. Thomas a Becket* 
 on London Bridge. The earliest document 
 relating to it which is still in existence appears to 
 
 * At a Common Council held July 14, 33 Henry VIII., it 
 was ordered that the seal of the Bridge House should be 
 changed, because the image of Thomas a Becket, sometime 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, was graven thereon, and it was 
 agreed that a new seal should be made, devised by Mr. Hall, 
 to whom the old seal was delivered.
 
 j6 London Sighs and Inscriptions. 
 
 be a small volume on vellum, probably dating 
 from the earlier part of the fourteenth century, 
 with additions made in the reign of King 
 Edward IV. A thorough examination of all the 
 records would be a work of great labour, but 
 would bring to light many interesting facts. 
 
 The property has by degrees increased in 
 value, till out of it they have been able to 
 rebuild London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, 
 and are now creating the huge structure by the 
 Tower. Much of St. George's Fields belonged 
 to the estate ; it had been Crown land, once 
 attached to Suffolk House, and was included 
 in the grant to the City, in the fourth year of 
 Edward VI. 's reign. The land on which stood 
 the Dog and Duck Tavern formed part of this 
 Bridge House Estate. The Bridge House itseif 
 stood on the Surrey side of the water, in Tooley 
 Street, and was originally a storeplace for mate- 
 rial belonging to the City which was used 
 in the repair of London Bridge. In course of 
 time it became a granary and a bakehouse, with 
 public ovens. The grain was for the relief of 
 poor citizens in time of distress, and the ovens 
 were used for baking it. Stow tells us that they 
 were ten in number, six of them very large, and 
 that * Sir John Throstone, Knight, sometime an 
 embroiderer, then a goldsmith, one of the sheriffs 
 in 1516, gave by his testament towards the making
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 77 
 
 of these ovens two hundred pounds, which thing 
 was performed by his executors.' 
 
 The stone sign of a Fox sitting on its haunches, 
 with the initials H w and date 1669, has been put 
 up inside the house at No. 24, Lombard Street, 
 and is in capital condition. It was found in 
 digging up the foundations of a house in 
 Clement's Lane, destroyed to make room for No. 
 30, Lombard Street, which extends further south 
 than its predecessor. In the seventeenth century 
 there was a sign of a fox in Lombard Street, but 
 some distance off; No. 73 occupies the site. A 
 kindred sign, the Three Foxes, is said to have 
 formerly existed, also in Clement's Lane, but about 
 this I am a little bit doubtful ; there was a drawing 
 of it in the Graphic of April 21, 1877, which 
 could hardly have represented the actual tablet, 
 for Larwood and Hotten say that it had been 
 plastered over long before this, when the house 
 was taken by a firm of three lawyers, who wished 
 to avoid the rather awkward connection of ideas 
 which might be suggested. 
 
 Of the carving of a Griffin's Head which 
 formerly existed in Old Jewry I know nothing, 
 except that it was drawn by Archer in 1850. 
 This was, perhaps, an heraldic charge of the 
 person who built, or first possessed, the house on 
 which it was placed. The badge of Fiennes, Lord 
 Dacre, was a griffin's head erased, gules, holding
 
 78 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 in its beak an annulet, or ; that of Polle, a 
 griffin's head erased, azure, ducally gorged, or. 
 
 On the east side of Shoreditch High Street, 
 between Nos. 79 and 80, and over the passage 
 leading into Hare Alley, is the sculptured stone 
 sign of a Hare running, with the initials ^ M and 
 date 1725. I have observed a similar sign in 
 Flushing. Hare Alley is mentioned in Hatton's 
 'New View of London,' 1708. Among seven- 
 teenth century trade-tokens is one with the 
 following inscription : 
 
 O. NICHOLAS WARRIN = A hare running. 
 
 R. IN ALDERSGATE STREET = N. I. W 
 
 So it is given in Boyne. A pun on the name is 
 probably intended, but unless the issuer was a 
 veritable cockney the animal represented was a 
 rabbit. 
 
 The Hare in combination with the Sun, having 
 the date 1676 and the initials ^, is still to be seen 
 above the first-floor windows of a house, No. 71,
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 79 
 
 on the east side of the Borough High Street ; 
 close to the sites of the three most famous South- 
 wark inns, the Tabard, the White Hart, and the 
 George ; of which the last-named still exists in 
 part at least, though doomed, I fear, to speedy 
 destruction. This house was gutted by fire a few 
 years ago, but the sign luckily escaped unharmed. 
 It is now painted in various colours, which was 
 the old method, and, I think, improves the effect. 
 The solicitors of the property have kindly let me 
 examine the deeds, and I have gathered from them 
 the following particulars : 
 
 In March, 1653, John Tarlton, citizen and 
 brewer, left to his children two tenements in 
 Southwark. In a mortgage of 1663 they are 
 called 'the Hare and the Three Pidgeons.' In 
 May, 1676, all, or nearly all, this part of Southwark 
 was burnt down, the number of houses destroyed 
 being, as stated in the London Gazette, about 600. 
 A curious little pamphlet in my possession, 
 licensed May 29, puts the number at nearly 500. 
 On the title-page we are told that 'St. Mary 
 Overy's Church and St. Thomas's Hospital ' were 
 ' shattered and defaced,' and everything ' from 
 Chain-Gate to the Counter on St. Margaret's Hill 
 
 o 
 
 on both sides the way burnt and demolished.' I 
 may note that on this occasion a fire-engine with 
 leathern hose was first used, and seems to have 
 been of great service in defending St. Thomas's
 
 80 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Hospital from the fire, as recorded in the London 
 Gazette for August 14, 1676. In the same month 
 Nicholas Hare, grocer, surrendered to be can- 
 celled a lease dated 1669, 'of the messuage or 
 tenement called the Hare and Sunne,' the said 
 messuage having been burnt in the fire ; and the 
 Tarltons let him the ground on building lease for 
 eighty-one years from June, 1677. The rent had 
 before been 24 a year, with a fine for renewal of 
 70; it was now reduced to 16 a year. The 
 sign in question is therefore a punning one, having 
 been put up by Nicholas Hare, grocer, after the 
 great South war k fire, as many signs of the same 
 description had been put up in London a few 
 years previously, after the great London fire. 
 How the sun had got into combination with the 
 hare one does not know.* In subsequent docu- 
 ments, down to the year 1748, when the house 
 came into the possession of John Paris, it is 
 described simply as the Hare. In his will, dated 
 1753, he speaks of 'my dwelling-house near the 
 George Inn, known by the sign of the Hare and 
 Stirrup ;' and finally, in 1757, in a schedule of the 
 fixtures, are mentioned ' in the dining-room two 
 large sign irons, and a large copper sign of the 
 Hare and Stirrup ;' so the unpretentious stone bas- 
 relief, though not taken down, appears to have 
 
 * But see Mr. Billson's paper on ' The Easter Hare,' in 
 Folklore, vol. iii. [Eo.]
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 81 
 
 been supplemented by a sign more likely to catch 
 the eye. It may be noted that on these sculptured 
 signs, where letters occur, the initial of the 
 owner, builder, or first occupant, is usually placed 
 over the initials of the Christian names of himself 
 and his wife the former naturally being on the 
 left. Sometimes, however, they are all in a line, in 
 which case the initial of the surname is most likely 
 the middle one, as on the seventeenth-century 
 trade tokens. 
 
 Centuries ago, when Islington was a little 
 country town separated from London by roads 
 which were often impassable in winter, there stood 
 near the Green a picturesque house which, by its 
 style, appeared to have been built in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth. It was an old and general 
 tradition that this house, which in course of time 
 became the Pied Bull Inn, had been the residence 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh ; but this seems to be nothing 
 more than a tradition.* There is, however, strong 
 evidence that Sir John Miller, knight, of Islington 
 and Devon, lived here some years later, for a 
 window of a room on the ground-floor was 
 adorned with his arms in painted glass, impaling 
 those of Grigg of Suffolk, and in the kitchen were 
 the remains of the same arms, with the date 1624. 
 Nelson gives an illustration of the chimney-piece 
 
 * It is told in considerable detail in a ' Life of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh,' 8vo., 1740, p. 152. 
 
 6
 
 82 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 in the ground-floor room ; it contained the figures 
 of Faith, Hope, and Charity in niches, with a 
 border of cherubim, fruit and foliage. The 
 central figure Charity was surmounted by two 
 cupids supporting a crown, and beneath were a 
 lion and unicorn couchant. Nelson thinks that 
 the design was intended as a compliment to Queen 
 Elizabeth. On the ceiling the five senses were 
 represented in stucco, with their Latin names. It 
 is not known at what time the house was converted 
 into an inn ; during the seventeenth century, no 
 doubt, for Defoe mentions it in his fictitious 
 narrative of the Plague.* The south front of the 
 house was comparatively modern, and of different 
 elevation to the older part, and here appeared a 
 stone bas-relief of the Pied Bull, bearing the date 
 1730, the year perhaps in which this addition was 
 made to the building. In 1740 the house and 
 14 acres of land were let at about 70 a year; 
 it was pulled down in 1827. The modern public 
 house called the Old Pied Bull, at the corner of 
 Upper Street and Theberton Street, is about twenty 
 or thirty yards north of the site. 
 
 * ' I remember one citizen, who having thus broken out of 
 his house in Aldersgate Street, or thereabout, went along the 
 road to Islington. He attempted to have gone in at the 
 Angel Inn, and after that at the White Horse, two inns still 
 known by the same signs, but was refused ; after which he 
 came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the same 
 sign.' 'Journal of the Plague Year,' by Daniel Defoe, 1722.
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 83 
 
 In the Guildhall Museum there is a well-executed 
 stone bas-relief in particularly good condition of a 
 Lion statant, size 8 inches by 14^ inches. No 
 record of its origin has been preserved by the City 
 authorities. Can this be the lion referred to by 
 Leigh Hunt in ' The Town '? His words are : 
 ' The only memorial remaining of the old palace 
 (Somerset House) and its outhouses is in the wall 
 of a house in the Strand, where the sign of a Lion 
 still survives a number of other signs, noticed in a 
 list at the time, and common at that period to 
 houses of all descriptions.' More likely, however, 
 he refers to a carved lion supporting the City arms 
 which is still to be seen on a jeweller's shop, 
 No. 342, Strand ; but this is apparently of no great 
 age. The occupant, who has been there thirty 
 years, could give me no information about it. 
 Mr. Harrison in his ' Memorials of London 
 Houses,' says that Robert Haydon lodged here., 
 when as a youth of eighteen he first came to 
 London from Plymouth. In the seventeenth 
 century there was a Golden Lion by York House, 
 which, with other tenements pertaining to Denmark 
 or Somerset House, was sold in 1650 for the bene- 
 fit of the State. 
 
 Perhaps a more interesting sign than either of 
 the above is that of the White Lion, a boldly- 
 executed carving with the date 1724, which is still 
 to be seen between the first-floor windows of a
 
 84 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 house, now a tobacconist's, on the north side of 
 Islington High Street, but in the parish of 
 Clerkenwell. This was once the sign of an inn 
 which existed at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, if not earlier. In ' Drunken Barnabee's 
 Journal,' the date of which is 1638, there occur 
 the following lines : 
 
 ' Thence to Islington, at Lion, 
 Where a juggling, I did spy one, 
 Nimble with his mates consorting, 
 Mixing cheating with his sporting.' 
 
 There is a curious allusion in Pepys' ' Diary/ 
 January 21, 1667-8 : ' It seems, on Thursday last, 
 he (Joyce) went sober and quiet, and behind one 
 of the inns, the White Lion, did throw himself 
 into a pond/* This Anthony Joyce was cousin to 
 Pepys ; he had lost money by the Great Fire, and 
 afterwards kept the Three Stags, Holborn Conduit. 
 He was got out of the pond before life was extinct, 
 but died soon afterwards. Pepys was afraid that 
 his estate would be taken from his widow and 
 children, on the ground that he had committed 
 suicide, the legal consequences of which might 
 have been forfeiture of goods and chattels to the 
 Crown ; but the coroner's jury returned a verdict 
 that he had died of a fever. A trade-token gives 
 the name of the landlord at the time : 
 
 * This was probably one of the ducking-ponds.
 
 Animals Real and Imaginary. 85 
 
 O. CHRISTOPHER . BVSBEE . AT = A lion passant. 
 
 R. WHIT. LION . IN . ISLINGTON. = HIS . HALF . PENY. I 668. 
 
 Busby's Folly, a house of entertainment, marked 
 in the old maps of Clerkenwell, and of which there 
 is an engraving in a rare volume called ' Views 
 of divers Noted Places near London,' 1731,* 
 possibly, as Burn suggests, originated with the 
 issuer of this token. T. Cromwell, in his 'History 
 of Clerkenwell,' published in 1828, gives us the 
 following information : ' The White Lion, now a 
 public-house and wine-vaults, at the south-east 
 corner of the street of the same name, was origi- 
 nally an inn much frequented by cattle-drovers and 
 others connected with the trade of Smithfield. It 
 then comprised the two dwelling-houses adjoining, 
 and extended also in the opposite or northward 
 direction, until the latter portion was pulled down 
 to make an opening to White Lion Row, as it was 
 then called, being that part of the existing White 
 Lion Street which was built between 1770 and 
 1780. Where Mr. Becket's shop now is was the 
 gateway of the inn-yard, over which a lion ram- 
 pant, executed in relief and painted white, was 
 inserted in the front of the building.' Nelson 
 tells us that the carriage-way was immediately 
 under the lion, and so continued till, the trade of 
 
 * Its site is also marked in Ogilby's Map of London to 
 Holyhead. Here is now the Belvidere Tavern.
 
 86 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 the inn declining, the building was converted into 
 a private house. The White Lion, one would 
 think, must first have been used as a sign by some 
 retainer of the Howards, who, by marriage with 
 Lady Margaret Mowbray, inherited, as a badge, 
 the blanch lion of the Mowbray family. 
 
 From the lion to the unicorn seems a natural 
 transition. A stone bas-relief of the latter animal 
 supporting a shield was formerly to be seen in 
 Cheapside, two doors east of the Chained Swan, 
 and opposite to Wood Street ; but disappeared 
 some years ago, when the house to which it be- 
 longed was rebuilt. Peter Cunningham, usually 
 so accurate, described it as a Nag's Head. It 
 seems that Roger Harris (not Sir Roger Har- 
 rison, as stated by Archer), who died in the year 
 1633, had owned the property, and by will 
 endowed the church of St. Michael's, Crooked 
 Lane, with a rent-charge on it of 2 i2s. for 
 the purchase of bread for the poor, which was 
 to be distributed every Sunday in the form of 
 one penny loaf for each one of twelve poor men 
 or widows in the parish. This amount is still 
 paid annually by the tenant of No. 39, Cheapside, 
 which stands on the site of the Unicorn ; under 
 the present arrangement, it is administered by the 
 trustees of the London Parochial Charities. The 
 sign was of old standing. In Machyn's * Diary ' 
 the entry for i May, 1561, records the fact
 
 Animals Rea/ and Imaginary. 87 
 
 that ' at afternoone dyd Mastyr Godderyke's 
 sune the goldsmyth go hup into hys father's 
 gylding house, toke a bowe-strynge and hanged 
 ymselff at the syne of the Unycorne, in 
 Chepsyd.'* 
 
 The unicorn first became a supporter of the 
 royal arms in James I.'s time, when it displaced the 
 red dragon of Wales, introduced by Henry VII. 
 Unicorns had been supporters of the Scottish 
 royal arms for about a century before the union of 
 the two crowns. A representation of the unicorn 
 often appeared in City shows. Cooke, in his 
 'City Gallant,' 1599, makes a City apprentice 
 exclaim : ' By this light I doe not thinke but to 
 be Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have 
 three pageants carried before me, besides a ship 
 and an unicorn.' This fabulous creature should 
 have the tail of a lion, the legs of a buck or goat, 
 the head and body of a horse, and a single twisted 
 horn in the middle of its forehead. It was used 
 as a sign by chemists and goldsmiths : by the 
 former, because the horn was considered an anti- 
 dote to all poisons ; by the latter, on account of 
 the immense value put upon it. * Andrea Racci, 
 a Florentine physician, relates that it had been sold 
 
 * Peter Cunningham says that Alderman Boydell, before 
 he removed to No. 90, Cheapside, at the corner of Iron- 
 monger Lane, lived at the Unicorn, at the corner of Queen 
 Street, Cheapside.
 
 88 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 by the apothecaries at ^24 per ounce, when the 
 current value of the same quantity of gold was 
 only 2 35. 6d.' (Larwood and Hotten, p. 160.) 
 The horn thus esteemed was probably narwhal's 
 horn. The arms of the Apothecaries' Company 
 are supported by unicorns.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BIRDS AND OTHER SCULPTURED SIGNS. 
 
 ' Emblems of Christ and immortality.' 
 
 r I ^HE next group of sculptured signs I should 
 JL like to consider is that in which birds are re- 
 presented. 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
 
 90 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 delicate moulding of small cut-brick, which stood 
 over the entrance to Crane Court, Lambeth Hill. 
 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. c. 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
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 91 
 
 the last sign of its class in London. Two pic- 
 turesque 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 neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 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* tells us that Mattei Girolamo, cap- 
 tain 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 
 
 * ' Historic Devices, Badges, and War Cries,' by Mrs. 
 Bury Palliser.
 
 92 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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, 
 i6of, in which Thomas Heighsham, of Bethnal 
 Green in Middlesex, and Richard Sparrow, citizen
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 93 
 
 and goldsmith of London, engage to pay Sander- 
 son 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 eight- 
 teenth 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* 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,^ in his ' Common-place Book,' gives it as 
 
 * Another record of him is a stone from Allhallows Church, 
 now imbedded in the western wall of the Church of St. 
 Mary-le-Bow, which has on it the well-known lines by 
 Dryden, beginning : ' Three poets in three distant ages 
 born,' etc., also the dates of Milton's birth and baptism. 
 
 t Additional MS. in British Museum, 3890.
 
 94 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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 i^th, 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
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 95 
 
 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, Alderman- 
 bury. Here also Milton was married to his 
 second wife, Catherine Woodcock. In 1890 the 
 churchyard was opened to the public as a recrea- 
 tion ground. 
 
 The pelican* in her piety, or feeding her young 
 with her blood, was often represented in the 
 Mediaeval 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 
 
 * In a ' Brief History,' by Eugenius Philalethes, p. 93, 
 we are told ; ' It is a vulgar error that the pelican turneth 
 her beak against her breast and therewith pierceth it till 
 the blood gush out, wherewith she nourisheth her young ; 
 whereas a pelican hath a beak broad and flat, much like the 
 slice of apothecaries and chirurgeons wherewith they spread 
 their plasters, no way fit to pierce, as Laurentius Gerbertus 
 counsellor and physitian to Henry the Fourth of France in 
 his book of Popular Errors hath observed.'
 
 96 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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. Hey wood 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 Phoenix in the Pelican's nest.' 
 
 And by a curious coincidence, at the present 
 day there are the signs of a Pelican and a 
 Phcenix in Lombard Street, both belonging to 
 famous insurance offices. The house* 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 
 
 * The architect was Sir Robert Taylor, R.A. The em- 
 blematic figures on the cornice in front are said to be of 
 artificial stone, executed at Coade's factory, Lambeth, where 
 John Bacon, R.A., worked for some years, and where, later, 
 Flaxman and Benjamin West also modelled. Some houses 
 on the north side of Westminster Bridge Road were originally 
 called Coade's Row, and the name still appears on one of 
 them. The gallery or showroom stood there, as marked in 
 Horwood's map. The factory was further north, between 
 Narrow Wall and the river.
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 97 
 
 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 
 
 7
 
 98 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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 Code'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
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 99 
 
 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 Coach- 
 ing 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 horse- 
 manship 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 coach- 
 ing.' 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, te ^ s 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
 
 ioo London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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. 
 Home, established the great carrying business, 
 which still flourishes on the site of the old Swan 
 with Two Necks, In 1845 ^ad L ane was a b- 
 sorbed 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,
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 101 
 
 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 Vint- 
 ners' 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' Com- 
 pany 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 sculp- 
 tured sign, but may, I think, be fairly included in 
 the same class. The design (see ante y 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
 
 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinuous 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. i, Lombard Street, which, on 
 comparison, J find to be similar in all respects, and, 
 as far as I can judge, cast from the same mould. 
 No. i, 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 consider- 
 ably older. It has been very much damaged ; pos-
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 103 
 
 sibly, as the owner says, in the Great Fire of 
 London. 
 
 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 door- 
 way. Some years ago it was stolen, but shortly
 
 104 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 afterwards restored, and to prevent accidents it 
 is now kept inside* the house of entertainment, 
 on the opposite side of the street, to which, 
 after the destruction of his old home, the pro- 
 prietor, 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 head- 
 waiter 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 Benja- 
 min Kenton, vintner and philanthropist, achieved 
 a considerable reputation. He was educated at 
 the charity school of the parish, and in his fif- 
 teenth year apprenticed to the landlord of the 
 Angel and Crown in Goulston Street, White- 
 chapel. 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 
 
 * The sign outside is a modern imitation.
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 105 
 
 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 Mag- 
 pie to its former position, and so increased the 
 bottled-beer business, ^hat 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,
 
 106 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 because, though they have nothing special in 
 common, they cannot weJl be fitted in else- 
 where. 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 jf 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 1 1 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 Jong before this it had been immor-
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 107 
 
 talized. 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 hap- 
 pened 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 num- 
 bered 251, High Holborn ; it has on it the 
 initials T A 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 associa- 
 tions, 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. 6 7, Knightrider Street ; on the keystones of the 
 three first-floor windows were the initials T ^ 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
 
 'THE BELL' IN KNICHTRIDER STREET.
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 109 
 
 commonly put up after the Great Fire. There 
 was, however, a hostelry with the same sign hard 
 by, which had a proud distinction. From the 
 Bell Inn, Carter Lane, Richard Quyney wrote in 
 1598 to his ' loveing good fFrend and contreyman, 
 Mr. Will 1 " 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 l 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 con- 
 nects Knightrider Street with Carter Lane. Ad- 
 joining 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 v/ith the 
 worship of the Christian Church, and the popu- 
 larity 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.'
 
 1 1 o London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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 Royal- 
 ists 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
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 1 1 I 
 
 bookseller of England,' and published many im- 
 portant 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. 
 
 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 }
 
 112 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 but is now vested in the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners. An advertisement in the Kingdoms In- 
 telligencer, No. n, March 10, 1661-2, shows that 
 there was a Feathers Tavern in St. Paul's Church- 
 yard. 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 Canter- 
 bury 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,
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 113 
 
 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 cen- 
 tury 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, Jong 
 
 ' 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 inscrip- 
 tions 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 appro- 
 priated 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 pro- 
 perty is or was attached to the See of London, or 
 
 8
 
 114 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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 sculp- 
 tured 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 1 642 were to be seen, among other curiosities, 
 ' a choyce Egyptian with hieroglyphicks, a Re- 
 mora, 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 Septem- 
 ber, 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,
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 1 1 5 
 
 ' 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 Free- 
 masons for upwards of eighteen years.* 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 ; i, 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 ; 
 
 * In Aubrey's 'Natural History,' p. 277, a manuscript in 
 the library of the Royal Society, is the following memorandum: 
 'This day, May the i8th, being Monday, 1691, after Roga- 
 tion Sunday, is a great convention at St. Paul's church of the 
 Fraternity of the adopted masons, where Sir Christopher 
 Wren is to be adopted a brother, and Sir Henry Goodric of 
 the Tower, and divers others. There have been kings that 
 have been of this sodality.'
 
 1 1 6 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 5, the handsome maid, Hannah.' Foote mentions 
 the Goose and Gridiron in his * Comedy of Taste.' 
 Yet another Mitre sign exists in London, pro- 
 bably 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 com- 
 plete relic of the fourteenth century in London.
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 1 1 7 
 
 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 straw- 
 berries in Ely Garden, though little more than 
 sixty years afterwards we have John Evelyn com-' 
 plaining in his * Fumifugium ' that smoke is
 
 1 1 8 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 4 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
 
 Birds and other Sculptured Signs. 119 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness 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 Maiden-head, 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
 
 I2O London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 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.'
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 VARIOUS CRESTS AND COATS OF ARMS. 
 
 ' Coats in heraldry, 
 Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 AVAST amount of property in London is 
 owned by the City Companies, and houses 
 which belong to them are as a rule marked by their 
 arms or crest. These were formerly carved in stone, 
 and a few fine old specimens still remain, similar in 
 style to the ordinary sculptured house signs. Some- 
 times, no doubt, a citizen put up on his own house, 
 as a sign, the arms of the guild of which he was a 
 member ; and this seems to have been the case 
 with the stone bas-relief of Adam and Eve, which 
 was formerly imbedded in the front wall of 
 No. 52, Newgate Street, a house now rebuilt. 
 Eve appeared handing the fatal apple to Adam, 
 the tree in the centre, round its stem the serpent 
 twining ; at the upper corners were the initials 
 L s, below the date 1669. It represented the
 
 122 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 arms of the Fruiterers' Company, but I have not 
 been able to discover that the house had ever 
 belonged to them. At Milton next Sittingbourne, 
 on a public-house formerly the Fruiterers' Arms, 
 now misnamed the Waterman's Arms, is a similar 
 carved sign, one of the few I have found out of 
 London. Beneath is inscribed * The Fruiterers.' 
 The design appears on a seventeenth - century 
 trade-token issued from Rosemary Lane. The 
 arms of the Fruiterers' Company, as blazoned in 
 Hatton's 'New View of London' (1708), are: 
 azure, on a mount in base vert, the tree of Para- 
 dise environed with the serpent between Adam and 
 Eve, all proper. Motto, ' Deus dat incrementum.' 
 What Ruskin calls the ' fig-tree angle ' of the 
 Doge's Palace, Venice, is adorned by a famous 
 piece of sculpture representing this subject. 
 
 The Elephant and Castle is the crest of the 
 Cutlers' Company. A stone bas-relief represent- 
 ing it is to be seen on the east side of Bell Savage 
 Yard, Ludgate Hill, having been placed there 
 nearly thirty years ago, some time after the 
 famous old inn was levelled with the ground. It 
 formerly stood over the gateway below the sign 
 of the Bell. In 1568 John Craythorne gave the 
 reversion of this inn, and after his death the house 
 called the Rose in Fleet Street, to the Cutlers' 
 Company for ever, on condition that two exhibi- 
 tions to the Universities, and certain sums to poor
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 1 2 3 
 
 prisoners, should be paid to them out of the 
 estate. A portrait of Mrs. Craythorne hangs in 
 Cutlers' Hall. In mediaeval times the elephant 
 was commonly depicted with a castle on its back. 
 It was then the heraldic emblem of Rome, and 
 appears as such on the floor of the cathedral at 
 Siena. 
 
 The Bell Savage Inn which came to be thus 
 associated with the Elephant and Castle, was one 
 of the oldest and most famous hostelries in 
 London. As long ago as 31 Henry VI. it is 
 described in a deed as Savage's Inn, otherwise the 
 Bell on the Hoop, thus proving the origin of the 
 sign, which from the time of Stow to that of 
 Addison had caused so many ingenious but faulty 
 surmises. Here plays were performed, and Bankes 
 showed his wonderful horse Marocco. Lambarde, 
 in his ' Perambulation of Kent,'* tells us that 
 4 none who go to Paris Garden, the Bel Savage, 
 or Thsatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or 
 fence-play, can account of any pleasant spectacle, 
 unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another 
 at the entry of the scaffold, and a third for a quiet 
 standing.' It was * upon a stall ' over against the 
 Bell Savage gate that Sir Thomas Wyat 'stayd 
 and rested him awhile,' when foiled in his ill- 
 advised rebellion ; as related by Howe, the con- 
 tinuator of Stow's ' Annals.' And Grinling 
 * Not in edition 1576, but edition 1596, p. 233. [Eo.]
 
 124 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Gibbons once occupied a house in the yard, where, 
 as Horace Walpole says, 'he carved a pot of flowers 
 which shook surprisingly with the motion of the 
 coaches that passed by.' I have a quaint little 
 book in Hudibrastic rhyme, ' The delights of the 
 Bottle, or the Compleat Vintner,' attributed to Ned 
 Ward. The third edition is ' printed for Sam. 
 Briscoe at the Bell-Savage on Ludgate-Hill, 1721.' 
 The Cutlers', though not one of the twelve 
 great City Companies, is still of considerable 
 importance, and as early as the 49th year of 
 Edward III. is said to have elected two of the 
 Common Council ; its first charter dated from 
 the time of Henry V. A good sculptured speci- 
 men of the arms is to be seen on the front of a 
 house in Houndsditch, at the corner of Cutler 
 Street. They were granted by Thomas Holme, 
 Clarencieux in 1476, and have been blazoned 
 thus: gules three pair of swords, in saltier, 
 argent, pommelled and hilted or, viz., two pair 
 in chief and one in base. The crest should have 
 by rights pennons displayed from the castle ; it 
 was granted by Robert Cook, Clarencieux. Sup- 
 porters ; two elephants or ; motto : * Pour parvenir 
 a bonne foy.' The carving referred to above was 
 put up in the year 1734 to mark property 
 belonging to the Company, as may be gathered 
 from the tablet on the west front of the same 
 house, which is inscribed 'GUTTLERS' STREET, 1734.'
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 125 
 
 The hall of the Cutlers' Company, rebuilt after 
 the Great Fire in Cloak Lane, Cannon Street, was 
 destroyed for the Inner Circle Railway. A new 
 hall has lately been erected in Warwick Lane. 
 
 Another heraldic charge of a City Company is 
 the Leopard, a carving of which was formerly let 
 into the front of a house in Budge Row, No. 28. It 
 
 was rebuilt about twelve years ago, when the sign 
 was placed in the passage of the new structure. 
 The owner has kindly allowed a sketch to be 
 taken, which is here reproduced. I believe that 
 the property at one time belonged to the Skinners' 
 Company, having been part of a bequest of John 
 Draper, in 1496. The Leopard, though not sup- 
 ported by a wreath, therefore represents their
 
 126 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 crest. The word ' budge,' whence Budge Row 
 takes its name, formerly signified the dressed 
 skin or fur of lamb, and would seem to indicate 
 that furriers carried on their business in this 
 quarter, near to the Hall of the Skinners' Company, 
 which was devoted to the protection of their craft. 
 In 1338, and again in 1358, the City authorities 
 ordered that women of inferior rank should not 
 be arrayed in budge or wool. 
 
 One of the commonest London sculptured signs 
 is that of the Maiden's Head, which indicates 
 property belonging to the Mercers' Company. I 
 will mention one which is to be seen above the 
 first-floor window of No. 6, Ironmonger Lane, 
 with the date 1668, as 'it is the only specimen of 
 any antiquity known to me which is dated, and 
 being somewhat more florid in treatment than 
 
 o 
 
 usual, it is characteristic of the time at which it 
 was put up. The arms of the company, granted 
 in 1568 and confirmed in 1634, are : gules, a 
 demi-virgin, with her hair dishevelled, crowned, 
 issuing out of and within an orle of clouds, 
 all proper. One may presume from the date 
 that they were chosen in honour of Queen Eliza- 
 beth. Strype says : ' When any of this company 
 is chosen mayor, or makes one of the triumph 
 of the day, wherein he goes to Westminster to 
 be sworn, a most beautiful virgin is carried through 
 the streets in a chariot, with all the glory and
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 1 27 
 
 majesty possible, with her hair all dishevelled 
 about her shoulders, to represent the maidenhead 
 which the company give for their arms, and this 
 lady is plentifully gratified for her pains, besides 
 the gift of all the rich attire she wears.' The 
 Maiden's Head also appears on the arms of the 
 Pinners' Company, with the motto, ' Virginitas et 
 unitas nostra aeternitas.' It was assumed as a 
 badge of the Parr family, previous to the marriage 
 of Catherine Parr with Henry VIII. They de- 
 rived it from the family of Ros of Kendal. 
 
 The Mercers' Company is very ancient ; it was 
 incorporated in the year 1393 (17 Rich. II.) ;* 
 but long before that the mercers had been asso- 
 ciated voluntarily for purposes of mutual aid and 
 comfort. They came to light first as a fraternity in 
 the time of Henry II., for Gilbert a Becket, father 
 of St. Thomas of Canterbury, is said to have been 
 a mercer; and in 1192, Agnes de Helles, sister 
 of St. Thomas, and her husband Thomas Fitz- 
 Theobald de Helles, in founding the hospital of 
 St. Thomas of Aeon, which is distinctly stated to 
 have been built on the spot where the future 
 archbishop was born, constituted the fraternity of 
 mercers patrons of the hospital. The present 
 Mercers' Hall, in Cheapside, is built on part of 
 this site. It was only by degrees that the merchant 
 
 * See ' City of London Livery Companies' Commission,' 
 1884, vol. ii.
 
 1 28 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 adventurers became detached from the mercers. 
 The last link between the two companies was 
 severed as late as the year 1666, when the Great 
 Fire destroyed the office held by the Merchant- 
 Adventurers under Mercers' Hall. The Haber- 
 dashers' Company was a branch of the Mercers', 
 which broke off from them in the time of 
 Henry VI. The word ' mercer ' would seem to 
 imply merchant only, being derived, through the 
 French ' mercier,' from the Latin word ' mercator.' 
 It is probable that those who were called mercers 
 dealt at first in most commodities, except food and 
 the precious metals. Herbert, however, considers 
 that in ancient times ' mercer ' was the name for a 
 man who dealt in small wares ; and that ' mer- 
 ceries then comprehended all things sold retail by 
 the little balance, in contradistinction to things sold 
 by the beam, or in gross, and included not only toys, 
 together with haberdashery and various other articles 
 connected with dress, but also spices and drugs ; 
 in short, what at present constitutes the stock of 
 a general country shopkeeper.' He goes on to 
 say that the silk trade, which in later ages formed 
 the main feature of the mercers' business, is stated 
 in the Act of 33 Henry VI., c. 5, to have been 
 carried on by ' the silkwomen and throwsteres of 
 London,' who, in petitioning for that Act, pray 
 that the Lombards and other strangers may be 
 hindered from importing wrought silk into the
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 1 29 
 
 realm, contrary to custom, and to the ruin of the 
 mystery and occupation of silk-making and other 
 virtuous female occupations. 
 
 The mercers were not the first incorporated 
 company; in this the goldsmiths, skinners, and 
 merchant tailors may claim precedence ; they, 
 however, have long ranked the first, as exemplified 
 in the following stanzas from a song addressed to 
 Sir John Peakes, mercer (who was elected Lord 
 Mayor in 1686), after a dinner given in his 
 honour : 
 
 ' Advance the Virgin, lead the van, 
 Of all that are in London free, 
 The Mercer is the foremost man 
 That founded a society. 
 
 Cho. Of all the trades that London grace, 
 We are the first in time and place. 
 
 ' When Nature in perfection was, 
 
 And virgin beauty in her prime, 
 The Mercer gave the nymph a gloss, 
 And made e'en beauty more sublime. 
 Cho, In this above our brethren blest, 
 
 The Virgin's since our coat and crest.' 
 
 More or less analogous to the arms of the City 
 companies are the arms of the Inns of Court and 
 Chancery. The interesting and highly picturesque 
 gatehouse of Lincoln's Inn, facing Chancery Lane, 
 has on it the date 1518, and three shields. That 
 in the centre represents the royal arms of England ; 
 to the spectator's right are the arms of Sir Thomas 
 
 9
 
 130 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Lovell, K.G., who was son of the executor of 
 King Henry VII., had been reader to the Society 
 of Lincoln's Inn, and gave most of the money 
 required for building the gatehouse.* To the left 
 are the arms of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, 
 namely, or, a lion rampant purp., placed there 
 by the builder; which reminds one of the historic 
 fact that Lincoln's Inn stands on the site of the 
 Earl's mansion and grounds, once possessed, in part 
 at least, by the Black or Preaching Friars. Here 
 he had a fine garden so productive that, besides 
 supplying his table, it yielded, says Mr. Hudson 
 Turner,f apples, pears, large nuts, and cherries, 
 sufficient to produce by their sale in one year 
 (24 Edward I.) ' the sum of ^9 2S. 3d. in money 
 of that time, equal to about ^135 of modern 
 currency.' The Earl of Lincoln died without 
 male issue in 1312, but bequeathed his name to 
 the property, which passed into legal hands. His 
 arms are still retained by the honourable society, 
 
 * Sir William Dugdale, in his ' Origines Juridiciales,' re- 
 cords that the whole cost of this gatehouse was ^153 los. 8d., 
 * the brick and tile used for the same being digged out of that 
 piece of ground then called the Coneygarth, lying on the 
 west side of the house, adjoyning to Lincoln's Inn Fields.' 
 This valuable relic is now, I fear, in a somewhat neglected 
 condition. 
 
 \ T. Hudson Turner in the Areheeological Journal for De- 
 cember, 1848, quoting from an account in the Office of the 
 Duchy of Lancaster.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 131 
 
 though it has been said that Sir James Lea at one 
 time proposed another device. 
 
 The Winged Horse, or Pegasus, representing the 
 arms of the Society of the Inner Temple, ornaments 
 the well-known gatehouse in Fleet Street, which 
 dates from i 607, and has in front the feathers of 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I. A 
 little west is the gatehouse to the Middle Temple, 
 built in 1684, from the designs of Sir Christopher 
 Wren. It has sculptured on it, the Lamb and 
 Flag, or Agnus Dei : 
 
 ' As by the Templars' haunts you go, 
 
 The Horse and Lamb display'd 
 In emblematic figures show 
 The merits of their trade ; 
 
 ' That clients may infer from thence 
 
 How just is their profession, 
 The lamb sets forth their innocence, 
 The horse their expedition.' 
 
 The Winged Horse is supposed by some to be a 
 corruption of the ancient seal of two Knights 
 Templars riding on one horse, indicative of their 
 original poverty; for here they had their head- 
 quarters in England ' till they decayed through 
 pride.' The two designs, however, resemble each 
 other to a very slight extent, and in point of fact 
 have no connection. It seems that in the fifth 
 year of Queen Elizabeth's reign the Society of 
 the Inner Temple adopted, as a heraldic charge,
 
 132 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 the Pegasus with the motto ' Volat ad aethera 
 virtus,' at the suggestion of Gerard Leigh, one of 
 its Benchers, a pedantic student of heraldry, the 
 idea being that the knowledge which might be 
 gained at this seat of learning would raise its 
 possessor to the highest pinnacle of fame. Sir 
 George Buc,* master of the revels, appears to be 
 responsible for the lamb and flag. He tells us 
 that in 1615, more than fifty years after the 
 adoption of the Pegasus by the twin society, 
 the authorities of the Middle Temple had neither 
 arms nor seal, and to supply the want he suggested 
 either ' two armed knights riding upon one horse, 
 or a field argent charged with a cross gules, and 
 on the nombril thereof a Holy Lamb ;' the first 
 having been, as I have said, the ancient seal of the 
 Knights Templars, and the second what they appear 
 to have assumed later, when they became pros- 
 perous. This at least is Sir George Buc's state- 
 ment, on the authority of an illuminated manu- 
 script containing the statutes of their order, which 
 belonged to Lord William Howard of Naworth. 
 Mr. Barrington thought that the Holy Lamb, as 
 a representation of Christ, should be encircled by 
 a nimbus. To confirm this view and to prove 
 that the Templars did use the device, he gives a 
 quotation from Blornefield's MS. collections for 
 
 * See an interesting article on this subject in the 'Archaeo- 
 logia,' vol. ix. (1789), by the Hon. Daines Barrington.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 133 
 
 Cambridgeshire, wherein the Holy Lamb, with its 
 nimbus and banner, appears on the seal of a deed 
 dated 1273, by which Guido de Foresta, ' magister 
 militias Tenipli in Anglia et fratres ejusdem 
 militias/ leased out certain lands in Pampesworth, 
 Cambridgeshire, the rent to be paid, ' domino 
 Templi,' at Dunworth of the same county. Round 
 the seal is the following inscription, ' >J< SIGILLVM 
 TEMPLI.' From the fact that Sir George Buc 
 suggested to the Society of the Middle Temple 
 the two devices which had been used by the 
 Templars, it is evident that the Pegasus, already 
 adopted by the Inner Temple, was not considered 
 in his time to have any connection with the original 
 seal of the Knights Templars. 
 
 The fourth of the great Inns of Court Gray's 
 Inn derived its name from the noble family of 
 the Greys of Wilton, having been originally their 
 dwelling, just as Lincoln's Inn had been the 
 dwelling of an Earl of Lincoln, and several of the 
 Inns of Chancery were originally the homes of 
 other well-known personages. The society seems 
 first to have used the arms of the Grey family ; 
 afterwards they adopted the Griffin's Head* as their 
 device, and it still adorns the pillars of the gate- 
 way from Field Court into those delightful 
 
 * For further details about the armorial bearings, see 
 * Gray's Inn ; its History and Associations,' by W. R. Douth- 
 waite, 1886, chap. xi.
 
 134 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 gardens which were first planted, it is thought, 
 under the direction of no less a man than Francis 
 Bacon. Once they were the resort of fine ladies, 
 but fashion has long since deserted them. The 
 trees, however, are still fine, the aspect of the 
 place ' reverend and law-abiding.' Here there is, 
 or was, a rookery, which has given pleasure to 
 generations of Londoners. Early last summer 
 (1892) the Benchers, anxious to utilize so eligible 
 a site, erected a corrugated iron structure some 90 
 feet long, at the south-west corner of the gardens. 
 They have tried to make it look beautiful by 
 partly covering it with trellis-work, and by having 
 the wooden roof painted tile colour. The rooks, 
 however, showed their resentment by flying off in 
 a body, and it remains a question whether they will 
 again make the gardens their permanent home ; 
 for now I hear that this erection, which has the 
 negative merit of being easily removable, is to 
 be replaced by a chapel ' in the Elizabethan or late 
 Tudor style,' the windows to be fitted or mis- 
 fitted with glass from the present chapel, which 
 will be turned to secular use. A little more than 
 a century ago Gray's Inn was quite on the out- 
 skirts of London,* ' with an uninterrupted prospect 
 of the neighbouring fields as far as Highgate and 
 Hampstead.' 
 
 Centuries before the Great Fire, carved shields 
 * Dodsley's 'London,' 1761, vol. iii., p. 58.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 135 
 
 of arms were doubtless common in London on 
 public buildings and the houses of great people, as 
 decorations, and as guides to the unlettered class, 
 which then formed a vast majority of the popula- 
 tion. Sometimes at any rate, in the earlier days 
 these arms were not carved in stone, but painted 
 and hung out, as we learn from the evidence 
 of the poet Chaucer* in the Scrope and Grosvenor 
 dispute, which also gives us an interesting glimpse 
 of the early history of one of our noble families. 
 He says that, in walking up Friday Street, he once 
 saw a sign hung out with ' arms painted and put 
 there by a knight of the County of Chester, called 
 Sir Robert Grosvenor ' ; and that was the first 
 time he ever heard of Sir Robert Grosvenor, 
 or his ancestors, or anyone bearing the name of 
 Grosvenor. 
 
 The first armorial shield to which I shall refer 
 under this heading is from a public building, 
 and though comparatively modern it should be 
 specially interesting to all citizens of London. I 
 allude to the Royal Arms f a well-executed piece 
 of sculpture which is used as the sign of a public- 
 
 * 'Scrope and Grosvenor Roll,' i. 178. 
 
 t The gatehouse had only been finished in the year 1728, 
 having replaced a previous one damaged by a great fire on 
 the bridge in 1725. Mist's Weekly Journal, for Saturday, 
 September II, tells us that about sixty houses were consumed 
 on that occasion.
 
 136 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 house rebuilt quite recently, on the south side of 
 Newcomen Street, late King Street, Southwark. 
 This was taken from the gatehouse at the Southwark 
 end of old London Bridge, which was pulled down 
 in 1760, in consequence of an Act of Parliament 
 
 passed four years previously, for the destruction of 
 the buildings on London Bridge and the widening 
 of the roadway. King Street was then being made 
 from High Street to Snow Fields, through the 
 former Axe and Bottle Yard, and these arms,
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 137 
 
 having been bought by Mr. Williams, a stone- 
 mason who was employed, in the construction of 
 King Street, were placed by him more or less in 
 their present position. In a view of the bridge- 
 gate engraved for Noorthouck's ' History of 
 London ' (p. 543), the arms appear with the in- 
 scription, G ii R, afterwards changed to G in, as 
 we now see it. 
 
 There are still a few carved shields of arms in 
 London, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, which marked the property of private 
 individuals. Until quite recently the district 
 known as Cloth Fair and Bartholomew Close, in 
 the immediate neighbourhood of the Church of St. 
 Bartholomew the Great, was distinguished by its air 
 of picturesque antiquity. Some quaint old houses 
 still remain; on one of them No. 22, Cloth Fair 
 is to be seen a relic which carries us back almost 
 to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. 
 This is the armorial shield of Richard Rich, who 
 was made a peer in 1 547 ; or more likely, perhaps, 
 of one of his immediate descendants. It is sur- 
 mounted by a coronet, and has been blazoned 
 thus : gules, a chevron between three crosses 
 botonnee or.* The founder of the Rich family 
 was a mercer in the City, and Sheriff in the year 
 
 * Burke's 'Armory General.' This seems correct; but 
 Burke's 'Extinct Peerages' gives it, 'gules, a chevron be- 
 tween three cross crosslets or.'
 
 138 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 1442 ; it was his great-grandson Richard who, 
 temp. Henry VIII., became Solicitor -General, 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, and who 
 took so scandalous a part in the trial and con- 
 viction of Sir Thomas More. In 1 544 the site of 
 St. Bartholomew's Priory was granted by the King 
 to his favourite, there described as Sir Richard 
 Rich, knight, in consideration of the sum of 
 ^1,064 us. jd., as appears from the original 
 deed ; and here he is said to have lived in the 
 Prior's mansion as Lord Chancellor. The tolls of 
 the fair* were also granted to him. It was pro- 
 vided that the church within the Great Close 
 was to be a parish church for ever, and vacant 
 ground adjoining it on the west side, 87 feet in 
 length by 60 feet in breadth, where the destroyed 
 nave had stood, was to be taken for a church- 
 yard, the site of the fair being no longer used as a 
 burial-ground. 
 
 Sir Richard Rich was made a baron in 1547. 
 Queen Mary revoked the grant in his favour, and 
 placed here a convent of Preaching Friars, who 
 
 * From early days, however, the fair had increased be- 
 yond church limits, and the City had acquired certain rights. 
 In the fourth edition of Stow, 1633, we are told how, on 
 Bartholomew Eve, the Aldermen in their violet gowns met 
 the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs at the Guildhall chapel, and 
 how they rode into Cloth Fair, and made a proclamation, 
 riding back through the churchyard and home to the Lord 
 Mayor's house.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms, i 3 9 
 
 under Father Person began to rebuild the nave 
 of the church, but they were turned out when 
 Elizabeth came to the throne, and the following 
 year there was a fresh grant to the purchaser, by 
 the title of Richard Lord Rich, and his heirs, ' in 
 free socage.' The monastery with its precincts 
 had been enclosed by a wall which contained, 
 besides the numerous monastic offices, a large 
 garden and court, fifty-one tenements, a mulberry 
 garden (one of the first planted in this country), 
 and the famous churchyard wherein had been 
 held, since the time of Henry I., the great annual 
 gathering for clothiers and drapers. This began 
 to fall ofF, as a cloth fair,* towards the end of the 
 sixteenth century, but continued to be more or 
 less of a London carnival, and in some sort 
 lingered on as late as the year 1855. The first 
 Lord Rich died in 1560 ; during his lifetime 
 little building seems to have taken place, for in 
 Ralph Aggas's map, which is considered to be 
 of about this date, the space north of the church 
 has no houses upon it, and the priory wall abutting 
 on Long Lane still exists. Very soon, however, 
 the land was turned to more profitable account, and 
 we find Stow "J* writing at the end of the century : 
 
 * In Allen's 'History of London,' published in 1827, 
 vol. iii., p. 658, we are told that the district called Cloth 
 Fair was still chiefly occupied by clothiers, tailors, etc. 
 
 t Stow's ' Survey of London,' edited by W. J. Thorns, 
 p. 141.
 
 140 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 ' Now notwithstanding all proclamations of the 
 prince, and also the Act of Parliament, in place of 
 booths within this churchyard (only Jet out in the 
 fair time, and closed up all the year after), be many 
 large houses built, and the north wall towards 
 Long Lane taken down, a number of tenements 
 are there erected for such as will give great rents.' 
 The houses in the street now called Cloth Fair 
 probably followed the old line of booths. The 
 first Lord Rich's grandson Robert, who made 
 such an ill-assorted marriage with Lady Penelope 
 Devereux, Sidney's 'Stella/ was raised to the dignity 
 of Earl of Warwick in 1618. His second son 
 Henry was created Baron Kensington and Earl of 
 Holland. The titles were merged in the next 
 generation, and became extinct in the year 1759, 
 when the tolls of the fair descended to the 
 Edwardes family, cousins of the Riches, in whose 
 favour the Kensington title was revived. Lord 
 Kensington sold these tolls to the Corporation of 
 London in 1839. 
 
 Before we quit this quaint neighbourhood let 
 us peep into the venerable Church of St. Bar- 
 tholomew the Great. What an idea it gives one 
 of the splendour of the old priory church, of 
 which it formed but a part, little more than 
 the choir remaining ! Much ' restoration ' is in 
 progress here, and it is difficult at a glance to 
 distinguish between the genuine Norman work
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 1 4 1 
 
 and the ingenious nineteenth-century Norman 
 which has lately been added. Fortunately the 
 fine perpendicular oriel on the south side of the 
 triforium has so far escaped intact. It was prob- 
 ably inserted by Prior Bolton (who died in 1532), 
 and has on it, carved in stone, expressive of his 
 name, a tun pierced by a bird-bolt, or arrow. 
 The rebus occurs again on the spandrel of a 
 Tudor doorway which leads into the modern 
 vestry. This Prior seems to have taken pleasure 
 in building, and in seeing his name thus perpetu- 
 ated.* He reconstructed the manor-house of 
 Canonbury, Islington, north of the parish church, 
 which had been given to the convent by Ralph de 
 Berners, and as early as the year 1253 is enu- 
 merated among his possessions. Here is also to 
 be found the Prior's rebus, on a doorway inside 
 No. 6, Canonbury Place, which, with No. 7, is 
 now used for a girls' school. It also formerly 
 appeared cut in stone on two parts of the wall 
 originally connected with the old brick tower, 
 which is so picturesque and so full of interesting 
 associations. 
 
 * The rebus was invented before Prior Bolton's time ; 
 as early as 1443 the White Friars had a grant of the ' Hospi- 
 tium vocatum Le Bolt en ton,' in Fleet Street. This became 
 a great coaching inn ; the site is marked by a railway office. 
 The tun occurs in the rebus of Beckington, of Castleton, 
 and of Bishop Langton in Winchester Cathedral.
 
 142 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 It is, however, generally thought that the 
 tower, as we see it, was built under the direction 
 of Sir John Spencer, the wealthy merchant, after- 
 wards the purchaser of Crosby Hall, who bought 
 this place from Thomas Lord Wentworth in 
 1570. Eleven years afterwards Queen Elizabeth 
 visited him here, and towards the end of the 
 century he made great alterations in the building. 
 Two of the rooms attached to Canonbury Tower 
 are finely panelled from floor to ceiling ; the 
 very handsome carved chimney-piece in the upper 
 room bears the arms of Sir John Spencer. 
 Canonbury House is now occupied by a Consti- 
 tutional Club. Parts of the building have been 
 modernized of late years, but the panelled rooms 
 are still much in their original state. The pretty 
 strip of garden at the back contains fruit-trees 
 which Goldsmith may have seen, when he lodged 
 here in the summer of 1767. 
 
 We must not forget that the original building 
 occupied a considerable part of Canonbury Place. 
 We have evidence of this in Prior Bolton's rebus 
 at No. 6 ; and traces of Sir John Spencer's work 
 are to be seen in this and the adjoining houses, 
 where there are no less than five richly-stuccoed 
 ceilings, two of them with the date 1599. Here 
 also, inside the entrance, are the arms* of Sir 
 
 * They were drawn and described for Nelson's ' History 
 of Islington,' 2nd edition, 1823.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 143 
 
 Walter Dennys, carved in oak. They were for- 
 merly over a fireplace, and when moved to their 
 present position, many years ago, the following 
 inscription was placed underneath : 
 
 'These were the arms of Sir Walter Dennys of Gloucester- 
 shire, who was made a Knight by bathing at the creation of 
 Arthur, Prince of Wales in Nov. 1489, and died Sept. I, 
 21 Henry VIE., and was buried at the church of Olviston in 
 Gloucestershire. He married Margaret, daughter of Sir 
 Rich Weston, Km., to which family Canonbury House for- 
 merly belonged. The carving is therefore 280 years old.' 
 
 The latter part of the inscription is clearly erro- 
 neous, as the manor-house was not in lay hands till 
 after the dissolution. Mr. Nelson thought that 
 these arms were placed here by some descendant of 
 the Dennys or Weston family, who might after- 
 wards have lived at Canonbury perhaps one of 
 the Comptons, Joan, a daughter of Sir Walter, 
 having married into that family. The Comptons 
 did not come into possession till 1610, when Wil- 
 liam, the second lord, succeeded Sir John Spencer, 
 having married Elizabeth, his daughter and sole 
 heiress. I need hardly say that they were the 
 direct ancestors of the present Marquis of North- 
 ampton, who still owns the property. 
 
 A famous galleried inn, the Old Bell,* Holborn, 
 
 * I have not been able to find proof positive that a Fowler 
 owned this property, The house, though of respectable 
 antiquity, is much more modern than the arms. By a lease
 
 144 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 now almost unique of its kind, has, imbedded in the 
 front, the sculptured arms of Fowler of Islington, 
 namely, azure, on a chevron argent, between 
 three herons or, as many crosses formee gules. 
 They are surmounted by an esquire's helmet, with 
 a crest, which seems to be an eagle's head with 
 a sprig of some sort in its beak. The first man 
 of this family who made any mark was Thomas 
 Fowler, lord of the manor of Bernersbury* or 
 Barnsbury, Islington, in 1 548. From him descended 
 Sir Thomas Fowler, knight, Deputy Lieutenant of 
 the county of Middlesex, and apparently one of the 
 jurors at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, at Win- 
 chester, in 1603. If the tradition of Sir Walter's 
 residence at Islington is true, they must have Jived 
 within a stone's throw of each other at one time. 
 
 dated 1722, a messuage called the Bell, with its stables, etc., 
 and two other messuages or tenements on either side, ad- 
 joining and fronting High Street, Holborn, 'formerly one 
 capital mansion or messuage called the Bell or Blue Bell Inn, 
 together with all shops, stables, and other appurtenances,' 
 were bought by Christ's Hospital for ^2,113 155. Together 
 with the adjoining house, it still belongs to the Hospital. 
 There is a rent-charge of 453. (originally 30 sacks of char- 
 coal) on the Blue Bell Inn, for the use of the poor of St. 
 Andrews, in which parish the houses are situated ; it was be- 
 queathed by Richard Hunt, who died in 1559. 
 
 * Named after the Berners family, who held the estate 
 from the Conquest till 1422, when it passed by marriage to 
 John Bourchier, created Lord Berners.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 145 
 
 Before being knighted, Thomas Fowler had mar- 
 ried Jane, daughter of Gregory Charlet, citizen and 
 tallow-chandler, who bore him two sons. His 
 second wife, to whom he was married at St. James's 
 Church, Clerkenwell, on March 17, 1604, was 
 Mary, widow of Sir John Spencer, of Althorp 
 not to be confused with his neighbour the rich 
 merchant of Crosby Place and Canonbury, who 
 lived on till 1609. His elder son, also Thomas, 
 was made a baronet, but the title died out with 
 him in 1656. 
 
 The Fowlers dwelt in a house in Cross Street, 
 Islington, a little beyond the church, which still 
 existed a generation ago. The ceiling of a room 
 on the first-floor was decorated with the arms and 
 initials of Queen Elizabeth, also the initials /,. At 
 the end of the garden, which had been of consider- 
 able extent, there was a small brick building,* 
 intended, perhaps, for a summer-house or porter's 
 lodge. It had on the west side, cut in stone, the 
 Fowler arms, bearing an esquire's helmet, ap- 
 parently similar in all respects to those I have 
 described, except that no mention is made of a 
 crest. In another part of the building were the 
 arms of Sir Thomas Fowler the younger, with his 
 initials and the date 1655. They were distinguished 
 by having an escutcheon charged with a sinister 
 
 * In Nelson's 'History of Islington,' 2nd edition, 1823, 
 facing p. 260, there is an illustration of the building. 
 
 10
 
 146 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 hand, couped at the wrist the arms of Ulster 
 and ensign of baronetcy. It is curious that the 
 daughter and heiress of this Sir Thomas Fowler 
 married a Fisher, to whom descended the manor of 
 Barnsbury, and that the first Fowler who settled 
 in Islington had married a Herne or Heron. The 
 arms of that family appeared in a window of the 
 old house in Cross Street. 
 
 When visiting the Guildhall Museum, not long 
 
 since, I was reminded of another Islington family, 
 
 not distinguished, but still perhaps worthy of 
 
 mention. A stone tablet, said to be from an old 
 
 house in Upper Street, Islington, has on it the 
 
 inscription : ^ RVFFORDS BVILDINGS 1688, 
 
 and a similar inscription is still to be seen on 
 
 No. i a, Compton Street, Clerkenwell. The fact 
 
 is, there were two groups of houses thus named, 
 
 both of which were built by Captain Nicholas 
 
 Ruffbrd, who was churchwarden at Islington in 
 
 1 690, and died in 1711, aged seventy-one. Nelson 
 
 mentions inscriptions to him and several of his 
 
 family in the churchyard. In the Islington 
 
 Rufford's Buildings Dr. W. Berriman lived for 
 
 some years. He was a famous divine, and became 
 
 Fellow of Eton College. His death took place in 
 
 1749-50. 
 
 Some pages back, in my description of the sign 
 of the Two Negroes' Heads, I had occasion to 
 allude to Clare Market. Before that neighbour-
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 147 
 
 hood is quite transformed, I should like to say a few 
 words about it and its connection with the Holies 
 family. An old coat of arms and an old inscrip- 
 tion will serve as pegs on which to hang my story. 
 In Seymour's 'Survey,' 1754 (written by John 
 Mottley), we are told that Clement's Inn* the 
 fancied scene of Shallow's exploits descended to 
 the Earls of Clare from their ancestor Sir William 
 Holies, or Hollis as he spells it Lord Mayor 
 of London in 1539. The name of John, Baron 
 Holies of Houghton, appears as a parishioner of 
 St. Clement Danes in the rate-book for the year 
 1617. In 1624 he was created Earl of Clare. 
 There seems to have been no concealment about 
 the fact that his titles were bought : the first, 
 obtained through the influence of the Duke of 
 Buckingham, had cost him no less a sum than 
 10,000 ; for the second he is said to have paid 
 an additional 5,000. It is curious that this latter 
 dignity had some years before been refused to 
 Robert Rich, afterwards created Earl of Warwick, 
 who had set his heart on it (and is said to have also 
 
 * The pretty garden of Clement's Inn is now being built 
 over, and the garden house will soon disappear behind 
 bricks and mortar. The black kneeling figure supporting a 
 sundial, which formerly decorated the lawn (having been 
 brought from Italy and presented to the Inn by one of the 
 Earls of Clare), was sold by the Ancients in 1884 for twenty 
 guineas, and has now found its way to Inner Temple 
 Gardens.
 
 148 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 paid money for his earldom), the Crown lawyers 
 having solemnly declared that it was a title peculiar 
 to the Royal Family, and not to be borne by a sub- 
 ject. The princely mansion of John Holies,* 
 second Earl, was at the end of Clare Court, or 
 Clare House Court, on the east side of Drury 
 Lane, next to Blackmore Street. In Hatton's 
 time (1708) it had been turned into tenements. 
 This second Earl founded Clare Market, f which 
 stands, or stood, on what was previously called 
 Clement's Inn Fields. License had already been 
 granted by Charles I. to Thomas York in 1640, 
 and to the antiquary Gervase Holies^ in 1642, 
 to make streets and to erect houses on this 
 property. One of the provisions in the Act 
 passed in 1657, 'for the Preventing of the 
 Multiplicity of Buildings in and about the 
 Suburbs of London,' expressly states that John, 
 Earl of Clare, having erected several new buildings 
 
 * Lord Clarendon says of this second Earl : ' He was a 
 man of honour and of courage, and would have been an 
 excellent person if his heart had not been so much set upon 
 keeping and improving his estate.' 
 
 t From Mr. Austin Dobson I learn that Hogarth engraved 
 a view of Clare Market. 
 
 \ He wrote MS. memoirs of the Holies family, afterwards 
 transcribed by Arthur Collins. 
 
 This Act appears to have been a dead letter. In 1580 
 Queen Elizabeth had issued an equally vain proclamation to 
 prevent the erection of new buildings within three miles of 
 the City gates.
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 149 
 
 and improved the property, ' from henceforth for 
 ever hereafter, on every Tuesday, Thursday, and 
 Saturday, in every week, there shall be a common 
 open and free market, held in Clement's Inn Fields 
 aforesaid, where the said buildings useful for a 
 market are erected, and in the places near unto 
 adjoining, and to enjoy all liberties, customs and 
 emoluments incident usually and of right belong- 
 ing and appertaining to markets.' It seems, from 
 the ' Harleian Miscellany,' that the City authorities 
 at one time began a lawsuit laying claim to this 
 property, but they failed in their attempt. The 
 market was at first usually called the New 
 Market. 
 
 The streets in this neighbourhood are several 
 of them named after the family of the former 
 possessors: as Clare Street, where, on Saturdays, 
 there is still something like a market ; Denzell 
 Street, Holies Street, Houghton Street, Vere Street, 
 and Gilbert Street and Passage. On a squalid house 
 at the corner of this narrow opening, and facing the 
 space lately cleared in what was the market, I have 
 observed with interest a fine stone bas-relief of the 
 Holies arms, surmounted by an earl's coronet, 
 namely, ermine, two piles in point sable, and 
 the motto ' Spes audaces adjuvat,' the supporters 
 being a lion and that nondescript beast, a 
 heraldic tiger, which is supposed to have a 
 dragon's head. The date beneath is 1659, showing
 
 150 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 that they were put up for John Holies, second 
 Earl of Clare, no doubt on a building in the 
 market-place. Another curious relic is to be 
 seen let into the wall of a public-house called the 
 Royal Yacht, at the corner of Denzell Street and 
 Stanhope Street. This is a stone tablet, the in- 
 scription on which is here given, and which speaks 
 for itself. 
 
 Sb called bu Gilbert 
 Earle of Clare in Memo 
 ry of his Vncfe Denied 
 Lord Holies Ulho ded 
 
 February y"J7"V679 
 Aged 5/years:3:mcntns) 
 a great honour to his >- 
 name and the exact 
 pal-erne of his Fathers 
 !* Montt' Hnn n re 
 
 areal- Mentt->h 
 5 arle of Clare 
 
 Rebuilt byH Y COCKER , 79 6 
 
 It was erected by Gilbert, third Earl, in memory 
 of his father's second brother Denzil ' a man of 
 great courage and of as great pride,' says Claren- 
 don, who, during the early troubles between 
 Charles I. and his Parliament, took a leading part 
 on the popular side. On March 2, 1629, when 
 the Speaker was about to adjourn the House in 
 obedience to the King's order, Denzil Holies 
 helped to keep him in the chair by force, for
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 151 
 
 which conduct he, with five other members, was 
 committed to the Tower and fined 1,000 marks. 
 After many vicissitudes Holies welcomed the resto- 
 ration of Charles II., was created a peer, and sent 
 as Ambassador to Paris, where his pugnacity and 
 his ignorance of the French language* were alike 
 remarkable. Mr. Wheatley tells us that in 1644 
 he had been living in Covent Garden, under the 
 name of Colonel Holies ; in 1666, and after, he 
 was in a house at the west corner of the north 
 piazza, which Sir Kenelm Digby had previously 
 occupied. 
 
 The Holies family became extinct in the male 
 line on the death of John, fourth Earl of Clare, 
 who had married Lady Margaret Cavendish, a 
 great heiress, and was created Duke of New- 
 castle. This nobleman, one of the richest 
 subjects in the kingdom, died in 1711, from 
 the effects of a fall while hunting at Welbeck, 
 leaving an only daughter, from whom is descended 
 the present Duke of Portland. Some years before 
 his death, namely, in May, 1705, still clinging to 
 the neighbourhood with which his family had been 
 so long connected, the last Holies in the male line 
 bought from the Marquis of Powis, for the large 
 sum of ^7,000, the house at the north-west angle 
 
 * M. Jusserand gives amusing instances in his excellent 
 new work on ' A French Ambassador at the Court of 
 Charles II.'
 
 152 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 of Lincoln's Inn Fields, now numbered 66 and 67, 
 which touches Great Queen Street, and is still 
 known as Powis or Newcastle House. The Duke 
 left the greater part of his possessions, including 
 this house, to his nephew, Thomas Pelham, the 
 well - known political leader in the time of 
 George II., who took the name of Holies, and was 
 also created Duke of Newcastle. Here he lived 
 and intrigued, and this was the scene of his levees, 
 so graphically described by Lord Chesterfield. If 
 those silent walls could speak, they might tell us 
 many strange tales. 
 
 Newcastle House had been built in 1686 by 
 Captain William Winde, or Wynne, as Campbell 
 calls him in the ' Vitruvius Britannicus ' a pupil 
 of Gerbier, and perhaps also of Webb, who was in 
 his turn a pupil of Inigo Jones. The structure 
 has unfortunately been much altered for the 
 worse since an engraving of it was made for 
 Strype's Stow (edition of 1754). It replaced an 
 older house which had been burnt to the ground 
 on October 26, 1684, the family escaping with 
 difficulty. William Herbert, first Marquis and 
 titular Duke of Powis, for whom the house was 
 built, suffered severely owing to his attachment to 
 the cause of James II. He accompanied the King 
 into exile, his estates were, in part at any rate, con- 
 fiscated, and he died at St. Germains in 1696. In 
 some way this house escaped the general wreck ;
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 1 5 3 
 
 perhaps it was alienated for a few years. Strype 
 says that * it was sometime the seat of Sir John 
 Somers, late Lord Chancellor of England ' ; and 
 Pennant adds, ' It is said that Government had it 
 once in contemplation to have bought and settled 
 it officially on the great seal. At that time it was 
 inhabited by the Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright.' 
 Whatever the circumstances may have been, it 
 came into the hands of the second Marquis, who 
 before its sale to the Duke of Newcastle had 
 already built himself another house* in Great 
 Ormond Street, on the site of which is Powis 
 Place. 
 
 The west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields shows 
 interesting specimens of architecture. Lindsey 
 House, though much altered, is an undoubted 
 work of Inigo Jones. It was built probably about 
 the year 1640, for Robert Bertie, firsc Earl of 
 Lindsey, who died a hero's death at the battle of 
 Edgehill. The fourth Earl having been created 
 Duke of Ancaster, it was for a time called 
 Ancaster House. Hatton, in 1708, describes it as 
 ' a handsome building of the Ionic order, and (in 
 front a) strong beautiful court-gate, consisting of six 
 fine, spacious brick piers, with curious ironwork 
 
 * There is a view of it in Strype's Stow (1754.), which 
 shows a sculptured phoenix over the doorway. The phoenix 
 in the porch of No. 40, Great Ormond Street suggests the 
 possibility of some connection with this house.
 
 154 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 between them, and on the piers are placed very 
 large and beautiful vases.' The stone facade is now 
 plastered and painted, the entrance door widened, 
 the house divided into two. Inside, a graceful 
 mantelpiece and an alcove evidently belong to the 
 last century. Mr. Alfred Marks, in a valuable 
 note on the house, ascribes these architectural 
 features to Ware, who was a great admirer oflnigo 
 Jones, and in 1743 published some of his designs. 
 The alcove is adorned by a coat of arms belonging 
 to the Shiffner family, a member of which, as 
 appears from the Gentleman s Magazine, resided in 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields in the year 1759. 
 
 South of Lindsey House, there are other build- 
 ings which were probably designed by Inigo Jones. 
 From the house which is over the archway leading 
 into Sardinia Street, one may trace the Rose and 
 Fleur-de-lys of Charles I. and his Queen on the 
 pilasters. They are now mostly plastered and 
 painted, but it may be remarked that in the ex- 
 treme south-west corner of the Fields, behind other 
 more modern structures, stands a house the upper 
 part of which is outside in its original condition. 
 It is of red brick, the bases, bands and capitals of 
 the pilasters and the architraves being of stone, and 
 it has, like the others, the rose and fleur-de-lys in 
 relief. But the best-preserved specimen, externally, 
 of work of this character now existing in London 
 is the harmonious red-brick building on the south
 
 Various Crests and Coats of Arms. 155 
 
 side of Great Queen Street, hard by, which was 
 either designed by Inigo Jones or by Webb under 
 his influence. Let those who wish to study its 
 fine proportions and pleasant details lose no time, 
 for an ominous board has appeared in front, and 
 much I fear that its days are numbered. Can 
 nothing be done to save it ? Mr. Wheatley says 
 that Thomas Hudson, the portrait-painter (Rey- 
 nolds's master), lived in this house, which is now 
 divided and numbered 55 and 56. It had almost 
 certainly been occupied by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS SIGNS, DATES, AND INSCRIP- 
 TIONS, ETC. 
 
 ' Many things of worthy memory.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 I SHALL close my account with a few mis- 
 cellaneous signs and inscriptions which I 
 could not appropriately fit in elsewhere. Several 
 eminent banking firms carefully preserve the signs 
 which were used by them before their houses were 
 numbered ; but they have been so ably described 
 by Mr. Hilton Price and others, that little more 
 need be said. The Mary-gold is in the front 
 shop of Messrs. Child and Co.'s premises, Fleet 
 Street ; it is of oak, the ground stained green, 
 with a sun and a gilt border : the motto under- 
 neath is, ' Ainsi mon ame/ The Three Squirrels of 
 Messrs. Gosling are worked in iron and attached 
 to the bars which protect their central window, 
 and the original sign of copper is preserved in the 
 front office. From Mr. Price I learn that as
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dafes, Inscriptions. 157 
 
 early as the year 1684, and perhaps earlier, James 
 Chambers kept a goldsmith's shop at the Three 
 Squirrels over against St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet 
 Street ; and it is a curious fact that one family of 
 Chambers bears the three squirrels in its arms. 
 Hoare's Golden Bottle hangs over the doorway of 
 their banking-house. Sir Richard Colt Hoare 
 thought it was a barrel sign adopted by James 
 Hore, of Cheapside, because his father, Ralph, was 
 a member of the Coopers' Company. More likely, 
 however, it was a sign of the same description as 
 the Black Jack and the Leathern Bottle, of which 
 a genuine specimen from the corner of Charles 
 Street, Leather Lane, has lately found its way into 
 the Guildhall Museum. Unfortunately, the Grass- 
 hopper the old sign of Messrs. Martin and Co., in 
 Lombard Street has not been preserved. It was 
 the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, who is believed 
 to have here carried on his business. A most 
 interesting history of the house has lately been 
 written by Mr. J. B. Martin, one of the 
 partners. A quaint and charming sign is the 
 little carved figure of a naval officer taking an 
 observation the Wooden Midshipman of Dombey 
 and Son. He may still be seen in the Minories, 
 having migrated from Leadenhall Street some 
 years ago. Not long since the owners sent him 
 for change of air to the Naval Exhibition. The 
 figure and its associations form the subject of a
 
 158 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 capital paper by Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry in All the 
 Tear Round for October 29, 1881. 
 
 At the corner of Charlotte Street and the Black- 
 friars Road there is a figure of a dog overturning 
 a three-legged iron pot, in its eagerness to get at 
 the contents ; this is the sign of a wholesale iron- 
 monger's establishment said to date from 1783. 
 The Dog's Head in the Pot, as it is called, seems, 
 of late years at any rate, to have been usually 
 adopted by members of this trade, because the 
 vessel represented is of iron. The sign is said to 
 indicate a dirty, slovenly housewife. Larwood and 
 Hotten mention a coarse woodcut of the beginning 
 of last century (to judge from the costumes, copied 
 from an older original) which represents two old 
 women in a disorderly room or kitchen. One of 
 them wipes a plate with the bushy tail of a large 
 dog whose head is buried in a pot. Under it are 
 the lines : 
 
 ' All sluts behold, take view of me, 
 Your own good husbandry to see.' 
 
 A Dutch saying, to anyone late for dinner, is 
 that he will find the dog in the pot ; in other 
 words, that the remains of the dinner have been 
 handed over to the dog to finish. 
 
 The Dog's Head in the Pot is a very old 
 London sign, being mentioned in a tract from 
 the press of Wynkyn de Worde called ' Cocke
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 159 
 
 Lorell's Bote.' The person who dwelt at this 
 sign was therein described as ' Annys Angry with 
 the croked buttock by her crafte a breche maker.' 
 A later notice occurs in the will (dated September 3, 
 1563) of Thomas Johnson, citizen and haberdasher, 
 of London, who gave ^13 45. annually to the high- 
 ways between Barkway and Dog's Head in the 
 Pot, otherwise called ' Horemayd,' probably a 
 house of entertainment in the parish of Great or 
 Little Hormead, in Hertfordshire, by the side of 
 the road from Barkway to London. At a house 
 in Westgate Street, Gloucester, some beautifully- 
 carved Tudor panels have lately come to light. 
 One of them has on it a dog or leopard eating out 
 of a three-legged pot. A seventeenth-century 
 trade-token, issued from Red Cross Street, and 
 another from Old Street, St. Luke's, have the de- 
 vice of the Dog's Head in the Pot. 
 
 A medallion in plaster or terra-cotta, which 
 looked as if it might have been copied from a 
 classical coin, was till lately to be seen on the gable 
 of a little fishmonger's shop in Cheyne Walk. 
 This, though a humble specimen of its class, be- 
 longed to a style of decoration once common. I 
 have before me a view, dated 1792, of a house on 
 Tower Hill with similar medallions. Sometimes 
 the heads of Roman Emperors were thus placed, 
 sometimes the cardinal virtues or other emblematic 
 figures. In the third edition of Stow, by Anthony
 
 160 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Munday, occurs the following passage, descriptive 
 of Aldgate : ' The old ruinous Gate being taken 
 downe, and order provided for a new foundation, 
 divers very ancient peeces of Romane coyne were 
 found among the stones and rubbish, which, as Mr. 
 Martin Bond (a Worshipful Citizen, and one of the 
 Surveyors of the worke) told me, two of them 
 (according to their true forme and figure) he caused 
 to be carved on stone, and fixed on eyther side of 
 the Gates Arch without, eastward.' These coins 
 were of the Emperors Trajan and Diocletian. 
 Martin Bond laid the foundation-stone of the new 
 gate in 1607. The little house in Cheyne Walk was 
 formerly a freehold with the right of pasturage on 
 Chelsea Common ; it was pulled down in October, 
 1892. I have drawn it for the frontispiece of this 
 volume ; the lower part appears in a delightful 
 etching by Whistler, called * The Fish-shop.' 
 
 One of the most interesting signs in existence 
 belongs to my friend Mr. F. Manley Sims. It does 
 not, however, strictly belong to London, having 
 been brought from Poole some years ago ; its earlier 
 history has yet to be discovered. This is a doctor's 
 signboard, excellently carved, with figures in high 
 relief. It is divided into compartments : in the 
 centre more important than the' rest is the 
 doctor himself, in Jacobean costume, his potions 
 ranged on shelves behind him ; around, in seven 
 compartments, are represented various operations
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 161 
 
 of surgery ; and below, in relief, appear the words 
 from Ecclesiasticus, * Altissimus creavit de terra 
 medicynam et vir prudens non abhorebit illam.' 
 Anno Domini 1623. There are traces of paint 
 and gilding ; the whole is enclosed within an orna- 
 mental border, and has a highly decorative effect. 
 
 Somewhat akin to the sculptured street signs 
 are the tablets on which are inscribed the names 
 of the streets, and often the dates of their building 
 or completion. They have historical value where, 
 as is not unfrequently the case, they record a name 
 now in danger of being forgotten, and some of 
 them are designed with a good deal of taste. So 
 many of these tablets remain that I shall not 
 attempt a list, but shall only mention a few 
 good examples. One of the oldest is in Great 
 Chapel Street, Westminster, and is inscribed : 
 'This is Chappeil Street, 1656.' 
 
 The following are instances of the inscriptions, 
 which may help us to make out the history of the 
 streets. On a corner house at the east side of 
 Bering Street (late Union Street), Oxford Street, 
 is a stone inscribed, 'Sheffield Street, 1721.' 
 Curiously enough, in Horwood's Map of 1799, 
 and in another issued in 1800, the name is given 
 as Shepherd Street, so that here we have four 
 changes in 1 70 years. On a modern house at the 
 south-east corner of Danvers Street, Cheyne Walk, 
 much of which is now cleared away, there is a 
 
 ii
 
 162 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 stone, supported by brackets, with a pediment 
 which tells us that ' This is Danvers Street, begun 
 in y e year 1696 by Benjamin Stallwood.' Danvers 
 House, hard by, was not pulled down till 1716. 
 May's Buildings, on the east side of St. Martin's 
 Lane, have the name, and date 1739. Mr. J. T. 
 Smith, in ' Nollekens and his Times,' tells us that 
 they were built by Mr. May, who ornamented the 
 front of No. 43, St. Martin's Lane, a few doors off, 
 where he resided. His house is still there ; it has 
 pretty cut brick pilasters, and a cornice, and is now 
 used as a restaurant. The archway which leads into 
 Sardinia Street, under one of the old houses on the 
 west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, is inscribed above 
 the keystone on each side, ' Duke Streete, 1648.' 
 This street was renamed in 1878, after the chapel 
 there, once belonging to the Sardinian minister, 
 which was demolished in the riots of June 2, 1780, 
 but shortly afterwards rebuilt, and is now known 
 as the chapel of SS. Anselm and Cecilia. Here 
 Fanny Burney was married, in 1793, to General 
 D'Arblay. A stone tablet, which has on it * Nassau 
 Street in Whettens Buildings, 1734,' is still to 
 be seen at the south-west corner of Nassau Street. 
 In Strype's Map of 1720 the ground here, facing 
 Gerrard Street, is occupied by a large mansion with 
 a garden at the back, Nassau Street not being yet 
 made. 
 
 Some of these tablets are well designed ; a very
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 163 
 
 nice example, though not an early one, is placed 
 above the first-floor of No. 16, Great James Street, 
 Bedford Row. It is an irregular convex shield, 
 surrounded by elaborate scroll-work of a style not 
 uncommon about the time of its erection, namely, 
 in 1721. As a typical specimen it has been drawn 
 for this work. James Street, Haymarket, is also 
 marked by a stone with ornamental border, above 
 a first-floor window of what is left of the old 
 Tennis Court, which is said to have been connected 
 
 with the noted Gaming House and Shaver's Hall. 
 The date on it namely, 1673, indicates, I suppose, 
 the year in which the street was built or finished ; 
 Shaver's Hall existed some time previously. The 
 Tennis Court ceased to be used in 1866, to the 
 regret of many. In the year 1887 the upper part 
 was rebuilt ; but from the tablet downwards the 
 original walls, though stuccoed over, remain. 
 Mr. Julian Marshall says that in this court Charles 
 and the Duke of York used frequently to play their
 
 164 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 favourite game, and that the house, No. 17, at the 
 south-western corner of James's Street and the 
 Haymarket, is said to have been that through 
 which the royal brothers used to pass, on their 
 way to the Tennis Court.* It does not, however, 
 appear that there was any contemporary evidence 
 connecting them with it. 
 
 From Mounf P|ea<bar>r' 
 
 In the region called Mount Pleasant, Gray's Inn 
 Lane, not far from the new thoroughfare Rose- 
 bery Avenue, there are two or three tablets of a 
 different kind. Near the west end, between Nos. 5 5 
 and 56, is a plain square stone, with ' DORRINGTON 
 STREET 1 720 'incised in Roman capitals. This 
 stone is in a brick frame, with moulded hood, 
 
 * 'Annals of Tennis,' 1878.
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 165 
 
 and projects from the frame about an inch and a 
 half. Further east, on No. 41, nearly opposite the 
 site of the prison, are two more tablets ; one, 
 similar to that just described, has ' BAYNES STREET, 
 1737.' Over this is a far more elaborate example 
 of cut or moulded brick, with a pediment. It has 
 the inscription ' IN GOD is ALL OUR TRUST/ and 
 below some marks or signs in relief (one of which 
 appears to be a T-square), with the date 1737. 
 The motto is similar to that of the Brewers' 
 
 Company, and of the Tylers' and Bricklayers' 
 Company ; with the latter I should think that the 
 builder or first possessor may have had some con- 
 nection. 
 
 This last, being a house and not a street 
 tablet, reminds me that there are scattered about 
 here and there on the fronts of houses, initials 
 and dates which by judi'cious treatment are made 
 quite decorative. One of the prettiest was a 
 little cut brick tablet on an old house No. 164, 
 Union Street, Southwark lately destroyed, which
 
 1 66 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 had on it beneath a pediment the initials w. H. in 
 monogram, and the date 1701. Again, in Walbrook, 
 on the west side, is a tablet merely dated 1668, with 
 well-designed brackets and cornice. On a modern 
 house No. 4, Tothill Street, Westminster called 
 in 1885 the Cock, now the Aquarium Tavern, 
 there is a stone on which are cut the date 1671, 
 a heart-shaped mark, and the initials E. T. A. In 
 
 12 waibrooK 
 
 1850, when Peter Cunningham wrote his handbook, 
 the old house was yet standing ; in it Thomas 
 Southerne, the poet, had lodged, as pointed out 
 by Mr. Hutton in his ' Literary Landmarks of 
 London.' The heart has puzzled me ; a similar 
 mark was formerly on a house in Peter Street, 
 Westminster. Can it have been a parish mark? 
 An undoubted device of this kind appears on a
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 167 
 
 house at the corner of West Street and Upper St. 
 Martin's Lane, and consists of two ragged staves 
 crossed, with the date 1691, and the initials s. G. F., 
 which indicate the parish of St. Giles's in the 
 Fields. A mark of the parish of St. Bride's, dated 
 1670, is in Robin Hood Court, Shoe Lane. At 
 the corner of Artillery Street, Bishopsgate Without, 
 and Sandys Row, soon to be improved away, there is 
 a flat stone having fastened on it a piece of iron, 
 shaped like a broad arrow, and below the date 
 1682. Is this a parish mark, or can it have been 
 connected in any way with the old artillery 
 ground the Tassel Close of an earlier time, when 
 crossbow-makers used here to shoot at the popin- 
 jay? In Strype's time 'divers worthy citizens' 
 still frequented it for martial exercise. Of greater 
 historic interest are the monogram of Henry VIII., 
 the Tudor portcullis, and other devices carved on 
 the spandrels of the arches which are under the 
 gatehouse of St. James's Palace. 
 
 A general description of the painted sign- 
 boards of London has formed no part of the 
 scheme of this book, because much has already 
 been written on the subject, and it would 
 be too extensive to treat satisfactorily in the 
 limited space at my command. It may, how- 
 ever, be useful to note a few signs of this 
 kind still in situ. The Running Footman, of 
 which there are two specimens in Hays Mews,
 
 1 68 London Signs and Inscriptions, 
 
 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, is particularly 
 interesting on account of the costume, and because 
 it is a record of the days when carriages moved at 
 little more than a foot's pace,* and there were no 
 police to regulate the traffic. It is supposed to 
 date from about 1770. Such a servant as this 
 would be singularly out of place in modern London ; 
 but in the East, retainers of the same kind, who run 
 in front and clear the way, still naturally form part 
 of a great man's equipage. The Goat in Boots is 
 to be seen in the Fulham Road in front of a public- 
 house lately rebuilt. To Le Blond a Flemish 
 painter, who lived at Chelsea was attributed the 
 original design, which seems to have been painted 
 or repainted by Morland. Since then, however, it 
 has been daubed over again and again. Some in- 
 genious person has conjectured that the sign origi- 
 nated from a corruption of the Dutch words : ' der 
 Goden Bode' (the messenger of the Gods), said to 
 have been applied to Mercury, and to have been 
 formerly used on houses in Holland, to denote that 
 post-horses were to be obtained ; but this seems 
 improbable, as the house in old deeds is called 
 
 * Some of these servants, however, must have been ex- 
 ceedingly active. In the London Evening Post for December 
 31, 1735, we are told that 'General Churchill's Running 
 Footman ran against the Lady Molesworth's, from the upper 
 end of St. James's Street to Edgworth Gate,' and won, per- 
 forming the distance, computed to be about eleven miles, in 
 an hour and five minutes.
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 169 
 
 the Goat. At the Ben Jonson tavern in Shoe 
 Lane a curious old wooden panel is preserved, 
 which bears on its two sides what are supposed 
 to be portraits of 'rare Ben' ; as it is nailed against 
 the wall, one side only is now visible. The person 
 portrayed is a lean hungry-looking man, the very 
 reverse of the poet ; it seems likely, nevertheless, 
 that this was the old signboard. A more ambi- 
 tious effort is the full-length portrait of the Duke 
 of Cumberland the hero of Culloden which 
 is on a public-house at the corner of Bryanston 
 Street and Great Cumberland Place, built about 
 1774. It is affixed to the wall in accordance with 
 the law passed a short time previously. One is 
 reminded of a letter by Horace Walpole to 
 Conway, dated April 16, 1747, in which he thus 
 moralizes : ' I observed how the Duke of Cumber- 
 land's head had succeeded, almost universally, to 
 Admiral Vernon's, as his head had left few traces 
 of the Duke of Ormonde's. I pondered these 
 things in my heart, and said unto myself all glory 
 is but a sign.' Now that Hatchett's Hotel in 
 Piccadilly has passed away, it is worth while to 
 record that over the bar of the Restaurant on this 
 site (rebuilt 1886) was to be seen the old painted 
 signboard of a white horse with flowing mane and 
 tail, and the inscription, 'The New White Horse 
 Cellars, Abraham Hatched:.' Last year, owing to 
 further alterations, this was removed.
 
 170 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 The signs I have referred to are comparatively 
 well known, but that of the Coach and Horses 
 No. 49, St. John's Square, Clerkenwell has, I 
 think, hitherto escaped observation. This is a 
 large picture representing a lioness attacking one 
 of the leaders of a mail-coach ; a yokel with 
 a pitchfork, and a dog, advance intrepidly to the 
 rescue. In the background is a wayside inn, in 
 front a pond. The event depicted actually took 
 place on October 20, 1816, and is described in 
 1 Cassell's Popular Natural History,' vol. ii., p. 119. 
 It seems that the Exeter mail-coach was on ite 
 way to London, and the driver had pulled up at 
 Winter's-Low-Hut, seven miles from Salisbury, 
 to deliver the bags, when one of his leaders was 
 suddenly attacked by a ferocious animal, which 
 proved to be a lioness. A large mastiff came to 
 the rescue, but when she charged him he fled, and 
 was pursued and killed about forty yards from 
 where the coach was standing. It turned out 
 that the lioness had escaped from a menagerie 
 which was on its way to Salisbury Fair. She was 
 eventually driven into a granary, carrying the 
 dead mastiff in her teeth, and there secured by her 
 keepers. A picture of this strange attack was 
 long exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly ; 
 of this picture I imagine the sign to be a copy, it 
 seems too well done to have been painted expressly 
 for the public-house to which it belongs. In the
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 171 
 course of 1889 a curious sign, the Whistling 
 
 x o * O 
 
 Oyster, disappeared from No. 13, Vinegar Yard, 
 on the south side of Drury Lane Theatre. Here 
 were formerly oyster and refreshment rooms, and 
 it seems that about 1 840 Mr. Pearkes, the then 
 proprietor, discovered among his stock an eccentric 
 bivalve, which actually did produce a sort of 
 whistling sound ; much custom for a time and many 
 jokes resulting therefrom. In an early volume of 
 Punch there is a fancy portrait of the whistling oyster. 
 In the course of this work I have several times 
 alluded to the Guildhall Museum, beneath the 
 Guildhall Library, which is not known as it 
 deserves. It contains not only sculptured signs, 
 but a very valuable collection of objects of artistic 
 and antiquarian interest, most of them from various 
 parts of the city. The only drawbacks are that 
 the crypt or room in which they are placed, being 
 half underground, is very imperfectly lighted, 
 and that the collection has not hitherto been 
 catalogued. This latter defect will, however, 
 I understand, be shortly remedied. Before de- 
 scending let us glance at the statues which flank 
 the entrance to the Guildhall Library and Museum 
 from King Street. They are from the old College 
 of Physicians in Warwick Lane one of Wren's 
 buildings some remains of which still exist, incor- 
 porated in the premises at the back of No. i, Newgate 
 Street. These statues represent King Charles II. and
 
 172 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Sir John Cutler, a rich merchant whose avarice, 
 handed down by Pope* and others, has become im- 
 mortal. It seems that in 1675 Sir John a near 
 relation of Dr. Whistler, the president expressed 
 a wish to subscribe towards the rebuilding of the 
 College of Physicians, which had been destroyed in 
 the Great Fire, having previously stood at Amen 
 Corner. When a deputation attended to thank 
 him, he renewed his promise, and specified the 
 part of the building for which he intended to pay. 
 The theatre accordingly bore on its front towards 
 Warwick Lane the inscription, ' Theatrum Cut- 
 lerianum.' In the year 1680 statues in honour of 
 the king and the knight were voted by members 
 of the college. A certain amount of money must 
 have been furnished, and some years afterwards 
 Cutler advanced them more ; but after his death 
 his executors, in 1699, claimed the whole with 
 interest, the money pretended to be given, and 
 that actually given, being alike set down as a loan 
 in Cutler's books. The demand was compromised 
 for ^2,000. The statue remained, but the college 
 wisely obliterated the inscription which, in the 
 warmth of its gratitude, it had placed beneath the 
 
 * He is Volpone in Pope's 'Moral Essay': 
 
 'His grace's fate sage Cutler could foresee 
 And well (he thought) advised him " Live like me." 
 As well his grace replied, " Like you, Sir John ? 
 That I can do, when all I have is gone." '
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 173 
 
 figure : ' Omnis Cutleri cedat labor amphitheatre. ' 
 Pennant* is responsible for the above account, per- 
 haps overcoloured, which he gave on the authority of 
 Dr. Richard Warren. Strype speaks of Sir John as a 
 great benefactor to the college; he had nodoubt given 
 largely to the Grocers' Company, of which he was 
 warden, and a portrait of him is in their possession. 
 I will now ask my readers to come with me to 
 the Museum, which well repays a visit. I under- 
 stand that the nucleus of it was formed in 1829, 
 when various antiquities, discovered in digging the 
 foundations of the then new Post Office in St. 
 Martin's-le-Grand, the new London Bridge, and 
 in the destruction of the Guildhall Chapel, were 
 brought together ; but it has only of late years 
 become important. I have already described the 
 sculptured signs which here find a home ; let me 
 now briefly call attention to other objects which 
 seem to me especially interesting. There is an 
 article on them in the City Press for September 5, 
 1891, to which I am indebted for several useful 
 hints. The accumulation of earth and debris in 
 the City is so great, that the present town is raised 
 many feet above Roman London. Now that 
 excavations for new buildings are carried down 
 much deeper than formerly, valuable objects are 
 not unfrequently brought to light. The Roman 
 
 * ' Some account of London,' by Thos. Pennant, 3rd 
 edition, pp. 372, 373.
 
 174 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 antiquities in the Museum are many and impor- 
 tant ; of these perhaps the most striking is a large 
 piece of tessellated pavement from Bucklersbury, 
 in almost perfect condition. It was found no less 
 than 19 feet below the level of the roadway, on 
 which account it is thought to be an early relic ot 
 the Roman occupation. One of the good deeds 
 of the much-abused Metropolitan Board of Works 
 was the gift of this piece of pavement to the 
 Corporation. In the course of excavations in the 
 City no less than three bastions of the original 
 wall have been discovered. The foundations of 
 these were formed by masses of statuary, inscrip- 
 tions, and other debris of earlier Roman buildings. 
 A fine specimen is the statue of a Roman soldier, 
 found at the bastion in Camomile Street a few 
 years since. Then there is a sculptured lion 
 fiercely attacking another animal, and many similar 
 remains of equal or greater interest ; to describe 
 them all in the briefest way would fill a chapter. 
 About one other relic of the Roman occupa- 
 tion I shall say a few words, because it appears 
 to be an almost unique instance of a joke, written 
 by a Roman with his own hand. This is a tile 
 found in the Roman wall during the excavations 
 for Cutler's Hall in Warwick Square. On it are 
 the following words, evidently incised when it was 
 still soft : ' Austalis, Dibusu vagatur sib cotidem,' 
 which was thus translated by the .late Mr. Charles
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 175 
 
 Roach Smith : ' Austalis wanders off (from his 
 work) by himself to the Gods every day.' The 
 sentence is thought to apply to a workman who 
 was in the habit of absenting himself at odd 
 intervals, for purposes of prayer maybe or more 
 likely of refreshment, and to have been written by 
 a fellow workman. 
 
 Of later objects, the various specimens of 
 mediaeval skates are worth mentioning. Each 
 one is fashioned out of the tibia of a horse. They 
 have been found from time to time in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Moorfields, and well exemplify the 
 description written by Fitzstephen in the twelfth 
 century, wherein he tells us that ' when the fen or 
 moor which watereth the walls of the City on the 
 north side, is frozen, many young men play upon 
 the ice some tie bones to their feet, and shoving 
 themselves by a little picked staff, do slide as 
 quickly as a bird flieth through the air, or an 
 arrow out of a crossbow.' Interesting also are 
 the flat caps of burgesses, considered to be of the 
 time of Henry VII., which were found in Finsbury, 
 May, 1887, and exhibited to the members of the 
 British Archaeological Association by Mr. J. W. 
 Bailey. They resemble the flatter kind of Scotch 
 caps, or the Basque caps, and have a peculiar little 
 flap behind. Gold coins were discovered in the 
 double rims of these caps, kept there for safety, 
 no doubt ; one of them an angel, of the time of
 
 176 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Richard II. Then there is a fine collection oi 
 Elizabethan graybeard jugs or bellarmines, the 
 grotesque heads on them being caricatured from 
 the cardinal of that name, who so strongly opposed 
 the reformed religion. Among larger objects, a 
 splendid fireplace from the old mansion in Lime 
 Street which belonged to the Fishmongers' Com- 
 pany, and on which Messrs. G. H. Birch and R. 
 Phene Spiers drew up such a valuable monograph 
 at the time of its destruction. An old stone 
 conduit from South Molton Street is worth a 
 glance. It has on it the City arms and the date 
 1627, and was found six feet below the pavement. 
 There is interest of a kind, too, in the inscription 
 from Pudding Lane, affixed in 1681 by over- 
 zealous Protestants to the house of Farryner, the 
 King's baker, where the Great Fire of London 
 first began. This inscription was taken down in 
 the reign of James II., replaced in that of William 
 III., and finally removed about the middle of last 
 century. It was found in the cellar and brought 
 here when the house (latterly numbered 25) was 
 pulled down in 1876. 
 
 A few signs not sculptured are, I think, worth 
 alluding to. One of the quaintest is composed of 
 blue and yellow Dutch tiles, and was doubtless 
 once fixed near the entrance of a coffee-house, but 
 unfortunately no record of it has been preserved. 
 It is about twenty inches high, and represents a
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 177 
 
 boy with long hair, in seventeenth-century costume, 
 somewhat like that of the modern Bluecoat boys. 
 He is standing, and pouring out coffee ; by his 
 side is a table, with appliances for drinking, and 
 tobacco pipes, and above, on a scroll, the words 
 4 DISH OF COFFEE BOY.' A sign of this kind in 
 remarkable preservation, and finely executed, is 
 the Cock and Bottle three to four feet high, and 
 worked in blue and white Dutch tiles with an 
 ornamental border which came from Cannon 
 Street. The date of this sign is said to be about 
 1 700 ; the house to which it belonged formerly 
 stood on the south side, and was pulled down in 
 1853, at the time of the Cannon Street alterations. 
 A public-house (Nos. 94 and 96), still called the 
 Cock and Bottle, occupies the site. A sign of 
 a Dolphin which belongs to the earlier part of 
 the eighteenth century was in 1890 presented by 
 Messrs. Burrup, so long pleasantly connected with 
 the Surrey Cricket Club. It is painted on copper, 
 and comes from a shop on the south side of the 
 old Royal Exchange, where an ancestor of the 
 Burrup family was first established in 1730. A 
 unique relic is the little plate of metal, inscribed 
 as follows: 
 
 ' Abraham Bartlett, who makes ye boulting mills and 
 cloathes, dwells at the sign of the boulting mill at Thames 
 Street, near Queenhith, London, 1678.' 
 
 It is surmounted by a grotesque head, and fixed 
 
 12
 
 178 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 on a thin piece of wood with a ring for hanging it 
 up. The boulting-mill was used for sifting meal 
 by shaking it backwards and forwards, boulting- 
 cloth being a material of loose texture for the meal 
 to pass through. Of doubtful origin is a classically 
 designed figure of a boy in low relief, with foliated 
 border, and the date 1633 ; the material of this is 
 cast iron. Another curious relic is a wooden 
 statuette of Time, with scythe and hour-glass, 
 which formerly belonged to the clock in the 
 church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. The inscription 
 tells us that it was presented by the church- 
 wardens, who in my opinion ought never to have 
 removed it from the church for which it had 
 been carved, where it was far more appropriately 
 placed than it can possibly be here ; though of 
 course one is glad that it is preserved. 
 
 Last, not least, a very interesting stone bas- 
 relief of doubtful origin, which purports to re- 
 present Whittington and his cat, was bequeathed 
 by the Rev. Canon Lysons. The figure in 
 question is doubtless that of a boy carrying a little 
 quadruped in his arms. The tablet to which it 
 belongs seems to have been broken off on the 
 side to the spectator's left, and therefore probably 
 formed part of a larger piece of sculpture. This 
 relic, which at a first glance seems to resemble a 
 sculptured house-sign, was exhibited some years 
 ago at a meeting of the Archaeological Institute.
 
 Miscellaneous Signs, Dates, Inscriptions. 179 
 
 Mr. Lysons stated on that occasion that it was 
 dug up in Westgate Street, Gloucester. From a 
 rent-roll of 1460, he had learned that in the said 
 year Richard ' Whitynton,' lord of the manor of 
 Staunton, possessed a house or houses, called 
 ' Rotten Row, or Asschowellys-place ' ; and from 
 a lease it appeared that the house, in the foun- 
 dations of which the stone was found, stands 
 exactly on the site of Asschowellys (in modern 
 orthography Ashwell's) Place. The Richard Whit- 
 tington here alluded to was great-nephew of the 
 renowned Lord Mayor of London, living con- 
 temporaneously with his famous namesake, the 
 rent-roll above named having been made within 
 thirty-seven years of Sir Richard's death. This is 
 certainly a very singular coincidence, and if it 
 could be proved that the tablet in question 
 represented Whittington and his cat, we might 
 consider that the tradition about him, which has 
 delighted the childhood of so many thousands^ 
 was really founded on fact. Mr. Lysons was 
 strongly of that opinion ; he stated, however, that 
 the house in Westgate Street, under which the 
 tablet was found, besides being on the site of Ash- 
 well's Place, is also on the site of a Roman temple 
 and perhaps most impartial observers will be 
 inclined to think that the costume of the figure, and 
 the general style of the tablet in question, point 
 rather to indifferent Roman than to fifteenth- 
 century work.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A FEW SUBURBAN SPAS. 
 
 ' Of either sex whole droves together 
 To see and to be seen flock thither, 
 To drink and not to drink the water, 
 And here promiscuously to chatter.' 
 Islington Wells or the Threepenny Academy, 1691. 
 
 IN connection with sculptured signs, and again 
 when alluding to the arms of the Fowler 
 family, and to Canonbury, I have had occasion to 
 describe houses in Islington. I shall now take up 
 the thread of my discourse, from the White Lion 
 on the west side of the High Street, and ask the 
 kind reader to explore with me the sites of some 
 of the old places of entertainment nearer London. 
 A short distance further south is the Angel, rebuilt 
 in 1819. This was one of the picturesque old 
 galleried inns which have now become almost 
 extinct. Close at hand, on the opposite side of 
 the way, is the old Red Lion tavern, very much 
 rejuvenated ; it puts forward a bold claim to date 
 from the year 1415. On the gables are shields,
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 181 
 
 apparently modern, with lions in relief. Seventy or 
 eighty years ago this house stood almost alone on 
 the high-road. Here Tom Paine was said to have 
 written his ' Rights of Man/ and the tradition is 
 that Goldsmith, Thomson, nay even the great 
 Dr. Johnson, visited it. In the middle distance of 
 Hogarth's picture of ' Evening,' there is a house, 
 supposed to be the old Red Lion, which shows 
 how rural were its then surroundings. The scene 
 is laid in front of the Myddleton's Head also 
 at that time apparently a country wayside inn, 
 which, says Pinks, had been built in 1614. A 
 portrait of the worthy founder of the New River 
 Company projects by way of sign from the gable. 
 This house stood on the south side of Sadler's 
 Wells Theatre, from which it was separated by 
 the New River. Malcolm has recorded that in 
 1803 it was still picturesque. He says: 'A few 
 paces northwards (from Islington Spa) conduct the 
 passenger under a portrait of Sir Hugh Myddle- 
 ton (tolerably well painted), who faces his river 
 adorned with tall poplars, graceful willows, sloping 
 banks, and flowers.' How changed is now the 
 scene ! The trees have long since perished as 
 utterly as the anglers,* * the noble swans ' and 
 water-fowl, of an earlier time ; and Sir Hugh 
 
 * In the Public Advertiser for Wednesday, April 21, 1775, 
 it is stated that ' a trout was catched in the New River, near 
 Sadler's Wells, which weighed eight pounds and a half.'
 
 1 82 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 would no longer face his once pleasant stream, 
 which in its old age has disappeared from sight, 
 and taken refuge under ground. In 1831 the 
 Sir Hugh Myddleton tavern replaced the former 
 house of entertainment. This, in its turn, has 
 now ceased to exist, having been pulled down, with 
 other houses in Myddleton Place, to make room for 
 the new thoroughfare* from the Angel, Islington, 
 to Holborn Town Hall, opened July 9, 1892, 
 under the name of Rosebery Avenue. 
 
 One of the leading characteristics of London 
 citizens of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies was their taste for frequenting public gardens 
 and houses of amusement in the suburbs. Many 
 of these were originally health-resorts ' spas ' or 
 * wells,' they were called, from the springs of 
 mineral water which had formed the chief attraction. 
 In such places the northern suburbs abounded, and 
 the parish of Clerkenwellf might be considered 
 
 * This roadway is 1,173 yards in length, and has cost 
 .353,526, but the amount will be diminished by the sale of 
 unused lands. Running under it is a subway for the convey- 
 ance of electric lighting, etc., high enough for a man to 
 walk through. 
 
 t The parish derived its name from a holy well, at which 
 the parish clerks of London used annually to perform a miracle 
 play. Its site was marked by a pump near the south-east 
 corner of Ray Street, an illustration of which is given in 
 Wilkinson's ' Londina Illustrata.' The well still exists a few 
 feet to the north, covered by a massive brick arch, under
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 183 
 
 their headquarters. At a time when travelling 
 was toilsome and costly, sometimes even dangerous, 
 it was useful to have a little Buxton or Harrogate 
 close at hand. To supply the demand, some enter- 
 prising person discovered a spring with rare healing 
 powers ; some doctor wrote it up, and the place 
 became, for a time at least, fashionable. Such a 
 spa in St. George's Fields I have already described. 
 Let me say a few words about others equally in- 
 teresting, in the neighbourhood in which we now 
 find ourselves. 
 
 Not far from the site of the Myddleton's Head, 
 on the north side of the New River, no longer 
 visible, and close to the New River Head, stands 
 Sadler's Wells Theatre, built on the site of one of 
 these places of health-resort. It seems that some 
 time before 1683, a certain Mr. Sadler, said to have 
 been a surveyor of highways, had put up a wooden 
 building hereabouts, which was known as Sadler's 
 Music-house. In that year his servants, when 
 digging in the garden for gravel, were reported 
 to have discovered a mineral spring, and in 1684 
 a pamphlet was published by a doctor named 
 Thomas Guidot, puffing the curative powers of 
 the water. He speaks of five or six hundred 
 
 the floor of No. 18, Farringdon Road formerly the parish 
 watch-house. This quaint little tenement is now to be let 
 on building lease. The whole neighbourhood seems in old 
 days to have had a reputation for holy and medicinal wells.
 
 184 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 patients being there every morning, and assures 
 us that the spring had merely been rediscovered : 
 ' The priests belonging to the Priory of Clarken- 
 well, using to attend there, making the people 
 believe that the virtues of the waters proceeded 
 from the efficacy of their prayers.' ' These super- 
 stitions,' he adds, ' were the occasion of its being 
 arched over and concealed at the time of the 
 Reformation.' 
 
 In spite of this fine pufF, the waters, apparently, 
 soon ceased to attract, though they continued to 
 be sold in Sadler's name for some time, as shown by 
 an advertisement of June, 1697.* In 1699 the 
 building was advertised as Miles's Musick-house. 
 The place had then become known as a resort for 
 very disorderly characters. Miles was succeeded 
 by Francis Forcer, whose father, a musician, seems 
 to have lived on the spot. 
 
 The son, said to have been an Oxford man, intro- 
 duced the diversions of tumbling and rope-dancing 
 with the pranks of Harlequin and Scaramouch. 
 He died in 1743, and in the following year the 
 establishment was being carried on by one John 
 Warren, when it was presented by a Middlesex 
 Grand Jury as a place of ' great extravagance, 
 
 * In the Post Boy, and in the Flying Post for June, 1697, we 
 are told that 'Sadler's excellent steel waters at Islington, having 
 been obstructed for some years, are now opened and current 
 again,' etc.
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 185 
 
 luxury, idleness, and ill-fame.' Soon afterwards 
 it got into the hands of Mr. Rosoman,* who 
 in 1765 pulled down Sadler's wooden erection, 
 and built a regular theatre on the site. 
 
 Towards the end of last century Sadler's Wells 
 was still some distance from London, and the roads 
 were by no means safe. George Daniel, in his 
 ' Merrie England,' says : ' It is curious to read at 
 the bottom of the old bills and advertisements 
 the following alarming announcements, " A horse 
 patrol will be sent in the New Road that night, 
 for the protection of the nobility and gentry who 
 go from the squares and that end of the town ; 
 the road also towards the city will be properly 
 guarded." Again, "June, 1783. Patroles of 
 horse and foot are stationed from Sadler's Wells 
 gate along the New Road to Tottenham Court 
 Turnpike ; likewise from the City Road to Moor- 
 fields ; also to St. John Street, and across the Spa 
 fields to Rosoman Row, from the hours of eight to 
 eleven." 1 On Easter Monday, April 2, 1804, a 
 new sort of entertainment called ' Naumachia ' 
 was produced at Sadler's Wells. An immense 
 tank had been constructed under the stage and 
 beyond it, which could be filled by water from the 
 
 * At the bar of the Sir Hugh Myddleton tavern there 
 was formerly an interesting portrait group of frequenters of 
 the old Myddleton's Head, Mr. Rosoman being in the 
 centre. *
 
 1 86 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 New River, and emptied at pleasure. On this 
 aquatic stage, the boards being removed, was given 
 a mimic representation of the Siege of Gibraltar, 
 in which real vessels of considerable size bom- 
 barded the fortress, but were subdued by the 
 garrison and to all appearance burnt.* After 
 a time the success of the novelty was prodigious, 
 and many pieces of the same kind were afterwards 
 produced. This theatre was distinguished a 
 generation ago as the home of Shakespearean 
 drama, under the management of that sterling 
 actor Samuel Phelps. It was rebuilt in 1879. 
 The actual site of the old well has long been lost ; 
 Malcolm asserted that it had been discovered 
 some time before he wrote ' in the space between 
 the New River and the stage-door ' of the theatre, 
 and that it was said to have been encircled with 
 stone, with a descent of several steps. Cromwell, 
 however, writing a few years later, tells us that 
 ' persons who have an intimate acquaintance with 
 the theatre for the last half- century have no 
 recollection of the discovery ; and as it is known 
 that springs yet exist under the orchestra and 
 stage, it seems probable that the ancient healing 
 fountain might be traced to that situation.' 
 
 For a few years, during the first half of the 
 seventeenth century, there was a rival to Sadler's 
 Wells in a popular place of amusement called ' The 
 
 * Pinks's ' History of Clerkenwell,' 2nd edition, p. 427.
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 187 
 
 New Wells near the London Spa.' There were 
 gardens here, and a theatre, in which took place 
 what we should now call variety entertainments. 
 Mrs. Charlotte Charke the eccentric daughter of 
 Colley Gibber, was one of the performers. Ceasing 
 to attract, it was closed in 1 747, the theatre being 
 afterwards used as a chapel under the auspices of 
 John Wesley, and, according to Pinks, the houses 
 Nos. 5 to 8, Rosoman Street now occupy the 
 site. 
 
 Lysons, Halliwell Phillipps, and others, have 
 confused the mineral spring discovered by Sadler 
 with a mineral spring of greater celebrity called 
 the New Tunbridge Wells ; but, though near 
 each other, they were quite distinct. In 1699 
 a narrative poem was published under the title 
 of ' A Walk to Islington, with a Description 
 of New Tunbridge Wells and Sadler's Musick 
 House,' in which the fame of the wells is ascribed 
 to its medicinal water, and that of the music-house 
 to such good cheer as cheesecakes, custards, bottled 
 ale and cider, and the diversions of singing and 
 dancing. An article in the Gentleman's Magazine 
 for December, 1813, puts the matter beyond 
 a doubt ; and their relative positions are clearly 
 marked in Horwood's map of 1799. New Tun- 
 bridge Wells, or the Islington Spa (really, of course, 
 in the parish of Clerkenwell), was a spring of 
 chalybeate water in a garden, the entrance to which
 
 1 88 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 until 1 8 1 o was opposite the New River Head on 
 the south side ; No. 6, Eliza Place marked the 
 site. This street, a continuation west of Myddle- 
 ton Place, has, like it, been absorbed by Rosebery 
 Avenue. The spa was open to the public before 
 1685, as is proved by a curious advertisement in 
 the London Gazette of September 24 in that year : 
 'Whereas Mr. John Langley, of London, Merchant, 
 who bought the Rhinoceros and Islington Wells, 
 has been represented by divers of his malicious 
 adversaries to be a person of no estate or reputa- 
 tion, nor able to discharge his debts ; which evil 
 practices have been on purpose to ruin and destroy 
 his reputation,' etc. The character of the 
 company soon after this may be judged from 
 a burlesque poem, published in 1691 ; it con- 
 tains the lines which head this chapter. In 1 700 
 there was * music for dancing all day long, 
 every Monday and Thursday during the summer 
 season. No mask to be admitted.' A few years 
 later the spa became fashionable, being patronized 
 by ladies of such position as Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu. It was at its zenith in 1733, when the 
 Princesses Amelia and Caroline, daughters of 
 George II., came daily in the summer and drank 
 the waters. At this time, as we learn from the 
 Gentleman s Magazine, ' Such was the concourse 
 of nobility and others that the proprietor took 
 above 30 in a morning. On the birthday of the
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 
 
 Princesses, as they passed through the Spa Field 
 (which was generally filled with carriages), they 
 were saluted with a discharge of 2 1 guns, a compli- 
 ment which was always paid them on their arrival ; 
 and in the evening there was a great bonfire, and 
 the guns were discharged several times.' Islington 
 Spa continued with, on the whole, declining 
 fortune throughout the rest of the eighteenth 
 century. Soon afterwards it was found necessary 
 to curtail the garden, and a great part of the old 
 coffee-roorn was pulled down. About the year 
 1810, the old entrance being closed, a new one 
 was made in Lloyd's Row ; and finally, in 1840, 
 what remained of the garden was altogether done 
 away with, and two rows of houses, called Spa 
 Cottages, were built on the site. Even now there 
 is a house at the corner of Lloyd's Row and Spa 
 Cottages, the residence of the last proprietor, which 
 recalls the vanished glory of other days by the 
 inscription in capital letters, ' ISLINGTON SPA, OR 
 NEW TUNBRIDGE WELLS.' At the back, in the 
 cellar of No. 6, Spa Cottages, I have seen grotto- 
 work with stone pilasters ; on each side are steps 
 descending. Here, I believe, was the original 
 chalybeate spring ; for many years it has ceased to 
 flow. 
 
 Horwood's map of 1799 shows some of these 
 suburban spas and places of amusement very dis- 
 tinctly. Islington Spa is marked just south of the
 
 190 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 New River Head, and over a hundred yards south- 
 west of Sadler's Wells. The garden is of con- 
 siderable size, running east, apparently to St. John 
 Street Road. A short distance to the west, and 
 also near the New River Head, is Merlin's Cave 
 a rural tavern and holiday-resort of Londoners 
 named, it is said, after an artificial cave, dug out 
 in 1835 m tne r y a l gardens at Richmond, by 
 order of Queen Caroline, and of which there was 
 here, perhaps, a humble imitation. 
 
 Again, some distance to the south of the New 
 River Head, at the corner of Rosoman Street and 
 Exmouth Street, one sees the words ' London 
 Spa,' on a public-house with that sign erected in 
 1835 to replace a former building. This is on 
 or near the site of another mineral spring once, as 
 we have seen, sufficiently famous to be named in 
 a description of the New Wells,* a neighbouring 
 establishment. In ' Poor Robin's Almanack ' for 
 1733, occurs the following doggerel, which refers 
 to the month of July : 
 
 ' Now sweethearts with their sweethearts go 
 To Islington or London Spaw ; 
 Some go but just to drink the water, 
 Some for the ale which they like better.' 
 
 * Both places are alluded to in an advertisement (dated 
 1747) of the Mulberry Garden, the site of which, says Pinks, 
 was afterwards covered by the House of Detention. A print 
 of it exists.
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 191 
 
 In point of fact, the spa ale sold here seems before 
 the middle of the century to have become famous, 
 when the mineral water was no longer heard of. 
 Spa Fields, which adjoined, were an open waste, 
 a Sunday resort of Londoners of the lower class 
 addicted to rough sports. I have already referred 
 to these fields at page 69, when speaking of the 
 Ducking -pond public-house and its successors, 
 the Pantheon, and Spa Fields Chapel, the first of 
 ' the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.' She 
 died in the house adjoining it on June 17, 1791. 
 
 At the end of last century one might have had 
 an almost rural walk from the London Spa west 
 to Bagnigge Wells, a more famous place of enter- 
 tainment. The way would have been along 
 Exmouth Street, then built on the south side only, 
 and called Braynes Row ; a relic of its early days 
 remains in the form of a tablet between Nos. 32 
 and 34, which has inscribed on it ' Braynes Build- 
 ings 1765.' At the end of this street was a turn- 
 pike, and at right angles to it was the Bagnigge 
 Wells Road, the lower portion of which had the 
 suggestive name of Coppice Row. North-west 
 from the turnpike, it ran between fields as far as 
 a little group of houses called Brook Place, and 
 then a few more steps would have taken one to 
 Bagnigge Wells,* within the borders of St. Pancras. 
 
 * The springs thus named were almost on the site of 
 another medicinal spring called Black Mary's Well or Hole.
 
 192 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 There was a tradition, unsupported, I believe, by 
 any evidence, that Nell Gwynne had here a place 
 of summer abode, ' pleasantly situated amid the 
 Fields, and on the banks of the Fleet,' then a 
 clear stream flowing rapidly and somewhat subject 
 to floods. This was Bagnigge House, a gabled 
 building, some trace of which still remained as 
 late as the year 1844. Inside, it had originally 
 some curious decorative features ; over a chimney- 
 piece in one of the rooms were the Royal arms and 
 other heraldic bearings, and between them ' the 
 bust of a woman in Roman dress, let deep into a 
 circular cavity of the wall, bordered with festoons 
 of delf earth in the natural colours and glazed.' 
 These were afterwards removed from this position, 
 and set up in a long room built for assemblies and 
 
 Dr. Bevis makes them out the same, and suggests that the 
 title by which the latter had been known was a corruption 
 of ' Blessed Mary's Hole.' Other writers seek to derive it 
 from Mary Woolaston a black woman who about 1680 is 
 supposed to have lived hereabout, by the side, of the road, in 
 a circular hut built of stones, and to have leased and sold the 
 waters. According to the Gentleman's Magazine for 1813, 
 part ii., p. 557, this spring was afterwards enclosed in a 
 conduit by Walter Baynes, Esq., the gentleman who, in 1697, 
 discovered the famous Cold Bath, and who owned, in part at 
 least, the Sir John Oldcastle tavern and gardens hard by. 
 According to a plan of the city and environs of London, as 
 fortified by Parliament in 1642-3, there was a battery and 
 breastwork ' on the hill E. of Blackmary's Hole.'
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 193 
 
 balls, which, formed the eastern boundary of the 
 garden. An aquatint print of the interior of 
 this room was published by J. R. Smith in 1772, 
 after a painting by Saunders. The place seems 
 to have been opened for purposes of amusement 
 early in the eighteenth century ; for in Beck- 
 ham's* curious work, the ' Musical Entertainer ' 
 (circa 1738), is an engraving of Tom Hippersly 
 there, mounted in the ' singing rostrum,' regaling 
 the company with a song. The inevitable heal- 
 ing springs, which always, no doubt, made their 
 appearance when wanted, were, it would seem, a 
 comparatively late discovery, first introduced to the 
 public by Dr. John Bevis, who in 1760 wrote 'An 
 Experimental Enquiry concerning the Contents, 
 Quality and Medicinal Value of two Mineral Waters 
 lately discovered at Bagnigge Wells near London.' 
 One was supposed to be purging, and the other 
 chalybeate ; he gives an elaborate account of each. 
 About the year 1775 the placet was described in 
 
 * See Notes and Queries, 3rd series, ii., p. 228. 
 
 t In Miss Burney's ' Evelina ' (chap, xlv.), published 
 January, 1778, there is an interesting list of places of amuse- 
 ment in the suburbs. The vulgar members of the Branghton 
 family, and others, dispute as to which they shall visit in the 
 evening. Miss Branghton votes for Saltero's coffee-house ; 
 her sister for a party at Mother Red Cap's ; the brother for 
 White Conduit House ; Mr. Brown for Bagnigge Wells ; 
 Mr. Branghton for Sadler's Wells, and Mr. Smith for 
 Vauxhall. White Conduit House is at last fixed upon. The 
 
 13
 
 194 London Signs and Inscriptions, 
 
 ' The Sunday Ramble ' as ' by no means barren of 
 amusement, and visited in the morning by hundreds 
 of persons to drink the water, and on summer 
 afternoons by numerous tea -drinking parties.' 
 The writer tells of ' beautiful walks ornamented 
 with a great variety of curious shrubs and flowers 
 all in the utmost perfection,' and ' a small round 
 fish-pond, in the centre of which is a curious 
 fountain representing Cupid bestriding a swan, 
 which spouts the water to a great height.' The 
 Fleet,* or, as it was sometimes there called, the 
 Bagnigge River, now a sewer, but at that time still 
 comparatively undefiled, flowed through part of 
 the garden ; it was crossed by a bridge, and the 
 banks were rich with vegetation, insomuch that, as 
 Archer tells us, Luke Clennell, the artist, often 
 came here and made foreground studies for his 
 pictures. But tastes change : the mineral waters 
 ceased to attract ; people of fashion came no more. 
 As early as 1779 Bagnigge Wells is described as a 
 place 
 
 ' Where 'prenticed youth enjoy the Sunday feast, 
 And City matrons boast their Sabbath rest, 
 Where unfledged Templars first as fops parade, 
 And new-made ensigns sport their first cockade.' 
 
 site of this is marked by a public-house No. 14, Barnsbury 
 Road ; it was named after an ancient conduit which once 
 stood hard by. 
 
 * Stow calls it the River of Wells, from the numerous 
 springs that overflowed into it.
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 
 
 '95 
 
 Later it became a mere cockney tea-garden, and 
 gradually declined, till in Lewis's ' History of 
 Islington,' 1 842, it is described as almost a ruin. 
 Shortly afterwards it was closed and dismantled, 
 and now all trace of it has disappeared, save the 
 name, which has been appropriated by a modern 
 tavern at the corner of King's Cross Road (formerly 
 Bagnigge Wells Road) and Pakenham Street, and 
 
 a curious stone tablet surmounted by a grotesque 
 head, of which I here give an illustration. This 
 is now to be seen built into the wall between two 
 modern houses Nos. 61 and 63, King's Cross 
 Road probably near the north-western limit of 
 the garden. It is mentioned by Dr. Bevis in 1 760 
 as having been ' over an old Gothic portal taken
 
 196 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 down about three years ago, and now replaced 
 over the door from the highroad to the house.' 
 At that time, I believe, the grotesque head was 
 added. About thirty years ago, as may be learned 
 from a letter in the Builder, January, 1863, the 
 doorway was pulled down and the stone fixed 
 where one may still see it, in front of the houses 
 built on the site. I was glad to find this stone still 
 in existence ; it is worth rescuing from oblivion. 
 The inscription runs as follows : * This is Bagnigge 
 House neare the Finder a Wakefielde 1680.' 
 
 The latter place, thus referred to, was an old 
 country tavern in the Gray's Inn Road. Mr. 
 Wheatley says it was on the west side, and that 
 the small houses between Harrison Street and 
 Cromer Street, till recently called Pindar Place, 
 occupied the site ; and, confirming his statement, it 
 is shown in Strype's map on the west side of * the 
 road to Hamstead.' The modern public-house 
 with this sign is on the east side. Tom Brown, 
 in his ' Comical View of London and Westminster,' 
 published in 1705, gives us a pleasant glimpse of 
 the then surroundings of a stile near Lamb's 
 Conduit, and ' a milkmaid crossing the fields to 
 Pinder of Wakefield.' There is mention of it 
 immediately after the Great Fire, by Aubrey. 
 When the inscription was first put up, Bagnigge 
 House and the Pinder of Wakefield were probably 
 next-door neighbours, though their sites are now
 
 A Few Suburban Spas. 197 
 
 separated by a dreary wilderness of bricks and 
 mortar. Palmer, in his ' History of St. Pancras,' 
 records that in 1724 the Pinder of Wakefield was 
 destroyed in a hurricane, the landlord's two 
 daughters being buried in the ruins. The word 
 Pinder, equivalent to pinner or penner, was applied 
 to the keeper of the public pen or pound for the 
 confinement of stray cattle. George a-Green, or 
 the Pinder of the town of Wakefield, is the 
 subject of a prose romance supposed to be as old 
 as the time of Queen Elizabeth. He (so runs the 
 legend), with his back to a thorn and his foot to 
 a stone, thrashed no less a foe than Robin Hood. 
 
 Before quitting this branch of my subject, I will 
 say a few words about a former health-resort within 
 a stone's throw of the old Pinder of Wakefield. 
 On the east side of Gray's Inn Road, near the upper 
 end, by the King's Cross Station on the Metro- 
 politan Railway, is a shabby-looking passage called 
 St. Chad's Row, which, turning to the north, runs 
 into King's Cross Road, and here is the site of the 
 well named after St. Chad or St. Ceadda, who 
 founded the bishopric of Lichfield, and died in 
 672. In Laurie and Whittle's map of 1800, the 
 extension of Gray's Inn Road northwards is called 
 St. Chad's Road. The well, however, as far as I 
 can ascertain, was not particularly ancient or, if 
 so, the early records are lost. Hone describes it 
 in his 'Everyday Book' in the following prophetic
 
 198 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 words : ' St. Chad's Well is near Battle Bridge. 
 The miraculous water is aperient, and was some 
 years ago quaffed by the bilious and other 
 invalids, who flocked thither in crowds. ... A 
 few years and it will be with its waters as with the 
 water of St. Pancras' Well, which is enclosed in 
 the garden of a private house near old St. Pancras 
 Churchyard.' 
 
 The garden attached to St. Chad's Well seems 
 in the last century to have been famous for its 
 tulips ; at least, if one may believe an advertise- 
 ment in my possession, which has the date 1779. 
 It speaks of ' The largest and richest .collection 
 of early Dutch tulips ever yet seen in Great 
 Britain, now in bloom, with many fine double 
 hyacinths of various colours raised by Van 
 Hawsen, to be had of Richard Morris at St. 
 Chad's Wells, Battle Bridge, near London ; the 
 lowest prices marked in the catalogue, which may 
 be had as above, and the flowers seen gratis. No 
 person admitted with a dog. Seedsmen and 
 gardeners will be furnished wholesale with Duke 
 Vantol, Claremond, and many other sorts of early 
 tulips at the Dutch prices, and with the usual 
 discount : the grand present Auricula at is. per 
 pot : Gold and Silver Fish cheap.' Mr. Pinks 
 gives the particulars of the sale by auction of St. 
 Chad's Well on September 14, 1837. ^ seems 
 that there was then a brick house facing Gray's
 
 A Few Suburban Spas, 
 
 199 
 
 Inn Lane, having a pump-room and a large 
 garden at the back. The water appears to have 
 been still sold three years afterwards, when a 
 pamphlet was issued setting forth ' the character- 
 istic virtues of the Saint Chad's Wells aperient 
 and alterative springs.'
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TWO OLD CITY MANSIONS. 
 
 ' The crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose 
 traffickers are the honourable of the earth.' 
 
 Isaiah xxiii. 8. 
 
 BEFORE the summer of 1892 a large and 
 interesting old mansion was destroyed in 
 the City. This, known as Nos. 8 and 9, Great 
 St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street, was situated on the 
 south side of the churchyard. It was of brick, 
 having engaged pilasters, which were furnished 
 with stone bases and capitals ; they also had bands, 
 on two of which, composed, however, of cement, 
 appeared in relief the initials A L X and the date 
 1646. The projecting sills or cornices, and the 
 deep keystones of the first-floor windows, gave a 
 striking character to the house. It was also 
 memorable as an early specimen of brickwork in 
 London, and as dating from a period before the 
 formal conclusion of the Civil War, when building 
 operations were almost at a standstill. No. 9 had, 
 in a room on the first-floor, a wooden seventeenth-
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 201 
 
 century mantelpiece,* behind which, on its removal, 
 were found traces of an older mantelpiece of marble, 
 and evidence of the former existence of a large 
 open fireplace. There was a beautiful staircase, 
 quite Elizabethan in style ; a blocked-up window 
 with wooden transoms for casements was also 
 discovered ; so it seems likely that some years 
 
 NOS. O AND 9, GREAT ST. HELEN S. 
 
 after the building of the house considerable alter- 
 ations took place. The facade has often been 
 attributed to Inigo Jones, f but it had not his 
 
 * There was another fairly good mantelpiece on the 
 second-floor. 
 
 t I do not guarantee the completeness of the following 
 list of work in the City said to have been by Inigo Jones,
 
 2O2 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 classic symmetry, and looked like the work of a 
 less-instructed native genius. Besides, Inigo Jones, 
 a Royalist and Roman Catholic, was taken prisoner 
 in October, 1645, at tne storming of Basing 
 House, having been there during the siege, which 
 had lasted since August, 1643. He was appa- 
 rently not free to return to his profession until 
 July 2, 1646, when, after payment of a heavy fine, 
 his estate, which had been sequestrated, was restored 
 to him, and he received pardon by an ordinance of 
 the House of Commons, to which the Lords gave 
 their assent. It is difficult to believe that, whilst 
 
 but it may be useful for reference. The Church of St. 
 Catherine Cree, Leadenhall Street, has been popularly 
 ascribed to him ; it was consecrated by Laud, January 1 6, 
 1630-31, and is in pseudo-Gothic style. The Classic portico 
 to old St. Paul's Cathedral was designed by Jones in 1633. 
 The repairs under his supervision were begun in April, 1631, 
 and carried on for more than nine years. The Church of 
 St. Alban's, Wood Street, may have been his work ; it re- 
 placed the old church, pulled down in 1632. This was de- 
 stroyed in the Great Fire. The hall, theatre, and court-room 
 of the Barber-Surgeons' Company were built by him, ap- 
 parently in 1636. The hall was destroyed in the Great 
 Fire ; the theatre, which had been restored by the Earl of 
 Burlington, was pulled down in 1763. It has been stated 
 that the latter rebuilt the court-room ; Mr. Young, however, 
 in his 'Annals of the Barber-Surgeons' (1890), declares posi- 
 tively that it is the work of Inigo Jones, repaired after the 
 Fire. He is said to have also built Thanet House, Alders- 
 gate Street, which survived till 1882.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 203 
 
 he was passing through such a crisis, or in the 
 few months succeeding it, he should have been 
 superintending a work in the Puritan City. At 
 the time of his release the great architect was 
 seventy-four years of age, and, as far as we know, 
 he hardly practised his profession afterwards. 
 Aubrey tells us that in 1648, the south side of 
 Wilton House having been destroyed, it was 
 restored by his advice, ' but he being then very 
 old could not be there in person, but left it to 
 Mr. Webb,' his pupil and executor. 
 
 The division of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's 
 into two took place in the course of last century, 
 probably about 1750, to judge from the style of 
 the fanlights and projecting hoods to the front- 
 doors, and from the staircase of No. 8, the upper 
 part of which, however, was much more archaic, 
 and may have served as part of the back-staircase 
 to the original house. At the time of these later 
 alterations a new brick front was put to the top 
 story, the windows being protected by high iron 
 railings, which showed that these upper rooms 
 were used as nurseries. Before this there was, 
 I should imagine, a high-pitched roof, perhaps 
 hipped, with dormer windows. There must also 
 have been an appropriate cornice and frieze, which 
 would have balanced the heavy projecting window- 
 sills below. That the house always had a fourth 
 story is proved by the fact that both the old stair-
 
 PART OF THE OLD HOUSE IN GREAT ST. HELENA, FROM A 
 MEASURED DRAWING.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 205 
 
 cases extended to the top. The accompanying 
 illustration of part of the front is from a beautiful 
 measured drawing by Mr. H. O. Tarbolton. who 
 studied the house very carefully just before its 
 demolition. 
 
 In Allen's ' History of London,' vol. iii., p. 157, 
 I find a statement that this brick mansion (identi- 
 fied by mention of its initials and date) was ' for- 
 merly the residence of Sir J. Lawrence, Lord Mayor 
 in 1665.' This appears to be the origin of the 
 idea that the house was built for -him, and that he 
 kept his mayoralty there, which has of late been 
 usually accepted as a fact. There is no doubt that 
 Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's was his property 
 in 1665, but he was living in a house of totally 
 different appearance an illustration of which, by 
 T. Prattent, published in 1796, forms the frontis- 
 piece to vol. xxix. of the European Magazine. As 
 there shown, it had elaborate plaster decorations 
 in front, with the City arms and the arms of 
 Lawrence, and last, though not least, the inscrip- 
 tion s r jL K & A. 1662. Sir John Lawrence's resi- 
 dence is marked by name in the map of Bishops- 
 gate Street Ward accompanying Strype's Stow, 
 where a slight sketch of it is also given ; the 
 present Jewish synagogue in Great St. Helen's is 
 a little bit west of the site. 
 
 Having looked up the history of the Lawrence 
 family, and its connection with this parish, I think
 
 206 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 I can show that the initials on the pilaster of 
 Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's were not those 
 of Sir John Lawrence and his wife Abigail, but 
 of his uncle Adam and his uncle's wife. The 
 Lawrences, like many other eminent mercantile 
 families, were originally Dutch or Flemish. The 
 name was spelt in various ways, as Laurens, Lau- 
 reijns, Laurents, etc., until, when its possessors 
 became thoroughly anglicized, it took the English 
 form. Le Neve, the herald, says that a Marcus 
 Lawrence, from Flanders, who had married Ger- 
 trude Huesen, came and settled in London. He 
 had, among other children, a son Abraham and a 
 son Adam. The latter was baptized at the Dutch 
 Church, Austin Friars, September 8, 1584;* and 
 one may fairly assume that it was he who there 
 married, May 28, 1610, Judith Van den Brugghe, 
 of Norwich, where there was then a strong settle- 
 ment of people from the Low Countries. He was 
 appointed deacon of the Dutch Church in 1628, 
 and became an elder in 1632. Eleven years later 
 he had taken up his residence in Great St. Helen's, 
 as we learn from an entry in the parish register, | 
 
 * 'Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Registers of the Dutch 
 Reformed Church, Austin Friars, from 1571 to 1874,' edited 
 by W. V. C. Moens. 
 
 t On the 1 5th of April, 1630, occurs the following entry : 
 ' Petronela Laurence widdowe, a Dutchwoman, was buryed 
 in ye ten shilling ground, att lower end of ye men's pewes.' 
 I am tempted to add the following curious baptismal entry
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 207 
 
 which suggests the forlorn condition of the home- 
 less poor in those days. On the 23rd of April, 
 1643, ' a f ema l e infant, found dead at the dore 
 of Mr. Adam Lawrence, merchant, was buried in 
 the churchyard ' there. What house he was then 
 living in I am not able to determine ; but in 
 the year 1646 the house just now destroyed was 
 doubtless either built or altered for his own resi- 
 dence, and on it was placed an inscription, 
 according to the custom of the country whence 
 he sprang. 
 
 I have previously pointed out that in inscriptions 
 of this kind the initial of the husband's Christian 
 name is almost invariably on the left, the wife's on 
 the right, and that of the surname above. The 
 letters in question would therefore have stood for 
 ' Adam and Judith Lawrence.' In 1650 came the 
 inevitable ending to their long married life. 
 On the 9th of April it is recorded that Judith 
 ' Laurents ' * was buried in the church of Great 
 St. Helen's. Adam died in October, 1657. His 
 will describes him as a merchant, and he seems to 
 
 from the register. 'Sept. I, 1611. Job-rakt-out-of-the- 
 asshes, being borne the last of August, in the lane going to Sir 
 John Spencer's back gate and there laide in a heape of seacole 
 asshes, was baptized the first day of September following and 
 dyed the next day after.' 
 
 * The old spelling is still retained, as in the entry of 
 Adam's baptism at the Dutch Church.
 
 208 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 have been a very prosperous one. He desires to 
 be buried near his wife, in Great St. Helen's, and 
 leaves i oo to the poor of the Dutch congregation 
 in Austin Friars, and^ioo towards the mainte- 
 nance of the ministry there ; also similar legacies 
 for the parish of Great St. Helen's, and^ioo to 
 the poor children of Christ's Hospital. Amongst 
 numerous nephews, he singles out for special favour 
 John, who seems to have been a son of his brother 
 Abraham. To him he leaves several houses and 
 gardens in the parish, amongst others his ' now 
 dwelling-house, with the yards, garden edifices, 
 appurtenances, and hereditaments whatsoever there- 
 unto belonging.' This, no doubt, was Nos. 8 and 
 9, Great St. Helen's, unless after his wife's death he 
 had shifted into another residence. Adam also left 
 to his nephew John his share in the ' sister's thread 
 trade/ whatever that may mean, which he had in 
 partnership with Abraham Cullen,* the elder, and 
 Philip Van Cassole ; and 1,500 to Abigail, his 
 nephew's wife, who died in 1681, and whose 
 monument still exists in Great St. Helen's 
 Church, where it is recorded that she was ' the 
 tender mother of ten children. The nine first, 
 being all daughters, she suckled at her own breasts ; 
 
 * The name is spelt in various ways. He may have been 
 of the family of Sir John Cullum, Sheriff of London in 
 1646, on the site of whose mansion Cullum Street, hard by, 
 is built.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 209 
 
 they all lived to be of age. Her last, a son, died 
 an infant. Shee lived a married wife 39 years, 
 23 whereof she was an exemplary matron of this 
 Cittie,* dying in the 59th year of her age.' This 
 lady was eldest daughter of Abraham Cullen, who 
 appears to have been nearly related to the Law- 
 rence family. One paragraph of Adam's will is 
 worth quoting, because it seems to indicate that 
 pretentious public funerals were then not uncom- 
 mon in the City, and that he, at any rate, was frca 
 from a taste for vulgar display. He says : ' Lastly, 
 my desire is that my funerall be decently performed 
 without anie pompe or ceremonie of mourners, and 
 that my corps be carried from my own dwelling 
 house, not troubling any publique hall.' 
 
 John Lawrence, the nephew, seems to have 
 been a pattern City merchant. He had begun 
 life as a Bluecoat boy, hence, perhaps, his uncle's 
 legacy. In 1658 he served the office of Sheriff. 
 On June 16, 1660, he was knighted by Charles II., 
 when that monarch, accompanied by his brothers, 
 the Dukes of York and Gloucester, and some 
 of the nobility, was entertained at supper by 
 the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Alleyne. In 1662 
 Sir John Lawrence appears to have built a new 
 house for himself, the one before alluded to, which 
 
 * From this I infer that she and her husband came to live 
 in the parish after Adam's death. Their son John was born 
 December, 1661, and died a few months afterwards.
 
 2io London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 was drawn by Prattent, not unlikely on a ' garden 
 plot' mentioned in his uncle's will. In 1664 he 
 was elected Lord Mayor, and Evelyn speaks of a 
 ' most magnificent triumph by water and land ' on 
 that occasion. Evelyn also attended the Lord 
 Mayor's banquet, and tells us that it was said to 
 have cost 1,000. He dined at the upper table 
 with the Lord Chancellor, the Dukes of Alber- 
 marle, Ormonde and Buckingham, the French 
 Ambassador and other great personages. The 
 Lord Mayor twice came up to them, ' first drink- 
 ing in the golden goblet his Majesty's health, then 
 the French King's as a compliment to the 
 Ambassador ' ; they ' returned my Lord Mayor's 
 health, the trumpets and drums sounding. The 
 cheer was not to be imagined for the plenty and 
 rarity, with an infinite number of persons at the 
 tables in that ample hall.' Sir John Lawrence 
 showed both courage and liberality whilst the 
 Great Plague was raging in the following year. 
 He stuck to his post, ' enforced the wisest regula- 
 tions then known,' and, when multitudes of servants 
 were dismissed through fear of contagion, he is 
 said to have * supported them all, as well as the 
 needy who were sick ; at first by expending his 
 own fortune, till subscriptions could be solicited 
 and received from all parts of the nation.' Dr. 
 Erasmus Darwin, in his ' Loves of the Plants,' 
 canto ii., devotes a few lines to ' London's
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 2 1 1 
 
 generous Mayor.' Five deaths only are recorded 
 in Great St. Helen's during the year 1665, which 
 suggests that those connected with the Church 
 showed less courage than the chief parishioner, and 
 that the register was neglected. 
 
 In 1684 the house of late numbered 8 and 9, 
 Great St. Helen's was in the occupation of one 
 William Moses. That year Sir John Lawrence, 
 who so far had not handed over his uncle's legacy 
 for the poor of the parish, agreed to discharge his 
 obligation by payment of 250, and to give 100 
 in addition for leave to make a family vault in the 
 church. In 1690 Sir John was living in Putney, 
 as appears from the churchwardens' accounts.* 
 He died January, 1691-2, and was buried on the 
 2 Qth of that month, in the family vault which 
 had been constructed for him under the church 
 of Great St. Helen's, but no monument to his 
 
 * Dr. Cox mentions this. Having searched for Sir John 
 Lawrence's will at Somerset House, I find that he died intes- 
 tate, and that administration of his estate was granted to his 
 widow Catherine ; so he had married a second time. In this 
 grant he is described as ' nuper de Putney.' It appears from 
 the register of that parish that he had a young family, and this 
 is confirmed by a Lawrence pedigree which has been kindly 
 placed at my disposal. Among the children there was another 
 son John, who married Catherine Briscoe ; he died in 1728, 
 leaving several daughters and a son of the same name. There 
 was also a son Adam, who left no issue. Catherine, Lady Law- 
 rence, was buried in the vault at St. Helen's Church in 1723.
 
 212 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 memory exists. The Rev. J. E. Cox, D.D., in his 
 ' Annals of St. Helen's ' tells us that at the church 
 restoration of 1865-8 'a quaint piece of carved 
 work, which had been set up to sustain the Lord 
 Mayor's sword and mace, was removed to the 
 pillar dividing the choir from the Chapel of the 
 Holy Ghost.' The following is a description of it 
 taken almost verbatim from Allen : ' It consists of 
 two twisted Corinthian columns, supporting an 
 entablature highly enriched, and an attic panel. 
 The shafts of the columns are set off with a 
 wreath of foliage running round them. On the 
 frieze are the arms of Sir John Lawrence, in the 
 attic are the City arms, and the whole structure is 
 crowned with the arms of Charles II., supported 
 by two gilt angels, and surmounted with the royal 
 crown.' I hope that this interesting memento of 
 a great City worthy, though not ' Gothic ' in 
 style, will be carefully preserved during the far 
 more wholesale restoration which is now in pro- 
 gress. 
 
 Sir John Lawrence's arms were : argent, a cross 
 raguly gules, a canton ermine.' 55 ' Peter le Neve 
 
 * Faulkner gives some verses which he says were written 
 about the year 1664 on the Lawrence arms. Here is a 
 specimen : 
 
 ' The Field is Argent, and the charge a Cross : 
 Riches without Religion are but dross ; 
 White, like this field, O Lord, his life should be 
 Who bears thy cross, follows, and fights for thee.'
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 213 
 
 says that they were granted to him September 18, 
 1664, and to his brothers James and Abraham, 
 sons of Abraham Lawrence deceased ; but it must 
 have been earlier, as they appear on his house 
 associated with the date 1662. Faulkner, in his 
 4 History of Chelsea,' no doubt deceived by 
 the fact that their arms were identical, assumes 
 that Sir John Lawrence belonged to the ancient 
 English family of the same name, whose memory 
 is perpetuated by various monuments at the end 
 of the north aisle of Chelsea old church. Both 
 he and Dr. Cox* go so far as to say that Sir 
 John was buried there ; but his namesake, ' Sir 
 John Lawrence, Knight and Baronet,' to whose 
 memory a tablet was placed against the east 
 wall of Chelsea Church, belonged to Iver, in 
 the county of Bucks, and died in 1638, aged fifty 
 years, as appears by the inscription. For several 
 generations the descendants of the famous Lord 
 Mayor continued to own the house which be- 
 came Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's. It after- 
 wards passed into the hands of the Guise family* 
 from whom it was inherited by an ancestor of the 
 last possessor, Mr. John Cosens Stevens. Peace be 
 to its memory ! 
 
 The passage from Great St. Helen's into 
 
 * Dr. Cox says the date of Lawrence's death was August 23, 
 1718, which would be seventy-six years after his first mar- 
 riage.
 
 214 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Bishopsgate Street passes under old gabled build- 
 ings which date from before the time of the Great 
 Fire. On the left is the northern front of Crosby 
 Hall, part of a Gothic mansion unrivalled in its 
 day, though little of the original structure remains. 
 This side was almost entirely rebuilt more than 
 fifty years ago. The oriel window, weathered by 
 London atmosphere, has a very picturesque effect ; 
 it is surmounted by the arms of Sir John Crosby, 
 the eminent citizen who built and first possessed 
 the mansion, and who lies buried in the adjoining 
 church, where there is a rich altar-tomb to his 
 memory, with the recumbent figures of him and 
 his first wife, Anneys. On this tomb also are the 
 Crosby arms, namely : sable, a chevron ermine 
 between three rams trippant argent, armed and 
 hoofed or. Sir John, a keen supporter of the 
 House of York, was knighted by Edward IV. in 
 the year 1471 ; he served as Sheriff of London in 
 1470, and held the important post of Mayor of 
 the Staple of Calais. 
 
 Opposite to Crosby Hall, on the northern side 
 of Great St. Helen's Passage, there stood till 
 September, 1892, a structure which, though un- 
 pretentious, had an air of quaintness, with its iron 
 railings in front and broad white window-frames. 
 The inscription on a tablet above the door of 
 this building ran as follows : ' These alms-houses 
 were founded by Sir Andrew Judd, Kt., Citizen f
 
 'Two Old City Mansions. 215 
 
 Skinner and Lord Mayor of London, Anno Dom. 
 1551. For six poor men of y e said Company. 
 Rebuilt by y e said Company Anno Dom. 1729.' 
 The original alms-houses are supposed to have 
 been further east. 
 
 Sir Andrew Judd was a native of Tunbridge 
 in Kent, near which town he inherited consider- 
 able estates. Having entered commercial life, he 
 made a large fortune by trading in furs, and, as 
 Stow, tells us, he kept his mayoralty in a ' fair 
 house ' in Bishopsgate Street, which had been 
 before used for a similar purpose by Sir William 
 Holies, the ancestor of the Earls of Clare. It 
 was during Judd's mayoralty, in 1550, that the 
 City of London obtained from the King by charter 
 lands in Southwark, forming now so important a 
 property, and to which I alluded in my account of 
 the Dog and Duck, St. George's Fields. Sir 
 Andrew was also buried in the church of Great 
 St. Helen's, which has been a sort of Westminster 
 Abbey for great citizens. A quaint Elizabethan 
 monument marks his resting-place. The inscrip- 
 tion gives quite a little biography of him ; as was 
 remarked by one of our Transatlantic cousins, ' it 
 states all the facts, and rhymes in some places.' In 
 the * Historical Collections of the Noble Families of 
 Cavendish, Holies, Vere, Harley and Ogle,' ed. 
 Lond. 1752, compiled by Arthur Collins, it is 
 asserted that, in building the alms-houses, Judd
 
 2i 6 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 was only acting as executor to his cousin ' Eliza- 
 beth, widow of Sir William Holies of St. Helen's, 
 Alderman,' and this seems to be shown by her 
 will, which was proved March 28, 1544. Stow, 
 however, does not mention her name in connec- 
 tion with the charity. It was augmented by Sir 
 Andrew Judd's daughter, Alice Smyth, of Westen- 
 hanger, Kent. Sir Andrew had also been executor 
 to the Holies family. His original alms-houses 
 were nearer the church than those the site of 
 which the Skinners' Company has now, I believe, 
 disposed of. He also founded and endowed Tun- 
 bridge Grammar School. 
 
 Great St. Helen's is being so rapidly ' improved ' 
 that it will soon become quite commonplace and 
 uninteresting. A piece was shorn off the church- 
 yard some years ago, no one exactly knew why, 
 and several picturesque plastered houses, im- 
 mediately west of Nos. 8 and 9, have been pulled 
 down within my memory. At the corner, op- 
 posite to the pretty south porch of the church, 
 attributed by the Rev. Thomas Hugo to Inigo 
 Jones, a quaint and very old building still re- 
 mains, which actually touched the house of 
 the Lawrences. No. 10 is constructed of wood 
 and plaster, with projecting upper stories and 
 massive timbering ; it dates from long before 
 the Great Fire ; the inside, however, has been 
 modernized. Tradition boldly asserts that Anne
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 217 
 
 * 
 
 Boleyn's father, Sir Thomas, afterwards Viscount 
 Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, at one time 
 lived here. It is an undoubted fact that one of 
 the name was intimately connected with St. 
 Helen's, for ' on the 24th December, 26th 
 Hen. VIII., 1534, the Prioress and Convent 
 appointed Sir James Bolleyne, knt., to be steward 
 of their lands and tenements in London and 
 elsewhere, the duties to be performed either by 
 himself or a sufficient deputy, during the life 
 of the said James, at a stipend of forty shillings a 
 year, payable at Christmas. If in arrear for six 
 weeks the said James might enter and distrain.' 
 Query: was this Sir Thomas Boleyn's elder brother? 
 There was a right of way hereabout from very 
 early times, for Dugdale tells us that in the 
 Hundred Roll of 3rd Edward I. several entries 
 occur relating to an attempt which the nuns 
 made to stop up the lane or passage through the 
 court of their nunnery from Bishopsgate Street to 
 St. Mary Axe, sometimes called St. Helen's Lane. 
 If, as is possible, the house dates from before the 
 Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it first saw 
 the light there must have been few buildings near 
 the even then venerable Church of St. Helen and 
 the adjoining priory. Crosby Place, indeed, stood 
 hard by, on land leased from the nuns for a term of 
 ninety- nine years, but much open space yet re- 
 mained. Even as late as the end of last century
 
 2i 8 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 there was a considerable field or garden imme- 
 diately to the east of the church, as shown in a 
 view by Malcolm dated 1799. 
 
 The buildings and grounds of Crosby Place 
 seem to have extended at first almost to Leaden- 
 hall Street. The houses* in Crosby Square are 
 said to have been built about the year 1678, on 
 the site of some of the offices which had been 
 destroyed by fire. I cannot say how it happened 
 that in the early part of the seventeenth century a 
 house of considerable size had already been erected 
 on part of Crosby Place, or could it have been just 
 outside the precincts? This was latterly known 
 as No. 25, Bishopsgate Street Within, or Crosby 
 Hall Chambers. It succumbed to the pickaxe of 
 the builder as nearly as possible at the same time 
 as Adam Lawrence's old residence in Great St. 
 Helen's. The part facing Bishopsgate Street had 
 no sign of antiquity except two carved festoons 
 of flowers, much blocked up with paint, 
 between the first-floor windows. Up a passage,f 
 however, one could see something of the north 
 
 * At the back of one of these houses is the only private 
 garden still existing in the City. 
 
 t This passage, to judge from a restored plan in Hammon's 
 'Architectural Antiquities of Crosby Place' (London, 1844^, 
 was one of the original courts of Crosby Place ; but I am 
 rather doubtful about it. According to this plan, Crosby 
 Square occupied the site, not of offices, but of the bowling- 
 green.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 219 
 
 side or front, which showed architectural features 
 of merit. It rested on round arches composed of 
 rustic work, and above were pilasters furnished 
 with capitals. On the first-floor, looking out on 
 this passage, there was a room adorned by a very 
 beautiful chimneypiece, with the initials G B and 
 the date 1633 in the centre panel. The lower 
 part is of stone, the over-mantel of oak, in very 
 fine condition, all the delicacy of the carving 
 having been preserved by thick layers of paint, 
 which have just been removed. On the ceiling 
 of the same room there was also a fragment of 
 original plaster decoration, which has been presented 
 to the South Kensington Museum. The site of 
 Crosby Hall Chambers will be occupied by the 
 Bank of Scotland. It is proposed to put up the 
 chimneypiece in their new premises. 
 
 In 1857 the Rev. Thomas Hugo, F.S.A., wrote 
 an interesting itinerary of the Ward of Bishopsgate 
 for the journal of the London and Middlesex 
 Archaeological Society. His paper was republished 
 in book form five years later ; it contains valuable 
 illustrations of Nos. 8 and 9, Great St. Helen's 
 and of Crosby Hall Chambers, besides other 
 houses which have passed away. The letterpress 
 is inspired by a fine enthusiasm ; but his archi- 
 tectural judgment is, I think, not altogether to 
 be relied on. He considers that both the above- 
 named buildings were designed by Inigo Jones.
 
 22O London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 Austin Friars, another region in the heart of 
 the City perhaps as interesting as that which I 
 have just described, is, like it, rapidly being 
 transformed. Not long ago it still maintained 
 a distinctive character. Something of monastic 
 calm seemed to linger about the old home and 
 grounds of the begging friars, crowned by part of 
 their church, which since Edward VI.'s time has 
 been handed over to the Dutch congregation of 
 London. Outside, in Broad Street, there was the 
 roar and confusion of a mighty traffic ; within the 
 sacred precinct there was peace : wheeled vehicles 
 seldom entered the very foot passengers, I have 
 thought, used to slacken their pace, and relax for a 
 moment the grim, determined look which, as a 
 rule, characterizes the man whose mind is bent on 
 business. 
 
 Passing round what remains of the old church, 
 one may still see a house No. 10 which is an 
 excellent example of the real Queen Anne style ; 
 to judge from the date on a rainpipe, it was prob- 
 ably completed in the year 1704. The porch 
 has a flight of steps ; ascending this, one finds 
 before one a spacious staircase panelled through- 
 out, and especially noticeable on account of its fine 
 painted ceiling, one of the last to be met with in a 
 City mansion. No. 1 1 forms part of the same 
 block of buildings. 
 
 Retracing our steps, we see standing back some-
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 221 
 
 what from the main roadway, to the right of a new 
 passage just opened into what is called, in mockery, 
 Drapers' Gardens, a tall new structure occupying 
 the site of another old brick mansion the associa- 
 tions of which were very remarkable. The house 
 in question, No. 21, Austin Friars, had been built 
 during the latter part of the seventeenth century, 
 possibly even before the Great Fire, which did not 
 extend so far north ; it seems to be marked in 
 Ogilby's map of 1677. About the early possessors, 
 Richard Young and others, nothing is known of 
 any special- interest. In the year 1705 it came into 
 the hands of Herman Olmius, merchant, whose 
 name occurs in the ' Little London Directory ' 
 for 1677, where he is described as of Angel Alley, 
 Bishopsgate Street Without. He was descended 
 from an ancient family of Arlon, in the duchy of 
 Luxemburg, and was naturalized by Act of Parlia- 
 ment, 29th Charles II. Here he lived and carried 
 on his business, and here, having made and in- 
 herited a large fortune, he died in the year 1718. 
 His will shows that he was a member, not of the 
 Dutch congregation of the neighbouring church 
 in Austin Friars, but of the French Church in 
 Threadneedle Street, to which he left 150 for the 
 benefit of the poor. At the time of his death he 
 possessed four other houses in Austin Friars, ' with 
 yards, . gardens, and appurtenances,' a shop called 
 the Crane in the Poultry, and another with the
 
 222 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 sign of the Plough in Bucklersbury. He also 
 had much real property in Essex and elsewhere. 
 Herman was the son of Johannes Ludovicus or 
 John Lewis Olmius, and of his wife Margareta 
 Gerverdine. He married Judith, daughter and 
 heiress of John Drigue, who also appears to have 
 been living in Angel Court or Alley in 1677, and 
 who had also married an heiress, the daughter of 
 John Billers. Herman Olmius and his wife Judith 
 had no less than ten children, but only two of 
 them left offspring. These were his younger 
 daughter Margaret, wife of Adrian Lernoult, who 
 had predeceased him, and to whose descendants 
 the City property was bequeathed ; and John 
 Olmius,* born in 1670. This gentleman became 
 High Sheriff of Essex in 1707, a justice of the 
 peace, and Deputy-Lieutenant of the county. He 
 died December 20, 1731, being then Deputy- 
 Governor of the Bank of England. His wife 
 was Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of 
 Thomas Clarke, a descendant of the Clarkes of 
 St. Ives, Huntingdon, and probably her husband's 
 cousin. Their son, also named John, was many 
 years member of Parliament, and received an Irish 
 peerage under the title of Lord Waltham. He 
 married Anne, daughter of Sir William Billers, 
 Lord Mayor in 1733, and left a son and a daughter. 
 
 * I observe that he and his brother Herman were sub- 
 scribers to Strype's Stow, published in 1720.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 223 
 
 The former died without issue in 1787, when the 
 family became extinct in the male line ; the latter 
 having married John Luttrell, who was brother of 
 the Duchess of Cumberland,* and who became 
 third Earl of Carhampton, had a daughter, Frances 
 Maria, from whom is descended Sir Simeon Henry 
 Stuart, Bart. The Olmius family possessed much 
 land in Essex, and a large country seat at Boreham, 
 now used as a convent. At the Saracen's Head 
 Hotel, Chelmsford, their fleeting dignity is still 
 represented by two fine hall-chairs emblazoned 
 with the Olmius crest, namely a demi-Moor in 
 armour between laurel branches, surmounted by a 
 baron's coronet. My friend Mr. Francis Galton 
 would doubtless tell us that the failure of the family 
 in the male line resulted naturally from marriage 
 with heiresses and from intermarriage. Its rapid 
 rise had also, no doubt, been in part owing to the 
 former cause. 
 
 The house in Austin Friars continued for 
 several generations to belong to the descendants 
 of the younger daughter of Herman Olmius. In 
 1783 Hughes Minet came to live here, and in 1 802 
 
 * Anne, daughter of Simon Luttrell, created Baron Irnham 
 of Luttrelstown, 1768; Viscount Carhampton, 1780; Earl 
 of Carhampton, 1785. She married, first, Christopher Horton, 
 of Colton Hall, Derbyshire, and secondly, in 1771, Henry 
 Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, brother of King George III. 
 This so incensed the latter that he procured the passing of 
 the Royal Marriage Act.
 
 224 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 he bought a sixth share from three brothers named 
 Clarke, great-grandsons of Margaret Lernoult. 
 He was a merchant and banker, of Huguenot 
 descent, and his family had long carried on a 
 prosperous business at Dover. His descendant, 
 Mr. William Minet, has just written a very inter- 
 esting account of them. The Minets lived in 
 Austin Friars for many years, though they never 
 owned more than a sixth of the property. In 
 1838 Mr. Isaac Minet, the then representative 
 of the family, sold his share of the freehold, 
 and we find Messrs. Thomas, Son, and Lefevre 
 established here, the last-named being a brother of 
 the late Lord Eversley. The final owner was 
 Mr. John Fleming, by whose courtesy I had the 
 privilege of visiting the house on almost the last 
 day that it remained intact. 
 
 In point of fact, No. 2 1 , Austin Friars was by 
 no means a striking specimen of architecture, but 
 having remained from the beginning practically 
 unchanged, there were points about it worthy of 
 record. Externally it was a plain four-storied 
 brick structure, the only piece of decoration being 
 a carved hood to the doorway which formed the 
 chief entrance from Austin Friars. Passing through 
 this, the visitor found himself in a hall, looking up a 
 broad winding staircase with twisted balusters. To 
 the right was the counting-house, panelled through- 
 out with South Carolina pine. It had an old Purbeck
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 225 
 
 marble mantelpiece, on the upper line of which ap- 
 peared in white marble the Olmius arms,* quartered 
 with those of the foreign families of Gerverdine, 
 Cappre, Drigue, and Reynstein. The double panes 
 above was worthy of remark as characteristic of 
 the time of Wren. Under an arch at the end of 
 the counting-house was a strong-room lined 
 throughout with Dutch tiles. Mounting the 
 staircase, one came upon the dining-room, with its 
 ingeniously contrived cupboard, and the drawing- 
 room, which looked out on what was, till within 
 the last few years, the pleasant and ample garden 
 of the Drapers' Company, now covered, all but 
 a fragment, with bricks and mortar. A view 
 of this garden is given in CasselPs ' Old and New 
 London,' vol. i., p. 517, with No. 21, Austin 
 Friars showing itself beyond the trees in the 
 middle distance ; but no reference to it is made in 
 the letterpress. On the first-floor also, above the 
 chief office, was a small warehouse or sample-room, 
 an indispensable adjunct to the old merchant's 
 d welling, t Above were capital bedrooms, while a 
 
 * Olmius is merely a Latinized form of the Dutch name 
 Van Olm, the latter word being equivalent to Elm. The 
 arms are given in Morant's ' History of Essex.' One of the 
 charges is : out of a mount vert, an elm-tree proper. 
 
 t In 1778 John Drigue Lernoult and another let the 
 house to Lewis Miol, and a schedule was then drawn up 
 which I have seen. Everything is most carefully noted. 
 
 "5
 
 226 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 narrow staircase gave access to the tiled roof, 
 surrounded by a stone parapet. Retracing one's 
 steps to the hall, one found, flanking a passage on 
 the side opposite to the counting-house, a lofty 
 kitchen still furnished with smoke-jack, spit-racks, 
 and iron caldron-holders, and adjoining the range 
 an oven lined with blue and white Dutch tiles, 
 no doubt a legacy of the Olmius family. Formerly, 
 also, most of the chimneypieces in the house were 
 fitted up with Dutch tiles, blue and white or red and 
 white ; but these in course of time had disappeared. 
 In the basement were cellars, and close to them 
 an old surface well, which still contained water, 
 analyzed at the time of its destruction and found 
 to be little better than sewage. A door in the 
 passage was prettily carved. Through this one 
 passed to the outer offices, a brewery, wash-house, 
 coach-house and stables; and thence again there 
 was access by the side-entrance into the garden,* a 
 
 from the arch in the hall ' with fluted columns and carved 
 capitals,' to the ' battlement wall about 2 feet 6 inches high, 
 coped with stone cornice.' At that time there was a ware- 
 house with a loft over it, and a crane, but its position is not 
 made clear. 
 
 * The plan of the garden seemed to show that it had been 
 curtailed when the houses to the east, Nos. 15 to 18, Austin 
 Friars, were erected. They were formerly called Winckworth 
 Buildings, and on their water-pipes were T w, 1 726. In No. 1 8, 
 James Smith, one of the authors of ' Rejected Addresses/ 
 lived for a time. These houses are all now swept away.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 227 
 
 quiet spot some half acre in extent, which no doubt 
 had originally formed part of the friars' grounds. 
 It was connected by steps with a narrow terrace 
 running along the back of the house. Here in 
 the summer of 1888 I saw fig-trees still flourish- 
 ing while the work of destruction had already 
 begun. 
 
 The boundary at the end of this garden was 
 formed by another interesting house, No. 23, 
 Great Winchester Street, which has also lately been 
 improved out of existence. Jt occupied a good 
 deal of ground, being approached through a paved 
 yard with a lodge on each side of the entrance. 
 Externally its chief characteristics were a some- 
 what high-pitched roof and wings projecting 
 forward. Inside the chief reception-room was 
 finely proportioned, with capital mouldings and 
 cornices, and there was an old kitchen range of 
 portentous size. 
 
 Close to this house, and also adjoining Drapers' 
 Garden, was formerly the garden attached to 
 the Carpenters' Hall, so that a few years ago 
 this neighbourhood was a paradise of open spaces. 
 At the dissolution the house and gardens of 
 the Augustine Friars had been bestowed by 
 Henry VIII. on William Paulet, first Marquis of 
 Winchester, who there built his town residence, 
 traces of which existed as late as the year 1 844 : 
 after this mansion Winchester Street was named.
 
 228 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 From a date carved on a grotesque bracket 
 formerly to be seen at the north-east corner, it 
 appears that the street was constructed, partly at 
 least, in the year 1656, during Cromwell's govern- 
 ment. Strype says that here was * a great messuage 
 called the Spanish Ambassador's House, of late 
 inhabited by Sir James Houblon, Knight and 
 Alderman, and other fair houses.' Even down to 
 our time it was a remarkably picturesque specimen 
 of a London street. Now nothing but the name 
 is left, to mark its connection with antiquity. 
 
 It may here be noted that even till comparatively 
 recent times almost every house in the City had a 
 garden, or at any rate some open space, belonging 
 to it, as may be proved by reference to old maps 
 and views. Horwood's map, published in 1799, 
 shows how much garden ground still remained at 
 the end of last century. Besides this, before the 
 days of lifts, high pressure of water, and gas or 
 electric light laid on, the inconvenience of very 
 high houses prevented their being built to any 
 great extent. The comparative sparseness of the 
 population should undoubtedly have given our 
 ancestors a great advantage over us with regard to 
 health, but it was more than counterbalanced by 
 drawbacks resulting from ignorance for example, 
 the use of impure water, and the inability to 
 grapple with diseases which are now comparatively 
 innocuous.
 
 Two Old City Mansions. 229 
 
 The disappearance of these open spaces, and the 
 erection of enormously high buildings on every 
 available spot, is, I believe, a great evil, not only 
 from the picturesque, but from the sanitary point 
 of view. Writers on sanitary subjects are agreed 
 that, of dangers to health, overcrowding is one of 
 the greatest, and that, other things being equal, 
 the death-rate regularly increases in proportion 
 to the density of the population. Dr. G. V. 
 Poore* has recently pointed out that every new 
 set of offices adds its quota to the sewage in the 
 river ; while ' the absence of green plants entails 
 a great loss of nascent oxygen or ozone which 
 gives to air its peculiar quality of freshness.' In 
 his opinion, it is hardly conceivable that a high 
 level of health can be maintained in a spot where 
 vegetable life languishes, animal and vegetable 
 life being complementary to each other. 
 
 Some will no doubt console themselves with the 
 notion that, the City being now to a great extent 
 merely a place of business, those who spend the 
 day there (considerably more than a million, ac- 
 cording to the last calculation) can throw off 
 the ill effects while they are away. To this I 
 reply that, if one includes the outlying parts, 
 many thousands still make it their home, and 
 
 * ' London, Ancient and Modern, from the Sanitary and 
 Medical Point of View,' by G. V. Poore, M.D., F.R.C.P. 
 London, 1889.
 
 230 London Signs and Inscriptions. 
 
 that, in any case,- to spend a quarter of one's 
 existence under most unhealthy conditions must 
 tend to cause illness and to shorten life. In these 
 times of popular government, the great City Guilds 
 are more or less on their probation. If I am 
 right, the Drapers' Company, whatever the tempta- 
 tion may have been, committed a fatal mistake when 
 they covered their garden with huge blocks of offices, 
 a mistake which can never be atoned for by any 
 amount of charitable donation. Their example has 
 been quickly followed, and soon, I fear, hardly one 
 breathing-space will remain in the City except the 
 ground about St. Paul's and the Tower, and here 
 and there a bit of a disused graveyard hemmed in 
 by lofty offices and warehouses.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ADAM and Eve, Newgate Street, 
 
 sign, 121 
 Addle Street ; derivation of name, 
 
 47 
 
 Aggas's, Ralph, map, 139 
 
 Aldermanbury, sign in, 94 
 
 Alleyne, Sir Thomas, Lord Mayor, 
 209 
 
 Altitude, highest in City, .7 
 
 Ancaster, Duke of, 153 
 
 Anchor, signs, 106 
 
 Angel Alley, 221 
 
 Angel, Islington, 180, 182 
 
 Ape, carving of, 46 
 
 Aquarium Tavern, 166 
 
 Artillery Street, Bishopsgate With- 
 out, 167 
 
 Ashburnham, Lord, 35 
 
 Ashby-Sterry, J., 158 
 
 Ash well's Place, site of, 179 
 
 Austin Friars, 220 
 house in, 220 
 
 Axe and Bottle Yard, 136 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 134 
 
 Bagnigge House, 192, 195, 196 
 
 Bagnigge Wells, 191-196 
 
 Bagnio Court, 20 
 
 Baker and Basket, sign, 6 
 
 Baltassar, one of the Three Kings, 
 
 32 
 Barrington, Hon. D., on arms of 
 
 Inner Temple, 132 
 Bartholomew Close, 137 
 Basing House, 202 
 
 Bath Street, 20 
 
 Battle Bridge, 198 
 
 Bear, Brown, Cheapside, sign, 48, 
 
 49 
 chained and muzzled, signs, 47 
 
 49 
 
 White, sign, 48 
 
 with collar and chain, sign, 47 
 Bear Quay, 49 
 Beare Lane, 49 
 Beauty in distress, sign, 71 
 Beer Lane, 49 
 
 Bel and the Dragon, sign, 50 
 Bell, the, sign, 106 
 Bell on the Hoop, sign, 123 
 Bell Savage Inn, the, 123 
 Ben Jonson Tavern, 169 
 Berners, Ralph de, 141 
 Berriman, Dr. W., 146 
 Bethlehem Hospital, 67, 71 
 Bevis, Dr. John, 193, 195 
 Bible and Crown, sign, 1 10 
 Billers, Sir William, Lord Mayor, 
 
 222 
 
 Birch, W. de Gray, 74 
 Bishopsgate Street, 214 
 Bishopsgate, Ward of, 219 
 Black Boy, advertisement, temp. 
 
 1695, 25 
 
 Black Friars, 130 
 Blackjack, sign, 157 
 Black Mary's Well, or Hole, 191 
 Black Spread Eagle Court, 93 
 Blackamore Street, 25, 148 
 Blackfriars Road, 158
 
 232 
 
 Index. 
 
 Blackmore Street, 25, 148 
 Bloomfield's MS., 132 
 Blowbladder Street, 19 
 Boar's Head, sign, 51, 119 
 
 Tavern, 52-60 
 Body-snatchers, resort of, 9 
 Boleyn, Sir Thomas, 217 
 Bottle, Golden, sign, 157 
 Boulting Mill, 178 
 Bow Churchyard, sign in, 118 
 Bowl and Mouth, signs, 64 
 Boy and Panyer, sign, 4 
 Braynes Row, 191 
 Brewers' Company, 5, 165 
 Bridge House, the, 76 
 
 estate, 71, 75 
 Brook Place, 191 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 43 
 Bryanston Street, 169 
 Buc, Sir George, 132 
 Bucklersbury, 26 
 Buckingham, Duke of, 20 
 Buckingham, Earl of, 147 
 Bucks' Heads, Three, sign, 13 
 Budge Row, origin of name, 126 
 Bull, Bishopsgate Street Within, 6 1 
 Bull and Mouth Inn, Aldersgate, 
 63-66 
 
 sale of, 65 
 
 sign, 63 
 
 Bull Head Court, 19 
 Bull Inn, mutiny at, 62 
 Burrup, Miss, 177 
 Busby's Folly, 85 
 Butcher Hall Lane, 19 
 Byrons, badge of, 6 1 
 
 Canon Alley, St. Paul's, in 
 Canonbury, Islington, 141 
 
 Place, 141 
 
 Tower, 142 
 Caps of burgesses, 175 
 Carhampton, Earl of, 223 
 Carpenters' Hall, 227 
 Cateaton Street, 14 
 Cavendish, Lady Margaret, 151 
 Chambers, James, goldsmith, 157 
 Chancery Lane, 129 
 Chapel Street. See Great Chapel 
 . Street 
 
 Chaplin, W., coach proprietor, 99 
 Charles I.'s porter and dwarf, 19 
 
 Charles Street, Leather Lane, 157 
 Charlet, Gregory, 145 
 Charlotte Street, 158 
 Chaucer, poet, 135 
 Cheapside Cross, 97 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 152 
 Cheyne Walk, 159 
 Childs and Co., bankers, 156 
 Chimneypiece, Bishopsgate Street, 
 
 219 
 
 Gibber, Colley, actor, 187 
 Civet cat, carving, 66 
 Clare, Earl of, 147, 215 
 
 Market, 24, 146 
 
 Street, 24 
 Clement's Inn, 147 
 Clement's Inn Fields, 148 
 
 market held in, 149 
 Cloth Fair, 137, 139 
 Coach and Horses, sign, 170 
 Cock Inn, 166 
 
 and Bottle, sign, 176 
 
 Court, 47 
 
 sign, 103 
 
 with snake, sign, 101 
 Coffee-house sign, 176 
 Compton family, 143 
 Compton Street, Clerkenwell, 146 
 Coopers' Company, 157 
 
 crest, 91 
 
 Coppice Row, 191 
 Corbyn and Co.'s Poultry, sign at, 
 
 So 
 
 Coutts, Lady Burdett, 55 
 Cow and Co., Messrs., 47 
 Cox and Hammond's, Messrs., sign 
 
 at, 49 
 
 Cox, Rev. J. E., 212 
 Crane, sign, 89 
 
 in the Poultry, 221 
 Cranes, Three, in the Vintry, sign, 
 
 90 
 
 Crescent moon, 43 
 Cromer Street, 196 
 Crosby Hall, 214 
 
 Hall Chambers, 218 
 
 Place, 217 
 
 Square, 218 
 
 Crosby, Sir John, arms, 214 
 Cross Street, Islington, 145 
 Crown and Magpie, sign, 104 
 Crowns, Three, sign, 27
 
 Index. 
 
 233 
 
 Cumberland, Duchess of, 223 
 
 Duke of, 169 
 Cutler, Sir John, 172 
 Cutlers' Company, arms of, 122, 
 124 
 
 Danvers Street, Cheyne Walk, 161 
 Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 210 
 Dennys, Sir Walter, arms of, 142 
 Denzil Street, 150 
 Dering Street, Oxford Street, 161 
 Devereux, Lady Penelope, 140 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 151 
 Doctor's signboard, 160 
 Dog and Duck, sign, 67, 215 
 Dog's Head in the Pot, sign, 158 
 Dorrington Street, 164 
 Doves, Four, sign, 90 
 Drapers' Company, 230 
 Gardens, 221, 227 
 Drury Lane, 148 
 Ducking ponds, 68 
 Dugdale, Sir William, 130 
 Duke Street, 162 
 Dyers' Company, 100 
 
 Eagle with two Heads, sign, 91 
 Eldernesse Lane, 12 
 Elephant and Castle, 122 
 Epiphany or Twelfth Day, 39 
 Epitaph on drawer at Boar's Head, 
 
 56 
 
 Essex, Earl of, arms, 98 
 Evans, William, giant, 20 
 
 Falstaff, drawing of, 58 
 
 Fastolfe, Sir John, 60 
 
 Field Court, 133 
 
 Fire at Southwark, 42, 79 
 
 Fire of London, memorial of, 9 
 
 Fishmongers' Company, arms of, 
 
 61 
 
 Fleet, banks of the, 192 
 Fleet Street, 131 
 Fleming, Mr. John, 224 
 Fortune of War Inn, 8 
 Four Doves, sign, 90 
 Fowler, Thomas, 144 
 Fowler family, 180 
 Fowler of Islington, arms of, 144, 
 
 145 
 Fox, sign, 77 
 
 i Foxes, Three, sign, 77 
 | Friday Street, 135 
 Fruiterers' Company, arms of, 122 
 
 Gallon, Francis, 223 
 
 Gaming House and Shaver's Hall, 
 
 163 
 
 Garden produce, temp. Edward I., 
 
 130 
 
 Gardens to City houses, 228 
 Gardiner's Lane, 15 
 Caspar, 31 
 George Inn, 79, 80 
 
 advertisement of, temp. 1762, 
 
 16 
 
 Gerard the Giant, 17 
 Gerrard Street. 162 
 Gerrardes Hall, 18 
 Gilbert Street and Passage, 149 
 Gisor's Hall, 18 
 Goat in Boots, sign, 168 
 Gog and Magog, 17 note 
 Golden Bottle, sign, 157 
 Golden Lion, house and sign, 83 
 Goldsmiths' Company, 129 
 Goose and Gridiron, sign, 1 14 
 Gosling, Messrs., sign, 156, 157 
 Grasshopper, sign, 157 
 Gray's Inn, 133 
 Gray's Inn Lane, 199 
 Gray's Inn Road, 196 
 Great Chapel Street, Westminster, 
 
 161 
 Great James Street, Bedford Row, 
 
 163 
 
 Great St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 200 
 203 et set/. 
 
 Church, 207 
 Passage, 214 
 right of way, 217 
 Great Ormond Street, 153 
 Great Queen Street, 152, 155 
 Great Winchester Street, No. 23, 
 
 227 
 
 Gresham, Sir Thomas, 157 
 Grey family, arms of, 133 
 Greys of Wilton, 133 
 Griffin's Head, sign, 77, 133 
 Grosvenor, Sir Robert, 135 
 ! Guildhall Museum, 146, 171, 173 
 ! Guy of Warwick, 1 1 
 [ Gwynne, Nell, 192
 
 234 
 
 Index. 
 
 Haberdashers' Company, 128 
 Half Moon, sign, 40 
 
 Inn Yard, Borough, 41 
 Passage, 45 
 Hare and Stirrup, sign, 80 
 
 and Three Pigeons, tenements 
 called, 79 
 
 in combination with the Sun, 
 78 
 
 Running, sign, 78 
 Harris, Roger, bequest of, 86 
 Harrison Street, 196 
 Hatchett's Hotel, 169 
 Hats, Three, sign, 69 
 Hawkins, Sir John, 25 
 Hays' Mews, Charles Street, 
 
 Berkeley Square, 167 
 Heathcock, sign, 90 
 Helmet, sign, 112, 113 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, 131 
 Herne, or Heron, family, 146 
 Hicks Hall, Middlesex Session 
 
 House, 48 
 
 Hoare, Messrs., their sign, 157 
 Hobson, portrait of, 62 
 Hogarth's picture of Evening, 
 
 181 ; of Southwark Fair, 42 
 Holland, Earl of, 140 
 Holies family, 147 
 
 arms of, 149 
 
 Sir William, 215 
 Holywell Street, 44 
 Hood, Robin, 197 
 Horn of Unicorn, 87 
 Horsham free school, founding of, 
 
 40 
 
 Houblon, Sir James, 228 
 Howard, Lord William, 132 
 Hudson, Jeffery, dwarf, 20 
 
 Thomas, painter, 155 
 Hugo, Rev. Thomas, 216, 219 
 
 Inner Temple, heraldic charge, 131 
 Inns of Court and Chancery, arms 
 
 of, 129 
 
 Islington, Upper Street, 146 
 Islington Wells, 180, 188 
 
 Jack in the Green, 24 
 Jackson, William, smuggler, 38 
 James Street, Haymarket, 163. See 
 Great James Street 
 
 Jones, Inigo, 154, 201, 216 
 Judd, Sir Andrew, Lord Mayor, 
 214 
 
 King of the Fields, 69 
 King's Cross Road, 195, 197 
 King Street, Southwark, 136 
 Kings, Three, signs, 26-45 
 King's White Bear, the, 50 
 Kenton, Benjamin, vintner, 104 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 155 
 Knights Templars, 132 
 
 Lacy, Henry de, Earl of Lincoln, 
 
 130 
 
 Lad Lane, 99 
 Laing, David, 35 
 Lamb and Flag, 75, 131, 132 
 Lambeth Hill, 27 
 Lamb's Conduit, 196 
 Lawrence, Adam, 206 
 
 will of, 208 
 
 family history of, 206 et seq. 
 Lawrence, Sir John, Lord Mayor, 
 205 
 
 Mayor's Banquet, 2IO 
 
 arms of, 212 
 Lea, Sir James, 131 
 Leadenhall Street, 218 
 Leathern Bottle, sign, 157 
 Leathersellers' Arms, 13 
 Leathersellers' Company, 12 
 Leigh, Gerard, 132 
 Lennep, J. Van, 3 
 Leopard, sign, 125 
 Lernoult, Margaret, 224 
 Lincoln's Inn, 129 
 
 Fields, 152, 153, 162 
 Lindsey, Earl of, 153 
 
 House, 152 
 Lion, stone bas-relief, sign, 83 
 
 Golden, sign, 83 
 
 W T hite, sign, 83-86 
 Little Distaff Lane, I IO 
 Lloyd's Row, 189 
 London Bridge, 136 
 
 Spa, the, 190 
 Long Lane, 139 
 Long Melford, Suffolk, 38 
 Longmans, Messrs., their sign, ill 
 Lovell, Sir Thomas, 130 
 Lyons Inn, 45
 
 Index. 
 
 2 35 
 
 Lysons, Rev. Canon, 178 
 
 Magi, the, 28 
 
 Maidenhead Inn, 14 
 sign, 119 
 
 Maiden's Head, sign, 126 
 
 Man in the Moon, sign, 4.0 
 
 Mantelpiece, seventeenth century, 
 
 200 
 
 from the old Cock Inn, 104 
 at 21, Austin Friars, 224 
 
 Marks, Alfred, 154 
 
 Marshall, Julian, 163 
 
 Martin and Co., bankers, their sign, 
 
 157 
 
 Martin, J. B., 157 
 Mary the Virgin, 29 
 Marygold, sign, 156 
 May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane, 
 
 162 
 
 Mouth, sign, Bishopsgate Street, 64 
 Myddleton, Sir Hugh, 181 
 Myddleton's Head Inn, 181, 183 
 
 Nag's Head, Unicorn sign wrongly 
 
 called, 86 
 sign, 97 
 
 Naked Boy, sign, n 
 Narwhal's horn, 88 
 Nassau Street, 162 
 Negroes' Heads, 24, 146 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 151 
 
 House, 152 
 
 Newcomen Street, Southwark, 136 
 New Market, 149 
 New River Company, portrait of 
 
 founder, 181 
 New River Head, 183 
 New, Tunhridge Wells, 187 
 New Wells, near London Spa, 186 
 
 Melchior, one of the Three Kings, New White Horse Cellars", sign- 
 
 31 board, 169 
 
 Mercers' Company, 14 
 
 arms of, 126 
 
 Merchant Tailors' Company, 129 
 Merchants' trade marks, 74 
 Merlin's Cave Tavern, 190 
 Mermaid, carved in relief, 60 
 
 in Bread Street, 61 
 
 in Cornhill, 61 
 
 sign of at Gravesend, 60 
 
 in Holland, 60 
 
 Middle Temple, gatehouse, 131 
 Midshipman, wooden, 157 
 Miller, Sir John, 81 
 Milton, John, sign showing birth- 
 place, 92 
 Mineral spring, St. 
 
 Fields, 70 
 
 Minerva, head of, 12 
 Minet, Hughes, 223 
 Minet, Walter, 224 
 
 Northampton, Marquis of, 143 
 Norwich Cathedral, 34 
 
 Old Bell Inn, Holborn, 143 
 Olmius, Herman, merchant, 221 
 Ormond Street. See Great Ormond 
 
 Street 
 
 Ormonde, Duke of, 169 
 Ostrich, stone bas-relief, 91 
 Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, 65 
 
 Minories, the, 157 
 Mitre Court, 116 
 Mitres, stone bas-reliefs of, 
 116 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 
 
 1 88 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 138 
 Morris Dancers, Three, sign, 22 
 Mount Pleasant, Gray's Inn Lane, 
 
 164 
 
 Pakenham Street, 195 
 Panyer Alley, sign in, 4 
 Parish marks, 166 
 Peakes, Sir John, Lord Mayor, 129 
 George's | Pegasus, Inner Temple, sign, 131 
 Pelham, Thomas, 152 
 Pelican, as an emblem, 95 
 
 sign, 94 
 
 and Phoenix, 96 
 Pepys' Diary, extract from, 84 
 Person, Father, 139 
 Peter Street, Westminster, 166 
 Phelps, Samuel, actor, 186 
 
 Philip Lane, 46 
 Physicians, College of, 172 
 Pie, sign, IO 
 Pie Corner, 9, 10 
 Pied Bull Inn, 81 
 Pindar Place, 196
 
 236 
 
 Index. 
 
 Finder a Wakefielde, inn, 196 
 Finder of Wakefield, 196 
 Finder, equivalent to, 197 
 Plough, sign, Bucklersbury, 222 
 Poore, Dr. G. V., 229 
 Pope, Mr. M., F.S.A., 91 
 Portland, Duke of, 151 
 Powis, Marquis of, 151 
 
 Place, 153 
 
 Preaching Friars, 130, 138 
 Price, Hilton, on bankers' signs, 156 
 Prince of Wales' feathers, 1 1 1 
 Pudding Lane, 9 
 
 Queen Street. See Great Queen 
 Street 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 81, 144 
 
 Red Lion Tavern, 180 
 
 Rich, Richard, 137 
 
 River. See New River 
 
 Robin Hood Court, Shoe Lane, 167 
 
 Roman dress, bust of woman in, 
 
 192 
 
 Roman temple, site of, 179 
 Rookery, Gray's Inn, 134 
 Rose, the, 92 
 Rose and Crown, ill 
 Rose and Fleur-de-lys, 154 
 Rosebery Avenue, 164, 182 
 Rosoman Street, 187 
 Rotten Row, Asschowellys Place, 
 
 179 
 
 Roxalana's Head, sign, 14 
 Royal Arms, 135 
 Bagnio, 20 
 Yacht Inn, 150 
 
 Rufford, Captain Nicholas, 146 
 Rufford's Buildings, 146 
 Running Footman, sign, 167 
 
 Sadler's mineral springs, 183 
 
 Music House, 183 
 
 Wells Theatre, 181, 183, 185 
 St. Anselm and Cecilia, chapel, 162 
 St. Bartholomew the Great, church, 
 
 140 
 
 St. Bartholomew's Priory, 138 
 St. Bride's, 167 
 St. Ceadda, well of, 197 
 St. Chad's Road, 197 
 Row, 197 
 
 St. Chad's Well, 198 
 
 St. 'Dunstan's Church, 157 
 
 St. Ethelreda, chapel of, 116 
 
 St. George and the Dragon, 15, 17 
 
 St. George's Fields, 67, 70, 215 
 
 St. Giles-in-the-Fields, 167 
 
 St. Helen's. See Great St. Helen's 
 
 St. James's Palace, 167 
 
 St. John's Square, Clerkenwell, 170 
 Street Road, 190 
 
 St. Martin's Lane, Upper, 167 
 
 St. Mary Axe, 217 
 
 St. Michael's Crooked Lane, 56 
 
 St. Pancras Churchyard, 198 
 Well, 198 
 
 Salisbury, 170 
 
 Sandys Row, 167 
 
 Saracen's Head Hotel, Chelmsford, 
 223 
 
 Sardinia Street, 154, 162 
 
 Savage's Inn, 123 
 
 Seven Stars, sign, 39 
 
 Shakespere's Boar's Head, 5 1 
 
 Sheffield Street, 161 
 
 Shepherd Street, 161 
 
 Shiffner family, the, 154 
 
 Ship and Black Swan, sign, 1 10 
 
 Shoe Lane, 169 
 
 Shoreditch High Street, 78 
 
 Sims, F. Manley, sign belonging to, 
 1 60 
 
 Skates, mediaeval, 175 
 
 Skinners' Company, 125, 129, 216, 
 
 Smith, Payne and vSmith, sign dis- 
 covered at their premises, IO2 
 
 Somers, Sir John, 153 
 
 Soper's Lane, 48 
 
 Southwark Arms, 72 
 Fire, 42, 79 
 
 Spa Field, 189 
 
 Spas, suburban, 180-199 
 
 Spencer, Sir John, 142, 145 
 
 Spread Eagle, 91 
 Court, 93 
 
 Squirrels, Three, sign, 156 
 
 Staircase, Elizabethan, 201 
 
 Star, sign, 40 
 
 Stevens, John Cosens, 213 
 
 Stinking Lane, 19 
 
 Stuart, Sir Simeon Henry, Bart, 223 
 
 Sun, sign, 40 
 
 Swan, chained, 87, 96-98
 
 Index. 
 
 2 37 
 
 Swan and Harp, sign, 115 
 upping or nicking, 101 
 with Two Necks, 98 
 origin of, 100 
 
 Tabard Inn, 79 
 
 Tallowchandlers' Company, 91 
 
 Tarbolton, H. O., 205 
 
 Tavern scoring, 44 
 
 Taylor, Edward, bequest of, 13 
 
 Temple, Inner, heraldic charge and 
 
 sign, 131 
 
 Tennis Court. 163 
 Theatrical Booth, 42 
 Thomas, Son, and Lefevre, 224 
 Three Bucks' Heads, sign, 13 
 
 Cranes in the Vintry, 90 
 
 Crowns, sign, 27 
 
 Hats, Islington, sign. 69 
 
 Kings, 26 
 
 arms of, 34 
 
 in plays, etc., 36 
 
 the feast of, 33 
 
 Magi, 28 
 
 Morris Dancers, sign, 22 
 
 Squirrels, sign, 156 
 Time, statuette of, 178 
 Tothill Street, Westminster, 166 
 Tower Hill, 159 
 Tulips, exhibition of, temp. 1779, 
 
 198 
 Tunbridge Grammar School, 216 
 
 Wells, New, 187 
 Turner, Mr. Hudson, 130 
 Two Brewers, 2 
 Two Negroes' Heads, 24, 146 
 Tyburn, prisoners on the way to, 
 
 64 
 
 Tylers' and Bricklayers' Company, 
 165 
 
 Unicorn, description of, 87 
 stone bas- relief of, 86 
 supporter of Royal Arms, 87 
 
 Union Street, Southwark, 165 
 Upper Street, Islington, 146 
 Upper St. Martin's Lane, 166 
 
 Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, 171 
 Vintners' Company, ico 
 
 Waller, J. G., 74 
 Waltham, Lord, 222 
 Warwick, Earl of, 140, 147 
 Warwick, Guy of, stone bas-relief 
 
 of, ii 
 Warwick Inn, 12 
 
 Lane, 1 1 
 Water carnival at Sadler's Wells, 
 
 185 
 
 Welbeck, 151 
 
 Went worth. Lord Thomas, 142 
 Wesley, John, 187 
 Westgate Street, Gloucester, 159, 
 
 178 
 
 Weston family, 143 
 White Bear, 48, 50 
 Hart Inn, 79 
 Lion, 83 
 
 Islington, 180 
 
 Whittington and his Cat, 178 
 Whistling Oyster, sign, 171 
 Wilberforce, William, 57 
 Williams, Mr., and the Royal 
 
 Arms from old London Bridge, 
 
 137 
 
 Wilion House, 203 
 Wiltshire, Earl of, 217 
 Winchester, Marquis of, 227 
 Winchester Street. See Great 
 
 Winchester Street 
 Winde, Captain William, 152 
 Winged Horse, the, 131 
 Winter's Low- Hut, 170 
 Woman's Head, the, 14 
 Wooden Midshipman, sign, 157 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 115, 131 
 Wright, Sir Nathan, 153 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.
 
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