xxvi. From him we learn that the body of this dreadful beast was larger

and stronger than “8 lions or 100 eagles,” so that he could with ease fly off to his nest with a great horse, or a couple of oxen yoked together, “for,” says he, “he has his talouns so large and so longe, and so gret upon his feet as thowghe thei weren hornes of grete oxen, or of bugles or of kijgn.”

In the original edition of the _Spectator_, No. xxxiii.,[192] the griffin is mentioned as the sign of a house in Sheer Lane, Temple Bar. The advertisement begins oddly enough:--“Lost, yesterday, _by a Lady in a velvet furbelow scarf_, a watch,” &c. The GOLDEN GRIFFIN was a famous tavern in Holborn, of which there are trades tokens extant of the seventeenth century. Tom Brown talks of a “fat squab porter at the Griffin Tavern, in Fulwood’s rents,” which is the same house, as appears from Strype:--“At the upper end of this court is a passage into the Castle Tavern, a house of considerable trade, as is the Golden Griffin Tavern, on the west side, which has a passage into Fulwood’s rents,” (Book iii., p. 253.)

The variously-coloured lions come under the same category of heraldic animals. Amongst them the GOLDEN LION stands foremost. A public-house with that sign in Fulham ought not to be passed unnoticed; it is one of the most ancient houses in the village, having been built in the reign of Henry VII. The interior is not much altered; the chimney-pieces are in their original state, and in good preservation. Formerly there were two staircases in the thick walls, but they are now blocked up. Tradition says that the house once belonged to Bishop Bonner, and that it has subterraneous passages communicating with the episcopal palace. When the old hostelry was pulled down in 1836, a tobacco-pipe of ancient and foreign fashion was found behind the wainscot. The stem was a crooked bamboo, and a brass ornament of an Elizabethan pattern formed the bowl of the pipe. This pipe Mr Crofton Croker[193] tries to identify as the property of Bishop Bonner, who, on the 15th June 1596, died suddenly at Fulham, “while sitting in his chair and smoking tobacco.” If Mr Croker be right, this inn should also have been honoured by the presence of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Henry Condell, (Shakespeare’s fellow actor,) John Norden, (author of A Description of Middlesex and Hertfordshire,) Florio, the translator of Montaigne, and divers other notabilities.

The BLUE LION is far from uncommon, and may possibly have been first put up at the marriage of James I. with Anne of Denmark. The PURPLE LION occurs but once--namely, on a trades token of Southampton Buildings.

Signs borrowed from Corporation arms form the last subdivision of this chapter. Such, for instance, is the THREE COMPASSES, a change in the arms of both the carpenters and masons. This sign is a particular favourite in London, where not less than twenty-one public-houses make a living under its shadow. Perhaps this is partly owing to the compasses being a masonic emblem, and a great many publicans “worthy brethren.” Frequently the sign of the compasses contains between the legs the following good advice:--

“Keep within compass, And then you’ll be sure, To avoid many troubles That others endure.”

Three Compasses were a frequent sign with the French, German, and Dutch printers of the sixteenth century. The Three Compasses, Grosvenor Row, Pimlico, a well-known starting point for the Pimlico omnibuses, was formerly called the GOAT AND COMPASSES, for which Mr P. Cunningham suggests the following origin:--

“At Cologne, in the church of S. Maria di Capitolio, is a flat stone on the floor, professing to be the ‘Grabstein der Bruder und Schwester eines Ehrbahren Wein und Fass Ampts, Anno 1693.’ That is, as I suppose, a vault belonging to the Wine Cooper’s Company. The arms exhibit a shield with a pair of compasses, an axe, and a dray or truck, with goats for supporters. In a country like England, dealing so much at one time in Rhenish wine, a more likely origin for such a sign could hardly be imagined.”

Others have considered the sign a corruption of a puritanical phrase, “God encompasseth us.” But why may not the Goat have been the original sign, to which mine host added his masonic emblem of the compasses, a practice yet of frequent occurrence.

The GLOBE AND COMPASSES seems to have originated in the Joiners’ arms, which are a chevron between two pairs of compasses and a globe. It occurs, amongst other instances, as the sign of a bookseller, in the following quaint title:--

“Sin discovered to be worse than a Toad; sold by Robert Walton, at the _Globe and Compasses_, at the West end of Saint Paul’s Church.”

The THREE GOATSHEADS, a public-house on the Wandsworth Road, Lambeth, was originally the Cordwainers’ (shoemakers) arms, which are azure, a chevron or, between three goats’ heads, erased argent. Gradually the heraldic attributes have fallen away, and the goats’ heads now alone remain. As there were rarely names under the London signs, the public unacquainted with heraldry gave a vernacular to the objects represented. Thus the THREE LEOPARDS’ HEADS is given on a token as the name of a house in Bishopsgate; yet the token represents a chevron between three leopards’ heads, the arms of the Weavers’ Company. The sign of the Leopard’s Head was anciently called the _Lubber’s Head_. Thus in the second part of Henry IV., ii. 1, the hostess says that Falstaff “is indited to dinner at the Lubbar’s Head in Lumbert Street, to Master Smooth’s the silkman.” “Libbard,” _vulgo_ “lubbar,” was good old English for “leopard.”

The GREEN MAN AND STILL is a common sign. There is one in White Cross Street, representing a forester drinking what is there called “drops of life” out of a glass barrel. This is a liberty taken with the Distillers’ arms, which are a fess wavy in chief, the sun in splendour, in base a still; supporters two Indians, with bows and arrows. These Indians were transformed by the painters into wild men or green men, and the green men into foresters; and then it was said that the sign originated from the partiality of foresters for the produce of the still The “drops of life,” of course, are a translation of _aqua vitæ_.

The THREE TUNS were derived from the Vintners, or the Brewers’ arms. On the 9th of May 1667, the Three Tuns in Seething Lane was the scene of a frightful tragedy:--

“In our street,” says Pepys, “at the Three Tuns Tavern, I find a great hubbub; and what was it but two brothers had fallen out, and one killed the other. And who should they be but the two Fieldings. One whereof, Bazill, was page to my Lady Sandwich, and he hath killed the other, himself being very drunk, and so is sent to Newgate.”[194]

There seems to have been a kind of fatality attached to this sign, for the _London Gazette_ for September 15-18, 1679, relates a murder committed at the Three Tuns, in Chandos Street, and in this same house, Sally Pridden, _alias_ Sally Salisbury, in a fit of jealousy stabbed the Honourable John Finch in 1723. Sally was one of the handsomest “social evils” of that day, and had been nicknamed Salisbury, on account of her likeness to the countess of that name. For her attempt on the life of Finch she was committed to Newgate, where she died the year after, “leaving behind her the character of the most notorious woman that ever infested the hundreds of old Drury.”[195] Her portrait has been painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Sometimes the sign of the ONE TUN may also be seen. It occurs in the following newspaper item:--

“Last Thursday four highwaymen drinking at the One Tun Tavern near Hungerford Market in the Strand, and falling out about dividing their booty, the Drawer overheard them, sent for a constable, and secured them, and next day they were committed to Newgate.”--_Weekly Journal_, December 6, 1718.

That these fellows meant mischief is evident from a subsequent article. They had a complete arsenal about them, viz., two blunderbusses, one loaded with fifteen balls, the other with seven, and five pistols loaded with powder and shot.

The GOLDEN CUP, from the form in which it was generally represented, seems to have been derived from the Goldsmiths’ arms, which are quarterly azure, two leopards’ heads _or_, (whence the mint mark,) and two golden cups covered between two buckles _or_. It was a sign much fancied by booksellers, as: Abel Jeff’s in the Old Bailey, 1564; Edward Allde, Without Cripplegate, from 1587 until 1600; and John Bartlet the Elder, in St Paul’s Churchyard; whilst the THREE CUPS was a famous carriers’ inn in Aldersgate in the seventeenth century.

The RAM AND TEAZEL, Queenshead Street, Islington, is a part of the Clothworkers’ arms, which are sable, a chevron ermine between two habicks in chief _arg._, and a teasel in base _or_. The crest is a ram statant _or_ on a mount vert.

The HAMMER AND CROWN appears from a trades token to have been the sign of a shop in Gutter Lane, in the seventeenth century. It was a charge from the Blacksmiths’ arms: sable, a chevron between three hammers crowned _or_. The LION IN THE WOOD was a tavern of some note a hundred years ago in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. It seems originally to have been the Woodmongers’ arms, whose crest is a lion issuing from a wood. At the present day it is the sign of a public-house in the same locality, namely, in Wilderness Lane, Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

To these Corporation arms we may add two belonging to companies. During the South Sea mania the SOUTH SEA ARMS was a favourite sign; in 1718, the very year that Queen Anne had established the company and granted them arms, they appeared as the sign of a tavern near Austin Friars: they are a curious heraldic compound. “Azure, a globe representing the Straights of Magellan and Cape Horn, all proper. On a canton the arms of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain, and in sinister chief two herrings salterwise _arg._, crowned _or_.”

The SOL’S ARMS, Sol’s Row, Hampstead Road, immortalised by Dickens in “Bleak House,” derives its name from the Sol’s Society, who were a kind of freemasons. They used to hold their meetings at the Queen of Bohemia’s Head, Drury Lane, but on the pulling down of that house the society was dissolved.

[121] History of Musick.

[122] Harl. MSS. 5910, vol. i. fol. 193. The reader will be amused with the spelling of this extract from the original manuscript, written when Addison was penning “Spectators,” and many classic English compositions were issuing from the press. Old Mr Bagford was a genuine antiquary, and despised new hats, new coats, and anything approaching the new style of spelling, with other changes then being introduced.

[123] Misson’s Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England. London, 1719.

[124] England is the country, _par excellence_, for gigantic dinners, amongst which agricultural repasts stand foremost; even that nuptial dinner of Camacho, at which honest Sancho Panza did such execution, would scarcely rank as a lunch beside the Homeric dinners of our farmers. In our times we have seen Soyer roast a whole ox for the Agricultural Society at Exeter; the details of this culinary feat are somewhat interesting: it was called a “baron with saddle back of beef _à la magna charta_, weighing 535 lbs., the joints being the whole length of the ox, rumps, rounds, loins, ribs, and shoulders to the neck. It was roasted in the open air within a temporary enclosure of brick work, the monster joint steaming and frizzling away over 216 jets of gas from pipes of an inch diameter, the whole being covered in with sheet iron; when in 5 hours the beef was dressed for 5 shillings.”--_Hints for the Table._

[125] Various examples of it occur in the Banks Bills.

[126] Original Weekly Journal, March 29 to April 3, 1718.

[127] Banks Bills.

[128] Historical and Topographical Account of the Parish of Fulham, 1813, p. 271.

[129] Boswell’s Johnson, vol. iv. p. 60.

[130] Hawkins’s Life of Dr Johnson, p. 433.

[131] This corncutter was probably the antique statue of the boy picking a thorn out of his foot, and was usual with pedicures. See under the sign “Old pick my toe.”

[132] Diary of the Rev. John Ward, M.A., 1648-1679. London, 1839.

[133] Diary of Rev. John Ward, M.A., 1648-1679, p. 122.

[134] Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Esq. By J. F. Kirkman. Vol. ii. p. 419.

[135] “A dragon in the manner of a banner, of a certain red silk embroidered with gold; its tongue like a flaming fire must always seem to be moving; its eyes must be made of sapphire, or of some other stone suitable for that purpose.”

[136] Peter Langtoffe’s Chronicle of Robert of Brunne, p. 217.

[137] “The king’s place was between the Dragon and the standard.”

[138] Caxton’s Chronicle at the end of Polychronicon, lib. ult. chap. vi.

[139] Hist., lib. ix. cap. vi.

[140] Nat. Hist., lib. viii. cap. ii.

[141] Chronicle of the Grey Fryars, Camden Society, p. 19.

[142] _Grub Street Journal_, Sept. 2, 1736.

[143] Badges of Cognizance of Richard, Duke of York, written on a blank leaf at the beginning of Digby MS. 82. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Archæologia xvii. 1814.

[144] The Cat, William Catesby; the Rat, Sir Richard Ratcliffe; Lovell our dog, Lord Lovel.

[145] Sir Roger Twisden’s Commonplace Books, 1653, as quoted _in extenso_ in _Notes and Queries_, Aug. 8, 1857. Mr James Thompson, in his “History of Leicester,” informs us that one man was hanged and a woman burned for this crime, and not seven persons capitally executed, according to the popular tradition.

[146] Harl. MS. 5910; of this printer Bagford says: “I do not find he prented many books, or at lest few of them have come to my hand.”

[147] Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft, b. xii. ch. xviii. p. 268, 1584.

[148] Archæologia. vol. xxix. 1840.

[149] Aubrey, iii. 438.

[150] Owen Glendower also bore a lion rampant sable, “the black lion of Powyss;” his arms were Paly of eight, arg. and gules, over all a lion sable. The black lion was the royal ensign of his father Madoc ap Meredith, last sovereign prince of Powyss; he died at Winchester in 1160. The black lion consequently might sometimes be set up by Welshmen.

[151] _Daily Courant_, January 1, 1711.

[152] “And observe that such a white feather was borne on his crest by Edward the eldest son of K. Edward; and this feather he conquered from the King of Bohemia whom he killed at Cressy in France, and so he assumed the feather, called the ostrich feather, which that most noble king had formerly worn on his crest.”--_Sloane MSS._ No. 56.

[153] Added to this were two vultures, sprinkled all over with finely-gilt linden leaves. Therefore I know this is King John of Bohemia.

[154] See the engraving in Pennant’s History of London, vol. i. p. 100.

[155] Lyson’s Berkshire, vol. i. p. 442.

[156] _London Gazette_, Sept. 18-21, 1682.

[157] _London Gazette_, March 12, 1672-3.

[158] Little London Directory for 1677, the oldest printed lists of bankers and merchants in London, reprinted, with historical introduction by John Camden Hotten, 1863.

[159] A very amusing French author of the time of Louis XIV., celebrated for his witty letters.

[160] “Let England amuse herself with idle fancies, and imagine that her kings are kings of France; but that there be Frenchmen who are ignorant enough, or bad subjects enough, to quarter the arms of France with those of England, that is a thing which such zealous subjects as M. d’Argenson, and the other police magistrates, ought by no means to permit.”

[161] Thos. Delaune’s Present State of London, 1681.

[162] These badges consisted of the master’s arms, crest, or device, either on a small silver shield or embroidered on a piece of cloth, and fastened on the left arm of servants. A ballad in the Roxburgh collection thus alludes to this custom:[163]--

“The nobles of our Land were much delighted then, To have at their command a Crue of lustie Men, Which by their Coats were knowne, of Tawnie, Red, or Blue; With crests on their sleeves showne when this old cap was new.”

[163]

“Time’s alteration; or, The old man’s rehearsall what brave days he knew A great while agone, when his old cap was new.”

Rox. Ball., i. fol. 407.

Stow gives us a good picture of a great nobleman’s retinue in the good old time, before the nobility took to hotel-keeping:--“The late Earl of Oxford, father to him that now liveth, has been noted within these forty years, to have ridden into this city and so to his house by London Stone, with eighty gentlemen, in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks, before him, and one hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his cognisance of the _blue boar_ embroidered on their left shoulder.” These badges fell into disuse in the reign of James I.

[164] Wright’s Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages, p. 333.

[165] “At Plombières he ordered me to leave with his hostess, according to the fashion of the country, an escutcheon of his arms in wood, which a painter of that town made for a crown and the hostess had it carefully hung upon the wall outside the house.”

[166] Harl. MSS., 5910, vol. ii. p. 167.

[167] Badge.

[168] Liveries.

[169] Portcullises.

[170] Leopard.

[171] Wiltshire.

[172] A transcript adds to these the names of Archbishop Parker and Jugge.

[173] This statement is modified lower down.

[174] Rivers.

[175] Raleigh.

[176] Silver.

[177] The UNION ARMS in Panton Street, Haymarket, was the public-house of Cribb, the pugilist champion, a fact commemorated by a poet of the prize ring, in all probability a better “fist” at smashing than at “wooing the Muses:”--

“The champion I see is again on the list, His standard--the UNION ARMS. His customers still he will serve with his fist, But without creating alarms. Instead of a floorer, he tips them a glass, Divested of joking or fib; Then, ‘lads of the fancy,’ don’t Tom’s house pass, But take a hand at the game of _Cribb_.”

[178] Sylvanus Morgan’s Sphere of Gentry. London, 1661.

[179] There is a sign of the GREEN LION in Short Street, Cambridge, the only one I have ever seen.

[180] Fuller, _in voce_ Warwickshire.

[181] Delaune’s Present State of London, 1682.

[182] Printed in the Journal of Brit. Archæolog. Assoc., vol. vii. p. 71.

[183] Taylor’s Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1630.

[184] Catherine Street, in the Strand, was a disreputable thoroughfare in the last century. Gay alludes to it in his “Trivia:”--

“Oh, may thy virtue guard thee through the roads Of Drury’s mazy courts and dark abodes! The harlots’ guileful path, who nightly stand Where Catherine Street descends into the Strand. With empty bandbox she delights to range, And feigns a distant errand from the ‘Change. Nay, she will oft the Quaker’s hood profane, And trudge demure the rounds of Drury Lane.”

Tom Brown describes, _con amore_, the wickedness of that part of the town. Catherine Street at present is not quite so bad as formerly, but the hundred of Drury Lane cannot by any means be called the most virtuous part of London.

[185] Art of Living in London. Printed for William Griffin, at the Garrickshead, in Catherine Street, in the Strand, 1768.

[186] Pennant’s Account of London, 1813, p. 618.

[187] Little London Directory for 1677, the oldest list of London merchants.

[188] “Buy these books, which Richard Fax the printer has printed with the wedge, with the greatest care. This little book was printed at London, in St Paul’s Churchyard, at the Maidenhead, in the year 1509, on the 12th of December.” The printing with the wedge was the first attempt of the art, whence the books produced in this manner are sometimes called _incunables_.

[189] Pleasant Conceits of old Hobson the Londoner, 1607. Hobson’s answer proves the truth of Misson’s remark, that there were no inscriptions on the London signs to tell what they represented, otherwise the maid could not have been passed off as a widow.

[190] Guillim’s Display of Heraldry, folio, p. 197.

[191] The Vicar of Bray, the hero of Butler’s comic poem, appears to have been a certain Simon Aleyn, _ob._ 1583; he was by turns, and as the times suited, Roman Catholic and Protestant, in the times of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth.

[192] The original edition of the _Spectator_ contained _bona fide_ advertisements like any other newspaper.

[193] In 1847, Mr Crofton Croker read a paper at a meeting of the Brit. Arch. Assoc. at Warwick, “On the probability of the Golden Lion Inn at Fulham having been frequented by Shakespeare about the year 1595 and 1596,” in which the possible genealogy of this pipe is given.

[194] Pepys here makes a mistake, for he tells as afterwards, July 4, when he went to the Session House to hear the trial, that Basil was the murdered man.

[195] Caulfield’s Memoirs of Remarkable Persons. A curious epitaph upon her occurs in the _Weekly Oracle_, February 1, 1735; unfortunately it is too highly spiced to be introduced here.