The Dolphin and Comb was the sign of E. Herne, a milliner on London Bridge in 1722. This is an instance of one of the articles sold within being added to the original sign of the house. Milliners in those days used to have a much more extensive variety of objects for sale than they have now, comprehending almost every article required for female apparel,—and including knives, scissors, combs, pattens, patches, poking sticks, fans, bodkins, &c. Such additions to signs were of frequent occurrence, thus the Fox and Topknot, the Lamb and Breeches, the Fox and Cap, and the Lamb and Inkbottle, which last figures on the imprint of Thomas Roch, Newgate Street, a bookseller who made “the best ink for deeds and records,” 1677. Frequently the sign of the Fish is seen without any further specification; in this case it is probably meant for the Dolphin, which is the signboard-fish par excellence. The Fish sign is a very common public house decoration at the present day, probably for the same reason as the Swan, because he is fond of liquor,—nay, to such an extent goes his reputation for intemperance, that to “drink like a fish” is a quality of no small excellence with publicans. In Carlisle, however, there are two signs of the Fish and Dolphin, a rather puzzling combination,—unless it has reference to the dolphin’s chase after the shoals of small fishes. The Fish and Bell, Soho, may either allude to a well-known anecdote of a certain numskull, who, when he caught a fish, which he desired to keep for dinner on some future grand occasion, put it back into the river, with a bell round its neck, so that he should be able to know its whereabouts the moment he wanted it; or it may be the usual Bell added in honour of the bell-ringers. A quaint variety of this sign is the Bell and Mackerel, in the Mile-End Road. The Three Fishes was a favourite device in the Middle Ages, crossing or interpenetrating each other in such a manner, that the head of one fish was at the tail of another. We cannot prove that it had any emblematic meaning, but it may possibly represent the Trinity, the fish being a common symbol for Christ, derived from the Greek monogram or abbreviation, ΙΧΘΥΣ. It occurs as a sign in the following advertisement, which minutely describes the livery of a page in the year of the Restoration:—

“On Saturday night last run away from the Lord Rich, Christophilus Cornaro, a Turk christened; a French youth of 17 or 18 years of age, with flaxen hair, little blew eyes, a mark upon his lip, and another under his right eye; of a fair complexion, one of his ears pierced, having a pearl-coloured suit, trimmed with scarlet and blue ribbons, a coat of the same colour with silver buttons; his name Jacob David. Give notice to the Lord, lodging at the Three Fishes in New Street, in Covent Garden, a cook-shop, and good satisfaction shall be given.”[324]

The Three Herrings, the sign of James Moxton, a bookseller in the Strand, near Yorkhouse, in 1675, is evidently but another name for the Three Fishes; at the present day it is the sign of an ale-house in Bell Yard, Temple Bar. Several taverns with this sign are mentioned in the French tales and plays of the 17th century; two of them seem to have been very celebrated, one in the Faubourg St Marceau, the other near the Palais de Justice; this last one seems to have been particularly famous, for it is named as a rival to the celebrated Pomme de Pin. “Si je vay au Palais, tous ces clercs sont alentour de moy; l’un me mène aux Trois Poissons, l’autre à la Pomme de Pin.”—Comédie de la Vefve, ac. iii. s. 3.[325] The Fish and Quart at Leicester must be passed by in silence, as the combination cannot immediately be accounted for. Were it in France a solution would be easier, for in French slang a “poisson,” or fish, means a small measure of wine. The Fish and Eels at Roydon, in Essex; the Fish and Kettle, Southampton; and the White Bait, Bristol, all tell their own tale, and need no comment. The Salmon is seen occasionally near places where it is caught. The Salmon and Ball is the well-known Ball of the silkmercers in former times, added to the sign of the Salmon; whilst the Salmon and Compasses is the masonic emblem that is added to the sign. Both these occur in more than one instance in London. The Fishbone is rarely met with as a public-house sign, though there is an example of it at Netherton in Cheshire, and also amongst the seventeenth century tokens of New Cheapside, Moorfields. But generally it is the sign of a rag and bone shop, or, in the euphonious language of the day, a “miscellaneous repository,” or “bank of commerce.” These shops, as their title of “marine stores” implies, used to buy all the odds and ends of rope, sails, seamen’s old clothes, in short all the rubbish of which a ship is cleared after its return from a long voyage. Bones of large fish would be often amongst the curiosities brought home by the sailors, these also they bought and hung them up outside their doors, and in the end these bones became their distinctive sign. The Sun and Whalebone at Latton, in Essex, may have originated from a whalebone hanging outside the house, or that the landlord had laid the foundation of his fortune as a rag merchant.

Insects are of very rare occurrence. The industrious habits of the bees, however, made their habitation a favourite object to imply a similar industry in the shopkeepers. Many years ago there used to be at Grantham in Lincolnshire, a signpost on which was placed a Beehive in full swarm, with the following lines under it:—

Though the living bees were gone the following season, yet the sign and inscription remained until very recently. The following is a common inscription under the sign of the Beehive:—

A tea-dealer at the corner of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, in the end of the last century, had for his sign the Walking Leaf, (the Phyllium siccifolium of the naturalists,) an East Indian insect, of an anything but agreeable association, when we consider the remarkable vegetable appearance of this insect, and the possibility that it might be dried among the tea-leaves.

Although the frog cannot be considered either an insect or a fish, yet we may include it in this chapter. Of frogs there are some instances on the signboard; the Three Frogs, (see under Heraldic Signs,) and Froghall, formerly a public-house at the south end of Frog Lane, Islington. On the front of this house there was exhibited the ludicrous sign of a plough drawn by frogs. There is at the present day a Froghall Inn at Wolston, near Coventry; and a public-house of that name at Layerthorpe in the West Riding, but the picture of the sign was doubtless unique. The principal inn on the island of Texel is called the Golden Frog, (de Goude kikker.) We may wonder that there are not more examples of this sign in Holland, for there are, without doubt, as many frogs in that country as there are Dutchmen; and even unto this day it is a mooted point, which of the two nations has more right to the possession of the country; both, however, are of a pacific disposition, so that they live on in a perfect entente cordiale.

CHAPTER VII.
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC.

In old times, when signboards flourished, there would have been many reasons for choosing these house-decorations. 1. Their symbolic meaning, as the olive-tree, the fig-tree, the palm-tree. 2. To intimate what was sold within, as the vine, the coffee-plant, &c. 3. The use of some plants as badges. 4. The vicinity of some well-known tree or road-mark, near the place where the sign was displayed. 5. The desire of a landlord to have an unusual sign.

The oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom is the Bush; it was a bush or bunch of ivy, box or evergreen, tied to the end of a pole, such as is represented in many of the suttler’s tents in the pictures of Wouverman. The custom came evidently from the Romans, and with it the oft-repeated proverb, “Good wine needs no Bush.” (Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus; in Italian, Al buon vino non bisogna frasca; in French, à bon vin point d’enseigne.) Ivy was the plant commonly used: “The Tavern Ivy clings about my money and kills it,” says the sottish slave in Massinger’s “Virgin Martyr,” (a. iii. s. 3.) It may have been adopted as the plant sacred to Bacchus and the Bacchantes, or perhaps simply because it is a hardy plant, and long continues green. As late as the reign of King James I. many inns used it as their only sign. Taylor, the water poet, in his perambulation of ten shires around London, notes various places where there is “a taverne with a bush only;” in other parts he mentions “the signe of the Bush.” Even at the present day “the Bush” is a very general sign for inn and public-house, whilst sometimes it assumes the name of the Ivy Bush, or the Ivy Green, (two in Birmingham.) In Gloucester, Warwick, and other counties, where at certain fairs the ordinary booth people and tradesmen enjoy the privilege of selling liquors without a licence, they hang out bunches of ivy, flowers, or boughs of trees, to indicate this sale. As far away as the western States of North America, at the building of a new village, or station, it is no uncommon thing to see a bunch of hay, or a green bough, hung from above the “grocery,” or bar-room door, until such time as a superior decoration can be provided. The bunch being fixed to a long staff was also called the Alepole; thus among the processions of odd characters that came to purchase ale at the Tunnyng of Elinour Rummyng:—

How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to enlarge and encroach upon the public way, has been shown in our Introduction, pp. 16, 17. The Bunch gradually became a garland of flowers of considerable proportions, whence Chaucer, describing the Sompnour, says:—

Afterwards it became a still more elegant object, as exemplified by the Nagshead in Cheapside, in the print of the entry of Marie de Medici; finally it appeared as a crown of green leaves, with a little Bacchus, bestriding a tun dangling from it. Thus the sign was used simultaneously with the bush.

“If these houses [ale-houses] have a boxe-bush, or an old post, it is enough to show their profession. But if they be graced with a signe compleat, it’s a signe of a good custome.”[326]

In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described:—“A flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe doore, but especially a conceited signe and an eminent bush.” “Tavernes are quickly set up, it is but hanging out a bush at a nobleman’s or an alderman’s gate, and ’tis made instantly.”—Shirley’s Masque of the Triumph of Peace. In a woodcut from the “Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles,” introduced in Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” the Bush is suspended from a square board, on which the sign was painted; for in France as well as in England, signboard and bush went together:—

Whilst an English host in “Good News and Bad News,” says:—“I rather will take down my bush and sign than live by means of riotous expense.” Gradually, as signs became more costly, the bunch was entirely neglected and the sign alone remained.

The Hand and Flower is a sign very frequently adopted by alehouses in the vicinity of nursery grounds:—thus, there is one in the High Street, Kensington, and one in the King’s Road, a little past Cremorne, though there the nursery ground has very recently been built over.

The Rose, besides being the queen of flowers, and the national emblem, had yet another prestige which alone would have been sufficient to make it a favourite sign in the middle ages; this was its religious import. On the monumental brass of Abbot Kirton, formerly in Westminster Abbey, there was a crowned rose with I.H.C. in its heart, and round it the words

SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORUM, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM.[328]

And in Caxton’s Psalter, above a woodcut representing an angel holding a shield with a rose on it, occur the words:—

It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some allusion to the Rose of Jericho, or to the Christmas rose.

Three centuries ago roses were still very scarce, as we learn from an original MS. of the time of Henry VIII., and signed by him, preserved at the Remembrance Office, in which it says that a red rose cost two shillings; hence, roses were often amongst the terms of a tenure. Sir Christopher Hatton, the handsome Lord Chancellor, with the “bushy beard and shoe strings green,” who danced himself into Queen Elizabeth’s favour, paid the Bishop of Ely for the rent of Ely House for a term of twenty-one years in 1576, a red rose, ten loads of hay, and £10 a-year; but that roses then were plentiful, in that garden at all events, is also evident, for the Bishop and his successors had a right to gather yearly twenty bushels of roses out of it. Sir John Poulteney, 21 Edward III., gave and confirmed by charter to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, his tenement of Cold Harborough, and appurtenances, for one rose at Midsummer; a still more whimsical tenure was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York, for which yearly a payment was to be made of a red rose at Christmas, and a snow ball at Midsummer.[330] Unless the flower of the Viburnum or Gueldres Rose, sometimes called a Snowball, was meant, the payment will have been almost impossible in those days when ice-cellars were unknown.

At the present day some publicans take liberties with the old sign of the Rose; in Macclesfield, and at Preston, for instance, there is the Moss Rose; on Silkstone Common, in Yorkshire, the Bunch of Roses; on the London Road, Preston, the Rosebud, &c. The Three Roses was formerly a common sign; from the way they are represented, they appear to have been heraldic roses, (see our illustration of the ancient Lattice.) It was the sign of Jonathan Edwin, bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1673. At the Rose Garland, Robert Coplande, the bookseller and printer, published in 1534 Dame Juliana Berner’s “Boke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, and Fyshyng.” This shop was in “the Flete Strete.” Rose garlands or chaplets were not only worn in the middle ages as head-dresses, but also awarded as archery prizes.

Copland’s Rose garland, doubtless, suggested the sign of another bookseller, John Wayland, who also lived in Fleet Street about the year 1540; his sign was the Blue Garland.

The colloquial phrase, Under the Rose, is sometimes used as a sign, or written under the pictorial representation of the rose; it occurs on a trade’s token of Cambridge,[331] and may be seen on various public-houses of the present day. Numerous suppositions have been made concerning its origin, some holding that it arose from this flower being the emblem of Harpocrates; others from a rose painted on the ceiling, any conversations held under which were not to be divulged; whilst Gregory Nazianzen seems to imply that the rose, from its close bud, had been made the emblem of silence.

At Lullingstone Castle, in Kent, the residence of Sir Percival Dyke, Bart., there is, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, a representation of a rose nearly two feet in diameter, surrounded with the following inscription:—

The Dutch have a similar phrase. In an old Book of Inscriptions of the seventeenth century is a device written round a rose painted on the ceiling:—

There is one sign of the Rose, the origin of which it is difficult to ascertain, this is the Rose of Normandy, a public-house in the High Street, Marylebone. It was built in the seventeenth century, and is the oldest house in that parish. In 1659 it is described as having

“Outside a square brick wall set with fruit trees, gravel walks 204 paces long, 7 broad; the circular wall 485 paces long, 6 broad; the centre square, a bowling-green, 112 paces one way, 88 another—all, except the first, double set with quickset hedges, full grown, and kept in excellent order, and indented like town walls.”[334]

The street having been raised, the entrance to the house is at present some steps beneath the roadway. The original form of the exterior has been preserved, and the staircases and balusters are coeval with the building; but the garden and large bowling-green have dwindled into a miserable skittle-ground.

As a sign the Marygold, it is said, arose from a popular reading of the sign of the Sun; a very natural and plausible origin. At the same time, it is just worth mentioning, that this flower (originally called the Gold) seems to have been considered as an emblem of Queen Mary; so, at least, it would appear from a lengthy ballad of “the Marygolde,” composed by her chaplain, William Forrest, in which, amongst many other similar allusions, the following words are found:—

The flower was a favourite one in the middle ages, deriving the first part of its name from the Virgin Mary. No mention of the actual use of the sign, however, has been met with previous to 1638, when it appears on the title-pages of Francis Eglisfield, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard. His name still occurs at the same house in 1673,[335] when it was also the sign of “Mr Cox, milliner, over against St Clement’s Church in the Strand.”[336] This must have been the same house in which Richard Blanchard and Francis Child, the goldsmiths, kept their “running cashes.”[337] It is the oldest banking firm in London. Francis Child, the founder, was, in the reign of Charles I., apprenticed to a goldsmith, William Wheeler, whose shop stood on the same spot now occupied by the bank. He married his master’s daughter, and thus laid the foundation of his immense fortune. Many bills and other papers relating to Nell Gwynn are still preserved by this firm, as well as various documents concerning the sale of Dunkerque. Alderman Blackwell, who was ruined by the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., was at one time a partner in this house. It was here that Dryden deposited the £50 offered for the discovery of the bullies of the “Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade.”[338] The old sign of the house is still preserved by their successors, together with various relics of the Devil Tavern, on the site of which it was built.

Only a few other flowers occur, mostly modern introductions. The Daisey, Bramley, Leeds; the Tulip, Springfield, Chelmsford; the Lilies of the Valley, Ible, near Wirksworth; the Snowdrop, near Lewes; Woodbine Tavern, South Shields; and the Forest Blue Bell, Mansfield. The Blue Bell is very common, but, inter doctores lis est, whether it signifies the little blue flower, or a bell painted blue.

As a sequel to the flowers, we may name the Myrtle tree, of which there are two in Bristol, and the Rosemary Branch, in Camberwell, and in many other places. Rosemary was formerly an emblem of Remembrance, in the same way as the Forget-me-not is now; “There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” says Ophelia, (Hamlet, ac. iv., s. 5,) and in Winter’s Tale, Perdita says:—

Hence Rosemary and gloves were of old presented to those who followed the funeral of a friend.

Fruit trees are much more common, particularly the Apple-tree and the Pear-tree, which (owing to the favourite drinks of cider and perry) are next to the Rose; and the Oak, the most frequent among vegetable signs. The Apple-tree, near Coldbath Fields prison, was one of the numerous public-houses which Topham the strong man kept in 1745. At the Apple-tree Tavern, in Charles Street, Covent Garden, four of the leading London Free Masons’ lodges, considering themselves neglected by Sir Christopher Wren in 1716, met and chose a grandmaster, pro tem., until they should be able to place a noble brother at the head, which they did the year following, electing the Duke of Montague. Sir Christopher had been chosen in 1698. The three lodges that joined with the Apple-tree Lodge used to meet respectively at the Goose and Gridiron, St Paul’s Churchyard; the Crown, Parker’s Lane; and at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, Westminster. The Hand and Apple was the sign, in 1782, of a shop in Thames Street, where “syder, Barcelona, cherry brandy, tobacco,” &c., were sold. It represented a hand holding an apple, and was chosen on account of the cider.[339] To this beverage other signs owe their origin: for instance, the Red-streak Tree, from the apple of which the best cider is made. Tickets used formerly to be in the windows of houses where cider was sold, with the words, “Bright Red-streak Cyder sold here,” illustrated with three merry companions in cocked hats, sitting under an apple-tree drinking cider, on the other side a pile of barrels, from which the landlord is drawing the liquor. In Maylordsham, Hereford, this sign is rendered as the “Red-streaked Tree;” there was a Red-streaked Tree Inn in that same town in 1775.[340] The Apple-tree and Mitre is an old painted sign, a great deal the worse for London smoke, in Cursitor Street. It represents an apple-tree abundantly loaded with fruit, standing in a landscape, with some figures; above it a gilt mitre. It is evidently a combination of two signs.

The Pear-tree is as common as the Apple-tree. The Iron Pear-tree at Appleshaw, Andover, Hants, and at Redenham in the same county, may have been derived from some noted pear-tree in that neighbourhood, whose hollow and broken stem was secured with plates or bands of iron. Very general, also, is the Cherry-tree. It was the sign of a once famous resort in Bowling-green Lane, Clerkenwell, and was adopted on account of the quantities of cherry-trees which grew upon its grounds, even as late as thirty or forty years ago. In our younger days, this house was the resort of the fast men of Clerkenwell; its bowling-green gave the name to the alley in which the house stood. Down the river, at Rotherhithe, was the Cherry-garden, a famous place of entertainment in the reign of the Merry Monarch. Pepys went to it on June 15, 1664, and, with his usual pleasant flow of animal spirits, “came home by water, singing merrily.”

“Over against the parish church, [St Olave’s, Southwark,] on the south side of the street, was some time one great house, builded of stone, with arched gates, which pertained to the Prior of Lewis, in Sussex, and was his lodging when he came to London; it is now a common hostelry for travellers, and hath to sign the Walnut-tree.”[341]

The Walnut-tree was also the sign of a tavern at the south side of St Paul’s Churchyard, over against the New Vault, in which place a concert is advertised in July 1718, which, from the high price of the admission tickets—5s. each—must have been something out of the common.[342] The Walnut-tree was frequently adopted by cabinetmakers, and is at the present day a not uncommon alehouse sign.

The Mulberry-tree was introduced at an early period, but does not seem to have been used as a sign until modern times. James I., in 1609, caused several shiploads of mulberry trees to be imported from abroad to encourage the home manufacture of silk: these were planted in a part of St James’s Park; but the climate being too cold for the silk worms, it was changed into a pleasure garden, where even the serious Evelyn would occasionally relax. 10th May 1654:—

“My Lady Gerard treated us at the Mulberry Gardens, now y^e only place of refreshment about y^e towne for persons of y^e best quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partizans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been y^e usual rendezvous for y^e ladys and gallants at this season.”

Here Dryden went to eat mulberry tarts, and here Pepys occasionally dined, as 5th April 1669, when he indulged in what he calls an “olio,” evidently an olla podrida, since it was prepared by a Spanish cook; and the dish was so “noble,” and such a success, that he and his friends left the rest of their dinners untouched; and after a ride in a coach and a walk for digestion, they took supper “upon what was left at noon, and very good.”

Orange trees were one of the ornaments of St James’ Park in the reign of Charles II.; and at that period and long after, were mostly used as signboards of the seed-shops, and by Italian merchants. The Orange-tree and Two Jars was the sign of a shop of the latter description in the Haymarket in 1753.[343] No doubt, the orange tree must have obtained some popularity in the reign of William III., as it is the emblem of the Orange family. The orange tree is said to be originally a Chinese plant, (whence they were formerly called China oranges.) They were unknown to the ancients, and introduced by the Moors into Sicily in the twelfth century. France possessed them in the fourteenth century; and probably much about the same period they were brought to England, for we find “pome d’orring” mentioned as one of the items at the coronation dinner of Henry IV. in 1399, where they occur in the third course, along with quincys en comfyte doucettys, and other items of a modern dessert.[344] But a still earlier instance is mentioned in the “Book of Days,” (vol. ii. p. 694,) viz., in 1290, when a large ship from Spain arrived at Portsmouth laden with spices. On this occasion, Queen Eleanor of Castile, anxious to taste again the luscious fruit that reminded her of her home in sunny Spain and the days of her girlhood, bought out of the cargo “a frail of figs, of raisins, and of grapes, a bale of dates, 230 pomegranates, 15 citrons, and 7 oranges.” This probably is the oldest mention of the orange being brought to England. The tree is said to have been introduced into this country by a member of the Carew family. Oranges are named amongst the articles of diet consumed by the Lords of the Star Chamber in 1509, when their price is quoted one day at iijd., and another at ijd., whilst the charge for strawberries was vijd., and on another day iiijd.[345] Perhaps, however, they were only used as hors d’œuvres, for Randle Holme, in his instructions how to arrange a dinner, (in that omnium gatherum, “Academy of Armory,”) mentions oranges and lemons as the first item of the second course. At all events, they were abundant enough in 1559, for on May day of that year the revellers “at the queen’s plasse at Westmynster shott and threw eges and orengs on a-gaynst a-nodur.”[346] In an “Account of several Gardens near London,” in 1691,[347] Beddington Gardens are mentioned—then in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, but belonging to the Carew family—as having in it the best oranges in England. The orange and lemon trees grew in the ground, “and had done so near one hundred years, the house in which they were being above 200 feet long. Each of the trees was about 13 feet high, and generally full of fruit, producing above 10,000 oranges a year.” Sir William Temple’s oranges at Sheen are also praised. It is, indeed, a pity that this plant has so much gone out of fashion; for, besides being always green, it bears fruit and flowers all the year round, both appearing at the same time. The flowers have a delicious smell; the candied petals impart a very fine flavour to tea, if a few of them are infused with it; whilst the fruit may be preserved in exactly the same manner as other fruit. The sign of the orange-tree still occurs at Highgate, Birmingham; the Lemon Tree at Beacon Street, Lichfield.

The Olive Tree was a common Italian warehouse sign, but was occasionally used by other shops. Amongst the tokens in the Beaufoy Collection, there is the “Olfa Tree, Singon Strete,” an example of the liberties taken with our language on the old tokens, as this stands for the Olive Tree in St John’s Street. The usefulness of the olive tree made it in very early times a symbol of peace. In 1503 it was the sign of Henry Estienne, a bookseller and printer at the end of the Rue de St Jean Beauvais, otherwise Clos Bruneau, in Paris. This firm, for several generations, continued the leading publishers and printers in Paris. Sauval, who wrote in 1650, says that in his time the olive tree, carved in stone, was still to be seen in the front of the house. Here Francis I., in 1539, visited Robert Estienne, grandson of the founder of the firm, in his workshops; and to give him a proof of his favour, conferred upon him the title of Printer to the King for Latin and Hebrew; and presented him with those beautiful letters which Estienne proudly mentions on his title-pages: “Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi regii, typis regiis.”

The Vine, or the Bunch of Grapes, is a very natural sign at a place where wine is sold. The last particularly was almost inseparable from every tavern, and was often combined with other objects—

The Bunch of Carrots, at Hampton Bishop, Hereford, is probably meant as a joke upon the Bunch of Grapes. Bagford, in a letter to his brother antiquary, Leland,[348] says:—

“I have often thought, and am now fully perswaded, that the planting of vines in the adjacent parts about this city, was first of all begun by the Romans, an industrious people, and famous for their skill in agriculture and gardening, as may appear from their rei agrariæ scriptores, as well as from Pliny and other authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden, (which at this time is called Vine Street,) and a third in St Giles-in-the-Fields.[349] Many places in the country bear the name of the Vineyard to this day, especially in the ancient monasteries, as Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c., which were left as such by the Romans.”

In Bede’s time vineyards were abundant; and still later, tithes on wine were common in Gloucester, Kent, Surrey, and the adjacent counties. Winchester was famous for its vineyards in olden times, for Robert of Gloucester, in summing up the various commodities of the English counties, says:—

“And London ships most, and wine at Winchester.”

The Isle of Ely was called Isle des Vignes, and the tithe on the vines yielded as much as three or four tuns of wine to the bishop. Even in Richard II.’s time, the Little Park at Windsor was used as a vineyard for the home consumption; and the vale of Gloucester, according to William of Malmesbury, produced, in the twelfth century, as good a wine as many of the provinces of France; this county, in fact, produced the best wine:—

“There is no province in England hath so many or such good vineyards as this county, [Gloucester,] either for fertility or sweetness of the grape; the wine whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not much inferior to French in sweetness.”[350]

From the household expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, (1289-1290,) it appears that the white wine was at that period chiefly home-grown, whilst the greater proportion of red wine was imported from abroad. Even as late as the last century wine was made in England: Faulkner[351] quotes the following memorandum from the MS. notes of Peter Collinson:—

“October 18, 1765.—I went to see Mr Roger’s vineyards at Parson’s Green [at Fulham] all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe; I did not see a green, half-ripe grape in all this quantity. He does not expect to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The branches and fruit are remarkably large, and the wine very strong.”

Grosley[352] mentions a vineyard at Cobham, belonging to a Mr Hamilton, of about half an acre, planted with Burgundian vines; but the wine it produced will cause nobody to regret that the culture has been abandoned, for “it was a liquor of a darkish gray color; to the palate it was like verjuice and vinegar blended together by a bad taste of the soil.” This description, enough to set the teeth on edge, is most likely true, and gives us the reason why English wine came to be abandoned.

As the vine was set up as a sign in honour of wine, so the Hop-pole, or the Hop and Barleycorn, the Barley Mow, the Barley Stack, the Malt and Hops, and the Hopbine, are very general tributes of honour rendered to beer. In many ale-houses a bunch of hops may be seen suspended in some conspicuous place.

The Pine-apple, in the end of the last and the beginning of this century, was generally the emblem adopted by confectioners, though not exclusively, for it was the sign of an eating-house in New Street, Strand, at which Dr Johnson, on his first coming to town, used to dine.

“I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine-apple in New Street, just by.[353] Several of them had travelled; they expected to meet every day, but did not know one another’s names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.”

The pine-apple was first known at the discovery of America, and was preserved in sugar as early as 1556. The first pine-apple was brought from Santa Cruz to the West Indies, thence to the East Indies and China. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing in October 1716, informs her sister that she had been at a supper of the King of Hanover, “where there were,” says she, “what I thought worth all the rest, two ripe ananas, which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came there, but by enchantment.” Upon inquiry she learned that they had been forced in stoves or hot-houses, and is “surprised we do not practise in England so useful an invention.” It was not till the end of the last century that they were introduced into English gardens, having been brought over from hot-houses in Holland; and from that time seems to date their introduction on the signboard. It is still in general use with public-houses.

Of the Fig Tree there are several examples among the London trades tokens, some of them, no doubt, grocers’ signs, but other trades may have adopted it, either in allusion to the text of every man “sitting under his own fig-tree,” or because the fig-tree was a symbol of quiet unassuming industry; as such, at least, Camerarius represents it:—

“Verno tempore ficus arbor speciosis floribus aut fructuum præcocium abundantia minime sese ostentat, nullamque inanem hominibus de se spem injicit: in autumno autem fructus suaviss. ac quidem in illis reconditos quasi flores quosdam proferre solet.”[354]

The Almond Tree was the sign of John Webster in St Paul’s Churchyard, in 1663; and the Peach Tree occurs sometimes as an ale-house sign, as, for instance, in Nottingham. Neither of these signs, however, are of frequent occurrence.

Not only fruit-trees but various forest-trees are constantly met with on the signboard: thus the Green Tree, which is very common, originally had allusion to the foresters of the “merry greenwood,” or was suggested by some large evergreen, or tree sheltering, or standing near the inn; of this green tree the Green Seedling in Chester is evidently a sprout. Again, in Sheffield there are two signs of the Burnt Tree, which name possibly originated from some tree having been damaged in a fire, and becoming a well-known landmark. The Oak, the vigorous emblem of our mighty state, is deservedly much used for a sign; sometimes it is called the British Oak. At Kilpeck, in Herefordshire, the following rhyme accompanies it:—