Thus, though the wood of the sacrifice played a very insignificant part in the story, yet the simple mention of it was enough to make it a fit subject for a Dutchman’s signboard. We have a similar instance in Jacob’s Well, which is common in London, as well as in the country. The allusion here is to the well at which Christ met the woman of Samaria, who said to him:

“ART thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.” (S. John iv. 12.)

How cruelly these words apply to the gin-tap, at which generation after generation drink, and after which they always thirst again. Not unlikely the English use of this sign dates from the Puritan period.[376] Not always, however, had the sign any direct relation to the trade of the inmate of the house which it adorned; as, for example, Moses and Aaron, which occurs on a trades token of Whitechapel. In allusion to this, or a similar sign, Tom Brown says, “Other amusements presented themselves as thick as hops, as Moses pictured with horns, to keep Cheapside in countenance.”[377] Even the Dutch shopkeeper, whose imagination was generally so fertile in finding a religious subject appropriate as his trade sign, was at a loss what to do with Moses; for a baker in Amsterdam, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of Moses, with this inscription:

In London, however, the use of this sign may at first have been suggested by the statues of Moses and Aaron that used to stand above the balcony of the Old Guildhall. Connected with the history of Moses, we find several other signs, one in particular, mentioned by Ned Ward as the Old Pharaoh in the town of Barley, in Cambridgeshire. It was so named, says he, “from a stout, elevating malt liquor of the same name, for which this house had been long famous.”[379] Why this beer was called Pharaoh, Ned Ward does not seem to have known; but a story in the county is current that it was so named because the beer, like the Egyptian king of old, “would not let the people go!” It is now no longer drunk in England, but a certain strong beer of the same name is still a favourite beverage in Belgium. Next, in chronological order, connected with the history of Moses, follows the Brazen Serpent, the sign of Reynold Wolfe, a bookseller and printer in St Paul’s Churchyard, 1544, and also of both his apprentices, Henry Binneman and John Shepperde. It had probably been imported by the foreign printers, for it was a favourite amongst the early French and German booksellers. At the present day it is a public-house sign in Richardson Street, Bermondsey. What led to the adoption of this emblem was not the historical association, but the mystical meaning which it had in the middle ages:—

“A serpent torqued with a long cross; others blazon Christ, supporting the brazen serpent, because it was an anti-type of the passion and death of our Saviour; for as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (Num. xxi. 8, 9; John iii. 14,) that all that behold him, by a lively faith, may not perish, but have everlasting life. This is the cognizance or crest of every true believer.”[380]

The idea was no doubt borrowed from the Biblia Pauperum. The Balaam’s Ass, again, was one of the dramatis personæ in the Whitsuntide mystery of the company of cappers, (cap-makers,) and this is the only reason we can imagine for his having found his way to the signboard. It occurs in 1722 in a newspaper paragraph, concerning a child born without a stomach, the details of which are too nauseous to be introduced here.[381]

The Two Spies is the last sign belonging to the history of Moses; it represents two of the spies that went into Canaan, “and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff,” (Num. xiii. 23.) This bunch of grapes made it a favourite with publicans; at many places it may still be seen, as in Catherine Street, Strand, (a house of old standing;) in Long Acre, &c. In Great Windmill Street, Leicester Square, it has been corrupted into the Three Spies.

After Moses there is a blank until we come to Samson, to whom our national admiration for athletic sports and muscular strength has given a prominent place on the signboard. Samson and the Lion occurs on the sign of various houses in London in the seventeenth century, as appears from the trades tokens. It is still of frequent occurrence in country towns, as at Dudley, Coventry, &c. It was also used on the Continent. In Paris there is, or was, not many years ago, a della Robbia ware medallion sign in the Rue des Dragons, with the legend “le Fort Samson,” representing the strong man tearing open the lion. To a sign of Samson at Dordrecht, in the seventeenth century, the following satirical inscription had been added:—

This admiration of strong men, which procured the signboard honours to Samson, also made Goliah, or Golias, a great favourite. In the Horse Market, Castle Barnard, he is actually treated just like a duke, admiral, or any other public-house hero, for there the sign is entitled the Goliah Head. Some doubts, however, may be entertained whether by Golias or Goliah, (for the name is spelt both ways,) the Philistine giant and champion was always intended. Towards the end of the twelfth century there lived a man of wit, with the real or assumed name of Golias, who wrote the “Apocalypsis Goliæ,” and other burlesque verses. He was the leader of a jovial sect called Goliardois, of which Chaucer’s Miller was one. “He was a jangler and a goliardeis.” Such a person might, therefore, have been a very appropriate tutelary deity for an alehouse.[383]

Goliah’s conqueror, King David, liberally shared the honours with his victim, and he still figures on various signboards. There is a King David’s inn in Bristol, and a David and Harp in Limehouse; whilst in Paris, the Rue de la Harpe is said to owe its name to a sign of King David playing on the harp. David’s unfortunate son, Absalom, was a peruke-maker’s very expressive emblem, both in France and in England, to show the utility of wigs. Thus a barber at a town in Northamptonshire used this inscription:

Which a brother peruke-maker versified, under a sign representing the death of Absalom, with David weeping. He wrote up thus:

Psalm xlii. seems to be very profanely hinted at in the sign of the White Hart and Fountain, Royal Mint Street, which, if not a combination of two well-known signs, apparently alludes to the words, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” The Panting Hart (het dorstige Hert, or het Heigent Hert,) was formerly a very common beer-house sign in Holland. In the seventeenth century there was one with the following inscription at Amsterdam:—

Another one at Leyden had the following rhyme:—

The wise king Solomon does not appear to have ever been honoured with a signboard portrait, but his enthusiastic admirer, the Queen of Saba, figured before the tavern kept by Dick Tarlton the jester, in Gracechurch Street. This Queen of Saba, or Sheba, was a usual figure in pageants. There is a letter of Secretary Barlow, in “Nugæ Antiquæ,” telling how the Queen of Sheba fell down and upset her casket in the lap of the King of Denmark—when on his drunken visit to James I.—who “got not a little defiled with the presents of the queen; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverages, cakes, spices, and other good matters.”

Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” has a very ingenious explanation for the sign of the Bell Savage, as derived from the Queen of Saba, which though non è vero, ma ben trovato. He bases his argument on a poem of the fourteenth century, the “Romaunce of Kyng Alisaundre,” wherein the Queen of Saba is thus mentioned:—

Elisha’s Raven, represented with a chop in his mouth, is the sign of a butcher in the Borough,—a curious conceit, and certainly his own invention; at least we do not remember any other instance of the sign. This tribute is certainly very disinterested in the butcher, for if there were any such ravens now, it is probable that they would sadly interfere with the trade.

Few signs have undergone so many changes as the well-known Salutation. Originally it represented the angel saluting the Virgin Mary, in which shape it was still occasionally seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as appears from the tavern token of Daniel Grey of Holborn. In the times of the Commonwealth, however, “sacrarum ut humanarum rerum, heu! vicissitudo est,” the Puritans changed it into the Soldier and Citizen, and in such a garb it continued long after, with this modification, that it was represented by two citizens politely bowing to each other. The Salutation Tavern in Billingsgate shows it thus on its trades token, and so it was represented by the Salutation Tavern in Newgate Street, (an engraving of which sign may still be seen in the parlour of that old established house.) At present it is mostly rendered by two hands conjoined, as at the Salutation Hotel, Perth, where a label is added with the words, “You’re welcome to the city.” That Salutation Tavern in Billingsgate was a famous place in Ben Jonson’s time; it is named in “Bartholomew Fayre” as one of the houses where there had been

During the civil war there was a Salutation Tavern in Holborn, in which the following ludicrous incident happened,—if we may believe the Royalist papers:—

“A hotte combat lately happened at the Salutation Taverne in Holburne, where some of the Commonwealth vermin, called soldiers, had seized on an Amazonian Virago, named Mrs Strosse, upon suspicion of being a loyalist, and selling the Man in the Moon; but shee, by applying beaten pepper to their eyes, disarmed them, and with their own swordes forced them to aske her forgiveness; and down on their mary bones, and pledge a health to the king, and confusion to their masters, and so honourablie dismissed them. Oh! for twenty thousand such gallant spirits; when you see that one woman can beat two or three.”[387]

At the end of the last century there was a Salutation Tavern in Tavistock Row, called also “Mr Bunch’s,” which was one of the elegant haunts, patronised by “the first gentleman of Europe,” otherwise the Prince Regent. Lord Surrey and Sheridan were generally his associates in these escapades. The trio went under the pseudonyms of Blackstock, Greystock, and Thinstock, and disguised in bob wigs and smockfrocks. The night’s entertainment generally concluded with thrashing the “Charlies,” wrenching off knockers, breaking down signboards, and not unfrequently with being taken to the roundhouse.

The Salutation in Newgate Street, some time called the Salutation and Cat, (a combination of two signs,) was haunted by many of the great authors of the last century. There is a poetical invitation extant to a social feast held at this tavern, January 19, 17356, issued by the two stewards, Edward Cave (of the Gentleman’s Magazine,) and William Bowyer, the antiquary and printer:—

Richardson the novelist was one of the invités. He returned a poetical answer, too long to quote at length: the following is part of it:—

In this tavern Coleridge the poet, in one of his melancholy moods, lived for some time in seclusion, until found out by Southey, and persuaded by him to return to his usual mode of life. Sir T. N. Talfourd, in his Life of Charles Lamb, informs us that here Coleridge was in the habit of meeting Lamb when in town on a visit from the University. Christ’s Hospital, their old school, was within a few paces of the place:—

“When Coleridge quitted the University and came to town, full of mantling hopes and glorious schemes, Lamb became his admiring disciple. The scene of these happy meetings was a little public-house called the Salutation and Cat, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, where they used to sup, and remain long after they had ‘heard the chimes of midnight.’ There they discoursed of Bowles, who was the god of Coleridge’s poetical idolatry, and of Burns and Cowper, who of recent poets—in that season of comparative barrenness—had made the deepest impression on Lamb; there Coleridge talked of ‘fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,’ to one who desired ‘to find no end’ of the golden maze; and there he recited his early poems with that deep sweetness of intonation which sunk into the heart of his hearers. To these meetings Lamb was accustomed, at all periods of his life, to revert, as the season when his finer intellects were quickened into action. Shortly after they had terminated, with Coleridge’s departure from London, he thus recalled them in a letter:—‘When I read in your little volume your nineteenth effusion, or what you call “The Sigh,” I think I hear you again. I imagine to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy.’ This was early in 1769, and in 1818, when dedicating his works—then first collected—to his earliest friend, he thus spoke of the same meetings:—‘Some of the sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct—the memory “of summer days and of delightful years,” even so far back as those old suppers at our old inn—when life was fresh and topics exhaustless—and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.’”

The Angel was derived from the Salutation, for that it originally represented the angel appearing to the Holy Virgin at the Salutation or Annunciation, is evident from the fact that, even as late as the seventeenth century on nearly all the trades tokens of houses with this sign, the Angel is represented with a scroll in his hands; and this scroll we know, from the evidence of paintings and prints, to contain the words addressed by the angel to the Holy Virgin: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.” Probably at the Reformation it was considered too Catholic a sign, and so the Holy Virgin was left out, and the angel only retained. Among the famous houses with this sign, the well-known starting-place of the Islington omnibuses stands foremost. It is said to have been an established inn upwards of two hundred years. The old house was pulled down in 1819; till that time it had preserved all the features of a large country inn, a long front, overhanging tiled roof, with a square inn-yard having double galleries supported by columns and carved pilasters, with caryatides and other ornaments. It is more than probable that it had often been used as a place for dramatic entertainments at the period when inn-yards were customarily employed for such purposes. “Even so late as fifty years since it was customary for travellers approaching London, to remain all night at the Angel Inn, Islington, rather than venture after dark to prosecute their journey along ways which were almost equally dangerous from their bad state, and their being so greatly infested with thieves.”[388] On the other hand, persons walking from the city to Islington in the evening, waited near the end of John Street, in what is now termed Northampton Street, (but was then a rural avenue planted with trees,) until a sufficient party had collected, who were then escorted by an armed patrol appointed for that purpose. Another old tavern with this sign is extant in London, behind St Clement’s Church in the Strand. To this house Bishop Hooper was taken by the Guards, on his way to Gloucester, where he went to be burnt, in January 1555. The house, until lately, preserved much of its ancient aspect: it had a pointed gable, galleries, and a lattice in the passage. This inn is named in the following curious advertisement:—

“TO BE SOLD, a Black Girl, the property of J. B——, eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks French perfectly well; is of excellent temper and willing disposition. Inquire of W. Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement’s Church, in the Strand.”—Publick Advertiser, March 28, 1769.

Older than either of these is the Angel Inn, at Grantham. This building was formerly in the possession of the Knights Templars, and still retains many remains of its former beauty, particularly the gateway, with the heads of Edward III. and his queen Philippa of Hainault on either side of the arch; the soffits of the windows are elegantly groined, and the parapet of the front is very beautiful. Kings have been entertained in this house; but it seemed to bring ill luck to them, for the reigns of those that are recorded as having been guests in it, stand forth in history as disturbed by violent storms—King John held his court in it on February 23, 1213; King Richard III. on October 19, 1483; and King Charles I. visited it May 17, 1633.

Ben Jonson, it is said, used to visit a tavern with the sign of the Angel, at Basingstoke, kept by a Mrs Hope, whose daughter’s name was Prudence. On one of his journeys, finding that the house had changed both sign and mistresses, Ben wrote the following smart but not very elegant epigram:—

The Angel was the sign of one of the first coffee-houses in England, for Anthony Wood tells us that, “in 1650 Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house at the Angel, in the parish of St Peter, Oxon; and there it [coffee] was by some, who delight in noveltie, drank.” Finally, there was an Angel Tavern in Smithfield, where the famous Joe Miller, of joking fame—a comic actor by profession—used to play during Bartholomew Fair time. A playbill of 1722 informs the public in large letters that—

“Miller is not with Pinkethman, but by himself, at the Angel Tavern, next door to the King’s Bench, who acts a new Droll, called the Faithful Couple or the Royal Shepherdess, with a very pleasant entertainment between Old Hob and his Wife, and the comical humours of Mopsy and Collin, with a variety of singing and dancing.

“The only Comedian now that dare,
Vie with the world and challenge the Fair.”

In France, also, the sign of the Angel is and was at all times, very common. The Hotel de l’Ange, Rue de la Huchette, appears to have been the best hotel in Paris in the sixteenth century. It was frequently visited by foreign ambassadors: those sent by Emperor Maximilian to Louis XII. took up their abode here; so did the ambassadors from Angus, King of Achaia, who, in 1552, came to see France, much in the same way as various ambassadors from all sorts of high and low latitudes occasionally honour our Court with a visit. Chapelle, a French poet of the seventeenth century, thus celebrates a tavern with this sign in Paris, frequented by the wits of the period:—

There being, then, such a profusion of Angels everywhere, it became necessary to make some distinctions, and the usual means were adopted; the Angel was gilded, and called the Golden Angel; this, for instance, was the sign of Ellis Gamble, a goldsmith in Cranbourn Alley, Hogarth’s master in the art of engraving on silver; shop-bills engraved for this house by Hogarth are still in existence. Another variety was the Guardian Angel, which is still the sign of an ale-house at Yarmouth. This, too, was used in France, as we find l’Ange Gardien, the sign of Pierre Witte, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, Paris, in the seventeenth century.

Very common, also, were the Three Angels, which may have been intended for the three angels that appeared to Abraham, or simply the favourite combination of three,[390] so frequent on the signboard and in heraldry. That three angels were thought to possess mysterious power, is evident from the following Devonshire charm for a burn:—

The Three Angels was a very general linen-draper’s sign, for which there seems no reason other than that the long flowing garments in which they are generally represented, suggest their having been good customers to the drapery business.

Angels appear in combination with various heterogenous objects, in many of which, however, the so-called Angel is simply a Cupid. The Angel and Bible was a sign in the Poultry in 1680.[391] The Angel and Crown was a not uncommon tavern decoration. The following stanza from a pamphlet, entitled, “The Quack Vintners,” London, 1712, p. 18, shows the way in which this sign was represented:—

From this we learn it was a Cupid or Amorino supporting a crown; the sign of the house had doubtless originally been the Crown, and the Cupid, so common in the Renaissance style, had been added by way of ornament, but was mistaken by the public as a constituent of the sign. The verses probably applied to the Angel and Crown, a famous tavern in Broad Street, behind the Royal Exchange. There was another Angel and Crown in Islington, where convivial dinners were held in the olden time. It was a common practice in the last and preceding centuries for the natives of a county or parish to meet once a year and dine together. The ceremony often commenced by a sermon, preached by a native, after which the day was spent in pleasant conviviality, after-dinner speeches, and mutual congratulations. The custom now has almost died out; but this is one of the invitation tickets:

St Mary, Islington.

Sir,

You are desidered to meet many other Natives of this place on Tuesday [271]y^e 11th day of April 1738 at Mrs Eliz. Grimstead’s y^e Angel and Crown, in y^e Upper Street, about y^e hour of One; Then and there w^th Full Dishes, Good Wine and Good Humour to improve and make lasting that Harmony and Friendship which have so long reigned among us.

Walter Sebbon.
John Booth.
Bourchier Durrell.
James Sebbon.
Stewards.

N.B. The Dinner will be on the table peremptorily at Two.
Pray pay the Bearer Five Shillings.

That same year, another Angel and Crown Tavern in Shire Lane obtained an unenviable notoriety, for it was there that a Mr Quarrington was murdered and robbed by Thomas Carr, an attorney from the Temple, and Elisabeth Adams. They were hanged at Tyburn, January 18, 1738.

The Angel and Gloves at first sight seems a whimsical combination, but is easily explained when we advert to the woodcut above the shop-bill of Isaac Dalvy, in Little Newport Street, Soho, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, sold gloves, &c., under this sign, which simply represented two Cupids, each carrying a glove,—in fact, exactly the same conceit as that of the Herculanese shoemaker, noticed in a former chapter. It is more difficult to find a rational explanation for the Angel and Stilliards. The Steelyard, or Stilliard, in Upper Thames Street, was the place where the Hanse merchants exposed their goods for sale, and was so called from the king’s steelyard, or beam, there erected for weighing the tonnage of goods imported into London.[392] Whether this sign represented a Cupid with such a weighing machine, or a view of the hall of the Hanse merchants, with a Fame flying over it, is now impossible to decide. It may be suggested that a variation of the well-known figure of Justice, with steelyards in place of the usual scales, was the origin. Be this as it may, the only mention we have found of the sign is in the following advertisement:—

“WILLIAM DEVAL, at the Angel & Stilliards, in St Ann’s Lane, near Aldersgate, London, maketh Castle (Castille), Marble, and white Sope as good as any Marseilles Sope; Tryed and Proved and sold at very Reasonable Rates.”[393]—Domestic Intelligencer, January 2d, 1679.

A few years later we find the Angel and Still noticed, as in the following advertisement:—

“A WELL-SET Negro, commonly called Sugar, aged about twenty years, teeth broke before, and several scars in both his cheeks and forehead, having absented from his Master, whosoever secures him and gives notice to Benjamin Maynard, at the Angel and Still, at Deptford, shall have a Guinea Reward and reasonable charges.”—Weekly Journal, October 18, 1718.

In this case the still was simply added to intimate the sale of spirituous liquors.

The Angel and Sun, apparently a combination of two signs, is named as a shop or tavern near Strandbridge, in 1663,[394] and is still the name of a public-house in the Strand. The Angel and Woolpack, at Bolton, is the same sign which, near London Bridge, is called the Naked Boy and Woolpack. A woolpack, with a negro seated on it, was at one time very common; for a change or distinction, this negro underwent the reputed impossible process of being washed white, and thus became a naked boy, which, in signboard phraseology, is equivalent to an angel.

The Virgin was unquestionably a very common sign before the Reformation, and it may be met with even at the present day, as, for instance, at Ebury Hill, Worcester, and in various other places. In France it was, and is still, much more common than in England, as might be expected. Tallemant des Réaux tells of a miraculous tavern sign of Notre Dame, on the bridge of that name, in Paris, which was observed by the faithful to cry and shed tears, probably on account of the bad company she had to harbour. It was taken down by order of the archbishop. At the end of the seventeenth century there was, in the Rue de la Seine, Paris, a quack doctor, who pretended to cure a great variety of complaints. He put up a holy Virgin for his sign, with the words, “Refugium Peccatorum,” which is one of the usual epithets of the holy Virgin in the Roman Catholic Church service, very wittily, although profanely, applied in this instance. The sign of the Virgin was also called Our Lady, as: “Newe Inne was a guest Inne, the sign whereof was the picture of our Lady, and thereupon it was also called Our Lady’s Inne.”[395] Our Lady of Pity was the sign of Johan Redman, a bookseller in Paternoster Row, in 1542. Johan Byddell, also a bookseller, had introduced this sign in the beginning of that century. This Byddell, or Bedel, (who lived in Fleet Street, next to Fleet Bridge,) had evidently borrowed it from a nearly similar figure in Corio’s History of Milan, 1505. He afterwards lived at the Sun, in Fleet Street, the house formerly occupied by Wynkyn de Worde.

The prevalence of the Baptist’s Head probably dated from the time when pilgrimages across the sea were considered good works, and the head of St John the Baptist at Amiens Cathedral came in for a large share of visits from English worshippers. The old monkish writers say that in 448 after Christ, the head was found in Jerusalem; in 1206 it was transferred to Amiens, where it was kept in a salver of gold, surrounded with a rim of pearls and precious stones.[396] Various other reasons may be adduced for the prevalence of this sign, as the conspicuous place occupied by St John in the Roman Catholic hagiology, and hence in mediæval plays and mysteries; the festivities of Midsummer, (a day of great moment in London for setting the watch;) and, finally, his being the patron saint of the Knights of Jerusalem. It was doubtless in compliment to those knights that the Baptist’s Head in St John’s Lane, Clerkenwell, was named. This house seems to be the remainder of some noble mansion of Queen Elizabeth’s time; it contains many Elizabethan ornaments, particularly a chimney-piece, with the coats of arms of the Radcliff and Forster families. When the house was adapted to its present purpose, it was distinguished by the head of St John the Baptist in a charger, now gone. Doctor Johnson is said to have been an occasional visitor here, when returning from Edward Cave’s, the editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, whose office was close by at St John’s Gate. Goldsmith is also reported to have made frequent calls here, when business of a similar nature led him to the same spot. In later years it became the house of call of the prisoners on their way to the new prison in the parish—a circumstance commemorated by Dodd in the “Old Bailey Registers.” Another St John’s Head is mentioned by Stow in the following accident:—

“The 11th of July (1553) Gilbert Pot, drawer to Ninion Saunders, vintner, dwelling at St John’s Head within Ludgate, who was accused by the said Saunders, his maister, was set on the pillory in Cheape, with both his ears nailed and cleane cut off, for wordes speaking at the time of the proclamation of Lady Jane; at which execution was a trumpet bloune and a herault in his coat of armes redd his offence, in presence of William Garrard, one of the Sheriffes of London. About 5 of the clocke the same day, in the afternoone, Ninion Saunders, master to the said Gilbert Pot, and John Owen, a gunmaker, both gunners of the Tower, comming from the Tower of London by water in a whirrie and shooting London Bridge, towards the Black Fryers, were drowned at S. Mary Loch[397] and the whirry-man saved by their oars.”

To this same saint also refers the John of Jerusalem, a sign at the present day in Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, put up, like the Baptist Head, in remembrance of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who formerly had their priory in this locality.

In France this sign was equally common. Jean Carcain, one of the early Parisian publishers and printers, (1487,) adopted it for his shop. One of his books has the following quaint impress:—

It was an old signboard jocularity in France to represent St John the Baptist by a monkey with cambric (batiste) ruffles and wristbands, (singe en batiste.) From the parables the sign of the Good Samaritan was borrowed, which, even at the present day, may be seen in Turner Street, Whitechapel; Grimshaw Park, Blackburn, &c. When barbers combined with their trade the practice of letting blood—otherwise than by “easy shaving,”—of drawing teeth, and setting bones, they frequently adopted this sign. In the seventeenth century, a barber-surgeon at Leeuwarden, in Holland, wrote under his device of the Good Samaritan the following poetical effusion:—

The Samaritan Woman (la Samaritaine) is the French version of our Jacob’s Well, and was a common sign in Paris; everybody knows the Bains de la Samaritaine, in which the luxurious Parisian indulges in a fresh water bath in his Seine, which at that place is about as clear as the Thames at Blackwall. In the Rue Caquerel at Rouen there is a stone bas-relief of the Samaritan woman at the well, with the date 1580. Jacques Dupuy, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, also used the Samaritan woman as his sign, evidently because it was a subject in which he could introduce a well, and so have the satisfaction of punning on his name. This kind of pun was none the less relished for being far-fetched; thus there is a stone bas-relief in the Rue Froid, at Caen, of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, (la Pêche Miraculeuse,) which, in the early part of the seventeenth century, was placed there by a bookseller of the name of Poisson, (Fish,) who, being an “odd fish,” adopted this sign as a pun on his own name. At the present day, the house is still inhabited by a bookseller of the same name and family.

Christ’s Passion does not seem to have suggested any signs in England, although the great symbol of His death, the Cross, was comparatively common. In Paris there was, in 1640, a bookseller, George Josse, in the Rue St Jacques, who had the Crown of Thorns (la Couronne d’Epine) for his sign, probably on account of the original Crown of Thorns being one of the relics kept at Paris. Coryatt’s remarks on this relic are rather amusing:—

“They report in Paris that the Thorny Crown, wherewith Christ was crowned on the Crosse, is kept in the Palace, which vpon Corpus Christi Day, in the afternoone, was publickly shewed, as some told me; but it was not my chance to see it. Truely, I wonder to see the contrarieties amongst the Papists, and most ridiculous varieties concerning their reliques, but especially about this of Christ’s Thorny Crowne. For whereas I was after that at the Citie of Vicenza in Italy, it was told me that in the monastery of the Dominican Fryers of that Citie, this Crowne was kept, which Saint Lewes, King of France, bestowed upon his brother Bartholomew, Bishop of Vicenza, and before one of the Dominican family. Wherefore I went to the Dominican Monastery and made suit to see it, but I had the repulse; for they told me that it was kept vnder three or four lockes, and neuer shewed to any by any favour whatsoeuer, but only upon Corpus Christi Day. If this Crowne of Paris, whereof they so much bragge, be true, that of Vicenza is false. Ho! the truth and certainty of Papistical reliques.”[400]

Crosses of various colours were probably amongst the first signs put up by the newly-converted Christians, (as soon as they could effect this with impunity,) on account of the recommendation of the early fathers, and for their beneficial influence. Father Lactantius, who lived in the fourth century, writes—“As Christ, whilst He lived amongst men, put the devils to flight by His words, and restored those to their senses whom these evil spirits had possessed; so now His followers in the name of their Master, and by the sign of His passion, even exercise the same dominion over them.” St Ephrem says—“Let us paint and imprint on our doors the life-giving cross; thus defended no evil will hurt you.” St Chrysostom says the same—“Wherefore let us with earnestness impress this cross on our houses, and on our walls, and our windows.” St Cyril of Alexandria introduces the Emperor Julian the apostate saying, “You Christians adore the wood of the cross, you engrave it on the porches of your houses,” &c. Hence the still prevalent custom in Roman Catholic places of painting crosses on the walls of houses, to drive away witches, as it is said; and these crosses being painted in different colours, might easily serve as a sign by which to designate the house. At the Crusades the popularity of this emblem increased: a red cross was the badge of the Crusader, and would be put up as a sign by men who had been to the Holy Land, or wished to court the patronage of those on their way thither. Finally, the different orders of knighthood settled each upon a particular colour as their distinctive mark. Thus the knights of St John wore white crosses, the Templars red crosses, the knights of St Lazarus green crosses, the Teutonic knights black crosses, embroidered with gold, &c. But the most common in England was the red cross, which was the cross of St George, and also of the red cross knights, who acted as a sort of police on the roads between Europe and the Holy Land to protect pilgrims. This badge, therefore, could not fail to be very popular.

In France it used to be, and in all probability is still, a common rebus to see le signe de la croix represented by a swan with a cross on his back, (cygne de la croix.)

Only very few signs of the cross are now remaining. The Golden Cross in the Strand is one of these, and has been in that locality for centuries. It was one of the first upon which the Puritans brooked their ill-humour and hatred of popery; for in 1643 it was taken down by order of a committee from the House of Commons, as “superstitious and idolatrous.” This was the precursor of the fall of old Charing Cross itself. The sign, however, was put up again at the Restoration, and figures prominently in Canaletti’s well-known view of Charing Cross, in the Northumberland Collection. The tavern was probably pulled down at the formation of Trafalgar Square.

At a point on the road between Dunchurch and Daventry, where three roads meet, there was formerly an inn with the sign of the Three Crosses, in allusion to the three roads. Swift, in one of his pedestrian excursions, happened to stop at that inn. Not being very elegantly dressed, and rather importunate to be served, the landlady told him that she could not leave her customers for “such as he,” upon which the Dean, who was not the most modest, nor the most patient of men, wrote the following epigram on one of the windows:—