From whence they obtained the information it is difficult to say, but it was a well-established fact with the old tobacconists that he could enjoy his pipe. Thus he is represented on some of the tobacconists’ papers in the Banks Collection puffing like a steam-engine, and underneath the words, “Who’ll smoake with y^e Man in y^e Moon?” If these frequent allusions in songs and plays were not enough to remind the Londoners that there was such a being, they could see him daily amongst the figures of old St Paul’s—

“The Great Dial is your last monument; where bestow some half of the three score minutes to observe the sauciness of the Jacks[443] that are above the Man in the Moon there; the strangeness of their motion will quit your labour.”—Decker’s Gull’s Hornbook.

CHAPTER X.
DIGNITIES, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS.

Tools and utensils, as emblems of trade, were certainly placed outside houses at an early period, to inform the illiterate public of the particular trade or occupation carried on within. Centuries ago the practice, as a general rule, fell into disuse, although a few trades still adhere to it with laudable perseverance: thus a broom informs us where to find a sweep; a gilt arm wielding a hammer tells us where the gold-beater lives; and a last or gilt shoe where to order a pair of boots. Those houses of refreshment and general resort, which sought the custom of particular trades and professions, also very frequently adopted the tools and emblems of those trades as their distinguishing signs. At other houses, again, signs were set up as tributes of respect to certain dignities and functions. Amongst the latter, the King’s Head and Queen’s Head stand foremost, and none were more prominent types than Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, even for more than two centuries after their decease. Only fifty or sixty years ago, there still remained a well-painted, half-length portrait of bluff Harry, as a sign of the King’s Head, before a public-house in Southwark. His personal appearance, doubtless, more than his character as a king, were at the bottom of this popular favour. He looked the personification of jollity and good cheer, and when the evil passions, expressed by his face, were lost under the clumsy brush of the sign-painter, there remained nothing but a merry, “beery-looking” Bacchus, eminently adapted for a public-house sign.

A very respectable folio might be filled with anecdotes connected with the various King’s Head inns and taverns up and down the country and in London—some connected with royalty, others with remarkable persons. Thus, for instance, when the Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth came forth from her confinement in the Tower, November 17, 1558, she went into the church of All Hallows, Staining, the first church she found open, to return thanks for her deliverance from prison. As soon as this pious duty was performed, the princess and her attendants went to the King’s Head in Fenchurch Street to take some refreshment, and there her Royal Highness dined on pork and peas. A monument of this visit is still preserved at the above house in an engraving of the princess, from a picture by Hans Holbein, hung up in the coffee-room; and the dish from which she ate her dinner still remains, it is said, affixed to the kitchen dresser there. There is a tradition that the bells of All Hallows were rung on this occasion with such energy, that the queen presented the ringers with silken ropes.

A more painful association is connected with another King’s Head:—

“In a secluded part of the Oxfordshire hills, at a place called Collins End, situated between Hardwicke House and Goring Heath, is a neat little rustic inn, having for its sign a well-executed portrait of Charles I. There is a tradition that this unfortunate monarch, while residing as a prisoner at Caversham, rode one day, attended by an escort, into this part of the country, and hearing that there was a bowling-green at this inn, frequented by the neighbouring gentry, struck down to the house, and endeavoured to forget his sorrows for a while in a game at bowls. This circumstance is alluded to in the following lines, written beneath the signboard:—

“Stop, traveller, stop, in yonder peaceful glade,
His favourite game the royal martyr play’d.
Here, stripp’d of honours, children, freedom, rank,
Drank from the bowl, and bowl’d for what he drank;
Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,
And changed his guinea ere he lost his crown.”[444]

The sign, which seems to be a copy from Vandyke, though much faded from exposure to the weather, evidently displayed an amount of artistic skill not usually met with on the signboard; but the only information the people of the house could give was, that they believed it to have been painted in London. His son, Charles II., is also connected in an anecdote with a King’s Head Tavern, in the Poultry, for it is reported that he stopped at this inn on the day of his entry at the Restoration, at the request of the landlady, who happened just then to be in labour, and wished to salute his majesty. Mrs King, the lady so honoured, was aunt to William Bowyer, “the learned printer of the eighteenth century.” In Ben Jonson’s time there was a famous King’s Head Tavern in New Fish Street, “where roysters did range.” It is this tavern, probably, that is alluded to in the ballad of “The Ranting Wh——’s Resolution:”—

At the King’s Head, the corner of Chancery Lane, Cowley the poet was born in 1618; it was then a grocer’s shop kept by his father. Subsequently it became a famous tavern, of which tokens are extant. It was at this house that Titus Oates’s party met, and trumped up their infamous story against the Roman Catholics, trying to implicate the Duke of York in the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. In the reign of William III., it was a violent Whig club. The distinction adopted by the members was a green ribbon worn in the hat. When these ribbons were shown, it was a sign that mischief was on foot, and that there were secret meetings to be held. North gives an amusing and lively description of this club:—

“The house was double balconied in front, as may be yet seen, for the clubsters to issue forth, in fresco, with hats and no perruques, pipes in their mouths, merry faces and diluted throat for vocal encouragement of the canaglia below, at bonfires, on unusual and usual occasions.”

Here the Pope-burning manifestations were got up, the Earl of Shaftesbury being president. In opposition to this Green Ribbon Club, the Tories wore in their hat a scarlet ribbon, with the words, Rex et Haeredes. Ned Ward, with his usual humour, describes a breakfast given in 1706 by the master of this house to his customers, consisting of an ox of 415 lb., roasted whole, and at the same time embraces the opportunity of praising the landlord as “the honestest vintner in London, at whose house the best wine in England is to be drunk.” This was probably Ned’s way of settling an old score.

Another King’s Head is mentioned by Pepys, 26th March 16634:—

“Thence walked through the ducking-pond fields, but they are so altered since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the old man’s at the Kings-head, to eat cakes and ale (his name was Pitts,) that I did not know which was the ducking-pond, nor where I was.”

It was a very different “ducking” in which the landlady of the Queen’s Head ale-house was concerned, as shown by the following newspaper paragraph:—

“Last week, a woman that keeps the Queen’s Head ale-house at Kingston, in Surrey, was ordered by the Court to be ducked for scolding, and was[308] accordingly placed in the chair and ducked in the river Thames, under Kingston Bridge, in the presence of 2000 or 3000 people.”—London Evening Post, Ap. 27, 1745.

Full particulars of such an operation are given by Misson:—

“They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two strong beams, twelve or fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other. The chair hangs upon a sort of axle, on which it plays freely, so as to remain in the horizontal position. The scold being well fastened in her chair, the two beams are then placed as near to the centre as possible, across a post on the water side, and being lifted up behind, the chair of course drops into the cold element. The ducking is repeated according to the degree of shrewdness possessed by the patient, and generally has the effect of cooling her immoderate heat, at least for a time.”

At the King’s Head, Strutton, near Ipswich, about ten years ago, there was the following inscription:—

Old Nat had lived for a period of eighty years under the shadow of the King’s Head.

Combinations with the King’s Head are not very frequent. The King’s Head and Lamb, an ale-house in Upper Thames Street, is evidently a quartering of two signs. The Two Kings and Still, sign of Henry Francis in Newmarket, 1667,[446] representing a still between two kings crowned, holding their sceptres, may have originated from the distillers’ arms, the two wild men, serving as supporters, being refined into two kings, the garlands on their heads into crowns, and their clubs into sceptres.

That Queen Elizabeth was for more than two centuries the almost unvarying type of the Queen’s Head need not be wondered at when we consider her well-deserved popularity. A striking instance of the veneration and esteem in which she was held, even through all the tribulations and changes of the Commonwealth, is exhibited in the fact of the bells ringing on her birthday, as late as the reign of Charles II.:—

“The Earl of Dorset coming to court, one Queen Elisabeth’s birthday, the king [Charles II.] asked him what the bells rung for? which having answered, the king farther asked him, ‘how it came to pass that her holiday was still kept, whilst those of his father and grandfather were no more thought of than William the Conqueror’s?’ ‘Because,’ said the frank peer[309] to the frank king, ‘she being a woman, chose men for her counsellors; and men, when they reign, usually chuse women.’”[447]

During the queen’s lifetime, however, the sign-painters had to mind how they represented “Queen Bess,” for Sir Walter Raleigh says that portraits of the queen “made by unskilful and common painters” were, by her own order, “knocked in pieces, and cast into the fire.”[448] A proclamation had been issued to that effect, in the year 1563, saying that:—

“Forasmuch as thrugh the natural desire that all sorts of subjects and people, both noble and mean, have to procure the portrait and picture of the Queen’s Majestie, great nomber of Paynters, and some Printers and Gravers have allredy, and doe daily, attempt to make in divers manners portraictures of hir Majestie, in paynting, graving, and pryntyng, wherein is evidently shewn, that hytherto none hath sufficiently expressed the naturall representation of hir Majesties person, favor, or grace, but for the most part have also erred therein, as thereof daily complaints are made amongst hir Majesties loving subjects, in so much, that for redress hereof hir Majestie hath lately bene so instantly and so importunately sued by the Lords of hir Consell, and others of hir nobility, in respect of the great disorder herein used, not only to be content that some special coning payntor might be permitted by access to hir Majestie to take the naturall representation of hir Majestie, whereof she hath been allwise of hir own right disposition very unwillyng, but also to prohibit all manner of other persons to draw, paynt, grave, or pourtrayit hir Majesties personage or visage for a time, until by some perfect patron and example the same may be by others followed.

“Therfor hir Majestie, being herein as it were overcome with the contynuall requests of so many of hir Nobility and Lords, whom she can not well deny, is pleased that for thir contentations, some coning persons, mete therefore, shall shortly make a pourtraict of hir person or visage, to be participated to others, for satisfaction of hir loving subjects; and furdermore commandeth all manner of persons in the mean tyme to forbear from payntyng, graving, printing, or making of any pourtraict of hir Majestie, untill some speciall person that shall be by hir allowed, shall have first fynished a pourtraicture thereof, after which finished, hir Majestie will be content that all other painters, printers, or gravers that shall be known men of understanding, and so thereto licensed by the hed officers of the plaices where they shall dwell, (as reason it is that every person should not without consideration attempt the same,) shall and maye at their pleasures follow the sayd patron or first portraicture. And for that hir Majestie perceiveth that a grete nomber of hir loving subjects are much greved and take grete offence with the errors and deformities allredy committed by sondry persons in this behalf, she straightly chargeth all her officers and ministers to see to the observation hereof, and, as soon as may be, to reform the errors allredy committed, and in the mean tyme to forbydd and[310] prohibit the shewing and publication of such as are apparently deformed, until they may be reformed which are reformable.”[449]

That there were signboards, however, representing her Majesty’s “person, favour, and grace,” during her lifetime, is evident from the fact that an ancestor of Pennant, the London topographer, made his fortune as a goldsmith at the sign of the Queen’s Head, in Smithfield, during the reign of good Queen Bess.

The irascible Mr Boursault, whose bile was so often deranged by signboard irregularities, took also sycophantic exception at royal heads being represented in that way:

“Je souffre impatiemment que le portrait du Roy, celuy de la Reine, de Monseigneur et des autres Princes et Princesses, servent d’enseignes de boutiques; eux qui ne devroient faire l’ornement que des plus célèbres galeries et des plus illustres cabinets. Monsieur d’Argenson et Vous même, Monsieur le Commissaire, n’auriez-vous pas juste raison de vous facher de voir vôtre portrait servir d’enseigne à, la Maison d’un cabaretier, ou à la boutique d’un Fripier; et pourquoi donc ne vous fachez-vous pas de ce que celui du Roy y est?”[450]

Of celebrated Queen’s Heads we must begin with the highly respectable inn of that name, in which, before the reign of Queen Elizabeth, lived the canonists and professors of spiritual and ecclesiastical law. It was situated in Paternoster Row, where its name is still preserved in Queen’s Head Alley. From this place the lawyers removed to Doctors’ Commons.

Nearly as ancient a building was the old Queen’s Head, Lower Street, Islington, at the corner of Queen’s Head Lane, one of the most perfect specimens of ancient domestic architecture in the vicinity of London. It is said that it was built by Sir Walter Raleigh, after he had obtained “lycense for keeping of taverns and retayling of wynes throughout Englande,” and that it was called by him the Queen’s Head in compliment to his royal mistress. Essex is also said to have resided there, and to have been visited by the queen. The same tradition is current about the Lord Treasurer Burleigh. In the reign of George II. it was used as a playhouse, and bills are still extant of plays acted there at that period.

It was a strong wood and plaster building, three lofty stories high, projecting over each other, and forming bay windows supported by brackets and caryatides. Inside it was panelled with wainscot, and had stuccoed ceilings, adorned with dolphins, cherubims, and acorns, bordered by a wreath of flowers. The porch was supported by caryatides of oak, crowned with scroll-capitals.[451] This time-honoured structure was pulled down in October 1829, and nothing of it remains in the new building erected on its site but the name, the carved oak panels of the parlour, and a bust of Queen Elizabeth at the top front. A carved mantelpiece, (formerly in the parlour of the old house,) with the history of Dian and Actæon on it, (a favourite subject with the virgin queen,) was sold for more than £60 at the sale of the building materials, most of which were bought by antiquaries.

There used to be a large pewter tankard in this house, with an inscription engraved on it, which is much too highly spiced to be given here. It was signed John Cranch, and bore date 1796.

At the Queen’s Head, Duke Court, Bow Street, the English language was enriched with two new terms, though one of them seems to have been still-born. This tavern was once kept by a facetious individual of the name of Jupp. Two celebrated characters, Annesley Shay and Bob Todrington—the latter a sporting man—meeting late in the day at the above place, went to the bar and asked for half a quartern each, with a little cold water. In the course of the evening they drank twenty-four, when Shay said to the other, “Now we’ll go.” “Oh no,” replied his companion, “we’ll have another, and then go.” This did not satisfy the Hibernian, and they continued drinking on till three in the morning, when they both agreed to go; so that under the idea of going they made a long stay, and this was the origin of drinking goes; but another preferring to eke out the measure his own way, used to call for a quartern at a time, and these in the exercise of his humour he called stays.[452]

In the beginning of this century, when Marylebone consisted of “green fields, babbling brooks,” and pleasant suburban retreats, there was a small but picturesque house of public entertainment, yclept the Queen’s Head and Artichoke, situated “in a lane nearly opposite Portland Road, and about 500 yards from the road that leads from Paddington to Finsbury”—now Albany Street. Its attractions chiefly consisted in a long skittle and “bumble puppy” ground, shadowy bowers, and abundance of cream, tea, cakes, and other creature comforts. The only memorial now remaining of the original house is an engraving in the Gentleman’s Magazine, November 1819. The queen was Queen Elizabeth, and the house was reported to have been built by one of her gardeners, whence the strange combination on the sign.

Besides Crowns (see p. 101) other royal paraphernalia are occasionally used as signboard decorations. The Sceptre is not uncommon; the Sceptre and Heart was the sign of Samuel Grover, chirurgical instrument maker, on London Bridge, in the latter end of the seventeenth century. It is engraved on his shop-bill, and represents a circle surrounded by fruit and foliage, having two Cupids standing at the upper corner, and containing in the centre two palm branches enclosing a sceptre surmounted by a heart. Round the whole are suspended lancets, trepans, saws, &c. In all probability it is simply a quartering of two signs.

The Royal Hand and Globe was the loyal sign of a stationer at the corner of St Martin’s Lane, in 1682.[453] It doubtless refers to the royal hand holding the golden orb, surmounted by a cross. It is still the sign of an ale-house near the Soho Theatre. The same orb or globe seems to be alluded to in the sign of the Sword and Ball, on Holborn Bridge, in the seventeenth century. What stands in the way of this explanation, however, is that on the token of this house the sword is represented piercing the ball; but this may merely have been a fancy of the sign-painter, who did not understand its meaning. As for the Sword and Mace, the meaning is perfectly clear; it is the sign of a public-house in Coventry.

The Church is almost as abundantly represented as royalty. Even long after the Reformation the Pope’s Head was still very common. Nash’s “Anatomie of Absurdities” was printed by T. Charlwood for Thomas Hacket, and was “to be sold at his shop in Lumbard Street, vnder the signe of the Popes Heade, 1590.” Taylor, the Water poet, in his “Travels through London,” 1636, mentions four Pope’s Head taverns; but the most famous of all was the Pope’s Head tavern in Cornhill.

“I have read[454] of a countryman that, having lost his hood in Westminster Hall, found the same in Cornhill hanged out to be sold, which he challenged, but was forced to buy, or go without it, for their stall they said was their market. At that time also the wine drawers at the Pope’s Head tavern (standing without the door in the High Street,)[455] took the same man by the sleeve, and said, ’Sir, will you drink a pint of wine?’ Whereunto he answered, ‘A penny spend I may,’ and so drank his pint, for bread nothing did he pay, for that was allowed free.[456] This Pope’s Head tavern, with other houses adjoining, strongly built of stone, hath of old time been all in one, pertaining to some great estate, or rather to the king, as may be supposed both by the largeness thereof, and by the arms, to wit, three leopards passant gardant, which were the whole arms of England before the reign of Edward III., that quartered them with the arms of France three flower de lys. Some say this was King John’s house, which might be, for I find in a written copy of ‘Matthew Paris’s History’ that in the year 1232, Henry III. sent Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent, to Cornehill in[314] London, there to answer all matters objected against him: when he wisely acquitted himself. The Pope’s Head tavern hath a footway through from Cornhill into Lumbard Street.”—Stow’s Survey, p. 75.

In this tavern, in the fourth of Edward IV. (1464,) a trial of skill was held between Oliver Davy, goldsmith of London, and White Johnson, “Alicante Strangeour,” also of London,—the London goldsmiths being divided into native and “foren” workmen. These last, though they might be Englishmen, were so named merely as a distinction with respect to the work they produced, which consisted frequently in counterfeit articles and bad gold. The trial consisted in making, in four pieces of steel the size of a penny, a cat’s face in relief, and another cat’s face engraved, a naked man in relief, and another engraved, which work was to be performed in five weeks. Oliver Davy, the native goldsmith, won the wager, as White Johnson, the foreign workman, after six weeks could only produce the two “inward engraved” objects. The forfeit was a crown, and a dinner to the wardens, the umpires, and all those concerned in the wager. The works were kept in Goldsmith’s Hall, “to y^at intent that they be redy iff any suche controursy herafter falls, to be shewede that suche traverse hathe be determyn’d aforetymes.”[457] In Pepys’s time this tavern, like many others of that period and later, had a painted room. “18 January 1668.—To the Pope’s Head, there to see the fine-painted room which Rogerson told me of, of his doing, but I do not like it at all, though it be good for such a publick room.” Here in 1718 Quin killed his brother actor Bowen. “On Thursday s’ennight at night, Mr Bowen and Mr Quin, two comedians, drinking at the Pope’s Head tavern in Cornhill, quarrelled, drew their swords, and fought, and the former was run into the guts; he languished till Sunday last, and then died. Bowen, before he expired, desired that Mr Quin might not be prosecuted, because what had happened to him was his own seeking.”[458] The jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter, and Quin for the offence was burned in the hand.[459] The quarrel was rather a foolish one, arising out of a wager which of the two was the honester man, which had been decided in favour of Quin; inde iræ. This tavern seems to have continued in existence till the latter part of the last century.

The emblem of another class of high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church, the Cardinal’s Hat or Cap, was at one time common in England. Bagford says: “You have not meney of them, they war set up by sume that had ben saruants to Tho. Wolsey.”[460] But we find the sign long before Wolsey’s time, for in 1459, Simon Eyre

“Gave the Tavern called the Cardinal’s Hat in Lumbard Street, with a tenement annexed on the East part of the tavern, and a mansion behind the East tenement, together with an alley from Lumbard Street to Cornhill, with the appurtenances, all which were by him new built, towards a brotherhood of our Lady in St Mary Woolnots.”—Stow, p. 77.

This tavern and another of the same name, also in Lombard Street, were still extant in the seventeenth century. It was also the sign of one of the Stairs on the Bankside, the name of which is still preserved to that locality in Cardinal Cap’s Alley.

These houses, by proclamation of 37, Henry VIII., were “whited and painted with signes on the front for a token of the said houses;” they were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, whence Pennant makes some sly remarks upon the sign of the Cardinal’s Cap:—

“I will not give into scandal so far as to suppose that this house was peculiarly protected by any coeval member of the sacred college. Neither would I by any means insinuate that the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, or the abbots of Waverley, or of St Augustine in Canterbury, or of Battel, or of Hyde, or the Prior of Lewis, had there their temporary residences for them or their trains, for the sake of these conveniences, in that period of cruel and unnatural restriction,” &c.[461]

The Bishop’s Head was, in 1663, the sign of J. Thompson, a bookseller and publisher in St Paul’s Churchyard. At this house, in 1708, was published Hatton’s “New View of London;” it was then in the occupation of Robert Knaplock.

More general, however, was the Mitre, which was the sign of several famous taverns in London in the seventeenth century. There was one in Great Wood Street, Cheapside, (called on the trades token of the house the Mitre and Rose,) mentioned by Pepys as “a house of the greatest note in London.”[462] The landlord of this house, named Proctor, died at Islington of the plague in 1665, in an insolvent state, though he had been “the greatest vintner for some time in London for great entertainments.” There was another Mitre near the west end of St Paul’s, the first music-house in London. The name of the master was Robert Herbert alias Forges. Like many brother-publicans, he was, besides being a lover of music, also a collector of natural curiosities, as appears by his

“Catalogue of many natural rarities, with great industrie, cost, and thirty years’ travel into foreign countries, collected by Robert Herbert, alias Forges, Gent., and sworn servant to his Majesty; to be seen at the place called the Musick house at the Mitre, near the West End of S. Paul’s Church, 1664.”

This collection, or at least a great part of it, was bought by Sir Hans Sloane. It is conjectured that the Mitre was situated in London House Yard, at the north-west end of St Paul’s, on the spot where, afterwards, stood the house known by the sign of the Goose and Gridiron. Ned Ward[463] describes the appearance of another music-house of the same name in Wapping, which he calls “the Paradise of Wapping,” though more probably it was in Shadwell, where there is still a Music House Court, which seems to point to some such origin. His description of this prototype of the Oxford and Alhambra music-halls is not a little amusing. The music, consisting of fiddles, hautboys, and a humdrum organ, he compares to the grunting of a hog added as a base to a concert of caterwauling cats in the height of their ecstacy. The music-room was richly decorated with paintings, (Hornfair was one of the pictures,) carvings, and gilding; the seats were like pews in a church, and the orchestra railed in like a chancel. The musicians occasionally went round to collect contributions, as they still do in the Cafés Chantants of the Champs Elysées, Paris. The other rooms in the house were “furnished for the entertainment of the best of companies,” all painted with humorous subjects. The kitchen, used at that period in many taverns as a sitting room by the customers, was railed in and ornamented in the same gaudy style as the rest of the houses; a quantity of canary birds were suspended on the walls. Underground was a tippling sanctuary painted with drunken women tormenting the devil, and other somewhat quaint subjects. The wine of the establishment was good. Here, then, we may imagine our great-great-grandfathers listening to the woeful fiddles scraping “Sillenger’s Round,” “John, come kiss me,” “Old Simon the King,” or other old tunes, until flesh and blood could stand it no longer, and a dance would be indulged in to the music of “Green Sleeves,” “Yellow Stockings,” or some other equally comic dance and tune; after which everybody went home, through the dirty dark streets, doubtless “highly pleased with the entertainment.”

Older than either of these was the Mitre in Cheap, which is mentioned in the vestry books of St Michael’s, Cheapside, before the year 1475.[464] In “Your Five Gallants,” a comedy by Middleton, about 1608, Goldstone prefers it to the Mermaid:—“The Mitre in my mind for neat attendance, diligent boys and—push, excels it [the Mermaid] far.” But the most famous of the inns with this name, was the Mitre in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, one of Doctor Johnson’s favourite haunts, “where he loved to sit up late,”[465] and where Goldsmith, and the other celebrities, and minor stars that moved about the great doctor, used to meet him. This house is named in the play of “Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks,” in 1611. It was one of those houses which, for more than two centuries, was the constant resort of all the wits about town; even the name of Shakespeare throws its halo around this place:—

“Mr Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street,” says Mr J. P. Collier, “is in possession of a MS. full of songs and poems in the handwriting of a person of the name of Richard Jackson; all prior to the year 1631, and including many unpublished poems by a variety of celebrated poets. One of the most curious is a song of five-seven-lines stanzas thus headed: ’Shakespeare’s Rime which he made at the Mytre in Fleete Street.’ It begins—‘From the rich Lavinian shore,’ and some few of the lines were published by Playford, and set as a catch. Another shorter piece is called in the margin: ’Shakespeare’s Rime:’—

‘Give me a Cup of rich Canary Wine,
Which was the Mitre’s (drink) and now is mine;
Of which had Horace and Anacreon tasted
Their lives as well as lines till now had lasted.’

I have little doubt that the lines are genuine, as well as many other songs.”

In this same tavern Boswell supped, for the first time, with his idol, and the description of the biographer’s delight on that grand occasion has a festive air about it that cannot fail to make a lively impression on his readers:—

“He agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I called on him, and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper, and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox high church sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson—the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation and the pride from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ever experienced.”

There, also, that amusing scene with the young ladies from Staffordshire took place, which would make an excellent companion picture to Leslie’s “Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman.”

“Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. Come (said he) you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject, which they did; and after dinner, he took one of them on his knees and fondled them for half an hour together.”

Hogarth, too, was an occasional visitor at this tavern. A card is still extant, wherein he requested the company of Dr Arnold King to dine with him at the Mitre. The written part is contained within a circle, (representing a plate) to which a knife and fork are the supporters. In the centre is drawn a pie with a Mitre on the top of it, and the invitation—

Mr Hogarth’s compliments to Mr King, and desires the honour of his company to dinner, on Thursday next, to η. β. π. [Eta beta py.][466]

In this tavern the Society of Antiquaries used to meet, before apartments were obtained in Somerset House.

“The Society hitherto having no house of their own, meet every Thursday evening, about seven o’clock, at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, where antiquities are produced and considered, draughts and impressions thereof taken, dissertations read, and minutes of the several transactions entered, and the whole economy under such admirable regulations, that probably in a short time they may apply for a royal power of incorporation.”[467]

In the bar of the Mitre Tavern in St James’ Market, which was kept by her aunt, (Mrs Voss, formerly the mistress of Sir Godfrey Kneller,) Captain Farquhar overheard Miss Nancy Oldfield read the play of “The Scornful Lady,” and was so struck with the proper emphasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage. Captain (afterwards Sir John) Vanbrugh, a friend of the family, recommended her to Rich, and shortly after she made her debut at Covent Garden, with an allowance of fifteen shillings a week.

Though a dozen other famous Mitre Taverns might be mentioned, these are sufficient to show how general a sign it was; the partiality of tavern-keepers for it is somewhat accounted for in the following stanza of the “Quack Vintners,” 1712:—