CHAPTER II.
HISTORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE SIGNS.

The Greeks honoured their great men and successful commanders by erecting statues to them; the Romans rewarded their popular favourites with triumphal entries and ovations; modern nations make the portraits of their celebrities serve as signs for public-houses.

As Byron hints, popular admiration is generally very short-lived; and when a fresh hero is gazetted, the next new alehouse will most probably adopt him for a sign in preference to the last great man. Thus it is that even the Duke of Wellington is now neglected, and in his place we see General Havelock, Sir Colin Campbell, Lord Palmerston, and Mr Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not omitting the fair Princess of Denmark. We will not now dwell upon these modern celebrities, but rather direct our attention to those illustrious dead upon whom the signboard honours were bestowed in bygone ages.

Many signboards have an historic connexion of some sort with the place where they are exhibited. Thus the Alfred’s Head, at Wantage, in Berkshire, was in all probability chosen as a sign because Wantage was the birthplace of King Alfred. So the Canute Castle, at Southampton, owes its existence to a local tradition; whilst admiration for the great Scotch patriot made an innkeeper in Stowell Street, Newcastle, adopt Sir William Wallace’s Arms. The Cæsar’s Head was, in 1761, to be seen near the New Church in the Strand,[54] and, in the beginning of this century, was the sign of a tavern in Soho, which afterwards removed to Great Palace Yard, Westminster. Even at the present day, his head may be seen outside certain village alehouses; but this we may attribute to that provincial popularity which the Roman hero shares with Oliver Cromwell; for as the Protector gets the blame of having made nearly all the ruins which are to be found in the three kingdoms, so Cæsar is generally named by country people as the builder of every old wall or earthwork the origin of which is unknown.

Notwithstanding the popular censure, Cromwell is still honoured with signboards in places where his memory has lingered, as at Kate’s Hill, near Dudley.

In most cases, however, signboard popularity is rather short-lived; “dulcique animos novitate tenebo” seems to be essentially the motto of those that choose popular characters for their sign. Had this modern tribute of admiration been in use at the time of the Preacher, it might have afforded him one more illustration of the vanity of vanities to be found in all sublunary things. Horace Walpole noticed this fickleness of signboard fame in one of his letters:—

“I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs, as I passed through the villages, made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the Duke’s Head had succeeded almost universally to Admiral Vernon’s, as his had left but few traces of the Duke of Ormond’s. I pondered these things in my breast, and said to myself, ’Surely all glory is but as a sign!’”[55]

Some favourites of the signboard have, however, been more fortunate than others. Henry VIII., for instance, may still be seen in many places; indeed, for more than two centuries after his death, almost every King’s Head invariably gave a portrait of Bluff Harry.

Older kings occasionally occur, but their memories seem to have been revived rather than handed down by successive innkeepers. If we are to believe an old Chester legend, however, The King Edgar Inn, in Bridge Street of that city, has existed by the same name since the time of the Saxon king. The sign represents King Edgar rowed down the river Dee by the eight tributary kings. The present house has the appearance of being built anterior to the reign of Elizabeth, and the sign looks almost as old, but it would be unwise to give the place or the sign a much higher antiquity. King John is the sign under whose auspices Jem Mace, the pugilist, keeps a public-house in Holywell Lane, Shoreditch. The same king also figures in Albemarle Street and in Bermondsey; whilst the great event of his reign, Magna Charta, is a sign at New Holland, Hull. John of Gaunt may be seen in many places; and we may surmise that his upholders are stanch Protestants, who value his character as a reformer and supporter of Wicliffe. The Black Prince may not unlikely have come down to us in an uninterrupted line of signboards; so little was his identity sometimes understood, that there is a shop-bill in the “Banks Collection”[56] on which this hero is represented as a negro!

There is a Queen Eleanor in London Fields, Hackney, probably the beautiful and affectionate queen of Edward I., buried in Westminster Abbey, 1290, in honour of whom Charing Cross, Cheapcross, and seven other crosses, were erected on the places where her body rested on its way to the great Abbey. What prompted the choice of this sign it is hard to say.

At Hever, in Kent, a rude portrait of Henry VIII. may be seen. Near this village the Bolleyn or Bullen family formerly held large possessions; and old people in the district yet shew the spot where, as the story goes, King Henry often used to meet Sir Thomas Bolleyn’s daughter Anne. Be this as it may, years after the unhappy death of Anne, the village alehouse had for its sign, Bullen Butchered; but the place falling into new hands, the name of the house was altered to the Bull and Butcher, which sign existed to a recent date, and would probably have swung at this moment, but for a desire of the resident clergyman to see something different. He suggested the King’s Head; and the village painter was forthwith commissioned to make the alteration. The latter accepted the task, drew the bluff features of the monarch, and represented it as other King’s Heads, but in his hands placed a large axe, which signboard exists to this day.

As for Queen Elizabeth, she was the constant type of the Queen’s Head, as her father was of the King’s Head; and, like him, she may still be seen in many places. It is somewhat more difficult to ascertain who is meant by the Queen Catherine in Brook Street, Ratcliffe Highway; whether it be Queen Catherine of Aragon, or Queen Catherine of Braganza. Queen Anne, in South Street, Walworth, has evidently come down to us as the token of that house since the day of its opening, just as the Queen of Bohemia, who, until about fifty years ago, continued as a sign in Drury Lane.[57] This was Elizabeth, daughter of James I., married to Frederic V., Elector-Palatine, who, after her husband’s death, lived at Craven House, Drury Lane, and died there, February 13, 1661, having been privately married, it is thought, to Lord Craven, who was foremost in fighting the battles of her husband.

Of King’s Heads, Henry VIII. is the oldest on authentic record. But this does not prove that he was the first; for, as there lived great men before Agamemnon, so most kings during their reign will, in all probability, have had their signs. Among Henry’s successors, we find the head of Edward VI. on a trades token; whilst Charles the First’s Head was the portrait hanging from the house of that scoundrel Jonathan Wild, in the Old Bailey. Even at the present day there is a sign of Charles the First at Goring Heath, Reading. The Martyr’s Head in Smithfield, 1710, seems also to have been a portrait of Charles I.; so, at least, the following allusion gives us to understand:—

which seems to be an allusion to Puritanical water-drinkers. To this unfortunate king belongs also the sign of the Mourning Bush, set up by Taylor the water-poet over his tavern in Phœnix Alley, Long Acre, to express his grief at the beheading of Charles I.; but he was soon compelled to take it down, when he put up the Poet’s Head, his own portrait, with this inscription:—

This “Poeta Aquaticus,” as he sometimes called himself, was a boatman on the Thames, and alehouse-keeper by profession, besides being the author of fourscore books of very original poetry. At the same time that he put up his new sign of the Poet’s Head, he issued a rhyming pamphlet, in which occur the following lines:—

The Mourning Crown was afterwards revived, and in the last century it was the sign of a tavern in Aldersgate, where, on Saturdays, when Parliament was not sitting, the Duke of Devonshire, the Earls of Oxford, Sunderland, Pembroke, and Winchelsea, Mr Bagford the antiquary, and Britton the musical small-coalman, used to refresh themselves, after having passed the forepart of the day in hunting for antiquities and curiosities in Little Britain and its neighbourhood.

Not only was the Crown put in mourning at the death of Charles I., but also the Mitre. Hearne has an anecdote which he transcribed from Dr Richard Rawlinson:—“Of Daniel Rawlinson, who kept the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street, and of whose being sequestered in the Rump time, I have heard much. The Whigs tell this, that upon the king’s murder he hung his sign in mourning. He certainly judged right; the honour of the mitre was much eclipsed through the loss of so good a parent of the Church of England. Those rogues say, this endeared him so much to the Churchmen that he soon throve amain, and got a good estate.”

Charles the Second’s Head swung at the door of a “music-house” for seafaring men and others, in Stepney, at the end of the seventeenth century. In a great room of this house there was an organ and a band of fiddles and hautboys, to the music whereof it was no unusual thing for parties, and sometimes single persons,—and those not of very inferior sort,—to dance. At the present day, that king’s memory is still kept alive on a signboard in Herbert Street, Hoxton, under the name of the Merry Monarch.

To his miraculous escape at Boscobel we owe the Royal Oak, which, notwithstanding a lapse of two centuries and a change of dynasty, still continues a very favourite sign. In London alone it occurs on twenty-six public-houses, exclusive of beerhouses, coffee-houses, &c. Sometimes it is called King Charles in the Oak, as at Willen Hall, Warwickshire. The Royal Oak, soon after the Restoration, became a favourite with the shops of London; tokens of some half a dozen houses bearing that sign are extant. What is rather curious is that, not many years since, one of the descendants of trusty Dick Pendrell kept an inn at Lewes, in Sussex, called the Royal Oak.

There is a trades token of “William Hagley, at the Restoration, in St George’s Fields;” but how this event was represented does not appear. At Charing Cross it was commemorated by the sign of the Pageant Tavern, which represented the triumphal arch erected at that place on occasion of the entry of Charles II., and which remained standing for a year after. This was evidently the same house which Pepys calls the Triumph. It seems to have been a fashionable place, for he went there, on the 25th May 1662, to see the Portuguese ladies of Queen Catherine. “They are not handsome,” says he, “and their fardingales a strange dress. Many ladies and persons of quality come to see them. I find nothing in them that is pleasing; and I see they have learned to kiss and look freely up and down already, and, I believe, will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country. They complain much for lack of good water to drink.” The Triumph is still the sign of a public-house in Skinner Street, Somers Town.

Queen Mary was in her day a very popular sign, as may be gathered from many of the shop-bills in the Banks Collection; whilst William and Mary are still to be seen in Maiden Causeway, Cambridge. The accession of the house of Brunswick produced the Brunswick, still very common, particularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Then come the Georges, of whom George III. and George IV. still survive in nearly as many instances as their successor, William IV.; with them a few of the royal Dukes of Clarence, Suffolk, and, above all, “the Butcher Cumberland;” until at length we come to Princess Victoria, and, finally, the Queen Victoria, the British Queen, Island Queen, &c. Under one of her signs at Coopersale, in Essex, is the following inscription:—

Among the foreign kings and potentates who have figured in our open-air walhalla, the Turkish sultans seem to have stood foremost. Morat (Amurat) and Soliman were constant coffee-house signs in the seventeenth century. Trades tokens are extant, in the Beaufoy and other collections, of a coffee-house in Exchange Alley, the sign of Morat, with this distich:—

On the reverse: “Coffee, tobacco, sherbett, tea, and chocolat retal’d in Exchange Alley.” The same house figures in advertisements of the time, giving the prices of those various articles:—

“At the Coffee-house in Exchange Alley is sold by Retail the right Coffee-powder, from 4s. to 6s. per pound, as in goodness: that pounded in a mortar at 3s. per pound; also that termed the right Turkie Berry, well garbled, at 3s. per pound—the ungarbled for less; that termed the East India Berry at 20d. per pound, with directions gratis how to make and use the same. Likewise, there you may have Tobacco, Verinas and Virginia, Chocolatta—the ordinary pound-boxes at 2s. per pound; also Sherbets (made in Turkie) of Lemons, Roses, and Violets perfumed; and Tea according to its goodness, from 6s. to 60s. per pound. For all of which, if any Gentleman shall write or send, they shall be sure of the best as they shall order; and to avoid deceit, warranted under the House Seal—viz., Morat the Great,” &c.—Mercurius Publicus, March 12-19, 1662.

The Great Mogol also had his share of signboards, of which a few still survive; one, for instance, in New Bartholomew Street, Birmingham. Kouli Khan we find only in one instance, (though there were probably many more,) namely, on the sign of a tavern by the Quayside, Newcastle, in 1746.[59] This house had formerly been called the Crown, but changed its sign in honour of Thomas Nadir Shah, or Kouli Khan, who, from having been chief of a band of robbers, at last sat himself on the throne of Persia. He was killed in 1747. One of the reasons of his popularity in this country was the permission he granted to the English nation to trade with Persia, the most chimerical ideas being entertained of the advantages to be derived from that commerce. Hanway, the philanthropist, was for some time concerned in it, but died before he could carry out the scheme; ultimately, the death of Nadir Shah himself put an end to it.

The Indian King, which we meet with so frequently, is an extremely vague personage, which various Indian potentates might take for themselves as the cap fitted. It was generally set up when some king from the far East visited the metropolis, and for a short time created a sensation. Thus, in 1710, there were four Indian kings from “states between New England, New York and Canada,” who had audiences with Queen Anne, and seems to have been a good deal talked about. (See Spectator, No. 50.)

Again, in 1762, London was honoured with the visit of a Cherokee king, and thus many before and after him have created their nine days’ wonder.

Visits of European monarchs were also commemorated by complimentary signs. One of the oldest was the King of Denmark, and few kings better than he deserved the exalted place at the alehouse door; yet, such is the ingratitude of the world, that he seems now completely forgotten. The sign originated in the reign of James I., who married a daughter of Christian IV., King of Denmark. In July 1606, the royal father-in-law came over on a visit, when the two kings began “bousing” and carousing right royally, the court, of course, duly following the example. “I came here a day or two before the Danish king came,” says Sir John Harrington, “and from that day he did come till this hour, I have been well-nigh overwhelmed with carousal and sport of all kinds. I think the Dane has strangely wrought on our English nobles; for those whom I could never get to taste good liquor, now follow the fashion and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon their society, and are seen to roll about in intoxication,” &c.[60] So late as thirty years ago, not less than three of these signs were left, the most notorious being in the Old Bailey. It used to be open all night for the sale of creature comforts to the drunkard, the thief, the nightwalker, and profligates of every description. Slang was the language of the place, and doubtless the refreshments were mostly paid for with stolen money. On execution nights, the landlord used to reap a golden harvest; then there were such scenes of drunkenness as must have done the old king on the signboard good to survey, and made him wish to be inside. The visit of another crowned votary of Bacchus is commemorated by the sign of the Czar’s Head, Great Tower Street:—

“Peter the Great and his companions, having finished their day’s work, used to resort to a public-house in Great Tower Street, close to Tower Hill, to smoke their pipes and drink beer and brandy. The landlord had the Czar of Muscovy’s Head painted, and put it up for his sign, which continued till the year 1808, when a person of the name of Waxel took a fancy to the old sign, and offered the then occupier of the house to paint him a new one for it. A copy was accordingly made of the original, which maintains its station to the present day as the Czar of Muscovy.”[61]

The sign is now removed, but the public-house still bears the same name. Prince Eugene also was at one time a popular tavern portrait in England, more particularly after his visit to this country in January 1712. It is named as one of the signs in Norwich in 1750,[62] but is now, we believe, completely extinct in England; in Paris there is still one surviving on the Boulevard St Martin.

The Grave Maurice is of very old standing in London, being named by Taylor the water-poet as an inn at Knightsbridge in 1636; at present there are two left, one in Whitechapel Road, the other in St Leonard’s Road. Who this Grave Maurice was is not quite clear. Grave (Ger. Graf, Dutch Graaf, i.e. Count,) Maurice of Nassau, afterwards Maurice, Prince of Orange, was, on account of his successful opposition to the Spanish domination in the Netherlands, very popular in this country. In Baker’s Chronicles, anno 1612, we read that:—“Upon St Thomas-day, the Paltzgrave and Grave Maurice were elected Knights of the Garter; and the 27th of December, the Paltzgrave was betrothed to the Lady Elizabeth. On Sunday the 7th of February, the Paltzgrave in person was installed a Knight of the Garter at Windsor, and at the same time was Grave Maurice installed by his deputy, Count Lodewick of Nassau.” The Garter conferred on the Grave Maurice was that which had been previously worn by Henri Quatre, King of France and Navarre. The Palzgrave was Grave Maurice’s nephew, the Palatine Count Frederick, by whose marriage with King James’s daughter were born the brothers Rupert and Maurice, (the latter in 1620,) who distinguished themselves in England during the civil wars. It was this Prince Maurice’s great uncle, the Grave Maurice of Nassau, whose counterfeit presentment still gives a name to two of our taverns. Another Maurice, about this period, was very popular in England—viz., Maurice Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who “carried away the palm of excellency in whatever is to be wished in a brave prince.”[63] Peacham, enumerating this prince’s qualifications, says that he was a good musician, spoke ten or twelve languages, was a universal scholar, could dispute, “even in boots and spurs,” for an hour with the best professors on any subject, and was the best bone-setter in the country. He gained, too, much of his popularity by his adherence to the Protestant religion during the Thirty Years’ War.

The Paltsgrave became a popular sign at the marriage of Frederick Casimir V., Elector and Count Palatine of the Rhine, King of Bohemia, with Elizabeth, daughter of James I. Trades tokens are extant of a famous tavern, the sign of the Palsgrave’s Head, without Temple Bar,[64] which gave its name to Paltsgrave Court, whilst the Palatine Head was an inn near the French ’Change, Soho. Prince Rupert, the Palsgrave’s son, who behaved so gallantly in many of the fights during the Civil War, was no doubt a favourite sign after the Restoration. We have an instance of one on the trades token of Jacob Robins, in the Strand.

One of the last foreign princes to whom the signboard honour was accorded, was the King of Prussia. This still occurs in many places. After the battle of Rosbach, Frederick the Great, our ally, became the popular hero in England. Ballads were made, in which he was called “Frederick of Prussia, or the Hero.” “Portraits of the hero of Rosbach, with his cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An attentive observer will at this day find in the parlours of old-fashioned inns, and in the portfolios of printsellers, twenty portraits of Frederick for one of George II. The sign-painters were everywhere employed in touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia.[65]”

These words of Macaulay remind us of a passage in the Mirror, No. 82, Saturday, February 19, 1780, bearing on the same subject. In 1739, after the capture of Portobello, Admiral Vernon’s “portrait dangled from every signpost, and he may be figuratively said to have sold the ale, beer, porter, and purl of England for six years. Towards the close of that period, the admiral’s favour began to fade apace with the colours of his uniform, and the battle of Culloden was total annihilation for him. . . . The Duke of Cumberland kept possession of the signboard a long time. In the beginning of the last war, our admirals in the Mediterranean, and our generals in North America, did nothing that could tend in the least degree to move his Royal Highness from his place; but the doubtful battle of Hamellan, followed by the unfortunate convention of Stade, and the rising fame of the King of Prussia, obliterated the glories of the Duke of Cumberland as effectually as his Royal Highness and the battle of Culloden had effaced the figure, the memory, and the renown of Admiral Vernon. The duke was so completely displaced by his Prussian majesty, that we have some doubts whether he met with fair play. One circumstance, indeed, was much against him; his figure being marked by a hat with the Kevenhuller cock, a military uniform, and a very fierce look, a slight touch of the painter converted him into the King of Prussia. But what crowned the success of his Prussian majesty, was the title bestowed upon him by the brothers of the brush, ‘The Glorious Protestant Hero,’ words which added splendour to every signpost, and which no British hero could read without peculiar sensation of veneration and of thirst.

“For two years, ‘the glorious Protestant hero’ was unrivalled; but the French being defeated at Minden, upon the 1st of August 1759, by the army under Prince Frederick of Brunswick, the King of Prussia began to give place a little to two popular favourites, who started at the same time; I mean Prince Ferdinand, and the Marquis of Granby. Prince Ferdinand was supported altogether by his good conduct at Minden, and by his high reputation over Europe as a general. The Marquis of Granby behaved with spirit and personal courage everywhere; but his success on the signposts of England was very much owing to a comparison generally made between him and another British general of higher rank, but who was supposed not to have behaved so well. Perhaps, too, he was a good deal indebted to another circumstance—to wit, the baldness of his head.”

That crowned heads, as well as other human beings, were subject to the law of change on the signboard, is amusingly illustrated in an anecdote told by Goldsmith:—

“An alehouse keeper near Islington, who had long lived at the sign of the French King, upon the commencement of the last war, pulled down his old sign, and put up that of the Queen of Hungary. Under the influence of her red nose and golden sceptre, he continued to sell ale, till she was no longer the favourite of his customers; he changed her therefore, some time ago, for the King of Prussia, who may probably be changed in turn for the next great man that shall be set up for vulgar admiration.”[66]

Of all great men, “bene meriti de patria,” military men appear at all times to have captivated the popular favour much more than those men who promoted the welfare of the country in the Cabinet, or who made themselves famous by the arts of peace, and the more quiet productions of their genius. We find hundreds of admirals and generals on the signboard, but we are not aware that there is one Watt, or one Sir Walter Scott; yet, what glory and pleasure has the nation not derived from their genius! Booksellers formerly honoured the heads and names of great authors with a signboard; but that custom fell into disuse when signs became unnecessary. At present, the publicans only have signs, and they and their customers can much better appreciate “the glorious pomp and pageantry of war,” than a parliamentary debate. A victory, with so many of the enemy killed and wounded, and so many colours and stands of arms captured, awakens much more thrilling emotions in their breasts than the most useful invention, or the most glorious work of art.

The sea being our proper element, admirals have always had the lion’s share of the popular admiration, and their fame appears more firmly rooted than that of generals. Signs of Admiral Drake, Sir Francis Drake, or the Drake Arms, so common at the water-side in our seaports, shew that the nation has not yet forgotten the bold navigator of good Queen Bess. Sir Walter Raleigh has not been quite so fortunate; for though he also came in for a great share of signboard honour, yet it was less owing to his qualities as a commander, than to his reputation of having introduced tobacco into England, whence he became a favourite tobacconist’s sign; and in that quality, we find him on several of the shop-bills in the Banks Collection. Signs being frequently used in the last century for political pasquinades, advantage was taken of a tobacconist’s sign for the following sharp hit at Lord North:—

“To the Printer of the General Advertiser:—

“Sir,—Being a smoaker, I take particular notice of the devices used by different dealers in tobacco, by way of ornament to the papers in which that valuable plant is enclosed for sale; and that used by the worthy Alderman in Ludgate Street, has often given me much pleasure, it having the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the following motto round it:—

‘Great Britain to great Raleigh owes
This plant and country where it grows.’

“To which I offer the following lines by way of contrast; the truth thereof no one can doubt:—

‘To Rubicon and North, old England owes
The loss of country where tobacco grows.’

“I suppose no dealer will chuse to adopt so unfortunate a subject for[57] their insignia; but perhaps, when you have a spare corner in your General Advertiser, it may not be inadmissible, which will oblige.—Yours, &c.,

“Feb. 1, 1783.

“A Smoaker.
General Advertiser, March 13, 1784.”

Brave old Admiral Benbow, who held up the honour of the British flag in the reign of William III., is still far from uncommon. Admiral Duncan, Howe, and Jervis still preside over the sale of many a hogshead of beer or spirits; whilst Admiral Vernon seems to have secured himself an everlasting place on the front of the alehouse, by reason of his dashing capture of Portobello; the name of that town, or sometimes the Portobello Arms, being also frequently adopted, instead of the admiral’s name. Admiral Keppel is another great favourite. There is a public-house with that sign, on the Fulham Road, where, some years ago, the portrait of the admiral used to court the custom of the passing traveller, by a poetical appeal to both man and beast:—