But, above all, Admiral Rodney seems to have obtained a larger share of popularity than even Nelson himself. In Boston there is the Rodney and Hood; and in Creggin, Montgomeryshire, the Rodney Pillar Inn, with the following Anacreontic effusion on a double-sided signboard:—

On the reverse:—

The last addition to this portrait gallery, before Sir Charles Napier, was the head of the gallant besieger of Algiers, Lord Exmouth. In 1825, there was one at Barnstaple, in Devon, with the following address to the wayfarer:—

Finally, there is still one sign left in honour of that deserving but unfortunate commander, Captain Cook, murdered by the natives of Owhyhee in 1779. His name is preserved as the sign of an alehouse in Mariner Street, London.

Though the fame of generals seems to be more short-lived than that of admirals, yet a few ancient heroes still remain. Amongst these, General Elliott, or Lord Heathfield, the defender of Gibraltar, seems to be one of the greatest favourites; perhaps his popularity in London was not a little increased by the present which he made to Astley, of his charger named Gibraltar; who, performing every evening in the ring, and shining forth in the circus bills, would certainly act as an excellent puff for the general’s glory. This hero’s popularity is only surpassed by that of the Marquis of Granby. Though nearly a century has elapsed since the death of the latter, (Oct. 19, 1770,) his portrait is still one of the most common signs. In London alone, he presides over eighteen public-houses, besides numerous beerhouses. The first one is said to have been hung out at Hounslow, by one Sumpter, a discharged trooper of the regiment of Horse Guards, which the Marquis of Granby had commanded as colonel.

Among the generals of a later period, are General Tarleton, (or, as he is called on a sign in Clarence Street, Newcastle, Colonel Tarlton,) General Wolfe, General Moore, and Sir Ralph Abercrombie. At a tavern of this last denomination in Lombard Street, some thirty-five or forty years ago, the “House of Lords’ Club” used to meet, not composed, as might be expected from the name, of members of the peerage, but simply of the good citizens of the neighbourhood, each dubbed with a title. The president was styled Lord Chancellor; he wore a legal wig and robes, and a mace was laid on the table before him. The title bestowed upon the members depended on the fee—one shilling constituted a Baron, two shillings a Viscount, three shillings an Earl, four shillings a Marquis, and five shillings a Duke; beyond that rank their ambition did not reach. This club originated early in the eighteenth century, at the Fleece in Cornhill, but removed to the Three Tuns in Southwark, that the members might be more retired from the bows and compliments of the London apprentices, who used to salute the noble lords by their titles as they passed to and fro in the streets about their business. One of their last houses was the Yorkshire Grey, near Roll’s Buildings. At present they are, we believe, extinct. In Newcastle, also, there was a House of Lords, of which Bewick the wood-engraver was a member. They used to hold their meetings in the Groat Market of that town.

The Duke’s Head, and the Old Duke, are signs that, for the last two or three centuries, have always been applied to some ducal hero or other, for the time being basking himself in the noontide sun of fame. One of the first to whom it was applied, was Monck, Duke of Albemarle after the Restoration; then came Ormond, Marlborough, Cumberland, York, and, at present, Wellington and the Duke of Cambridge. The Duke’s Head in Upper Street, corner of Gad’s Row, Islington, was the sign of a public-house kept by Thomas Topham, the strong man, who, in 1741, in honour of Admiral Vernon’s birthday, lifted three hogsheads of water, weighing 1859 lb., in Coldbath Fields.[67]

The Duke of Albemarle figured on numberless signboards after the Restoration; but at the same period, there existed still older signs, on which his grace was simply called Monck; as for instance, that hung out by “Will. Kidd, suttler to the Guard at St James’s,”[68] which was the Monck’s Head. Kidd had probably followed the army in many a campaign in former years, and was much more accustomed to the name of General Monck than that of his Grace the Duke of Albemarle. Of the Duke of Ormond there is still one instance remaining in Longstreet, Tetbury, Gloucester, under the name of the Ormond’s Head. A very few Dukes of Marlborough are also left. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Duke of Marlborough’s Head in Fleet Street, was a tavern used for purposes very similar to those which we are accustomed now-a-days to behold at the St James’ and the Egyptian Halls. Among the Bagford Bills, and in the newspapers of the time, it is constantly mentioned as the place where something wonderful or amusing was to be seen—panoramas, dioramas, moving pictures, marionnettes, curious pieces of mechanism, &c., &c.[69]

The Lord Craven was once a very popular sign in London. It occurs amongst the trades tokens of Bishopsgate Street Without, and even at present there is a Craven Head and two Craven Arms in London. These signs were in honour of William Craven, eldest son of Sir William Craven, knt., (Sheriff of London temp. Queen Elizabeth.) This nobleman passed the greater part of his life abroad, serving the Protestant cause in Holland and in Germany. During the Civil War, he at various times gave pecuniary assistance to King Charles II., who at the Restoration created him Viscount Craven of Uffington, &c. He is said to have been privately married to Elizabeth, daughter of James I., the Queen of Bohemia. He died, April 19, 1697. Though his public and military career had certainly been brilliant, yet he owed his popularity probably more to his civic virtues, shewn during the plague period, when he and General Monck were almost the only men of rank that remained in town to keep order. He even erected a pesthouse at his own expense in Pesthouse Field, Carnaby Market, (now Marshall Street, Golden Square.) His assistance during the frequent London fires, also tended to make him a favourite with the Londoners.

“Lord Craven, in the time of King Charles II., was a constant man at a fire; for which purpose he always had a horse ready saddled in his stables, and rewarded the first that gave him notice of such an accident. It was a good-natured fancy, and he did a good deal of service; but in that reign everything was turned to a joke. The king being told of a terrible fire that was broke out, asked if Lord Craven was there yet. ‘Oh!’ says somebody by, ‘an’t please your majesty, he was there before it began, waiting for it, he has had two horses burnt under him already.’[70] On such occasions he usually rode a white horse, well known to the London mob, which was said to smell the fires from afar off.”

The Earl of Essex, Elizabeth’s quondam favourite, might have been met with on many signs long after the Restoration. There are trades tokens of a shop or tavern with such a sign on the Bankside, Southwark, and tokens are extant of two other shops that had the Essex Arms. In the last century there was an Essex Head in Essex Street; in this tavern the Robin Hood Society, “a club of free and candid inquiry,” used to meet. It was originally established in 1613, at the house of Sir Hugh Middleton, the projector of the New River for supplying London with water. Its first meetings were held at the houses of members, but afterwards, the numbers increasing, they removed to the above tavern, and its name was altered into the “Essex Head Society.” In 1747 it removed to the Robin Hood in Butcher Row, near Temple Bar. The society attained a position of so much importance, that a history of its proceedings was published in 1764, giving an account of the subjects debated, and reports of some of the speeches. Seven minutes only were allowed to each speaker, at the expiration of which the Baker, or president, summed up. Many a young politician here winged his first flight.[71]

In 1784, the year of his death, Dr Johnson instituted at this house a club of twenty-four members, in order to insure himself society for at least three days in the week. He composed the regulations himself, and wrote above them the following motto from Milton:—

The house at that time was kept by Samuel Greaves, an old servant of Mrs Thrale. Each night of non-attendance was visited on the members by a fine of threepence. Members were to spend at least sixpence, besides a penny for the waiter. Each member had to preside one evening a month.

That the Earl of Essex, who had taken up arms against his queen, should have continued more than a century after his death, is easily accounted for by the immense popularity he enjoyed, exceeding that of any of his cotemporaries. More difficult to explain is the presence on English signboards of the Dutch Admiral van Tromp; yet we find him in Church Street, Shoreditch, and in St Helen’s, Lancashire. His countryman, Mynheer van Donck, would certainly make a much more appropriate public-house sign.

Names of battles and glorious faits d’ armes have also been much used as signs,—thus, Gibraltar, Portobello, the Battle of the Nile, the Mouth of the Nile, Trafalgar, the Battle of Waterloo, the Battle of the Pyramids, are all more or less common. The Bull and Mouth is said to have a similar origin, being a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, the entry to Boulogne Harbour, which grew into a popular sign after the capture of that place by Henry VIII. The first house with this sign is said to have been an inn in Aldgate. In less than a century the name was already corrupted into the “Bull and Mouth,” and the sign represented by a black bull and a large mouth. Thus it appears on the trades tokens, and also in a sculpture in the façade of the Queen’s Hotel, St Martin’s-le-Grand, formerly the Bull and Mouth Inn. Of the same time also dates the Bull and Gate, a corruption of the Boulogne Gates, which Henry VIII. ordered to be taken away, and transported to Hardes, in Kent, where they still (?) remain. The Bull and Gate was a noted inn in the seventeenth century in Holborn, where Fielding makes his hero Tom Jones put up on his arrival in London. It is still in existence under the same name, though much reduced in size. There is another in New Chapel Place, Kentish Town; and a few imitations of it were carried to distant provincial towns by the coaches of old times.

Another sign of the same period, although not commemorative of a battle, was the Golden Field Gate, mentioned by Taylor the water-poet, in 1632, as the sign of an inn at the upper end of Holborn. It was put up in honour of the Champ du Drap d’Or, where Henry VIII. and Francis I.,

The signs of great men who have distinguished themselves in the civil walks of life are much more scarce. Archimedes we meet with as an optician’s sign. He had been adopted by that class of workmen on account of the burning lenses with which he set the Roman fleet on fire at Syracuse. Various implements of their trade were added as distinctions by the several shops who sold spectacles under his auspices, such as Golden Prospects of Perspectives, (i.e., spectacles or any other glass that assisted the sight,) Globes, King’s Arms, &c. Among the Bagford Bills there is one of John Marshall, optician on Ludgate Hill, “at the sign of the Old Archimedes and Two Golden Spectacles,” which represents Archimedes taking astronomical observations, a huge pair of spectacles being suspended on one side of the sign, and on the other a lantern.[72] Archimedes and Three Pair of Golden Spectacles was the sign of another optician in Ludgate Street, 1697, who evidently had adopted Marshall’s sign with the addition of one pair of spectacles, in the hope of filching some of his customers. Sir Isaac Newton was another telescope-maker’s sign in Ludgate Street circa 1795.[73] At the present day he occurs on a few public-houses; but it is somewhat more gratifying for our national pride to see a coffee-house in the Rue Arcade, Paris, named after him. Lord Bacon’s Head was the sign of W. Bickerton, a bookseller, without Temple Bar, in 1735; Locke’s Head, of T. Peele, between the Temple Gates, 1718; James Ferguson figured at the door of an optical instrument maker in New Bond Street in 1780.[74] No doubt this optician was a Scotchman, who had given preference to a national celebrity. Just so, Andrew Miller, the great publisher and friend of Thomson, Hume, Fielding, &c., took the Buchanan Head for the sign of his shop in the Strand, opposite St Catherine Street, the house where the famous Jacob Tonson had lived, in whose time it was the Shakespeare’s Head. But Miller preferred his countryman, and put up the less known head of George Buchanan, (1525-1582.) Buchanan was author of a version of the Psalms, and at various times of his life tutor to Queen Mary Stuart, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Principal of St Leonard’s, preceptor to James I., director of the Chancery, Privy Seal, &c.

Cardinal Wolsey occurs in many places, particularly in London, Windsor, and the neighbourhood of Hampton Court. Andrew Marvel is still commemorated on a sign in Whitefriargate, Hull, of which town he was a native. Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange, was a favourite in London after the opening of the first Exchange in 1566; and Sir Hugh Middleton, the projector of the New River, is duly honoured with two or three signs in Islington.

There exists a curious alehouse picture, called the Three Johns, in Little Park Street, Westminster, and in White Lion Street, Pentonville. The same sign, many years ago, might have been seen in Bennett Street, near Queen Square, in the former locality. It represented an oblong table, with John Wilkes in the middle, the Rev. John Horne Tooke at one end, and Sir John Glynn (sergeant-at-law) at the other. There is a mezzotinto print of this picture (or the sign may be from the print) drawn and engraved by Richard Houston, 1769. John Wilkes, on whom the popular gratitude for writing the Earl of Bute out of power conferred many a signboard, still survives in a few spots. In a small Staffordshire town called Leek-with-Lowe, there is a stanch re-publican, who to this day keeps the Wilkes’-Head as his sign, whilst another one occurs in Bridges Street, St Ives. Sir Francis Burdett is also far from forgotten, and may still be seen “hung in effigy” at Castlegate, Berwick, in Nottingham, and in a few other places.

In 1683, we find Sir Edmundbury Godfrey on the picture-board of Langley Curtis, a bookseller near Fleetbridge. Being the martyr of a party, he undoubtedly for a while must have been a popular sign. Lord Anglesey was, in 1679, adopted by an inn in Drury Lane. This, we suppose, was Arthur, second Viscount Valentia, son of Sir Thomas Annesley, (Lord Mountmorris,) and elevated to the British peerage by the title of Earl of Anglesey in 1661; he died in 1686. One of the acts which probably contributed most to his popularity was that he, with the Lord Cavendish, Mr Howard, Dr Tillotson, Dr Burnet, and a few others, appeared to vindicate Lord Russell in the face of the court, and gave testimony to the good life and conversation of the prisoner.

The bulky figure of Paracelsus, or, as he called himself, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus von Hohenheim, used formerly to be a constant apothecaries’ symbol. From an advertisement in the London Gazette, July 22-26, 1680, about a stolen horse “with a sowre head,” we gather that there was at that time a sign of Paracelsus in Old Fish Street. Information about the horse with “the sowre head” would also be received at a house in Lambeth, with no less a dignitary for its sign than the Bishop of Canterbury, his grace having been thus honoured from a neighbourly feeling.

Doctor Butler, (ob. 1617,) physician to James I., and, according to Fuller, “the Æsculapius of that age,” invented a kind of medicated ale, called Dr Butler’s ale, “which, if not now, (1784,) was, a few years ago, sold at certain houses that had the Butler’s Head for a sign.”[75] One of the last remaining Butler’s Heads was in a court leading from Basinghall into Coleman Street.

That singularly successful quack, Lilly, though he ought not to be placed in such good company as the king’s physician, was also a constant sign, in the last century, at the door of sham doctors and astrologers. Not unfrequently they combined the Balls (a favourite sign of the quacks) with Lilly’s head, as the Black Ball and Lillyhead, the sign of Thomas Saffold, “an approved and licensed physician and student in astrology: he hath practised astronomy for twenty-four years, and hath had the Bishop of London’s licence to practise physick ever since the 4th day of September 1674, and hath, he thanks God for it, great experience and wonderful success in those arts.” He promised to perform the usual tours de force.

This address was “at the Black Ball and Lilly Head, next door to the Feather shops that are within Blackfriars gateway, which is over against Ludgate Church, just by Ludgate in London.”[76]

Classic authors also have come in for their share of signboard popularity in this country, which, at the time they flourished, was about as little civilized as the Sandwich Islands in the days of Captain Cook. These signs were set up by booksellers; thus Homer’s Head was, in 1735, the sign of Lawton Gilliver, against St Dunstan’s Church, publisher of some of Pope’s works, and in 1761, of J. Walker at Charing Cross. Cicero, under the name of Tully’s Head, hung at the door of Robert Dodsley, a famous bookseller in Pall Mall. In a newspaper of 1756, appeared some verses “on Tully’s head in Pall Mall, by the Rev. Mr G——s, of which the following are the first and the last stanzas:—

About the same time, the favourite Tully’s Head was also the sign of T. Becket, and P. A. de Hondt, booksellers in the Strand, near Surrey Street. Horace’s Head graced the shop of J. White in Fleet Street, publisher of several of Joseph Strutt’s antiquarian works; and Virgil’s Head of Abraham van den Hoeck and George Richmond, opposite Exeter Change in the Strand, in the middle of the last century. Of Seneca’s Head two instances occur, J. Round in Exchange Alley in 1711, and —— Varenne, near Somerset House, in the Strand, at the same period.

A few of our own poets are also common tavern pictures. As early as 1655 we find a (Ben) Jonson’s Head tavern in the Strand, where Ben Jonson’s chair was kept as a relic.[77] In that same year it was the sign of Robert Pollard, bookseller, behind the Royal Exchange. Ten years later it occurs in the following advertisement:—

“WHEREAS Thomas Williams, of the society of real and well-meaning Chymists hath prepaired certain Medicynes for the cure and prevention of the Plague, at cheap rates, without Benefit to himself, and for the publick good, In pursuance of directions from authority, be it known that these said Medicynes are to be had at Mr Thomas Fidges, in Fountain Court, Shoe Lane, near Fleet Street, and are also left by him to be disposed of at the Green Ball, within Ludgate, the Ben Jonson’s Head, near Yorkhouse,” &c.[78]

There is still a Ben Jonson’s Head tavern with a painted portrait of the poet in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street; a Ben Jonson’s Inn at Pemberton, Wigan, Lancashire; and another at Weston-on-the Green, Bicester.

Shakespeare’s Head is to be seen in almost every town where there is a theatre. At a tavern with that sign in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, the Beefsteak Society (different from the Beefsteak Club,) used to meet before it was removed to the Lyceum Theatre. George Lambert, scene-painter to Covent Garden Theatre, was its originator. This tavern was at one time famous for its beautifully painted sign. The well-known Lion’s Head, first set up by Addison at Button’s, was for a time placed at this house.[79] There was another Shakespeare Head in Wych Street, Drury Lane, a small public-house at the beginning of this century, the last haunt of the Club of Owls, so called on account of the late hours kept by its members. The house was then kept by a lady under the protection of Dutch Sam the pugilist. After this it was for one year in the hands of the well-known Mr Mark Lemon, present editor of Punch, then just newly married to Miss Romer, a singer of some renown, who assisted him in the management of this establishment. The house was chiefly visited by actors from Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Olympic, whilst a club of literati used to meet on the first floor.

Sir John Falstaff, who so dearly loved his sack, could not fail to become popular with the publicans, and may be seen on almost as many signboards as his parent Shakespeare.

Milton’s Head was, in 1759, the sign of George Hawkins, a bookseller at the corner of the Middle Temple gate, Fleet Street; at present there are two Milton’s Head public-houses in Nottingham. Dryden’s Head was to be seen in 1761, at the door of H. Payne and Crossley, booksellers in Paternoster Row. At Kate’s Cabin, on the Great Northern Road, between Chesterton and Alwalton, there is a sign of Dryden’s head, painted by Sir William Beechey, when engaged as a house-painter on the decoration of Alwalton Hall. Dryden was often in that neighbourhood when on a visit to his kinsman, John Dryden of Chesterton.

Pope’s Head was in favour with the booksellers of the last century; thus the Gentleman’s Magazine, Sept. 1770, mentions a head of Alexander Pope in Paternoster Row, painted by an eminent artist, but does not say who the painter was. Edmund Curll, the notorious bookseller in Rose Street, Covent Garden, had Pope’s head for his sign, not out of affection certainly, but out of hatred to the poet. After the quarrel which arose out of Curll’s piratical publication of Pope’s literary correspondence, Curll, in May 22, 1735, addressed a letter of thanks to the House of Lords, ending thus,—“I have engraved a new plate of Mr Pope’s head from Mr Jervas’s painting, and likewise intend to hang him up in effigy for a sign to all spectators of his falsehood and my own veracity, which I will always maintain under the Scotch motto, ‘Nemo me impune lacessit.’” R. Griffiths, a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard since 1750, had the Dunciad for his sign. He was agent for a very primitive social-evil movement; advertisements emanating from this “sett of gentlemen sympathising with the misfortunes of young girls” occur in the papers of June and July 1752. One of the regulations was, “☞ None need to apply but such as are Fifteen years of age, and not above Twenty-five: older are thought past being reclaim’d, unless good Recommendations are given. Drinkers of spirits and swearers have a bad chance.”

The Man of Ross is at the present day a signboard at Wye Terrace, Ross, Herefordshire; the house in which John Kyrle, the Man of Ross, dwelt, was, after his death, converted into an inn. Twenty or thirty years ago the following poetical effusion was to be read stuck up in that inn:—

The head of Rowe, the first emendator, corrector, and illustrator of Shakespeare, was in 1735 the sign of a bookseller in Essex Street, Strand. The Camden Head and Camden Arms occur in four instances as the sign of London publicans. Camden Town, however, may perhaps take the credit of this last sign. Addison’s Head was for above sixty years the sign of the then well-known firm of Corbett & Co.—first of C. Corbett, afterwards of his son Thomas, booksellers in Fleet Street from 1740 till the beginning of this century. Dr Johnson’s Head, exhibiting a portrait of the great lexicographer, is a modern sign in Bolton Court, Fleet Street, opposite to where the great man lived, and which was in his time occupied by an upholsterer. It is sometimes asserted to be the house in which the Doctor resided, but this statement is wrong, for the house in which he had apartments was burned down in 1819. Finally, a portrait of Sterne, under the name of the Yorick’s Head, was the sign of John Wallis, a bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1795.

Of modern poets Lord Byron is the only one who has been exalted to the signboard. In the neighbourhood of Nottingham his portrait occurs in several instances; his Mazeppa also is a great favourite, but it must be confessed its popularity has been greatly assisted by the circus, by sensational engravings, and, above all, by that love for horse flesh innate to the British character. Don Juan also occurs on a publican’s signboard at Cawood, Selby, West Riding; and Don John at Maltby, Rotheram, in the same county; but perhaps these are merely the names of race horses.

The latest of all literary celebrities who attained sufficient popularity to entitle him to a signboard was Sheridan Knowles, who was chosen as the sign of a tavern in Bridge Street, Covent Garden, facing the principal entrance to Drury Lane Theatre, (now a nameless eating-house.) There the Club of Owls used to meet. Sheridan Knowles was one of the patrons, and Augustine Wade, an author and composer of some fame, was chairman of the club in those days. Pierce Egan and Leman Rede were amongst its members; so that it may be conjectured that the nights were not passed in moping.[80]

Mythological divinities and heroes, also, have been very fairly represented on our signboards. At this head, of course, Bacchus (frequently with the epithet of Jolly) well deserves to be placed. In the time when the Bush was the usual alehouse sign, or rather when it had swollen to a crown of evergreens, a chubby little Bacchus astride on a tun was generally a pendant to the crown. In Holland and Germany we have seen a Beer king, (a modern invention, certainly,) named Cambrinus, taking the place of Bacchus at the beer-house door; but, according to the sixteenth century notions, Bacchus included beer in his dominions. Hence he is styled “Bacchus, the God of brew’d wine and sugar, grand patron of robpots, upsey freesy tipplers, and supernaculum takers, this Bacchus, who is head warden of Vintner’s Hall, ale connor, mayor of all victualling houses,” &c.—Massinger’s Virgin Martyr, a. ii. s. l. Next to Bacchus, Apollo is most frequent, but whether as god of the sun or leader of the Muses it is difficult to say. Sometimes he is called Glorious Apollo, which, in heraldic language, means that he has a halo round his head.[81] In the beginning of this century there was a notorious place of amusement in St George’s Fields, Westminster Road, called the Apollo Gardens—a Vauxhall or a Ranelagh of a very low description. It was tastefully fitted up, but being small and having few attractions beyond its really good orchestra, it became the resort of the vulgar and the depraved, and was finally closed and built over.

Minerva also is not uncommon—probably not so much because she was the goddess of wisdom, but as “y^e patroness of scholars, shoemakers, diers,” &c.[82] Juno has a temple in Church Lane, Hull, and Neptune of course is of frequent occurrence in a country that holds the

The smith “being generally a thirsty soul, his patron Vulcan constitutes an appropriate alehouse sign, and in that capacity he frequently figures, particularly in the Black country. Amongst the quaint Dutch signboard inscriptions there is one which, in the seventeenth century, was written under a sign of Vulcan lighting his pipe:—

Vulcan, as the god of fire, without which there is no smoke, was a common tobacconist’s sign in Holland two hundred years ago. One of these dealers had the following rhymes affixed to his Vulcan sign:—

Mercury, the god of commerce, was of frequent occurrence, as might be expected. Amongst the Banks collection of shop-bills there is one of a fanshop in Wardour Street with the sign of the Mercury and Fan. Both Cupid and Flora were signs at Norwich in 1750,[85] and Comus is frequently the tutelary god of our provincial public-houses. Castor and Pollux, represented in the dress of Roman soldiers of the empire standing near a cask of tallow, was the sign of T. & J. Bolt, tallow-chandlers, at the corner of Berner Street, Oxford Street, at the end of the last century, for the obvious reason that, like the Messrs Bolt, they were two brothers that spread light over the world. Our admiration for athletic strength and sports suggested the sign of Hercules, as well as his biblical parallel Samson.

As for the Hercules Pillars, this was the classic name for the Straits of Gibraltar, which by the ancients was considered the end of the world; in the same classic sense it was adopted on outskirts of towns, where it is more common now to see the World’s End. In 1667 it was the sign of Richard Penck in Pall Mall, and also of a public-house in Piccadilly, on the site of the present Hamilton Place, both which spots were at that period the end of the inhabited world of London. The sign generally represented the demi-god standing between the pillars, or pulling the pillars down—a strange cross between the biblical and the pagan Hercules.

The Pillars of Hercules in Piccadilly is mentioned by Wycherley in the “Plain Dealer,” 1676:—“I should soon be picking up all our own mortgaged apostle spoons, bowls, and beakers out of most of the alehouses betwixt the Hercules Pillars and the Boatswain in Wapping.” The Marquis of Granby often visited the former house, and here Fielding, in “Tom Jones,” makes Squire Western put up:—“The Squire sat down to regale himself over a bottle of wine with his parson and the landlord of the Hercules Pillars, who, as the Squire said, would make an excellent third man, and would inform them of the news of the town; for, to be sure, says he, he knows a great deal, since the horses of many of the quality stand at his house.”[86] In Pepys’ time there was a Hercules Pillars tavern in Fleet Street. Here the merry clerk of the Admiralty supped with his wife and some friends on Feb. 6, 1667-8; his return home gives a good idea of London after the fire:—

“Coming from the Duke of York’s playhouse I got a coach, and a humour took us and I carried them to the Hercules Pillars, and there did give them a kind of supper of about 7s. and very merry, and home round the town, not through the ruins. And it was pretty how the coachman by mistake drives us into the ruins from London Wall unto Coleman Street, and would persuade me that I lived there. And the truth is, I did think that he and the linkman had contrived some roguery, but it proved only a mistake of the coachman; but it was a cunning place to have done us a mischief in, as any I know, to drive us out of the road into the ruins, and there stop, while nobody could be called to help us. But we came home safe.”

Atlas carrying the World was the very appropriate sign of the map and chart makers. In 1674 there was one in Cornhill,[87] and under a print of Blanket fair (the fair held on the Thames when frozen over) occurs the following imprint:—“A map of the river Thames merrily called Blanket-fair, as it was frozen in the memorable year 1683-4, describing the Booths, Footpaths, Coaches, Sledges, Bull-baitings, and other remarks. Sold by Joseph Moxon on the West side of Fleet ditch, at the sign of the Atlas.” Equally appropriate was Orpheus as the sign of the music shop of L. Peppard, next door to Bickerstaffe’s coffee-house, Russell Street, Covent Garden, 1711. No fault either can be found with the Golden Fleece as the sign of a woollen draper—Jason’s golden fleece being an allegory of the wool trade, but at the door of an inn or public-house it looks very like a warning of the fate the traveller may expect within—in being fleeced. In the seventeenth century there was a Fleece Tavern in St James’s:—

“A RARE Consort of four Trumpets Marine, never heard of before in England.[88] If any person desire to come and hear it, they may repair to the Fleece Tavern near St James’s about 2 o’clock in the afternoon every day in the week except Sundays. Every consort shall continue one hour and so to begin again. The best places are 1 shilling, the others sixpence.”—London Gazette, Feb. 1-4, 1674.

This is amongst the earliest concerts on record in London. Another example of this sign worth mentioning was the Fleece Tavern, (in York Street,) Covent Garden, which, says Aubrey, “was very unfortunate for homicides; there have been several killed—three in my time. It is now (1692) a private house. Clifton, the master, hanged himself, having perjured himself.”[89] Pepys does not give this house a better character:—“Decemb. 1, 1660. Mr Flower did tell me how a Scotch knight was killed basely the other day at the Fleece in Covent Garden, where there had been a great many formerly killed.” On the Continent, also, this symbol was used; for instance, in 1687, by Jean Camusat, a printer in the Rue St Jacques, Paris; his colophon represented Jason taking the golden fleece off a tree, with the motto—“Tegit et quos tangit inaurat.”

Another sign, of which the application is not very obvious, is Pegasus or the Flying Horse, unless it refers to this rhyme:—