article. They had a complete arsenal about them, viz., two blunderbusses, one loaded with fifteen balls, the other with seven, and five pistols loaded with powder and shot.

The GOLDEN CUP, from the form in which it was generally represented, seems to have been derived from the Goldsmiths' arms, which are quarterly azure, two leopards' heads or, (whence the mint mark,) and two golden cups covered between two buckles or. It was a sign much fancied by booksellers, as: Abel Jeff's in the Old Bailey, 1564; Edward Allde, Without Cripplegate, from 1587 until 1600; and John Bartlet the Elder, in St Paul's Churchyard; whilst the THREE CUPS was a famous carriers' inn in Aldersgate in the seventeenth century.

The RAM AND TEAZEL, Queenshead Street, Islington, is a part of the Clothworkers' arms, which are sable, a chevron ermine between two habicks in chief arg., and a teasel in base or. The crest is a ram statant or on a mount vert.

The HAMMER AND CROWN appears from a trades token to have been the sign of a shop in Gutter Lane, in the seventeenth century. It was a charge from the Blacksmiths' arms: sable, a chevron between three hammers crowned or. The LION IN THE WOOD was a tavern of some note a hundred years ago in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. It seems originally to have been the Woodmongers' arms, whose crest is a lion issuing from a wood. At the present day it is the sign of a public-house in the same locality, namely, in Wilderness Lane, Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

To these Corporation arms we may add two belonging to companies. During the South Sea mania the SOUTH SEA ARMS was a favourite sign; in 1718, the very year that Queen Anne had established the company and granted them arms, they appeared as the sign of a tavern near Austin Friars they are a curious heraldic compound. 'Azure, a globe representing the Straights of Magellan and Cape Horn, all proper. On a canton the arms of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain, and in sinister chief two herrings salterwise arg., crowned or."

The SOL'S ARMS, Sol's Row, Hampstead Road, immortalised by Dickens in "Bleak House," derives its name from the Sol's Society, who were a kind of freemasons. They used to hold their meetings at the Queen of Bohemia's Head, Drury Lane, but on the pulling down of that house the society was dissolved.

CHAPTER IV.

SIGNS OF ANIMALS AND MONSTERS.

IT is in many cases impossible to draw a line of demarcation between signs borrowed from the animal kingdom and those taken from heraldry: we cannot now determine, for instance, whether by the White Horse is meant simply an equus caballus, or the White Horse of the Saxons, and that of the House of Hanover; nor, whether the White Greyhound represented originally the supporter of the arms of Henry VII., or simply the greyhound that courses "poor puss" on our meadows in the hunting-season. For this reason this chapter has been placed as a sequel to the heraldic signs.

As a rule, fantastically coloured animals are unquestionably of heraldic origin: their number is limited to the Lion, the Boar, the Hart, the Dog, the Cat, the Bear, and in a few instances the Bull; all other animals were generally represented in what was meant for their natural colours. The heraldic lions have already been treated of in the last chapter; but sometimes we meet with the lion as a fera naturæ, recognisable by such names as the BROWN LION, the YELLOW LION, or simply the Lion. There is a public-house in Philadelphia with the sign of the Lion, having underneath the following lines:

"The lion roars, but do not fear,

Cakes and beer sold here."

Which inscription is certainly as unnecessary as that over the nonformidable-looking lions under the celebrated fountain in the Spanish Alhambra, "O thou who beholdest these lions crouching, fear not, life is wanting to enable them to exhibit their fury."

Lions occur in numerous combinations with other animals and objects, which in many cases seem simply the union of two signs, as the LION AND DOLPHIN, Market Place, Leicester; the LION AND TUN, at Congleton: the LION AND SWAN in the same locality may owe its joint title to the name of the street in which the public-house is situated, viz., Swanbank. The combination of the LION AND PHEASANT, Wylecop, Shrewsbury, seems rather mysterious, unless the Pheasant has been substituted for the Cock, just as in the THREE PHEASANTS AND SCEPTRE, they were substituted for the THREE PIGEONS AND SCEPTRE As for the

COCK AND LION, a very common sign, their meeting, if we may believe ancient naturalists, is anything but agreeable to the lion. "The lyon dreadeth the white cocke, because he breedeth a precious stone called allectricium, like to the stone that bight Calcedonius. And for that the Cocke beareth such a stone, the Lyon specially abhorreth him."*

Some more information about this stone may be gathered from a mediæval treatise on natural history:

"Allectorius est lapis obscuro cristallo silis e větriculo galli castrati trahitur post quartu ana. Ultima eius quãtitas e ad magnitudine fabe-que gladiator. hñs in ore penanct. Ivictus ac sine siti."+

The LION AND BALL owes its origin to another mediaval notion:

"Some report that those who rob the tiger of her young use a policy to detaine their damme from following them, by casting sundry lookingglasses in the way, whereat she useth to long to gaze, whether it be to beholde her owne beauty or because when she seeth her shape in the glasse she thinketh she seeth one of her young ones, and so they escape the swiftness of her pursuit."

The looking glass thrown to the tiger was spherical, so that she could see her own image reduced as it rolled under her paw, and would therefore be more likely to mistake it for her cub. Lions and tigers being almost synonymous in medieval zoology, the spherical glass was generally represented with both. In sculpture it could only be represented by a ball, which afterwards became a terrestrial globe, and the lion resting his paw upon it, passed into an emblem of royalty.

In the last century an innkeeper at Goodwood put up as his sign the CENTURION'S LION, the figure-head of the frigate Centurion, in which Admiral Anson made a voyage round the world. Under it was the following inscription :

'Stay, Traveller, a while and view

One that has travelled more than you,
Quite round the Globe in each Degree,
Anson and I have plow'd the Sea;
Torrid and Frigid Zones have pass'd,
And safe ashore arriv'd at last.

In Ease and Dignity appear

He in the House of Lords, I — here."

• J. Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, London, 1597, p. 97.

ད "Allectorius is a stone similar to a dark crystal, which is taken from the stomach of a capon when it is four years old. Its utmost size is that of a bean. Gladiators take it in their mouths in order to be invincible, and not to suffer from thirst."-Tractatus de Animalibus et Lapidibus, 4to, circa 1465-75.

Guillim's Display of Heraldry. The same is also related in the Latin Bestiarium, Harl. MSS. 4751; and by Albertus Magnus, Camerarius, &c.

When Anson was in general disfavour about the Minorca affair, the following biting reply to this inscription went the round of the newspapers :—

"The Traveller's reply to the Centurion's Lion.
"O King of Beasts, what pity 'twas to sever
A pair whose Union had been just for ever!
So diff'rently advanced! 'twas surely wrong,
When you'd been fellow-travellers so long.
Had you continued with him, had he born
To see the English Lion dragg'd and torn?
Brittannia made at every vein to bleed,

A ravenous Crew of worthless Men to feed?
No; Anson once had sought the Land's Relief;
Now
Ease and Dignity have banish'd Grief.
Go, rouse him then, to save a sinking nation,
Or call him up, the partner of your station.
We often see two Monsters for a sign,
Inviting to good Brandy, Ale, or Wine."

The TIGER is of rare occurrence on signboards; there is a GOLDEN TIGER in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, and a bird-fancier on Tower Dock, not far from the then famous menagerie which attracted crowds to the Tower, chose the LEOPARD AND TIGER for his sign. In 1665 there was a LEOPARD Tavern in Chancery Lane; the same animal is still occasionally seen on public-house signs. Generally speaking, the carnivorous animals are not great favourites, and those named above are almost the only examples that occur. As for the popularity of the BEAR, it is entirely to be attributed to the old vulgar pleasure of seeing him ill-treated, a relic of the once common amusements of bear-baiting and whipping. The colours in which he is represented are the BLACK BEAR, the BROWN BEAR, the WHITE BEAR, and in a very few instances (as at Leeds) the RED BEAR.

Besides bear-whipping and bear-baiting, another barbarous fancy led sometimes to the choice of this animal for a sign,— viz., the lamentable pun which the publican inade upon the article he sold, and the name of the animal. Will. Rose of Coleraine, in Ireland, for instance, issued trades tokens with a bear passant, on the reverse EXCHANGE.FOR. A. CAN (i.e., of Bear!), and as if the pun was not ridiculous enough, there was a rose as a rebus for his name. Thomas Dawson of Leeds perpetrated a similar pun on his token, dated 1670; it says,-BEWARE.OF.YE. BEARE, evidently alluding to the strength of his beer.*

* "Boyne's and Akerman's Trades Tokens of the 17th Century," in England, Ireland, and Wales.

Bears used often to be represented with chains round their neck, (as on the stone sign in Addle Street, with the date 1610.) This led to the following amusing rejoinder :-It happened that a pedestrian artist had run up a bill at a road-side inn which he was unable to pay, whereupon the landlord, in order to settle the account, commissioned him to paint a bear for his sign. The painter, wanting to make a little besides, suggested that, if the bear was painted with a chain round his neck, which he strongly advised him to have, it would cost him half-a-guinea more, on account of the gold, &c. But the host was not agreeable to this extra expense; accordingly, the sign was painted, (but in distemper,) and the painter went his way. Not many days after it began to rain, and the bear was completely washed from the board. The first time the landlord met the painter, he accused him in great dudgeon of having imposed upon him, for that, in less than a month, the bear had gone from his signboard. "Now, look here," replied the painter; "did not I advise you to have a chain put about the bear's neck? but you would not hear of it; had that been done he could not have run away, and would still be at your door."

Among the most famous Bear inns and taverns were, the Bear" at Bridgefoot," i.e., at the foot of London Bridge, on the Southwark side, for many centuries one of the most popular London taverns; as early as the reign of Richard III. we find it the resort of the aristocratic pleasure-seeker. Thus, in March 1463, it was repeatedly visited by Jocky of Norfolk, the then Sir John Howard, who went there to drink wine and shoot at the target, at which he lost 20 pence.* It is also frequently named by the writers of the seventeenth century.+ Pepys mentions it April 3, 1667. "I hear how the king is not so well pleased of this marriage between the Duke of Richmond and Mrs Stuart, as is talked; and that he by a wile did fetch her to the Bear at the Bridgefoot, where a coach was ready, and they are stole away into Kent without the king's leave." The wine of this establishment did not meet with the approbation of the fastidious searchers after claret in 1691.

"Through stinks of all sorts, both the simple and compound,
Which through narrow alleys, our senses do confound,
We came to the Bear, which we now understood

Was the first house in Southwark built after the flood;

* Steward's Accounts of Sir John Howard.

↑ See Cunningham's London Past and Present, p. 41.