THE INNS OF OLD LONDON

By Philip Norman, LL.D.

To write a detailed account of London inns and houses of entertainment generally would require not a few pages, but several volumes. The inns, first established to supply the modest wants of an unsophisticated age, came by degrees to fulfil the functions of our modern hotels, railway stations, and parcel offices; they were places of meeting for business and social entertainment—in short, they formed a necessary part of the life of all Londoners, and of all who resorted to London, except the highest and the lowest. The taverns, successors of mediæval cook-shops, were frequented by most of the leading spirits of each generation from Elizabethan times to the early part of the nineteenth century, and their place has now been taken by clubs and restaurants. About these a mass of information is available, also on coffee-houses, a development of the taverns, in which, for the most part, they were gradually merged. As to the various forms of public-house, their whimsical signs alone have amused literary men, and perhaps their readers, from the time of The Spectator until now. In this chapter I propose to confine my remarks to the inns "for receipt of travellers," so often referred to by John Stow in his Survey of London, which, largely established in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, continued on the same sites, mostly until years after the advent of railways had caused a social revolution. These inns, with rare exceptions, had a galleried courtyard, a plan of building also common on the Continent, which came perhaps originally from the East. In such courtyards, as we shall see, during Tudor times theatrical performances often took place, and in form they probably gave a hint to the later theatres.

Before the fifteenth century it was usual for travellers to seek the hospitality of religious houses, the great people being lodged in rooms set apart for them, while the poorer sort found shelter in the guest-house. But as time went on this proved inadequate, and inns on a commercial basis came into existence, being frequented by those who could hardly demand special consideration from the religious houses, and were not fitting recipients of charity. Naturally enough, these inns, when once their usefulness became recognised, were soon to be found in the main thoroughfares leading out of the metropolis, and they were particularly plentiful in Southwark on each side of what we now call the Borough High Street, extending for a quarter of a mile or more from London Bridge along the main road to the south-eastern counties and the Continent. The first thus established, and one of the earliest in this country, had to some extent a religious origin—namely, the

about which and about the Southwark inns generally I propose now to say a few words, for although well known, they are of such extreme interest that they demand a foremost place in an account of this kind. From the literary point of view the "Tabard" is immortalized, owing to the fact that Chaucer has selected it as the starting-point of his pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. Historically, it may be mentioned that as early as the year 1304 the Abbot and Convent of Hyde, near Winchester, purchased in Southwark two tenements, on the sites of which he built for himself a town dwelling, and at the same time, it is believed, a hostelry for the convenience of travellers. In 1307 he obtained license to build a chapel at or by the inn, and in a later deed we are told that "the abbott's lodginge was wyninge to the backside of the Tabarde and had a garden attached." From that time onwards frequent allusions can be found to this house, the sign of which (a sleeveless coat, such as that worn by heralds) got somehow corrupted into the Talbot, a species of dog, by which it was known for a couple of centuries or more, almost to the time of its final destruction. Although the contrary has been asserted, the inn was undoubtedly burnt in the Great Southwark Fire of 1676, but was rebuilt soon afterwards in the old fashion, and continued to be a picturesque example of architecture until 1875, when the whole was swept away, hop merchants' offices and a modern "old Tabard" now occupying the site.

Equal in interest to the last-named inn was the "White Hart." At the one Chaucer gave life and reality to a fancied scene; at the other occurred an historical event, the bald facts of which Shakespeare has lighted up with a halo of romance. The White Hart appears to have dated from the latter part of the fourteenth century, the sign being a badge of Richard II., derived from his mother, Joan of Kent. In the summer of 1450 it was Jack Cade's headquarters while he was striving to gain possession of London. Hall, in his Chronicle, records this, and adds that he prohibited "murder, rape and robbery by which colour he allured to him the hartes of the common people." It was here, nevertheless, that "one Hawaydyne of sent Martyns was beheaded," and here, during the outbreak, a servant of Sir John Fastolf, who had property in the neighbourhood, was with difficulty saved from assassination. His chattels were pillaged, his wife left with "no more gode but her kyrtyll and her smook," and he thrust into the forefront of a fight then raging on London Bridge, where he was "woundyd and hurt nere hand to death." Cade's success was of short duration; his followers wavered, he said, or might have said, in the words attributed to him by Shakespeare (2 Henry VI., act iv., scene 8), "Hath my sword therefore broken through London gate that you should leave me at the White Hart in Southwark?" The rebellion collapsed, and our inn is not heard of for some generations. Want of space prevents our recording the various vicissitudes through which it passed, and the historic names connected with it, until the time of the Southwark Fire of 1676, when, like the "Tabard," it was burnt down, but rebuilt on the old foundations. In 1720 Strype describes it as large and of considerable trade, and it so continued until the time when Dickens, who was intimately acquainted with the neighbourhood, gave his graphic description of Sam Weller at the White Hart in the tenth chapter of Pickwick. In 1865-66 the south side of the building was replaced by a modern tavern, but the old galleries on the north and east sides remained until 1889, being latterly let out in tenements.

There were several other galleried inns in Southwark, dating at least from the time of Queen Elizabeth, which survived until the nineteenth century, but we only have space briefly to allude to three. The "King's Head" and the "Queen's Head" was each famous in its way. The former had been originally the "Pope's Head," the sign being changed at the Reformation. In 1534 the Abbot of Waverley, whose town house was not far off, writes, apparently on business, that he will be at the "Pope's Head" in Southwark—eight years afterwards it appears as the "King's Head." In a deed belonging to Mr. G. Eliot Hodgkin, F.S.A., the two names are given. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the house belonged to various noteworthy people; among the rest, to Thomas Cure, a local benefactor, and to Humble, Lord Ward. It was burnt in the Great Southwark Fire, and the last fragment of the galleried building, erected immediately afterwards, was pulled down in January, 1885.

The "Queen's Head" was the only one of the Southwark houses we are describing that escaped the Fire of 1676, perhaps owing to the fact that, by way of precaution, a tenement was blown up at the gateway. It stood on the site of a house called the "Crowned or Cross Keys," which in 1529 was an armoury or store-place for the King's harness. In 1558 it had a brew-house attached to it, and had lately been rebuilt. In 1634 the house had become the "Queen's Head," and the owner was John Harvard, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who afterwards migrated to America, and gave his name to Harvard University, Massachusetts. About this time it was frequented by carriers, as we learn from John Taylor, "the water-poet." The main building, destroyed in 1895, was found to be of half-timbered construction, dating perhaps from the sixteenth century. A galleried portion, also of considerable age, survived until the year 1900.

Of another Southwark inn, the "George," we can fortunately speak in the present tense. It seems to have come into existence in the early part of the sixteenth century, and is mentioned with the sign of "St. George" in 1554:—

The owner in 1558 was Humfrey Colet, or Collet, who had been Member of Parliament for Southwark. Soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, in a book called Musarum Deliciæ, or the Muses' Recreation, compiled by Sir John Mennes (Admiral and Chief Comptroller of the Navy) and Dr. James Smith, appeared some lines, "upon a surfeit caught by drinking bad sack at 'the George' in Southwark." Perhaps the landlord mended his ways; in any case, the rent was shortly afterwards £150 a year—a large sum for those days. The "George" was a great coaching and carriers' inn. Only a fragment of it, but a picturesque one, now exists; it is still galleried, and dates from shortly after the Southwark Fire of 1676. The rest of the building was pulled down in 1889-90. All the inns to which allusion has been made were clustered together on the east side of the Borough High Street, the gateways of those most distant from each other being only about 140 yards apart.

Another leading thoroughfare from London to the east was the road through Aldgate to Whitechapel. Here, though the houses of entertainment were historically far less interesting than those of Southwark, they flourished for many years. Where a modern hotel with the same sign now stands, next to the Metropolitan railway station on the north side of Aldgate High Street, there was once a well-known inn, the "Three Nuns," so called, perhaps, from the contiguity of the nuns of St. Clare, or sorores minores, who gave a name to the Minories. The "Three Nuns" inn is mentioned by Defoe in his Journal of the Plague, which, though it describes events that happened when he was little more than an infant, has an air of authenticity suggesting personal experience. We are told by him that near this inn was the "dreadful gulf—for such it was rather than a pit"—in which, during the Plague of 1665, not less than 1,114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from the 6th to the 20th of September. Throughout the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries this house was much frequented by coaches and carriers. The late Mr. Edwin Edwards, who etched it in 1871, was told by the landlord that a four-horse coach was then running from there to Southend during the summer months. A painting of the holy nuns still appeared on the sign-board. The house was rebuilt soon after the formation of the Metropolitan Railway. A short distance west of the "Three Nuns," at 31, Aldgate High Street, the premises of Messrs. Adkin and Sons, wholesale tobacconists, occupy the site of the old "Blue Boar" coaching inn, which they replaced in 1861. The sculptured sign of the "Blue Boar," let into the wall in front, was put up at the time of the rebuilding. The former inn, described on a drawing in the Crace collection as the oldest in London, is held by some to be the same as that referred to in an order of the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor, dated from St. James's, September 5th, 1557, wherein he is told to "apprehende and to comitt to safe warde" certain actors who are about to perform in "a lewde Playe called a Sacke full of Newse" at the "Boar's Head" without Aldgate.

A few years ago, at No. 25, the entrance might still be seen of another famous inn called the "Bull," formerly the "Black Bull." Above the gateway was a fine piece of ironwork, and the old painted sign was against the wall of the passage. This house flourished greatly a little before the advent of railways, when Mrs. Anne Nelson, coach proprietor, was the landlady, and could make up nearly two hundred beds there. Most of her business was to Essex and Suffolk, but she also owned the Exeter coach. She must have been landlady on the memorable occasion when Mr. Pickwick arrived in a cab after "two mile o' danger at eightpence," and it was through this very gateway that he and his companions were driven by the elder Weller when they started on their adventurous journey to Ipswich. The house is now wholly destroyed and the yard built over.

A common sign in former days was the "Saracen's Head." We shall have occasion to refer to several in London. One of them stood by Aldgate, just within the limits of the city. Here a block of old buildings is in existence on the south side, which once formed the front of a well-known coaching inn, with this sign. The spacious inn yard remains, the house on the east side of its entrance having fine pilasters. From the "Saracen's Head," Aldgate, coaches plied to Norwich as long ago as 1681, and here there is, or was quite recently, a carrier's booking office.

Another thoroughfare which, within the memory of some who hardly admit that they are past middle age, contained several famous inns, was that leading to the north, and known in its various parts as Gracechurch Street and Bishopsgate Street Within and Without. One of the best known was the "Cross Keys" in Bishopsgate Street, mentioned in the preface to Dodsley's Old Plays as a house at which theatrical performances took place. It was here that, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, Bankes exhibited the extraordinary feats of his horse Marocco. One of them, if we may believe an old jest-book, was to select and draw forth Tarlton with its mouth as "the veriest fool in the company." In more modern times, until the advent of railways, the "Cross Keys" was a noted coaching and carriers' establishment. Destroyed in the Great Fire, and again burnt down in 1734, but rebuilt in the old style, it was still standing on the west side of the street, immediately south of Bell Yard, when Larwood and Hotten published their History of Signboards in 1866. Another inn with this sign stood appropriately near the site of St. Peter's Church in Wood Street, Cheapside, and was pulled down probably about the same time as the more famous house in Gracechurch Street.

Of equal note was the "Spread Eagle," the site of which has mostly been absorbed by the extension of Leadenhall Market. Like the "Cross Keys," it was burnt in the Great Fire, but rebuilt in the old style with an ample galleried yard. In the basement some mediæval arches still remained. At the "Spread Eagle" that original writer George Borrow had been staying with his future wife, Mrs. Mary Clarke, and various friends, when they were married at St. Peter's Church, Cornhill, on April 23rd, 1840, her daughter, Henrietta, signing the register. Before its destruction in 1865 it had been for some time a receiving office of Messrs. Chaplin and Horne. The site, of about 1,200 square feet, was sold for no less a sum than £95,000. Another Gracechurch inn, the "Tabard," which long ago disappeared, had, like the immortal hostelry in Southwark, become the "Talbot," and its site is marked by Talbot Court.

In Bishopsgate Street Within three galleried inns lingered long enough to have been often seen by the writer. These were the "Bull," the "Green Dragon," and the "Four Swans," each with something of a history, and to them might be added the picturesque, though less important, "Vine" and the "Flower Pot," from which last house a seventeenth century trade token was issued. The "Bull," the most southern of these inns, all of which were on the west side of the highway, was at least as old as the latter part of the fifteenth century, for in one of the chronicles of London lately edited by Mr. C. L. Kingsford, I find it, under the date 1498, associated with a painful incident—namely, the execution of the son of a cordwainer, "dwellyng at the Bulle in Bisshoppesgate Strete," for calling himself the Earl of Warwick. Hall gives his name as Ralph Wilford. Anthony Bacon, elder brother of Francis, during the year 1594 hired a lodging in Bishopsgate Street, but the fact of its being near the "Bull," where plays and interludes were performed, so troubled his mother that for her sake he removed to Chelsea. Shortly afterwards, as may be learnt from Tarlton's Jests, the old drama called "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth" was here played, "wherein the judge was to take a boxe on the eare, and because he was absent that should take the blow, Tarlton himselfe, ever forward to please, tooke upon him to play the judge, besides his own part of the clown." The "Bull" was the house of call of old Hobson, the carrier, to whose rigid rule about the letting of his saddle horses we are supposed to owe the phrase, "Hobson's Choice." Milton wrote his epitaph in the well-known lines beginning:—

In his second edition of Milton's Poems, p. 319, Wharton alludes to Hobson's "portrait in fresco" as having then lately been in existence at the inn, and it is mentioned in The Spectator, No. 509. There is a print of it representing a bearded old man in hat and cloak with a money bag, which in the original painting had the inscription, "The fruitful mother of an hundred more." He bequeathed property for a conduit to supply Cambridge with water; the conduit head still exists, though not in its original position. In 1649, by a Council of War, six Puritan troopers were condemned to death for a mutiny at the "Bull." The house remained till 1866.

Further north, at No. 86, was the "Green Dragon," the last of the galleried inns that survived in Bishopsgate Street. It is mentioned in De Laune's Present State of London, 1681, as a place of resort for coachmen and carriers, and I have before me an advertisement sheet of the early nineteenth century, showing that coaches were then plying from here to Norwich, Yarmouth, Cambridge, Colchester, Ware, Hertford, Brighton, and many other places. There is a capital etching of the house by Edwin Edwards. It was closed in 1877, its site being soon afterwards built over. At the sale of the effects eleven bottles of port wine fetched 37s. 6d. each. The "Four Swans," immediately to the north of the inn last named, although it did not survive so long, remained to the end a more complete specimen of its class, having three tiers of galleries perfect on each side, and two tiers at the west end. The "water-poet" tells us that in 1637 "a waggon or coach" came here once a week from Hertford. Other references to it might be quoted from books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the story told on an advertisement sheet issued by a former landlord about a fight here between Roundheads, led by Ireton, and a troop of Royalists, is apocryphal.

Not far off, in Bishopsgate Street Without, there was until lately a "Two Swan" inn yard, and a "One Swan" with a large yard—an old place of call for carriers and waggons. These lingered on until the general clearance by the Great Eastern Railway Company a few years ago, when the remains of Sir Paul Pindar's mansion, latterly a tavern, were also removed; the finely-carved timber front and a stuccoed ceiling finding their way into the Victoria and Albert Museum. Another old Bishopsgate house was the "White Hart," near St. Botolph's Church, a picturesque building with projecting storeys, and in front the date 1480, but the actual structure was probably much less ancient. It was drawn by J. T. Smith and others early in the nineteenth century, and did not long survive. The site is still marked by White Hart Court. On the opposite side of the way was an inn, the "Dolphin," which, as Stow tells us, was given in 1513 by Margaret Ricroft, widow, with a charge in favour of the Grey Friars. It disappeared in the first half of the eighteenth century. The old "Catherine Wheel," a galleried inn hard by, mentioned by De Laune in 1681, was not entirely destroyed till 1894.

Another road out of London richly furnished with inns was that from Newgate westward. The first one came to was the "Saracen's Head" on Snow Hill, an important house, to which the late Mr. Heckethorn assigned a very early origin. Whether or not it existed in the fourteenth century, as he asserts, it was certainly flourishing when Stow in his Survey described it as "a fair and large inn for receipt of travellers." It continued for centuries to be largely used, and here Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited on Squeers, the Yorkshire schoolmaster, whom Dickens must have modelled from various real personages. In a Times advertisement for January 3rd, 1801, I read that "at Mr. Simpson's Academy, Wodencroft Lodge, near Greta Bridge, Yorkshire, young gentlemen are boarded and accurately instructed in the English, Latin, and Greek languages, writing, arithmetic, merchants' accounts, and the most useful branches of the mathematics, at 16 guineas per annum, if under nine years of age, and above that age 17 guineas; French taught by a native of France at 1 guinea extra. Mr. Simpson is now in town, and may be treated with from eleven till two o'clock every day at the 'Saracen's Head,' Snow Hill." In the early part of last century the landlady was Sarah Ann Mountain, coach proprietor, and worthy rival of Mrs. Nelson, of the "Bull" Inn, Aldgate. The "Saracen's Head" disappeared in the early part of 1868, when this neighbourhood was entirely changed by the formation of the Holborn Viaduct. Another Snow Hill inn was the "George," or "George and Dragon," mentioned by Strype as very large and of considerable trade. A sculptured sign from there is in the Guildhall Museum.

In Holborn there were once nine or ten galleried inns. We will only allude to those still in existence within the memory of the writer. The most famous of them, perhaps, was the "George and Blue Boar," originally the "Blue Boar," the site of which is covered by the Inns of Court Hotel. The house is named in the burial register of St. Andrew's, Holborn, as early as 1616, but it is chiefly known from a story related by the Rev. Thomas Morrice, in his Memoir of Roger Earl of Orrery (1742), that Cromwell and Ireton, in the disguise of troopers, here intercepted a letter sewn in the flap of a saddle from Charles I. to his Queen, in which he wrote that he was being courted by the Scotch Presbyterians and the army, and that he thought of closing with the former. Cromwell is supposed to have said, "From that time forward we resolved on his ruin." The writer ventured to ask that excellent historian, Dr. Samuel Gardiner, what he thought of the statement. In August, 1890, he most kindly replied by letter as follows:—"The tale has generally been repudiated without enquiry, and I am rather inclined to believe, at least, in its substantial accuracy. The curious thing is, that there are two lines of tradition about intercepted letters, as it seems to me quite distinct." We may, therefore, without being over credulous, cherish the belief that the picturesque incident referred to was one that actually occurred. There is an advertisement of December 27th, 1779, offering the lease of the "George and Blue Boar," which helps us to realize the value and capacity of an important inn of that period. We are told that it contains forty bedrooms, stabling for fifty-two horses, seven coach-houses, and a dry ride sixty yards long; also that it returns about £2,000 a year. In George Colman the younger's "Heir at Law," act i., scene 2, this house is said by one of the characters to be "in tumble downish kind of a condition," but it survived until 1864, when it made way for the Inns of Court Hotel.

A group of inns which remained more recently were Ridler's "Bell and Crown," the old "Bell," and the "Black Bull," all on the north side of Holborn. Of these, the most picturesque was the "Bell," about which I have been able to ascertain some curious facts. The earliest notice of it that has come to light was on the 14th of March, 1538, when William Barde sold a messuage with garden called the "Bell," in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, to Richard Hunt, citizen and girdler. The latter, who died in 1569, gave thirty sacks of charcoal yearly for ever, as a charge on the property, to be distributed to thirty poor persons of the parish. After various changes of ownership, in 1679-80 it passed into the hands of Ralph Gregge, and his grandson sold it in 1722 to Christ's Hospital. In the deed of sale three houses are mentioned and described as "formerly one great mansion-house or inn known as the Bell or Blue Bell." About two years before, the front of the premises facing Holborn had been rebuilt, when the sculptured arms of Gregge were let into the wall in front; these arms are now at the Guildhall Museum. The "Bell" became a coaching house of considerable reputation, that part of the business being about the year 1836 in the hands of Messrs. B. W. and H. Horne, who, as coach proprietors, were second only to William Chaplin. For many years, until finally closed in September, 1897, the house was managed by the Bunyer family. It was the last galleried inn on the Middlesex side of the water, the galleries being perhaps as old as the reign of Charles II. A still older portion was a cellar built of stone immediately to the left of the entrance, which might almost have been mediæval. The rest of the building seems to have dated from the early part of the eighteenth century. There is a sympathetic reference to the old "Bell" by William Black in his Strange Adventures of a Phæton. Another noteworthy "Bell" Inn was that in Carter Lane, whence Richard Quyney wrote in 1598 to his "loveing good ffrend and contreyman Mr. Willm Shackespere," the only letter addressed to our greatest poet which is known to exist. There is still a Bell yard connecting Carter Lane with Knightrider Street. The first scene of the Harlot's Progress, by Hogarth, is laid in front of an inn, with the sign of the "Bell" in Wood Street. Above the door are chequers.

A short distance west of the Holborn house was the "Crown" Inn, latterly Ridler's "Bell and Crown," destroyed about 1899. It had been a coaching centre, but years ago the yard was built over, and it flourished to the end as a quiet family hotel. Next to the "Bell" on the east side was the "Black Bull," the front of which, with the carved sign of a bull in a violent state of excitement, remained after the rest of the inn had disappeared, outliving its neighbour for a brief period. It was in existence for a couple of hundred years or more, but future generations will probably only remember it as the house where Mr. Lewson was taken ill, and placed under the tender mercies of Betsy Prig and Mrs. Gamp; whence also, when convalescent, he was assisted into a coach, Mould the undertaker eyeing him with regret as he felt himself baulked of a piece of legitimate business.

A few short years ago if, on leaving this group of Holborn inns, we had turned down Fetter Lane in the direction of Fleet Street, after passing two or three gabled buildings still standing on the right hand side, we should have come to another old hostelry called the "White Horse," of which there is a well-known coloured print from a drawing made by Pollard in 1814, with a coach in front called the Cambridge Telegraph. It gradually fell into decay, became partly a "pub" and partly a common lodging-house, and with its roomy stabling at the back was swept away in 1897-98. Most of the structure was of the eighteenth century, but there were remains of an earlier wooden building. Its northern boundary touched the precinct of Barnard's Inn, an inn of chancery, now disestablished and adapted for the purposes of the Mercers' School.

Continuing our course southward, a short walk would formerly have taken us to the "Bolt-in-Tun," I think the only coaching establishment in Fleet Street, which possessed so many taverns and coffee-houses. The inn was of ancient origin, the White Friars having had a grant of the "Hospitium vocatum Le Bolt en ton" as early as the year 1443. The sign is the well-known rebus on the name of Bolton, the bird-bolt through a tun or barrel, which was the device of a prior of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, and may still be seen in the church there, and at Canonbury, where the priors had a country house. The City Press for September 12th, 1882, announces the then impending destruction of the "Bolt-in-Tun," and in the following year we are told that although a remnant of it in Fleet Street exists as a booking office for parcels, by far the larger portion, represented chiefly by the Sussex Hotel, Bouverie Street, which bore on it the date 1692, has just disappeared.

Further east, on Ludgate Hill, La Belle Sauvage Yard, where Messrs. Cassell & Co. carry on their important business, marks the site of an historic house, and perpetuates an error of nomenclature. Its original title, as proved by a document of the year 1452, was "Savage's" Inn, otherwise called the "Bell on the Hoop," but in the seventeenth century a trade token was issued from here, having on it an Indian woman holding a bow and arrow, and in 1676 "Bell Sauvage" Inn, on Ludgate Hill, consisting of about forty rooms, with good cellarage and stabling for about one hundred horses, was to be let. The mistake is repeated in The Spectator, No. 28, where we are told of a beautiful girl who was found in the wilderness, and whose fame was perpetuated in a French romance. As we learn from Howe, in his continuation of Stow's Annals, on a seat outside this inn Sir Thomas Wyat rested, after failing in an attempt to enter the city during his ill-advised rebellion in the reign of Mary Tudor. From Lambarde we gather that this was one of the houses where plays were performed before the time of Shakespeare. Writing in 1576, he says, "Those who go to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage, or the Theatre to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or fence play, must not account of any pleasant spectacle unless first they pay one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffold, and a third for quiet standing." Here, as at the "Cross Keys," Gracechurch Street, Bankes exhibited his horse, and here, in 1683, "a very strange beast called a Rhynoceros—the first that ever was in England," could be seen daily. Stow affirms the inn to have been given to the Cutlers' Company by Isabella Savage; but, in fact, the donor was John Craythorne, who conveyed the reversion of it to them in 1568. The sculptured elephant and castle representing their crest is still on a wall in La Belle Sauvage Yard. The inn, which has left its mark in the annals of coaching, was taken down in 1873.

A thoroughfare, formerly containing several fine mansions and various inns for travellers, was Aldersgate Street, the continuation of St. Martin's-le-Grand. There are allusions in print to the "Bell," the "George" (previously the "White Hart"), and to the "Cock" Inn, where, after years of wandering, Fynes Moryson arrived one Sunday morning in 1595; but these all passed away long ago. The last to linger in the neighbourhood was the "Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand, finally called the "Queen's" Hotel, absorbed by the General Post Office in 1886. The name is generally supposed to be a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, the entrance to Boulogne Harbour, that town having been taken by Henry VIII. George Steevens, the Shakespearean commentator, seems to have suggested this, and his idea has been generally accepted; but it is more likely that our inn was identical with the house called in 1657 "the Mouth near Aldersgate in London, then the usual meeting-place for Quakers," to which the Body of John Lilburne was conveyed in August of that year. We learn from Ellwood's Autobiography that five years afterwards he was arrested at the "Bull and Mouth," Aldersgate. The house was at its zenith as a coaching centre in the early years of the nineteenth century, when Edward Sherman had become landlord. He rebuilt the old galleried house in 1830. When coaching for business purposes ceased to be, the gateway from St. Martin's-le-Grand was partially blocked up and converted into the main entrance, the inn continuing under its changed name for many years. The sculptured signs were not removed until the destruction of the building. One, which was over the main entrance, is a statuette of a Bull within a gigantic open Mouth; below are bunches of grapes; above, a bust of Edward VI. and the arms of Christ's Hospital, to which institution the ground belonged. Beneath is a tablet inscribed with the following doggerel rhyme:—

Another version of the sign, the Mouth appearing below the Bull, was over what had been a back entrance to the yard in Angel Street. These signs are now both in the Guildhall Museum. I had almost overlooked one house, the "Castle and Falcon," Aldersgate, closed within the last few months, and now destroyed. The structure was uninteresting, but it stood on an old site—that of John Day's printing-house in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. At the present inn on April 12th, 1799, was founded the Church Missionary Society; here also its centenary was celebrated.

Besides being plentiful in the main thoroughfares, important inns, like the churches, were often crammed away in narrow and inconvenient lanes. This was the case with the "Oxford Arms" and the "Bell," both in Warwick Lane. The former was approached by a passage, being bounded on the west by the line of the old city wall, or by a later wall a few feet to the east of it, and touching Amen Corner on the south. It was a fine example of its kind. As was said by a writer in The Athenæum of May 20th, 1876, just before it was destroyed:

The house must have been rebuilt after the Great Fire, which raged over this area. That it existed before is proved by the following odd advertisement of March, 1672-73:

The "Bell" Inn, also galleried, was on the east side of Warwick Lane. There Archbishop Leighton died in 1684. As Burnet tells us, he had often said that "if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an Inn; it looked like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it." Thus his desire was fulfilled. There is a view of the old house in Chambers' Book of Days, vol. i., p. 278. It was demolished in 1865, when the value of the unclaimed parcels, some of which had been there many years, is said to have been considerable. According to one statement, the jewellery was worth £700 or £800.

The few remaining inns to which reference will be made may best perhaps be taken in alphabetical order. The old "Angel" Inn, at the end of Wych Street, Strand, already existed in February, 1503, when a letter was directed to Sir Richard Plumpton "at the Angell behind St. Clement's Kirk." From this inn Bishop Hooper was taken to Gloucester in 1554 to be burnt at the stake. A trade token was issued there in 1657. Finally, the business, largely dependent on coaches, faded away; the building was rased to the ground in 1853, and the set of offices called Danes Inn built on the site. These in their turn have now succumbed. The "Axe" in Aldermanbury was a famous carriers' inn. It is mentioned in drunken Barnabee's Journal, and from there the first line of stage waggons from London to Liverpool was established about the middle of the seventeenth century. It took many days to perform the journey.

In Laurence Lane, near the Guildhall, was a noteworthy house called "Blossoms" Inn, which, according to Stow, had "to sign St. Laurence the Deacon in a border of blossoms of flowers." In 1522, when the Emperor Charles V. came to visit Henry VIII. in London, certain inns were set apart for the reception of his retinue, among them "St. Laurence, otherwise called Bosoms Yn, was to have ready XX beddes and a stable for LX horses." In Ben Jonson's Masque of Christmas, presented at Court in 1616, "Tom of Bosomes Inn," apparently a real person, is introduced as representing Mis-rule. That the house was early frequented by carriers is shown in the epistle dedicatory to Have at you at Saffron Walden, 1596:—"Yet have I naturally cherisht and hugt it in my bosome, even as a carrier at Bosome's Inne doth a cheese under his arm." A satirical tract about Bankes and his horse Marocco gives the name of the authors as "John Dande the wiredrawer of Hadley, and Harrie Hunt head ostler of Bosomes inn." There is a view of this famous hostelry in the Crace collection, date 1855; the yard is now a depôt for railway goods.

In 1852 London suffered a sad loss architecturally by the removal of the fine groined crypt of Gerard's Hall, Basing Lane, which dated perhaps from the end of the thirteenth century, and had formed part of the mansion of a famous family of citizens, by name Gysors. In Stow's time it was "a common hostrey for receipt of travellers." He gives a long account of it, mixing fact with fiction. The house and hall were destroyed in the Great Fire, but the crypt escaped, and on it an inn was built with, in front, a carved wooden effigy of that mythical personage, Gerard the Giant, which is now in the Guildhall Museum. On the removal of the crypt the stones were numbered and presented to the Crystal Palace Company, with a view to its erection in their building or grounds. It is said, however, that after a time the stones were used for mending roads.

A rather unimportant-looking inn was the "Nag's Head," on the east side of Whitcomb Street, formerly Hedge Lane, but it is worthy of mention for one or two reasons. We learn from a manuscript note-book, which was in the possession of the late Mr. F. Locker Lampson, that Hogarth in his later days, when he set up a coach and horses, kept them at the "Nag's Head." He was then living on the east side of Leicester Square. According to a pencil note on an old drawing, which belongs to the writer, "this inn did the posting exclusively for the Royal family from George I. to William IV." It was latterly used as a livery stable, but retained its picturesque galleries until, the lease having come to an end, it was closed in 1890. The space remained vacant for some years, and is now covered by the fine publishing office of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.

Two "Saracen's Head" inns have already been described, and though one feels how imperfect this account must of necessity be, and that some houses of note are altogether omitted, I am tempted to mention a third—the house with that sign in Friday Street. It came into the hands of the Merchant Taylors' Company as early as the year 1400, and after several rebuildings was finally swept away in 1844. The adjoining house, said by tradition to have been occupied by Sir Christopher Wren, was destroyed at the same time.

It was in the early thirties of last century that coaching reached its zenith, and perhaps the greatest coaching centre in London was the "Swan with Two Necks," Lad Lane. It was an old inn, mentioned by Machyn as early as 1556. In 1637 carriers from Manchester and other places used to lodge there, but it will be best remembered as it appears in a well-known print during the heyday of its prosperity, the courtyard crowded with life and movement. The gateway was so narrow that it required some horsemanship to drive a fast team out of the said courtyard, and some care on the part of the guard that his horn or bugle basket was not jammed against the gate-post. The proprietor of this establishment was Mr. William Chaplin who, originally a coachman, became perhaps the greatest coach proprietor that ever lived. About 1835 he occupied the yards of no fewer than five famous and important inns in London, to all of which allusion has been made—the "Spread Eagle" and "Cross Keys" in Gracechurch Street, the "Swan with Two Necks," the "White Horse," Fetter Lane, and the "Angel" behind St. Clement's. He had 1,300 horses at work on various roads, and about that time horsed fourteen out of the twenty-seven coaches leaving London every night. When the railways came he bowed to the inevitable, and, in partnership with Mr. Horne, established the great carrying business, which still flourishes on the site of the old "Swan with Two Necks." In 1845 Lad Lane was absorbed by Gresham Street. The origin of the sign has been often discussed, but it is perhaps well to conclude this chapter by adding a few words about it. The swans on the upper reaches of the Thames are owned respectively by the Crown and the Dyers and the Vintners' Company, and, according to ancient custom, the representatives of these several owners make an excursion each year up the river to mark the cygnets. The visitors' mark used to consist of the chevron or letter V and two nicks on the beak. The word nicks has been corrupted into necks, and as the Vintners were often tavern-keepers, the "Swan with Two Necks" became a common sign.