class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 21]"/> Mention is often made of a brewhouse attached to the inn. As to the marks on the barrels a prosaic solution is that these are merely excise marks of the seventeenth century, when beer was taxed according to its strength.

Pigeon House at the Bull, Long Melford

Whatever the terms of its original lease may have been the Bull profited by monastic favour and protection to grow into a big and prosperous establishment. It is nearly always the leading hostelry of the town. Two centuries ago the Bull at St. Albans was described by Baskerville as the largest in England, but with the decay of the coaching trade it has retired into private life. Mr. Jingle’s recommendation of the Bull at Rochester, “Good house, nice beds,” might be fairly applied to nearly every Bull Inn of our acquaintance. The sign is a symbol of steady-going respectable old-fashioned ways, where comfort is not sacrificed to economy, and where the cellar and kitchen are alike irreproachable. Any remnants of antiquity are concealed behind a broad Georgian façade, for good business entails frequent rebuilding. The Bull at Barking is now to all appearance a quite modern hotel. Few would guess that its history could be traced for seven hundred years, and that twice during that time it has been occupied by a single family for more than a century. In 1636 it was sold to St. Margaret’s Hospital in Westminster, for the sum of one shilling; and therefore continues to be collegiate property.

To avoid confusion we must remind the reader that the “Bull’s Head” denotes the crest of the Nevilles or, occasionally, Anne Boleyn. The Pied Bull is a whimsical sign found near a cattle market or bull-ring. A few inns, too, received the name of the Bull in Elizabethan or Jacobean times when astrology was popular, and Taurus happened to be the house ascendant in the horary figure. Thus in Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist”:

“A townsman born in Taurus given the bull, or the Bull’s head; in Aries the ram.”

Sometimes in place of the official seal the monastic inn bore for its sign a picture or carving of a religious mystery. Outside the Abbey Gate, at Bury St. Edmunds, is the Angel Inn, once called the Angelus or Salutation; there is another Angel Inn, probably monastic, in Guildford. Both of these are famous for their beautiful Early English crypts, groined and vaulted in stone. The Angel at Grantham belonged to the Knights Templars. At Addington in Kent the Angel has a very odd staircase of great antiquity, each tread being a solid log of timber; and an underground passage, which local gossip connects with a priory at Ryarsh. Another monastic Angel at Basingstoke is said to be the subject of Ben Jonson’s coarse epigram, inspired by the departure of his hostess, Mrs. Hope and her daughter Prudence. The Cock as an emblem of St. Peter, and the Crosskeys are frequently found. The most interesting inn in the city of Westminster was the Cock and Tabard, in Tothill Street, pulled down in 1871. It dated from the reign of Edward III, and it was here, according to Stowe, that the workmen engaged in the completion of the Abbey Church were paid. From its yard two centuries later the first stage-coach to Oxford was started. Battle Abbey possessed several “Star” inns, the best known of which was the Star at Alfriston, which may either be named after Our Lady, Star of the Sea, or after the Earl of Sussex, one of whose badges was the star.

Semi-religious signs such as the Angel, Star and Mitre are not always monastic, nor need they imply pre-reformation origin. The Angel at Islington is, comparatively speaking, a mushroom upstart. Under the sign of the Angel, Jacobs, a Jew, opened in 1650 one of the first coffee-houses in the parish of St. Peter, Oxford. A pious Roundhead might find chapter and verse for the sign and gloat over the conceit of entertaining an Angel—perhaps not unawares. Puritan sects have been known to give the official title of “Angel” to their itinerant preachers. The Cock Tavern, in Fleet Street, in spite of the splendid gilt chanticleer (generally attributed to Grinling Gibbons) has no connection with St. Peter. An advertisement, printed in the Intelligence of 1665, shows that its old name was the Cock and Bottle. Cock is still used in some parts of the country for the spigot, or tap in a barrel; and the sign was simply a short way of informing the bibulous that they could obtain here ale both on draught and in bottle.

A monastic inn far exceeding in world-wide fame all others, is that Tabard Inn in the Borough, whence five hundred years ago thirty merry pilgrims set forth on a springtide morning on their three days’ journey along the old Watling Street to Canterbury. The Tabard was a speculation of the Abbot of Hyde, Winchester, and no doubt a profitable one, for its landlords were always men of character and substance who would attract guests of good class. Harry Bailey, Chaucer’s friend, represented Southwark in two successive parliaments, and another landlord, William Rutton, sat in Parliament for East Grinstead in 1529. Built in 1307, together with a hostel for the clergy of the monastery, it remained in much the same condition as when Chaucer sang its praises until about 1602. The stone-coloured wooden gallery, in front of which hung a picture of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, attributed to Blake, and the so-called “Pilgrim’s room” were probably of this period; the rest was rebuilt after the great fire of Southwark, 1676. Twenty years ago all was demolished, and a gin-shop on its site of modern, vulgar red-brick mock gothic absurdly claims the title of “The Old Tabard.”

One religious order never attempted to divert the increasing stream of guests into the inns. With the Knights Hospitallers all comers were welcomed; the entertainment of strangers remained their chief duty. The accounts of their house in Clerkenwell for the year 1337 show that they had spent more than their whole revenue—at least £8,000, the reason being, as the prior explains, the hospitality given to strangers, members of the royal family and other grandees who all expected to be entertained in accordance with their rank. A noble would occasionally send his whole suite to the convent in order to save expense. The Knight monks finding no Paynim to demolish became an order of hotel-keepers, and travellers never failed to profit by the generous fare provided in their numerous establishments.

Yard of the White Horse, Dorking

At Dorking, when the Knights departed, the innkeeper took their place and continues to keep up the old traditions. The White Cross is now the White Horse, though not from any similarity of names but because the Earls of Arundel, and afterwards the Dukes of Norfolk, were lords of the manor. In later life the White Horse was a famous coaching house, and rebuildings have apparently destroyed any feature older than say three centuries. Perhaps it was in the yard of this house, where a noble old vine spreads green fragrance over