The Cheter will dine at the _Checker_, The Picke-pockets in a blind alehouse, Tel on and tride then up Holborne they ride, And they there end at the Gallowes.”
Thomas Heywood introduced a similar song in his “Rape of Lucrece.” This, the first of the kind we have met with, is in all probability the original, unless the ballad be a reprint from an older one; but the term Puritan used in it, seems to fix its date to the seventeenth century.
“THE Gintry to the _Kings Head_, The Nobles to the _Crown_, The Knights unto the _Golden Fleece_, And to the _Plough_ the Clowne.
The Churchmen to the _Mitre_, The Shepheard to the _Star_, The Gardener hies him to the _Rose_, To the _Drum_ the Man of War.
The Huntsmen to the _White Hart_, To the _Ship_ the Merchants goe, But you that doe the Muses love, The sign called _River Po_.
The Banquerout to the _World’s End_, The Fool to the _Fortune_ his, Unto the _Mouth_ the Oyster-wife, The Fiddler to the _Pie_.
The Punk unto the _Cockatrice_,[23] The Drunkard to the _Vine_, The Begger to the _Bush_, there meet, And with Duke Humphrey dine.”[24]
After the great fire of 1666, many of the houses that were rebuilt, instead of the former wooden signboards projecting in the streets, adopted signs carved in stone, and generally painted or gilt, let into the front of the house, beneath the first floor windows. Many of these signs are still to be seen, and will be noticed in their respective places. But in those streets not visited by the fire, things continued on the old footing, each shopkeeper being fired with a noble ambition to project his sign a few inches farther than his neighbour. The consequence was that, what with the narrow streets, the penthouses, and the signboards, the air and light of the heavens were well-nigh intercepted from the luckless wayfarers through the streets of London. We can picture to ourselves the unfortunate plumed, feathered, silken gallant of the period walking, in his low shoes and silk stockings, through the ill-paved dirty streets, on a stormy November day, when the honours were equally divided between fog, sleet, snow, and rain, (and no umbrellas, be it remembered,) with flower-pots blown from the penthouses, spouts sending down shower-baths from almost every house, and the streaming signs swinging overhead on their rusty, creaking hinges. Certainly the evil was great, and demanded that redress which Charles II. gave in the seventh year of his reign, when a new Act “ordered that in all the streets no signboard shall hang across, but that the sign shall be fixed against the balconies, or some convenient part of the side of the house.”