The Bell, in Great Carter-lane, in this neighbourhood, has been taken down: it was an interesting place, for, hence, October 25, 1598, Richard Quiney addressed to his "loveing good ffrend and countryman, Mr. Wm. Schackespere," (then living in Southwark, near the Bear-garden), a letter for a loan of thirty pounds; which letter we have seen in the possession of Mr. R. Bell Wheler, at Stratford-upon-Avon: it is believed to be the only existing letter addressed to Shakspere. The Bull, Bishopsgate, is noteworthy; for the yard of this inn supplied a stage to our early actors, before James Burbadge and his fellows obtained a patent from Queen Elizabeth for erecting a permanent building for theatrical entertainments. Tarleton often played here. Anthony Bacon, the brother of Francis, lived in a house in Bishopsgate-street, not far from the Bull Inn, to the great concern of his mother, who not only dreaded that the plays and interludes acted at the Bull might corrupt his servants, but on her own son's account objected to the parish as being without a godly clergyman. Gerard's Hall, Basing-lane, had the fine Norman crypt of the ancient hall of the Sisars for its wine-cellar; besides the tutelar effigies of "Gerard the gyant," a fair specimen of a London sign, _temp._ Charles II. Here also was shown the staff used by Gerard in the wars, and a ladder to ascend to the top of the staff; and in the neighbouring church of St. Mildred, Bread-street, hangs a huge tilting-helmet, said to have been worn by the said giant. The staff, Stow thinks, may rather have been used as a May-pole, and to stand in the hall decked with evergreens at Christmas; the ladder serving for decking the pole and hall-roof. Fosbroke says, that the Bell Savage is a strange corruption of the Queen of Sheba; the Bell Savage, of which the device was a savage man standing by a bell, is supposed to be derived from the French, Belle Sauvage, on account of a beautiful savage having been once shown there; by others it is considered, with more probability, to have been so named in compliment to some ancient landlady of the celebrated inn upon Ludgate-hill, whose surname was Savage, as in the Close-rolls of the thirty-first year of the reign of Henry VI. is an entry of a grant of that inn to "John Frensch, gentilman," and called "Savage's Ynne," _alias_ the "Bell on the Hoof." The token of the house is--"HENRY YOVNG AT YE. An Indian woman holding an arrow and a bow.--Rx ON LVDGATE HILL. In the field, H. M. Y." "There is a tradition [Mr. Akerman writes] that the origin of this sign, and not only of the inn, but also of the name of the court in which it is situate, was derived from that of Isabella Savage, whose property they once were, and who conveyed them by deed to the Cutlers' Company. This, we may observe, is a mistake. The name of the person who left the Bell Savage to the Cutlers' Company was Craythorne, not Savage."