‘A Black boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run away the 8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his neck, with this inscription: “The Lady Bromfield’s black, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”’ Black attendants were common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In more than one celebrated portrait a black boy serves to enhance the charm of a fair lady’s complexion. Sir John Hawkins, after his voyage of 1564, which was partly for slave-trading purposes, was authorized to have as his crest the half-length figure of a negro prisoner called heraldically a demi-Moor, bound and captive. The Black Boy was a frequent tobacconists’ sign, still sometimes seen. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. THREE KINGS--ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS. ‘Gaspar and Melchior and Balthazar Came to Cologne on the broad-breasted Rhine, And founded there a temple, which is yet A fragment, but the wonder of the world.’ LORD TENNYSON: MS. AN interesting group of City signs is that connected with the Three Kings, showing as it does what a hold the sacred legend, handed down to us from a remote past, continued to have on popular imagination till comparatively recent years. In the Guildhall Museum there is a stone bas-relief of the Three Kings, brought from No. 7, Bucklersbury when the house was rebuilt some years ago. The figures are represented standing in similar attitudes; they have sceptres in their right hands, the left arm being in each case folded across the breast. The figure to the spectator’s left has flowing hair; that in the centre is of negro type; the one to the right is distinguished by a large moustache. A bas-relief from Lambeth Hill, also in the Guildhall Museum, is somewhat similar in design; the king on the left has a crown, the others diadems; it is dated 1667. Another sign from Lambeth Hill--the Three Crowns--was also put up in 1667, and may possibly have belonged to the same house. [Illustration] The sign of the Three Kings was an appropriate one for inns, because on account of their journey they were considered the patron saints of travellers: it is also said to have been used in England by mercers, because they imported fine linen from Cologne. Bearing on this is a passage to be found among the Harleian manuscripts, No. 5910, vol. i., fol. 193, which, though already quoted by Larwood and Hotten in their ‘History of Sign-boards,’ is so much to the point that I venture to give it again: