‘Lost from the Brown Bear, next door to Mercers’ Chapel, in Cheapside, a large broken silver candlestick, having on the bottom James Morris engraven; also two double silver scroles of sconces, and a small scrole of a silver sconce, &c.’ Yet another sculptured sign of a chained bear exists in the City, more or less in its former position. It has on it the initials M E with date 1670, and is to be found let into a modern wall at the entrance to Messrs. Cox and Hammond’s quays, between Nos. 5 and 6, Lower Thames Street, having fortunately escaped a fire which in part destroyed the premises some years since. A far more terrible fire occurred in the neighbourhood in January, 1714-15, when above 120 houses were said to have been either burnt or blown up, and many persons perished. It was caused by an explosion in a little gunpowder shop near Bear Quay, and burned eastward as far as Mark Lane. The sign belonged perhaps originally to this Bear Quay, the site of which is now covered by the Custom House, and which in the eighteenth century was chiefly appropriated to the landing and shipment of wheat. A Great Bear Quay and a Little Bear Quay are marked close together in Strype’s map of the Tower Ward. Beer Lane, further east, leading from Great Tower Street to Lower Thames Street, was in Stow’s time called Beare Lane. From a writ dated at Windsor, October 30, in the thirtieth year of Henry III., it appears that the Sheriffs of London were commanded to provide a muzzle, an iron chain, and a cord, for the King’s white bear in the Tower of London, and to use him to catch fish in the water of the Thames; and six years afterwards, namely in 1252, the Sheriffs were commanded to supply fourpence per diem for the maintenance of the King’s white bear and his keeper in the Tower. Burnet tells us that on May 29, 1542, the French Ambassadors, after they had supped with the Duke of Somerset, went to the Thames, and saw the bear hunted in the river. Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and consort of Richard III., adopted the white bear as a badge. In 1539 a ‘Manual of Prayers’ was printed by John Mayler, at the sign of the White Bear in Botolph Lane. A seventeenth-century trade token was issued by a grocer from the sign of the White Bear, Thames Street. Another trade token, ascribed by Boyne and others to Southwark, is far more likely to have been issued from here; it reads thus: _O._ PHILIP STOWER.AT = a bear. _R._ THE.BEARE.AT.BARE.KEY = P.S.S.