Yet another sculptured sign indicating the name of a court was the Heathcock--in a handsome shell canopy, which formerly graced the entrance to Heathcock Court, Strand. It was removed in July, 1844, in spite of the remonstrance of Mr. Peter Cunningham, who wrongly supposed it to be the last sign of its class in London. Two picturesque old houses fronting this court still remain. A heathcock with wings expanded forms the crest of the Coopers’ Company; but it does not appear that they ever owned property in this neighbourhood. As late as 1866 a stone bas-relief of an Ostrich was to be seen in Bread Street, together with the arms of the Tallowchandlers’ Company. Soon afterwards the house was destroyed, and the sign disappeared for many years, till it came, by chance, into the hands of Mr. M. Pope, F.S.A., who has kindly presented it to the Guildhall Museum. The beak is a modern restoration. A rough drawing, which, however, quite serves to identify it, appeared in the _Illustrated London News_ for December 13, 1856, when it was suggested that it might have served as the sign of a feather-dresser. Mrs. Palliser[45] tells us that Mattei Girolamo, captain of the guard to Clement VII., placed on his flag an ostrich swallowing an iron nail, with the motto, ‘Spiritus durissima coquit,’ ‘Courage digests the hardest things’; that is, the brave man is not easily daunted. Sir Thomas Browne wrote a paper on the ostrich, for the use of his son. The Spread Eagle or ‘Eagle with two heads displayed’ was, like the Ostrich, bought by Mr. Pope some time since, and has also been presented to the Guildhall Museum; he wrote a description of these signs in the ‘London and Middlesex Notebook.’ Both signs were sold by the same person; they had been in the possession of his family for many years, and he believed that his father had obtained them from the same neighbourhood in the City. The Spread Eagle is in fair condition, though the sinister head has been badly restored with cement. It has on it the initials RM and the date 1669. I have no proof as to the original position of this sign, but in the absence of fuller information one can, I think, fairly hazard the conjecture, that after the Great Fire it may have been put up in Bread Street to perpetuate the memory of the house in which John Milton, the poet, was born. We know that his father, a scrivener, but a man of good family, had adopted his own coat of arms as a sign. Aubrey, a contemporary, says he had another house in Bread Street, called the Rose. In Masson’s Life of Milton there is a transcript of a volume in the British Museum containing miscellaneous notes, which relate to the affairs of John Sanderson, a Turkey merchant, in the early part of the seventeenth century. Among other things there is a copy of a bond dated March 4, 160-2/3, in which Thomas Heighsham, of Bethnal Green in Middlesex, and Richard Sparrow, citizen and goldsmith of London, engage to pay