Sanderson a sum of money on May 5 following, the payment to be made _at the new shop of John Milton, scrivener, at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street_. The signature of John Milton, scrivener, is appended. Some years since there existed in Bread Street a Black Spread Eagle Court, at the first turning on the left hand as one entered from Cheapside, with, as Strype tells us, a very good house at the upper end; in several directories of the eighteenth century it is called Spread Eagle Court. This is considered to have been on the site of Milton’s birthplace; the ground is now covered by modern warehouses--Nos. 58 to 63, occupied by one firm. The Church of All Hallows, Bread Street, in which Milton[46] had been baptized, was swept away in 1878. Its site is marked by a bust of the poet with an inscription, set up in the wall of a new building. The Spread Eagle was by no means an uncommon London sign; to the one in Gracechurch Street I shall presently refer. Collet,[47] in his ‘Common-place Book,’ gives it as his opinion that, ‘the eagle with two necks in the imperial arms, and in the arms of the King of Spain, depicted on signboards as the Spread Eagle, signified the east and west empire, the extension of their power from the east to the west.’ During a great tempest at sea in January, 1506, Philip, King of Castile and his Queen were weather driven, and landed at Falmouth. The same storm blew down the eagle of brass off the spire of St. Paul’s Church in London, and in falling the same eagle broke and shattered the black eagle that hung for a sign in St. Paul’s Churchyard, as related in Stow’s ‘Annals,’ p. 484. An interesting sign of the Pelican is let into the string course above a corner first-floor window of No. 70, Aldermanbury. It was the crest of two merchants who formerly occupied the house. Their monument is in the neighbouring church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, the inscription being as follows:-- ‘Here lyeth the body of Richard Chandler, Citizen and Haberdasher of London, Esquire, Who departed this life November 8th, 1691, aged 85. Also the body of John Chandler, Esqre, his brother, Citizen and Haberdasher of London, Who died October 14th, 1686, aged 69 years.’ Above is the Pelican as a crest, corresponding with the sign. The busts of these two worthy citizens in flowing periwigs appear on each side of the inscription; their names are in the Little London Directory for 1677. The church was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, the parishioners subscribing liberally; Richard Chandler gave the font in 1675. The notorious Judge Jeffreys, who died in the Tower of London and was buried in the chapel there, was afterwards, on petition of his family, reinterred in the church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury. Here also Milton was married to his second wife, Catherine Woodcock. In 1890 the churchyard was opened to the public as a recreation ground.