The Mandevilles, Earls of Essex, bore as their arms, gules, a swan argent, ducally collared and chained or, which the Bohuns, who were descended from them, adopted; and for this reason, no doubt, it became a badge of King Henry IV., who was a Bohun on the mother’s side. It is represented in the central spandrel of the canopy of the brass in Westminster Abbey to Eleanora de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, who died in 1399. From such high beginnings the Chained Swan gradually came, as we see, to be used as a tavern sign. Another specimen, carved in stone, was the sign of a house in Eastcheap, not far from the Boar’s Head. It is mentioned by Pennant, and by J. T. Smith, but disappeared early in this century. Here I am tempted to say a few words about the Swan with Two Necks, because, though now only represented by modern bas-reliefs at No. 65, Gresham Street, and in Aldermanbury, they recall the memory of a famous inn, and the sign is one of the quaintest in London. The Swan with Two Necks ‘at Milke Street end’ is noticed by Machyn in his ‘Diary,’ August 5, 1556. In 1637, as we learn from Taylor, the Water Poet, carriers from Manchester and other places lodged at the Two-necked Swan in Lad Lane. Towards the end of last century it became a great coaching centre, and continued to flourish till steam drove the coaches off the road, when it revived in a new form. Mr. Stanley Harris, in his amusing book, ‘Old Coaching Days,’ says that ‘the gateway out of the yard of the Swan with Two Necks, through which the various coaches passed, and Milk Lane and Lad Lane, was so narrow that it required some horsemanship to drive out a fast team just started, and some care on the part of the guard, that his horn or bugle basket, which was usually hung on to the iron of the back seat of the coach nearest the roof, was not jammed against the gate-post. Between four and five on an afternoon was a time worth being in that same yard of the Swan with Two Necks for anyone who took an interest in coaching.’ The proprietor of this establishment was Mr. William Chaplin, who, originally a coachman, became, perhaps, the greatest coach proprietor that ever lived. ‘Nimrod,’ writing about 1835, tells us that at that time Mr. Chaplin occupied the yards of no fewer than five famous and important inns in London, namely the Spread Eagle and Cross Keys, Gracechurch Street; the Swan with Two Necks, Lad Lane; the White Horse, which still exists in Fetter Lane, and the Angel, behind St. Clement’s. He had no fewer than 1,300 horses at work on various roads, and about that time horsed 14 out of the 27 coaches leaving London every night. When the railways came he bowed to the inevitable, and, in partnership with Mr. Horne, established the great carrying business, which still flourishes on the site of the old Swan with Two Necks. In 1845 Lad Lane was absorbed by Gresham Street.