Yet another Mitre sign exists in London, probably far older than any of those I have described. In Mitre Court, a narrow passage between Hatton Garden and Ely Place, stands a comparatively modern public-house, let into the front wall of which is a Mitre carved in bold relief; on it is cut or scratched the date 1546, which, however, appears to be a modern addition. This is said to have formed part of the town residence of the Bishops of Ely, the remains of which, with the ground attached to it, were conveyed to the Crown in 1772. The site was afterwards sold to an architect named Cole, who levelled everything except the chapel. This last building stands hard by, and is dedicated to St. Etheldreda. The Rev. W. J. Loftie considers that it is the most complete relic of the fourteenth century in London. Since he wrote, however, the restorer has, alas! been busy. In 1772 it stood in an open space of about an acre, planted with trees and surrounded by a wall; at that time the hall, seventy-two feet long, and a quadrangular cloister existed. Over the chief entrance the sculptured arms of the see, surmounted by a mitre, were still visible, and it is likely that this mitre was afterwards converted into the sign I am considering. The rural character of the neighbourhood in early days may be judged by the records of it which have come down to us. In 1327 Bishop Hotham purchased a house and lands, including vineyard, kitchen-garden and orchard contiguous to his manor of Holborn, which, with other properties, he settled on the church of Ely, dividing them between his successors the Bishops, and the convent. Again, as late as 1576, when Sir Christopher Hatton, Queen Elizabeth’s handsome Lord Chancellor, became tenant of part of the house and garden, the rent was a red rose, ten loads of hay and £10 a year; Bishop Cox, on whom the bargain was forced by the Queen, reserving to himself and his successors the right of walking in the gardens and gathering twenty bushels of roses annually. Shakespeare, too, praises the quality of the strawberries in Ely Garden, though little more than sixty years afterwards we have John Evelyn complaining in his ‘Fumifugium’ that smoke is ‘suffering nothing in our gardens to bud, display themselves, or ripen; so as our anemones and many other choycest flowers, will by no industry be made to blow in London or the precincts of it.’ Ely Place seems to have been let by the see to John of Gaunt, ‘time-honoured Lancaster,’ and here in 1399 he breathed his last. The present town residence of the Bishops of Ely, No. 37, Dover Street, has been occupied by them since 1772. It has a mitre carved over one of the first-floor windows; Sir Robert Taylor, R.A., was the architect.