The first armorial shield to which I shall refer under this heading is from a public building, and though comparatively modern it should be specially interesting to all citizens of London. I allude to the Royal Arms[60]--a well-executed piece of sculpture--which is used as the sign of a public-house rebuilt quite recently, on the south side of Newcomen Street, late King Street, Southwark. This was taken from the gatehouse at the Southwark end of old London Bridge, which was pulled down in 1760, in consequence of an Act of Parliament passed four years previously, for the destruction of the buildings on London Bridge and the widening of the roadway. [Illustration] King Street was then being made from High Street to Snow Fields, through the former Axe and Bottle Yard, and these arms, having been bought by Mr. Williams, a stonemason who was employed in the construction of King Street, were placed by him more or less in their present position. In a view of the bridgegate engraved for Noorthouck’s ‘History of London’ (p. 543), the arms appear with the inscription, G II R, afterwards changed to G III, as we now see it. There are still a few carved shields of arms in London, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which marked the property of private individuals. Until quite recently the district known as Cloth Fair and Bartholomew Close, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, was distinguished by its air of picturesque antiquity. Some quaint old houses still remain; on one of them--No. 22, Cloth Fair--is to be seen a relic which carries us back almost to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. This is the armorial shield of Richard Rich, who was made a peer in 1547; or more likely, perhaps, of one of his immediate descendants. It is surmounted by a coronet, and has been blazoned thus: gules, a chevron between three crosses botonnée or.[61] The founder of the Rich family was a mercer in the City, and Sheriff in the year 1442; it was his great-grandson Richard who, _temp._ Henry VIII., became Solicitor-General, Speaker of the House of Commons, and who took so scandalous a part in the trial and conviction of Sir Thomas More. In 1544 the site of St. Bartholomew’s Priory was granted by the King to his favourite, there described as Sir Richard Rich, knight, in consideration of the sum of £1,064 11s. 3d., as appears from the original deed; and here he is said to have lived in the Prior’s mansion as Lord Chancellor. The tolls of the fair[62] were also granted to him. It was provided that the church within the Great Close was to be a parish church for ever, and vacant ground adjoining it on the west side, 87 feet in length by 60 feet in breadth, where the destroyed nave had stood, was to be taken for a churchyard, the site of the fair being no longer used as a burial-ground.