The sign no doubt dates from after the Great Fire; it seems, however, to represent a previous one. Stow, writing in 1598, says that Panyer Alley was ‘so called of such a sign,’ and confirming his statement, a Panyer, Paternoster Row, appears in a list of taverns of about the year 1430, which Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., lately discovered among the documents of the Brewers’ Company, the landlord, John Ives, having been a member of that company. From ‘Liber Albus,’ which relates to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one learns that in those days the sale of bread was not allowed to take place in the bakers’ houses, but only in the King’s markets. It was sold in bread-baskets or ‘panyers,’ and, the coarser kinds at any rate, occasionally in boxes or hutches. Mr. H. T. Riley in his introduction to ‘Liber Albus’ (p. lxviii.) stated it as his opinion that the child is handing out a loaf, and that at a period somewhat later than the date of that volume (1419) Panyer Alley was noted as a standing place for bakers’ boys with their panniers. If, as seems not unlikely, this was the case, the sign would be similar to the Baker and Basket, still existing in Whitechapel and in Finsbury. Another idea--that the pannier is in point of fact a fruit-basket--seems to arise from Strype’s statement that the boy has in his hand a bunch of grapes. Fruit and vegetables were doubtless landed from the river in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. Porters carrying such produce may have passed through, and rested themselves in this short passage on their way to Newgate Market, which, originally for corn and meal, was after the Fire used for poultry, fruit, and vegetables,[2] before it became exclusively a meat market. Mr. Kerslake, in a passage since referred to with approval by Professor Earle in his work on ‘Land Charters and Saxonic Documents’ (1888), tries to connect the sign with a far more remote antiquity. He argues that it may have been placed there to transmit the tradition of a wheatmaund-stone (maund being a basket or pannier), mentioned in a grant of King Alfred, A.D. 889, which indicated the site of the ancient corn market, and was, in point of fact, a place where a porter carrying a load of wheat could rest it, or the base of a market cross.[3] It seems that the question of a town house for the Bishop of the Mercians having come before Alfred, he gave to Bishop Werfrith a mansion or court, ‘æt hwæt mundes stane’--thus it is spelt in the document--and probably granted him a toll on the neighbouring market. I am not aware of any further evidence in support of this theory.