Some years ago a great mound of rubbish in Whitechapel, supposed to be the carted remains of the City after the Great Fire, was cleared away, and the relic, of which we give a representation, was discovered. It is an oak carving, dated at the back 1568, and had a name written upon it which was found to correspond with that of the landlord of the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, in that year. A ballad, which assigns to each inn its particular class of customers, is introduced by Thomas Heywood into his _Rape of Lucrece_:— The Gintry to the King’s Head, The Nobles to the Crown, The Knights unto the Golden Fleece, And to the Plough the Clowne. {205} The Churchman to the Mitre, The Shepherd to the Star, The Gardiner hies him to the Rose, To the Drum the Man of War. The Huntsman to the White Hart, To the Ship the Merchants goe, And you that doe the Muses love, The sign called River Po. The Banquer out to the World’s End, The Fool to the Fortune hie, Unto the Mouth the Oyster-wife, The Fiddler to the Pie. The taverns of the seventeenth century seem in many cases to have occupied the upper part of a house, the lower portion being devoted to some other trade. Izaak Walton’s _Complete Angler_ was to be “sold at his shopp in Fleet Street, under the King’s Head Tavern.” Bishop Earle, who wrote in the early part of that century, seems to signify that there was often a tavern above and an alehouse below. “A tavern,” he says, “is a degree or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an alehouse where men are drunk with more credit and apology. . . . Men come here to be merry, and indeed make a noise, and the music above is answered with a clinking below.” Amongst the inns and taverns frequented by Shakspere may be mentioned the Falcon Tavern, by the Bankside, which was the place of meeting of the mighty poets and wits of the Elizabethan age—of Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Ford, Beaumont, Fletcher, Drayton, Herrick, and a host of lesser names. An assemblage, indeed, unique in any country or in any age! Here took place those “wit combats,” of which Fuller speaks, between Shakspere and Ben Jonson, “which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakspere, like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention.”