In pondering over this class of signs great difficulty often arises from the absence of all proof that the object under consideration was set up as a badge, and not as a representation of the actual animal. As no amount of investigation can decide this matter, we have been somewhat profuse in our list of badges, in order that the reader should be able to form his own opinion upon that subject. Thus, for instance, with the first sign that offers itself, the ANGEL AND TRUMPET, it is impossible to say whether the supporters of Richard II. gave rise to it, or whether it represents Fame. Various examples of it still occur, and a very good carved specimen may be seen above a draper’s shop in Oxford Street. It is also the name of alehouses in King Street, Holborn, and in Stepney, High Street, &c. The ANTELOPE is not very common now, although in 1664 there was a tavern with this sign in W. Smithfield, the trades token of this house bearing the following legend:--BIBIS. VINUM. SALUTA. ANTELOP. The Rev. John Ward tells a very feeble college joke concerning the Antelope Tavern in Oxford:-- “I have heard of a fellow at Oxford, one Ffrank Hil by name, who kept the Antelope; and if one yawned, hee could not chuse but yawne, that vppon a time some schollars hawing stoln his ducks, hee had them to the Vice chancelor, and one of the scholars got behind the Vice chancelor, and when the fellow beganne to speak hee would presently fall a yawning, insomuch that the Vice chancelor turned the fellow away in great indignation.”[133] Macklin, the centenarian comedian, who died in 1797, used for thirty years and upwards to visit a public-house called the Antelope in White Hart yard, Covent Garden, where his usual beverage was a pint of stout made hot and sweetened almost to a syrup. This, he said, balmed his stomach, and kept him from having any inward pains.[134] He died at the age of upwards of 107, a proof that if, as the teetotallers inform us, fermented liquors be a poison, it is certainly a slow one. The DRAGON appears to have been one of the oldest heraldic charges of this kingdom. It was the standard of the West Saxons, and continued so until the arrival of William the Conqueror, for in the Bayeux tapestry a winged dragon on a pole is constantly represented near the person of King Harold. It was likewise the supporter of the royal arms of Henry VII. and all the Tudor sovereigns except Queen Mary. Before that time it had been borne by some of the early Princes of Wales, and also by several of the kings. Thus it is recorded, 28 Hen. III., the king ordered to be made-- “Unum draconem in modum unius vexilli de quodam rubro sanulo, qui ubique sit de auro extensillatus, cujus lingua sit facta tamquam ignis comburens et continue appareat moveatur, et ejus oculi fiant de sapphiris vel de aliis lapidibus eidem convenientibus.”[135] At the battle of Lewes, 1264, the chronicler says that--