The Bear and Ragged Staff is still the sign of an inn at Cumnor, to which an historic interest is attached owing to its connexion with the dark tragedy of poor Amy Robsart, who in this very house fell a victim to that stony-hearted adventurer, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Sir Walter Scott has introduced the house in the first chapter of “Kenilworth.” The power the Warwick family once enjoyed gave this sign a popularity which has existed to the present day, though the race of old Nevil, and the kings he made and unmade, have each and all passed away. Its heraldic designation has been better preserved than is the case of some other signs; only in one instance, at Lower Bridge Street, Chester, it has been altered into the BEAR AND BILLET. Sometimes the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff, we may inform the reader, is jocularly spoken of as the Angel and Flute. The RAGGED STAFF figures also in single blessedness. A carriers’ inn in West Smithfield possessed this sign in 1682.[181] In the wall of a house at the corner of Little St Andrew Street and West Street, St Giles, there is still a stone bas-relief sign of two ragged staves placed salterwise, with the initials S. F. G., and the date 1691. It was doubtless put there as a compliment to Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, who in the reign of Charles II. built Leicester House, which gave a name to Leicester Fields, now the site of Leicester Square. Stow mentions that the king-maker, Richard Warwick, came to town for the convention of 1458, accompanied by 600 men, all in red jackets, “embroidered with ragged staves before and behind.”