The Heifer is to be met with sometimes in Yorkshire, but always with some local adjective, as the CRAVEN HEIFER; the AIRESDALE HEIFER, the DURHAM HEIFER, &c. The PIED CALF at Spalding seems to present a solitary instance of a calf on the signboard. Neither are sheep very common; the RAM was a noted carrier’s inn in the seventeenth century, in West Smithfield, and, indeed, continued as such until the recent destruction of this old cattle market. The crest of the cloth-workers was a mount vert, thereon a ram statant; so that this sign in that locality was very well chosen, being in honour of the cattle-dealers on ordinary occasions, and serving for the cloth-workers in the time of Bartholomew fair, for whose benefit the fair was founded. In 1668 there were two RAM’S HEAD inns in Fenchurch Street; one of them was a carriers’ inn for the Essex people. The RAM’S SKIN, which occurs at Spalding in Lincolnshire, is another name for the Fleece. The BLACK TUP figures on a sign near Rochdale, perhaps in allusion to the black ram frail matrons used to bestride in the old custom of _Free Bench_, thus related in Jacob’s “Law Dictionary:”-- “In the manors of East and West-Enbourne in the Co. of Berks, and the manor of Torre in Devonshire, and other parts of the West of England, there is a custom, that when a Copyhold Tenant dies his widow shall have ‘Free Bench’ in all his customary lands ‘dum sola et casta fuerit,’ but if she commits incontinency she forfeits her estate. Yet nevertheless on her coming into the court of the manor, riding backwards on a _black ram_ with his tail in her hand and saying the words following, the steward is bound by the custom to readmit her to her free bench; The words are these:-- Here I am Riding upon a Black Ram Like a w----e as I am; And for my crincum crancum I have lost my bincum bancum; And for my T----’s game Have done this worldly shame. Therefore pray, Mr Steward, let me have my land again. This is a kind of penance among jocular tenures to purge the offence.” Though the ram is rarely, and the sheep never seen on the signboard, the LAMB is not uncommon. In 1586, it was the sign of Abraham Veale, (agreeably to the punning practices of the time, one would have expected the _Calf_ from him,) a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard, and in 1728 of Thomas Cox, also a bookseller, under the Royal Exchange in Cornhill. Doubtless, these signs had originally represented the Lamb with the flag of the Apocalypse. The sign was used by other trades: in 1673, it was the distinctive ornament of a confectioner at the lower end of Gracechurch Street;[266] and an instance of an alehouse is found in the following advertisement, which at the same time affords us a peep at the homely proceedings of the Admiralty in those days:--