One of the oldest Cock taverns in London is the COCK in Tothill Street, Westminster, lately re-christened as the COCK AND TABARD. An ancient coat of arms, carved in stone, England quartered with France, discovered in this house, is now walled up in the front of the building. In the back parlour is a jolly, bluff-looking man in a red coat, said to represent the driver of the first mail to Oxford, which started from this tavern. Tradition says that the workmen employed at the building of Westminster Abbey, in the reign of Henry VII., used to receive their wages at this house. It was formerly entered by steps; the building now exhibiting traces of great antiquity, and appears at one time to have been a house of considerable pretensions. The rafters and timber are principally of cedar wood. There is a curious hiding-place on the staircase, and a massive carving of Abraham about to offer his son Isaac; and another, in wood, representing the Adoration of the Magi, said to have been left in pledge, at some remote period, for an unpaid score. The cock may have been adopted as a sign here on account of the vicinity of the Abbey, of which St Peter was the patron, for in the middle ages a cock crowing on the top of a pillar was often one of the accessories in a picture of the apostle. This certainly was a very unkind allusion for the poor saint, particularly when accompanied with such a sneering rhyme as that under the sign of the Red Cock in Amsterdam in 1682. On the one side was written:-- “Doe de Haan begost te kraayen Toen begost Petrus te schraayen.” On the reverse:-- “De haan die kraait niet by ongeval Vraagt Petrus die ’t U zeggen zal.”[289] The Cock in Bow Street witnessed a disgraceful scene in the reign of Charles II.:-- “Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the public, in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened. The crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For this demeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined £500. What was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission of the king, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves and exacted it to the last groat.”[290]