As late as 1654, we find the name “maggoty pie” used in “Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal,” July 26 to August 3, where the Welshman’s arms are described as a fly, a _maggoty pie_, &c.[311] The MAGPIE AND STUMP represents the magpie sitting on the stump of a tree; it was the sign of one of the Whig pothouses in the Old Bailey during the riots of 1715. There is still an old house with such a sign in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The MAGPIE AND PEWTER PLATTER, in Wood Street, originated from a magpie standing by a dish and picking out of it. The MAGPIE AND CROWN, says the author of “Tavern Anecdotes,” (1825,) is a ridiculous association; but when once joined is not to be separated without injury to the concern, as it happened in the case of a Mr Renton, who was originally waiter at a house of this name in Aldgate, famous for its ale, which was sent out in great quantities. The landlord becoming rich, pride followed, and he thought of giving wing to the Magpie, retaining only the royal attribute of the crown. The ale went out for a short time, as usual, but it was not from the Magpie and Crown, and the customers fancied it was not so good as usual; consequently the business fell off. The landlord died, and Renton purchased the concern, caught the Magpie, and restored it to its ancient situation; the ale improved in the opinion of the public, and its consumption increased so much, that Renton, at his death, left behind him property amounting to £600,000, chiefly the profits of the Magpie and Crown ale. This danger of altering a sign is also illustrated by another example. When Joseph II., emperor of Germany, was at Maestricht, in the Netherlands, he stayed at the GRAY ASS Inn, (_L’Ane Gris_,) in honour of which imperial visit the landlord discarded his humble quadruped sign, and put up the EMPEROR’S HEAD. The customers seeing the Old Gray Ass gone, thought the business had fallen into other hands, and so went to various inns in the neighbourhood, and particularly to a NEW GRAY ASS, which had just then opened in the same street. The landlord seeing his business falling off, through the change of his sign, yet unwilling to part with his Emperor’s head, after long thinking and pondering, at last hit upon a clever compromise: he kept up the portrait of the Emperor, but wrote under it, “At the Original Gray Ass, (_au veritable Ane Gris_.)” The PARROT, or POPINJAY, is an old sign now almost out of fashion, the GREEN PARROT, Swinegate, Leeds, being one of the few remaining. Andrew Maunsell, a bookseller and printer, resided at the Parrot in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1570, and continued to trade under this sign till 1600. Taylor, the water poet, mentions the POPINJAY at Ewell, in 1636. It was a very appropriate sign for quacks, and one of these, at all events, had candour enough to adopt it. His handbill begins in a grandiloquent style:--