In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described:--“A flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe doore, but _especially a conceited signe and an eminent bush_.” “Tavernes are quickly set up, it is but hanging out a bush at a nobleman’s or an alderman’s gate, and ’tis made instantly.”--_Shirley’s Masque of the Triumph of Peace._ In a woodcut from the “Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles,” introduced in Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” the Bush is suspended from a square board, on which the sign was painted; for in France as well as in England, signboard and bush went together:-- “La taverne levée _L’enseigne et le bouchon_, La dame bien peignée Les cheveux en bouchon.”[327] --_Chanson nouvelle des Tavernes et Tavernières, Fleur des Chansons Nouvelles, Lyon_, 1586. Whilst an English host in “Good News and Bad News,” says:--“I rather will take down my bush and sign than live by means of riotous expense.” Gradually, as signs became more costly, the bunch was entirely neglected and the sign alone remained. The HAND AND FLOWER is a sign very frequently adopted by alehouses in the vicinity of nursery grounds:--thus, there is one in the High Street, Kensington, and one in the King’s Road, a little past Cremorne, though there the nursery ground has very recently been built over. The ROSE, besides being the queen of flowers, and the national emblem, had yet another prestige which alone would have been sufficient to make it a favourite sign in the middle ages; this was its religious import. On the monumental brass of Abbot Kirton, formerly in Westminster Abbey, there was a crowned rose with I.H.C. in its heart, and round it the words SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORUM, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM.[328] And in Caxton’s Psalter, above a woodcut representing an angel holding a shield with a rose on it, occur the words:-- “Per te rosa toluntur vitia, Per te datur mestis leticia.”[329] It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some allusion to the Rose of Jericho, or to the Christmas rose.