“My signe was once a _Crowne_, but now it is Changed by a sudden metamorphosis. The crowne was taken downe, and in the stead Is placed John Taylor’s, or the _Poet’s Head_. A painter did my picture gratis make, And (for a signe) I hang’d it for his sake. Now, if my picture’s drawing can prevayle, ’Twill draw my friends to me, and I’ll draw ale. Two strings are better to a bow than one; And poeting does me small good alone. So ale alone yields but small good to me, Except it have some spice of poesie. The fruits of ale are unto drunkards such, To make ‘em sweare and lye that drinke too much. But my ale, being drunk with moderation, Will quench thirst, and make merry recreation. My book and signe were publish’d for two ends, T’ invite my honest, civill, sober friends. From such as are not such, I kindly pray, Till I send for ‘em, let ‘em keep away. From _Phœnix Alley_, the _Globe Taverne_ neare, The _middle of Long Acre_, I _dwell_ there. “JOHN TAYLOR, _Poeta Aquaticus_.” [Illustration: PLATE IV. EAGLE AND CHILD. (Banks’s Bills, circa 1750.) ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN. (Roxburghe Ballads, 1600.) GRIFFIN AND CHAIR. (Banks’s Bills, 1790.) BOLT-IN-TUN. (Fleet Street). BOAR’S HEAD. (Eastcheap.) BULL’S HEAD. (Longhborough, Linc., 1806.)] The MOURNING CROWN was afterwards revived, and in the last century it was the sign of a tavern in Aldersgate, where, on Saturdays, when Parliament was not sitting, the Duke of Devonshire, the Earls of Oxford, Sunderland, Pembroke, and Winchelsea, Mr Bagford the antiquary, and Britton the musical small-coalman, used to refresh themselves, after having passed the forepart of the day in hunting for antiquities and curiosities in Little Britain and its neighbourhood. Not only was the Crown put in mourning at the death of Charles I., but also the MITRE. Hearne has an anecdote which he transcribed from Dr Richard Rawlinson:--“Of Daniel Rawlinson, who kept the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street, and of whose being sequestered in the Rump time, I have heard much. The Whigs tell this, that upon the king’s murder he hung his sign in mourning. He certainly judged right; the honour of the mitre was much eclipsed through the loss of so good a parent of the Church of England. Those rogues say, this endeared him so much to the Churchmen that he soon throve amain, and got a good estate.” CHARLES THE SECOND’S HEAD swung at the door of a “music-house” for seafaring men and others, in Stepney, at the end of the seventeenth century. In a great room of this house there was an organ and a band of fiddles and hautboys, to the music whereof it was no unusual thing for parties, and sometimes single persons,--and those not of very inferior sort,--to dance. At the present day, that king’s memory is still kept alive on a signboard in Herbert Street, Hoxton, under the name of the MERRY MONARCH.