To his miraculous escape at Boscobel we owe the ROYAL OAK, which, notwithstanding a lapse of two centuries and a change of dynasty, still continues a very favourite sign. In London alone it occurs on twenty-six public-houses, exclusive of beerhouses, coffee-houses, &c. Sometimes it is called KING CHARLES IN THE OAK, as at Willen Hall, Warwickshire. The Royal Oak, soon after the Restoration, became a favourite with the shops of London; tokens of some half a dozen houses bearing that sign are extant. What is rather curious is that, not many years since, one of the descendants of trusty Dick Pendrell kept an inn at Lewes, in Sussex, called the Royal Oak. There is a trades token of “William Hagley, at the RESTORATION, in St George’s Fields;” but how this event was represented does not appear. At Charing Cross it was commemorated by the sign of the PAGEANT Tavern, which represented the triumphal arch erected at that place on occasion of the entry of Charles II., and which remained standing for a year after. This was evidently the same house which Pepys calls the TRIUMPH. It seems to have been a fashionable place, for he went there, on the 25th May 1662, to see the Portuguese ladies of Queen Catherine. “They are not handsome,” says he, “and their fardingales a strange dress. Many ladies and persons of quality come to see them. I find nothing in them that is pleasing; and I see they have learned to kiss and look freely up and down already, and, I believe, will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country. They complain much for lack of good water to drink.” The Triumph is still the sign of a public-house in Skinner Street, Somers Town. QUEEN MARY was in her day a very popular sign, as may be gathered from many of the shop-bills in the Banks Collection; whilst WILLIAM AND MARY are still to be seen in Maiden Causeway, Cambridge. The accession of the house of Brunswick produced the BRUNSWICK, still very common, particularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Then come the Georges, of whom GEORGE III. and GEORGE IV. still survive in nearly as many instances as their successor, WILLIAM IV.; with them a few of the royal Dukes of CLARENCE, SUFFOLK, and, above all, “the Butcher CUMBERLAND;” until at length we come to PRINCESS VICTORIA, and, finally, the QUEEN VICTORIA, the BRITISH QUEEN, ISLAND QUEEN, &c. Under one of her signs at Coopersale, in Essex, is the following inscription:-- “The Queen some day May pass this way, And see our Tom and Jerry. Perhaps she’ll stop, And stand a drop, To make her subjects merry.” Among the foreign kings and potentates who have figured in our open-air walhalla, the Turkish sultans seem to have stood foremost. MORAT (Amurat) and SOLIMAN were constant coffee-house signs in the seventeenth century. Trades tokens are extant, in the Beaufoy and other collections, of a coffee-house in Exchange Alley, the sign of Morat, with this distich:--