The pole referred to is, of course, the barber’s pole. The couplet was, however, not original. The ANGEL, which still continues to exist at Kelvedon, is referred to in an advertisement in the _Chelmsford Chronicle_ for December 29, 1786. It is also stated in the Bufton MSS.[88] that on the 20th of October, 1692, King William III. “stayed and dined at the ANGELL,” at Kelvedon. Doubtless he was on his way to Holland, _viâ_ Harwich. Larwood and Hotten say (p. 266) that this sign “was derived from the Salutation; for, that it originally represented the Angel appearing to the Holy Virgin at the Salutation or Annunciation, is evident from the fact that, even as late as the seventeenth century, on nearly all the trades-tokens of houses with this sign, the Angel is represented with a scroll in his hands; and this scroll we know, from the evidence of paintings and prints, to contain the words addressed by the Angel to the Holy Virgin: _‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum_.’ Probably at the Reformation it was considered too Catholic a sign, and so the Holy Virgin was left out, and the Angel only retained.” The supporters of the arms of Richard II. were also two angels, blowing trumpets. The ANGEL AND HARP at Church End, Dunmow, is a strange sign which does not appear to be noticed by the authors so often quoted. Probably it is a modern, though by no means inappropriate, impalement, as it appears in the list of sixty years ago simply as the *HARP. The sign of the BLACK BOY occurs seven times in the county, namely, at Chelmsford, Wrabness, Bocking, Weeley, *Coggeshall, Wivenhoe, and Great Bromley. At the latter place it seems to have existed since 1786, as a sale is advertised to take place at the BLACK BOY in Great Bromley, in the _Chelmsford Chronicle_ for March 3rd in that year. There is also a beer-house of this name at Danbury, and the large brick house in the High Street at Epping, lately occupied by that eminent naturalist, Henry Doubleday, was an inn with this sign before the Doubleday family acquired it about 1770. The BLACK BOY now existing at Chelmsford is not the same house that went under that name during the last and previous centuries, though standing on the same site. The old inn ranked as a coaching-inn of the first importance. It was pulled down in 1857, having been fairly run off the road by the opening of the railway in 1843. Two wooden bosses, taken from the ceiling of one of the rooms, and now to be seen in the Chelmsford Museum, are carved, respectively, with the Blue Boar of the De Veres (to which family the house probably once belonged), and the red and white rose combined. Mr. John Adey Repton, F.S.A., formerly of Springfield, writing to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in May, 1840, sends sketches of these two bosses, which were duly inserted. He says: