The CHEQUERS is a sign of great interest and antiquity. It is very common in Essex, as it appears no less than twenty times, including one OLD CHEQUERS. It is equally common as a beer-house sign. Robt. Bowyer kept the CHEQUERS at Bardfield in the seventeenth century, as shown by his token, but no house now exists there under that name. Mr. Creed’s list (p. 7) shows inns with this sign at Epping, Nazing, Waltham Abbey, High Laver, and Nettleswell in 1789. The CHEQUERS at Roxwell seems to have existed since 1787, as it is referred to in the _Chelmsford Chronicle_ for February 2nd in that year. As a sign it is said to be found even among the ruins of Pompeii, and, according to Larwood and Hotten, it “is, perhaps, the most patriarchal of all signs.” The same writers say (p. 488) that in England it is “said to represent the coat of arms of the Earls de Warrenne and Surrey, who bore _chequy, or and azure_, and in the reign of Edward IV. possessed the privilege of licensing ale-houses.” The old money-changers used boards divided up into squares like a modern chess-board, and the sign of the CHEQUERS may have originated, partly, at least, in these “exchequers,” as they were called, being hung up outside their places of business. Not improbably the sign also represents the “chequer,” or board divided into squares, and still used in some country inns for keeping a tally or record of the amount drunk by each regular customer. As the sign is now painted it is almost as often _lozengy_ as _chequy_. In the year 1764, according to an advertisement of that date in the _Chelmsford Chronicle_, the present IPSWICH ARMS at Ingatestone was impaled with a CHEQUERS, forming the IPSWICH ARMS AND CHEQUERS. The sign of the COACH AND HORSES, which occurs thirteen times in the county, has already been alluded to. As might be expected, it was considerably commoner forty years ago than now. An inn of this name at Chelmsford has a pictorial sign-board, representing a number of gentlemen, in the costume of fifty or sixty years ago, riding on the top of a coach. [Illustration: CROOKED BILLET. (_After Larwood and Hotten._)]