The White Hart was also used as a badge by Edward IV. It is just possible that the fact of the crest of the Maynard family being a stag, as already mentioned, has something to do with the abundance of the WHITE HART as a sign in Essex, or at least in the northern parts of the county. It is possible, too, that the abundance of this sign in Essex may be due in part to the fact that a very ancient and famous WHITE HART formerly stood in Bishopsgate Street Without, in such a position that it would probably form a stopping-place for most travellers to and from London along the Great East Road. Timbs, in his _Clubs and Club-life in London_ (p. 397), says that it was originally built in 1480, but the old house was pulled down and rebuilt in modern style in 1829. Allusion has already been made (p. 25) to an absurd corruption of this sign at West Bergholt, where the landlord of the WHITE HART, not content with a script sign, has added a pictorial one of his own designing, representing a large WHITE HEART on a black ground! Whether this has been done through ignorance or intent, it is a good example of the way signs become corrupted and altered in the course of time. Illustrations of both forms are given above. [Illustration: THE WHITE HART (Heart). (_At West Bergholt._)] [Illustration: THE WHITE HART.] The horse and his belongings are referred to no less than seventy-three times on Essex sign-boards, although a simple horse does not once occur. The use of the horse as a sign is probably derived both from the animal himself and from the part he anciently played in Heraldry. Horses of fantastic colour, such as the GOLDEN HORSE at Forest Gate, are, in all probability, of heraldic origin. No less than thirty-six times in this county do we meet with the sign of the WHITE HORSE, and there is an OLD WHITE HORSE at North Ockendon. Boyne describes tokens issued by “John Tvrner at the White Horse in Chelmsford, 1667,” and by “John Langston at the Whit Horse in Mvchboddow.” WHITE HORSES are still in existence at both of these places. There can be no doubt that the one at Great Baddow is the one from which the token was issued in the seventeenth century; but in the case of Chelmsford there is some doubt. The matter is not without interest, for there is in the British Museum a scarce and curious quarto tract, of twenty-one pages, published in the year 1688, with the following title: “_A True Relation of a Horrid Murder, committed upon the person of Thomas Kidderminster of Tupsley in the County of Hereford, Gent., at the White Horse Inn in Chelmsford, in the County of Essex, in the Month of April, 1654, together with a True Account of the Strange and Providential Discovery of the Same nine years after, &c., &c._” In this tract one Mr. Turner (without doubt the man who issued the token in 1667) is many times mentioned as landlord at the time the murder was discovered. Forty years ago the WHITE HORSE at Dovercourt styled itself the GREAT WHITE HORSE.