Exactly one hundred years later, the Cock is named with encomiums on its porter, in the “Art of Living in London;” but it is to be hoped the porter was better than the poetry:--
“Nor think the Cock with these not on a par, The celebrated Cock of Temple Bar, Whose Porter best of all bespeaks its praise, Porter that’s worthy of the Poet’s lays.”[293]
In William Waterproof’s Monologue, the fame of a waiter of this tavern is handed down to posterity in the harmonious verses of the Poet Laureate.
Jackson the pugilist, who has a pompous epitaph on his grave in the Brompton burial-ground, kept for some time the Cock alehouse, Sutton, on the Epsom Road; but being patronised by the Prince of Wales and a great many of the leading members of the “nobility and gentry,” he was in a very short time enabled to retire with a £10,000 fortune. Finally, some twenty years ago, there was a Cock and Bottle public-house in Bristol kept by a man named John England, who added to his sign the well known words:--
“England expects every man to do his duty.”
The sign of the THREE COCKS occurs in the following advertisement:--
“ALL persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at the THREE COCKS in St John’s Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to him before the 25th of December 1709, are desired to fetch them away by the 25th of March next, or they will be disposed off.”--_London Gazette_, Jan. 18-21, 1711.
From this and innumerable other similar advertisements, it appears that pawnbrokers in those days did not always rigorously adhere to the Three Balls; that is to say, they were occasionally goldsmiths, and in that capacity used any sign.
It is rarely that the sign of the Cock designates any particular colour. There is a BLACK COCK in Owen Street, Tipton; a cock of this colour was always considered something more than an ordinary bird; with the Greeks it was a grateful sacrifice to Esculapius and Pluto, and in the middle ages it played a prominent part in matters of witchcraft. The BLUE COCK is a sign at Leicester; but neither colour is common. At Hargrave, near Bury St Edmunds, there is a COCK’S HEAD, put up either in imitation of a nag’s,--bull’s,--bear’s,--or boar’s head, or as the crest of a fool’s cap, which, in old times, usually terminated with a cock’s head.