Thus did Horace Walpole moralise over the fickleness of sign-board favour:
"I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs, as I passed through the villages, made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the 'Duke's Head' had succeeded almost universally to 'Admiral Vernon's,' as his had left but few traces of the 'Duke of Ormonde's.' I pondered these things in my breast, and said to myself, 'Surely all glory is but as a sign.'"
True, and trite. He might even, perhaps, by dint of scraping, have found upon those old sign-boards whole strata of discarded heroes, painted one over another. Vernon was, of course, the dashing captor of Portobello, in 1739. There were "Portobellos" and "Admiral Vernons" all over the country, for some years, but one would need to travel far and search diligently before he found an "Admiral Vernon" in these days. Six years only was his term of popularity, and there was no renewal of the lease. The Duke of Cumberland displaced him, and he, the victor of Colloden--little enough of a hero--was painted out in favour of our ally, the "King of Prussia" (Frederick the Great) about 1756. The "King of Proosher," as the rustics commonly called him, had an extraordinary vogue, and the sign is still occasionally to be found, even in these days, when everything German is, with excellent reason, detested. But, as the poet remarks, "all that's bright must fade," and the greater number of "Kings of Prussia" were abolished after the battle of Minden, in 1759, in favour of the "Marquis of Granby." The "Markis o' Granby" is associated, in the minds of most people, with Dorking, with the _Pickwick Papers_, and with the ducking in a horse-trough of a certain prophet; but when the sign first became popular, it stood for military glory. The Marquis himself was the eldest son of the third Duke of Rutland: a soldier who rose to distinction in our wars upon the Continent, became Commander-in-Chief, and at length died in his fifty-eighth year, in 1779. There was another special appropriateness in selecting him for a tavern sign; for he was one of the deepest drinkers among the hard-drinking men of his age.
The actual labour of converting the Duke of Cumberland into the King of Prussia, and his Most Protestant Majesty into the Marquis of Granby could have been but small, for they were all represented in profile, and all were clean-shaven, and wore a uniform and a cocked hat; and it is probable that in most cases the sole alteration that took place was in the lettering.