“Peter the Great and his companions, having finished their day’s work, used to resort to a public-house in Great Tower Street, close to Tower Hill, to smoke their pipes and drink beer and brandy. The landlord had the Czar of Muscovy’s Head painted, and put it up for his sign, which continued till the year 1808, when a person of the name of Waxel took a fancy to the old sign, and offered the then occupier of the house to paint him a new one for it. A copy was accordingly made of the original, which maintains its station to the present day as the Czar of Muscovy.”[61]
The sign is now removed, but the public-house still bears the same name. PRINCE EUGENE also was at one time a popular tavern portrait in England, more particularly after his visit to this country in January 1712. It is named as one of the signs in Norwich in 1750,[62] but is now, we believe, completely extinct in England; in Paris there is still one surviving on the Boulevard St Martin.
The GRAVE MAURICE is of very old standing in London, being named by Taylor the water-poet as an inn at Knightsbridge in 1636; at present there are two left, one in Whitechapel Road, the other in St Leonard’s Road. Who this Grave Maurice was is not quite clear. GRAVE (_Ger._ Graf, _Dutch_ Graaf, _i.e._ COUNT,) Maurice of Nassau, afterwards Maurice, Prince of Orange, was, on account of his successful opposition to the Spanish domination in the Netherlands, very popular in this country. In Baker’s Chronicles, anno 1612, we read that:--“Upon St Thomas-day, the Paltzgrave and _Grave Maurice_ were elected Knights of the Garter; and the 27th of December, the Paltzgrave was betrothed to the Lady Elizabeth. On Sunday the 7th of February, the Paltzgrave in person was installed a Knight of the Garter at Windsor, and at the same time was _Grave Maurice_ installed by his deputy, Count Lodewick of Nassau.” The Garter conferred on the Grave Maurice was that which had been previously worn by _Henri Quatre_, King of France and Navarre. The Palzgrave was Grave Maurice’s nephew, the Palatine Count Frederick, by whose marriage with King James’s daughter were born the brothers Rupert and Maurice, (the latter in 1620,) who distinguished themselves in England during the civil wars. It was this Prince Maurice’s great uncle, the Grave Maurice of Nassau, whose counterfeit presentment still gives a name to two of our taverns. Another Maurice, about this period, was very popular in England--viz., Maurice Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who “carried away the palm of excellency in whatever is to be wished in a brave prince.”[63] Peacham, enumerating this prince’s qualifications, says that he was a good musician, spoke ten or twelve languages, was a universal scholar, could dispute, “even in boots and spurs,” for an hour with the best professors on any subject, and was the best bone-setter in the country. He gained, too, much of his popularity by his adherence to the Protestant religion during the Thirty Years’ War.
