by Albert Jack
The smugglers and their families were a violent and desperate bunch (seventeenth-century Cornwall must have been like living in Mafia-run Sicily), renowned for their bloodthirsty antics. Many would stop at nothing to make the maximum amount of profit, wrecking any ship that wasn’t part of their network. There’s an old Cornish expression, ‘jibber the kibber’, which refers to the tactic of fixing a lantern round the neck of a horse led along the shore at night to make it appear like a ship’s light. The ships bearing towards it ran aground, their cargoes were plundered and any surviving crew murdered by the locals.
The government was extremely keen to claw back control of England’s very profitable trade and its revenue officers were under strong pressure to produce results. Officers drawn from local families would turn a blind eye to smuggling activities, but those who came from London were less tolerant of the covert behaviour of locals, and this led to conflict and violence on a regular basis.
Revenue officers were generally regarded as insensitive to the poverty of the Cornish, interested only in collecting income for themselves and their paymasters in London. In consequence, it was common for officers to be shunned at best or, at worst, go missing. No one therefore was too surprised when the landlord of the New Inn in the village of Phillack, located on a small cove close to St Ives on the northern coast of Cornwall, went to draw his morning water from the well only to find the head of an unpopular revenue man floating in a bucketful of blood. Whether this is true or not – although given what we know about smuggling, pirates and the Cornish, it very likely is – it is certainly why, in 1980, the New Inn was renamed the Bucket of Blood, possibly my favourite pub name of all.
The Bull
TALL STORIES AND PAPAL DECREES
The Bull seems a pretty self-explanatory name for a pub. A bull is, after all, the crucial possession of every dairy farmer and most Bull Inns – and variations such as the Black Bull, Brown Bull, Red Bull, Bull’s Head, Old Bull and just about every other type of bull you can imagine – are found in farming areas, or what were once farming areas. But there could be other reasons behind the name, ones unrelated to agriculture.
A formal proclamation by the Pope is known as a papal bull – from the bulla or seal attached to the official document – so in previous centuries an innkeeper choosing to call his inn the Bull may well have been displaying his loyalty as a Roman Catholic. The origin of many of the pubs called the Bull can be traced back to the time of the Reformation when, following the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1533 (see THE CAT AND FIDDLE), Henry VIII defied Rome and rejected the Catholic faith. To demonstrate his defiance of the Pope and the bull threatening him with excommunication, Henry included a bull’s head on his coat of arms, reflecting his fondness for cutting off the heads of those who displeased him. So it is quite possible that all pubs formerly calling themselves the Bull’s Head did so out of loyalty to King Henry VIII, while those named the Bull may have instead been showing their allegiance to the man in the dress in the Vatican.
Another meaning may come from the name of the figure that personifies England, John Bull, represented as a stout, red-faced man, dressed in a shallow top hat, waistcoat and tails and often accompanied by a bulldog. The American author Washington Irving described him, and hence the typical Englishman, as a
plain, downright, matter-of-fact fellow… There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of a strong natural feeling. He excels in humor more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay; melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear, or surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment and has no turn for light pleasantry. He is a boon companion if you allow him to have his humor, and to talk about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel, with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgeled.
John Bull is well intentioned and not particularly quick-witted, yet full of common sense. Unlike America’s Uncle Sam, he is not a figure of authority but a man of the soil, a farmer. Calling your pub the Bull sent a very clear message to its customers (many of whom probably looked and behaved just like the national figurehead) that this was a proper English pub at its unchallenging and comfortable best, and you could expect warm beer and amiable chitchat with your fellow drinkers.
On the subject of the kind of topic that might be discussed at the Bull, the pub name in fact provides the origin of the common expression for an extremely tall tale. A ‘cock and bull’ story is likely to be untrue and with no real evidence to support it. The most likely source for this phrase comes from two pubs located in the same town.
Stoney Stratford, now part of Milton Keynes, is located almost exactly halfway between London and Birmingham, and Oxford and Cambridge respectively. During the great coaching era of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the town was an important stopover point for travellers. The two main coaching inns were The Cock and the Bull and, because of the centrality of their location, became known throughout the country as a hub of news and information. Not that the information was always reliable, however: according to local hearsay, a piece of information discussed at one pub had changed almost unrecognizably by the time it was retold at the second pub, a mere fifteen minutes away, as a result of which many items of news were dismissed as ‘Cock and Bull’ tales.
Rumour has it the entire government are going to relaunch their careers after the next general election, when their current ones will almost certainly be over, by forming a new chain of pub and restaurants called simply the Cock and Bull.
The Bush
THE MOST ANCIENT SYMBOL FOR AN ALEHOUSE
There are two theories behind this name, both dating back hundreds of years. The first comes from the earliest days of pubs. In Anglo Saxon times the village alehouse was just a normal house; the ale wife showed that she had ale available for drinking by fixing a green bush from the roof. That may also be where the popular pub name The Holly Bush comes from as they grabbed any bush to hand, the greener and tougher the better. This bit of early advertising was a precursor of the pub sign.
The second name actually derives more from a tree than a bush – the chequer (or chequers) tree, once common throughout Europe but now found only in ancient woodlands around Britain. It is thought that the tree is so called because its bark peels off in roughly rectangular pieces, giving it the appearance of a chequerboard. During the boom in beer drinking (and making) of the early Middle Ages and before the introduction of hops (see THE WHEATSHEAF), chequer berries were added to beer (or ‘ale’, as it was known) to flavour it and were widely used by brewers all over Britain. Many of those who brewed their own ale had their own chequer trees to supply them with fruit and so called their taverns after the tree. This is why some of the oldest pubs in Britain are still called The Chequers (see that entry for a different origin of the name), Chequer Tree, Chequer Bush or the Bush, and why the ancient symbol for an alehouse is a bush.
The California Arms
(Belmont, Surrey)
WAS THERE EVER A GOLD RUSH IN SURREY?
In 1850 John Gibbons was caught poaching a pheasant on the Northey estate in Cheam, Surrey. At that time, many poor families only survived by poaching. It was very risky, however: the hand of the law fell heavily upon transgressors. Being caught stealing in this way meant at best several years in prison, at worst being hanged. Not wishing to take any chances, Gibbons, grandson of the landlady at the Little Hell Alehouse on the Brighton Road (so named because of its popular, but illegal, gambling den deep in the cellar), fled to California, then in the throes of the Gold Rush.
Too sensible to risk everything again by panning for gold, Gibbons made his fortune running a supply store for the gold prospectors and returned to his home village of Belmont in 1860 where he built a public house, calling it the California Arms in honour of the part of America stolen from the Mexicans when gold was first found in their hills and rivers.
He might also have been hinting about the powerful appeal of his golden bee
r… If he was, it worked and a mini beer-rush happened as the fame of Gibbons’s pub spread throughout the area. Thanks to the pub, there are still many references to California, with several buildings and other landmarks bearing the name locally. Even the railway station was originally called after this western US state.
In 1941 the California Arms was badly damaged during a German air raid, an event marked by the bravery of a British soldier, Private Gibb, who held up the crumbling roof for three hours while a woman trapped in the wreckage was rescued. Gibb was subsequently awarded the British Empire Medal for his heroism. The California Arms was then rebuilt in 1955, although it is now known, more prosaically, as the Belmont Country Carvery.
The Captain Kidd
(Wapping, London)
THE INFAMOUS PIRATE WHO FAILED TO PROVE HIS INNOCENCE
As any schoolboy will confirm, Captain Kidd (1645–1701) was a notorious pirate. Unfortunately for him, the good captain didn’t see himself as a pirate at all. At fifty years of age, William Kidd was a respected English sea captain with an unblemished record. His reliability was the reason the British government invited him to lead a privateering expedition in 1695. At this time ships of those nations England was at war with were regarded as fair game and a privateer was permitted to attack them and loot their cargo. When Kidd sailed, he knew England was once again at war with France and therefore had carte blanche to steal the cargo of any French ship. Kidd was also taxed with attacking any pirates he came across.
Kidd had various backers who had invested in his ship and crew and they wanted results and a large cut of his winnings, so he was under real pressure to produce results. Consequently he did cut the odd corner but remained firmly on the privateering side of piracy. As his small fleet patrolled the entrance to the Red Sea, he sighted two Armenian vessels sailing under French passes and duly intercepted them, as he was legally entitled to do. But the ships’ owners protested to the English authorities and Kidd was amazed to find himself arrested and branded a pirate when he later docked in New York. Kidd protested his innocence and forwarded the French passes to the correct authorities in England, fully expecting to be exonerated when he returned to London. But his backers, on whose support he depended, proved to be his loudest denouncers, terrified of being implicated in piracy. During the two years before his case was heard, the French passes that proved his innocence mysteriously disappeared (they have recently been rediscovered) and so he was convicted. Kidd was hanged on 23 May 1701 at Execution Dock in Wapping, close to the riverside pub that now bears his name. His body was gibbeted – left to hang in an iron cage over the Thames for twenty years – making possibly the world’s most macabre pub sign. It makes it all the more harrowing that history’s most famous pirate was, in fact, an innocent man, a victim of behind-the-scenes skulduggery and the old boys’ network.
The Case is Altered
A LEGAL EXPRESSION OR A SPANISH STRIP CLUB?
There are several pubs in England going by this name, or, with the addition of a single letter, the Cause is Altered, and drinkers have often debated, long into the night, the origins of possibly the most unusual pub name in English history. Unsurprisingly, there are several theories, each depending on the individual pub. One suggestion, involving the Case is Altered in Bentley, near Ipswich, is that the first landlady had been famously easygoing about the payment of bar bills, until she married, that is, and her new husband took a rather different view, soon altering the situation.
In Dover, the Cause is Altered is thought to have been named to indicate to foreign travellers that England was no longer a Catholic country. Another theory stems from the time when farmers and herdsmen would stop at the inn on the way to market, the pub’s name a corrupted version of a local expression, ‘the cows are halted’. In Banbury what was the Weavers Arms became the Case is Altered, the pub sign depicting a barrister interrogating a local man in the courthouse, after the company of weavers supposedly won an important legal case there.
Another theory, this time based on a pub in Harrow, suggests a phrase imported from Spain during the Peninsular War (1807–14). British soldiers taking a rest from the fighting would have been entertained at a ‘house of dancing’ (possibly an early type of strip club), or, in Spanish, casa de saltar, which could have become corrupted over time to ‘case is altered’. But a far more likely origin of the phrase, and hence the pub name, can be traced to one Edmund Plowden (1518–85), a celebrated lawyer and theorist of the Tudor period.
A committed Catholic, Plowden was appointed a Member of the Council of Marches soon after the Catholic Queen Mary ascended to the throne in 1553 and began persecuting the Protestants. However, within a few years Mary had died and her half-sister Elizabeth became queen. She soon set about re-establishing the Protestant faith and Plowden’s once meteoric career predictably faltered.
The new queen did offer to promote Plowden to the position of Lord Chancellor, the second highest office in the land, but this was on the condition he adopted the Anglican faith. Plowden declined but such was the eloquence of his defence of his faith that, instead of throwing him into the Tower of London and cutting off his head, the common fate of opponents to the crown, Elizabeth retained him as a legal adviser. As a result, Catholics in trouble were soon queuing up at Plowden’s chambers seeking legal representation from one of the finest lawyers in the land.
Plowden’s most famous case was representing a prominent Catholic who stood accused of hearing Mass. The accusations against the defendant had not been denied but as the trial wore on it dawned on Plowden that Mass had been held, in this instance, for the sole purpose of revealing to the Protestant authorities those who had attended and had therefore been conducted by a layman, not a priest. It was entrapment. Realizing this, Plowden immediately halted proceedings with this simple statement: ‘No priest, no Mass. The case is altered.’
The expression soon became standard legal terminology and was brought into even wider use by BEN JONSON when he wrote a comedy called The Case is Altered (c.1597), which proved very popular. It is thought that some canny innkeepers then chose the unusual expression as the name of their pub to make it stand out all the more from the local competition. It obviously worked as hundreds of years later not only are those pubs still going strong but their names haven’t altered.
The Cat And Cabbage
(Rotherham, Yorkshire)
TIGER AND ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME
At first glance this may appear to be another of those ridiculous theme names, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Cat and Cabbage is actually an army pub and its name relates to this.
In 1881 the York and Lancashire Regiment was formed by uniting two other regiments, the York and Lancasters and the Yorkshire North Ridings. The new regiment, whose main recruiting area was south Yorkshire, particularly around the town of Rotherham, fought with distinction during many major conflicts, including the Boer War, the two world wars and the Suez Crisis of 1956.
Soon after Suez, in 1958, the 1st Battalion was disbanded and they finally gave up their regimental badge in 1968. The cap badge of the York and Lancasters was quite distinctive, consisting as it did of a tiger and a cabbage rose – the rose for Yorkshire and the tiger representing their predecessors’ action in India – and this had led to the soldiers becoming known throughout the world by the fond nickname of the Cat and Cabbages.
The Cat and Fiddle
ENGLAND’S TRUE QUEEN OR THE MURDERER OF THE PRINCES?
There are many Cat and Fiddle public houses around Britain and opinion is divided on the origin of their unusual name. Discounting a tall tale of a violin-playing pub cat (although there probably is such a story somewhere), there are several theories. One suggests it could derive from chat fidèle (French for ‘faithful cat’), the phrase having become corrupted over time. By contrast, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests that Caton le Fidèle, referring to a former Governor of Calais (at the time an English colony in France), may be the source of th
e name. According to this theory, although not supported by any evidence, one of Caton’s soldiers retired to England and opened a tavern named after his old master, but the English had trouble pronouncing the name and so he changed it to Cat and Fiddle.
Another possibility is that the name is a mangling of Catherine la Fidèle – Catherine the Faithful – a nickname for Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536). Catherine’s story is an unfortunate one. Aged fifteen, the Spanish princess was married to Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, who was so desperate to cement relations between England and Spain that when Arthur died of a fever a few months later, he promptly re-betrothed Catherine to his surviving son, Henry, then only eleven. Poor Catherine then had to wait for eight years under virtual house arrest for her second wedding.
Despite its less than romantic start, the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was initially a very happy one. Both were highly educated, talented rulers in a partnership of equals: when he went to France on a military campaign, Henry appointed her regent. And when the Scots invaded, she inspired the English army to victory at Flodden. The young king had loveknots with their entwined initials carved into all their palaces.
