by Albert Jack
The Red Lion
A WAR WAGED THROUGH PUB NAMES
One of the most popular pub names in Britain, the Red Lion has an interesting history. One theory claims the reason there are so many Red Lions was due to James VI of Scotland becoming James I of England and Ireland, on 24 March 1603 (see also THE BRITANNIA). The red lion was the Scottish king’s personal crest and a prominent part of his coat of arms and it is recorded that he ordered the emblem to be displayed at all public places to remind his English subjects that the Scots now held power in the south. Many innkeepers throughout England felt it wise to follow the new rules in case the king and his army happened to ride by one day. While it is certainly due to James I that the red lion became part of the coat of arms of the British monarchy, the idea that this is the source of all those pub and hotel names is, however, doubtful.
The Red Lion was in fact a popular choice of name long before 1603. England’s first permanent theatre, built in Mile End in 1567, was called the Red Lion and that was a full thirty-six years before James turned up in England claiming the throne. As many other Red Lions predate his reign, we need to look elsewhere for the origin of the name – to an earlier royal family, in fact, and another coat of arms.
In the fourteenth century John of Gaunt (1340–99) was the most powerful man in England. The third son of King Edward III, he was twenty-seven when his ten-year-old nephew, son of his brother the Black Prince, inherited the English crown as Richard II. Gaunt exercised great influence in the early days of Richard’s reign, and not always positively. It was his unwise decisions about various taxes that brought on the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 (see JACK STRAW’S CASTLE), as the rebels recognized when they ransacked Gaunt’s Savoy Palace in London (now the site of today’s Savoy Hotel).
In 1386 John of Gaunt left England to claim the throne of Castile (he had married Infanta Constance of Castile fifteen years before), whose coat of arms, consisting of a Spanish castle and a red lion, he had incorporated into his own crest. During his absence things soon fell apart, however, and England teetered on the brink of civil war as a result of misrule by the young king. It is thought that many places, including taverns and inns, then began displaying John of Gaunt’s coat of arms in order to show their preference for Edward III’s surviving son. Highly sensitive to this public vote of no confidence, Richard II responded by ruling that every publican and landlord close to London must display his own crest, THE WHITE HART, instead. Not so different from today, when you think about it, with signs for political candidates popping up everywhere, just before an election, instead of royal coats of arms.
Rather than take advantage of the situation and seize the crown for himself, Gaunt returned to England to support his nephew and help restore stability. Recognized as the real power behind the throne, he enjoyed the wealth and riches of rule and was astute enough to avoid making serious enemies along the way. Even so, he was unable to prevent his ambitious son Henry Bolingbroke being sent into exile by the king in 1398. A year later, Gaunt passed away, dying peacefully in his bed at Leicester Castle. Rather unusually for the time, it was from natural causes. With that his family crest, red lion included, passed over to Henry, while Richard claimed all his lands for the crown.
Henry invaded England in June 1399 with a small force that quickly grew in numbers. Claiming initially that his goal was only to reclaim his patrimony, it soon became clear that he had his eyes firmly fixed on the throne itself. Meeting little resistance, partly thanks to the reputation of his father and partly due to the king’s unpopularity, Bolingbroke was able to demonstrate he had enough strength and support to force Richard to hand over the crown, and he became King Henry IV. Richard died in captivity early the next year; it is thought he was probably murdered. The White Hart had finally, and very definitely, given way to the Red Lion.
The Rising Sun
BACK FROM THE DEAD EACH MORNING
From the dawn of human history, the sun, so vital for life, has been central to people’s belief systems. The Aztecs, for example, believed the sun and the earth had already been destroyed four times and that during the time of the fifth sun the final destruction would occur. To ensure the sun continued to rise each day and the world didn’t end in disaster, human sacrifices were made to the sun god, Huitzilopochtli, as a key part of their ritual worship. The victim, usually a captured prisoner, would be placed on an altar of rounded stone with his back arched and limbs held firm. Then the priest would cut through the abdomen, just below the rib cage, with a flint blade. The heart would be torn out and held, still beating, towards the sky in honour of the sun god.
The sun’s return every morning could never be taken for granted, and many cultures evolved myths to explain the cycle of night and day. The ancient Greeks had Helios, riding a chariot across the sky; the Hindu sun god, Surya, also rides a chariot, drawn by seven white horses; the Egyptians had Ra, sailing a barge; while the Chinese saw the sun as a bird slowly flying across the sky. Other myths tell how the sun god dies each night and then comes back to life with the new day.
In 274 the pragmatic Romans (see THE BRITANNIA) created a new sun god, Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), in an attempt to co-opt a whole series of local, heliocentric religions throughout their Eastern provinces. His birthday was celebrated by the Romans on the day after the winter solstice (the shortest day) to signify the rebirth and regrowth of the sun every year. Interestingly, this is when the equally pragmatic Christian Church claims Jesus Christ, too, was born. It couldn’t have hurt that many aspects of Christ’s story are similar to those of the sun gods of other religions: he sacrificed his life to save the world (the sky was supposed to have turned black as night at his death) and then he was reborn. He was also the Son (sun) of God. And in many churches the image of the rising sun represents Christ’s rising from the dead and his promise of eternal life.
Edward III (1312–77), who was extremely keen to emphasize the symbolic nature of the English monarchy ( see THE GEORGE AND DRAGON and THE STAR AND GARTER), was said to have decorated his recreation of King Arthur’s Round Table with a painting of the rising sun. He was also the first of a number of monarchs who used the sun as one of their royal badges, Edward’s emblem being represented as a sunburst, or a golden sun with rays shooting upwards from a bank of white cloud, just like the rising sun. A number of noble families consequently adopted it as part of their coat of arms to enhance their prestige; the many pubs throughout Britain called the Rising Sun are most likely named after them. But it probably doesn’t hurt to mention another, bawdier meaning of the name that anyone brought up on the Animals’ song ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ (regarded by many as a euphemism for a brothel) or familiar with John Donne’s poem ‘The Sun Rising’ will recognize…
The Robert Peel
MAN OF PRINCIPLES WHO GAVE US THE BOYS IN BLUE
There are many Robert Peels the length and breadth of Britain, and there is a very good reason for that. Robert Peel (1788–1850) enjoyed a long and distinguished political career. He became home secretary in 1822 and again, under the premiership of the Duke of Wellington (see THE IRON DUKE), in 1828, and he was twice elected prime minister, in 1834 and again in 1841. But had it not been for his time as home secretary he might not have been remembered with much affection at all, and certainly we would not be drinking in pubs that bear his name.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, each parish had a constable. This system comprised, generally, one unarmed, able-bodied citizen in each parish, who was appointed to serve for a year, unpaid. He would work in cooperation with the local justices in ensuring laws were observed and order maintained. In towns, responsibility for the maintenance of order was conferred on the guilds (see THE ODDFELLOWS’ ARMS) and, later, on other specified groups of citizens, and these supplied bodies of paid men, known as the ‘watch’, for guarding the town gates and patrolling the streets at night (see THE LAMPLIGHTERS). If you had been the victim of a crime, you could hire a thief-taker to track down the p
erpetrator, but there was no state-run centralized system.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, great socio-economic changes were afoot, leading to a huge influx of people into the towns. London had always been a hive of criminal activity. But as the city grew ever larger, it became harder to control and the parish constable and ‘watch’ systems were unable to cope. There had been various private attempts at policing, most notably by Henry Fielding’s Bow Street Runners in 1749, but as there were just eight of them, there was only so much that they could do. And it wasn’t just crime. London was also a centre for political unrest. The second half of the eighteenth century had seen the city racked by three major uprisings against the government: the Strand Riots (protesting against ‘disorderly houses’) in 1749; the 1768 Wilkes Riots (caused by attempts to prevent the electorate choosing their own MP); and the Gordon Riots (protesting about Catholics being given equal rights) in 1780, which caused huge destruction and had to be stopped by the army.
The French Revolution then provided a vivid illustration in 1789–99 of what an angry populace could do if their needs and demands continued to be ignored. Britain needed reform and London desperately needed a centralized police force. Unfortunately this went against the English respect for individual liberty, desire for self-regulation and distrust of the state: surveillance of any kind was hotly resented. Parliamentary committees were set up in 1812, 1818 and 1822 to look into the subject of crime and policing. But it was not until 1828 when Sir Robert Peel set up a further committee that progress was finally made, resulting in a bill that led to the setting up of an organized police force in London.
The Metropolitan Police Act was reluctantly passed by Parliament in 1829. To allay the fears of an alarmed and suspicious public, the first policemen had to wear their distinctive uniform even when off duty, so that they could never be accused of concealing their identity; they put an armband on when on duty.
Starting with just 1,000 uniformed men, who were known either as ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’ (after Sir Robert), ‘coppers’ (they caught or ‘copped’ villains) or ‘crushers’ (they crushed liberty), Peel’s civilian force were initially highly unpopular: in fact, juries at the inquests of two of the first officers killed on duty, PC Joseph Grantham and PC Robert Culley, returned verdicts of justifiable homicide. Gradually, however, the tide of public opinion turned in the police’s favour when they proved very effective at reducing crime in the capital.
And so other police forces were rapidly established throughout Britain and its growing colonies. Since then, Robert Peel has come to be regarded as the father of modern policing while his Peelian Principles define the core values for a successful police force. There are nine of them and although well over a hundred and fifty years old, they are still equally valid today. Here are three of the most resonant:
The ability of the police force to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
The police at all times should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police.
The Robin Hood
THE PERFECT COMPANION FOR AN EVENING AT THE PUB?
Robin Hood is one of the great English heroes. For generations we have been told about this lovable bandit who famously stole from the rich and gave to the poor and who lived with his Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, near Nottingham. Over the years he has been the subject of songs and ballads, radio and TV programmes, novels, films, paintings and poems. He has been portrayed as a farmer, archer, nobleman, hero, traitor and common thief, but what do we really know about him?
The earliest written reference to Robin appears in William Langland’s Piers Plowman (c.1360–87). In it, a character called Sloth admits that while he can’t always remember his prayers, he knows all the ballads of popular heroes, especially those of Robin Hood by heart. The allegorical story of an ordinary man’s path to enlightenment, Piers Plowman is a poem of protest against the contemporary corruption and inadequacy of the Church and state. Rather like a Private Eye of its time, it poked a satirical finger at the establishment, and in so doing is believed to have influenced the Peasants’ Revolt (see JACK STRAW’S CASTLE). The ballads of Robin Hood, not written down until the fifteenth century, are jollier and lighter than Piers Plowman but they also tell the story of one man who manages to trick the rich and powerful and gives their wealth to the people who need it, the poor. Unlike King Arthur, Robin Hood is a hero for ordinary people who constantly gets away with tweaking the nose of the overly privileged, and consequently the ballads became incredibly popular. But just because he was a much needed figure for yesterday’s peasants and today’s tourist industry, it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a real person.
Many people believe that Robin Hood actually existed, living around the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century. In Sherwood Forest the tree he supposedly lived in, the Major Oak, has been carbon-dated at 800–1,000 years old, meaning that it would have been old even in Robin’s day, which correlates with the legend. The problem is that different ballads tell different stories and a lot of the evidence is doubled up as both Yorkshire and Nottingham claim him as their own. Among the sites associated with his name is Kirklees Priory, in west Yorkshire, which claims to have his tombstone, dated 1247 and apparently fitting with the account of Robin’s death in which he is killed by his cousin, the Prioress of Kirklees, when he travels to visit her at the priory. Equally, he could be buried at Loxley, near Stratford-upon-Avon (possibly the Lockersley cited in the ballads as his birthplace?), in which the churchyard has a grave with the name of Robert Fitz Odo (another of Robin’s pseudonyms) and dating to the thirteenth century.
So could it be that there was more than one Robin Hood? Or that every tale about outlaws was rounded up under the name of the most popular one? (It’s what happened to Dick Turpin in the eighteenth century, when all stories about highwaymen were attributed to him. See THE CROOKED BILLET for more on him.) That would certainly explain some of the known discrepancies in the information that we have. After all, the stories were in the form of ballads and in the constant retelling all kinds of extra details and contemporary touches would have been added to suit the times and changing tastes of their listeners.
It’s easy to see why so many pubs are named after him. If Robin Hood was a real man, he would have been a great person to spend a long evening in the pub with. Not to mention the fact that the Merry Men would have made the perfect medieval pub quiz team. I’m thinking about a time when the sport round would have just covered wrestling (Little John’s favourite subject) and archery, Friar Tuck would have tackled food- and drink-related questions, Alan a Dale contemporary music and Maid Marian etiquette and embroidery. No wonder there are also pubs named after all of them.
The Rose and Crown
EMBLEM OF TWO FEUDING FAMILIES FINALLY UNITED
The rose is by far the most frequently occurring flower when it comes to pub names, and there is a good reason for this. The popular pub sign of a red-and-white rose and a crown is the symbol of the ending of a civil war that, for many years, tore the country apart.
In the fifteenth century there were two English dynasties that used a rose as their emblem: the House of York had a white rose and the House of Lancaster a red one. When Henry Bolingbroke seized the throne in 1399, becoming Henry IV (see THE RED LION), it was the House of Lancaster that took over the throne. He was succeeded by the even more able Henry V (see THE AGINCOURT). Unfortunately, the king that followed, Henry VI, was not only mentally unstable (something he had inherited from his mad French grandfather, who had believed he was made of glass) but was also just a child when he took over the throne.
As long as Henry had no sons, his ambitious cousin Richard of York was his heir.
Seeking to minimize this threat, the king sent Richard into virtual exile in France and then in Ireland. In 1452 Richard returned secretly to England, attempting to rally support in his aim to be officially recognized as Henry’s heir, but with his army defeated he was forced to swear an oath of allegiance and abandon his claim to power. Then the following year things looked up for him as the king suffered what appears to have been a complete mental collapse.
York’s hour had come, it seemed, and Richard was appointed Protector of the Realm, overruling opposition by Henry’s strong-willed French wife, Margaret of Anjou. But the king recovered and it was back to square one for the duke, who gathered another army, meeting Henry at St Albans on 22 May 1455. In the subsequent battle York was lined up against Lancaster, the first in a series of engagements in what became known as the War of the Roses. In this instance it was an emphatic victory for York, the duke taking the king prisoner and appointing himself Constable of England.
In custody, the king became ill again. Richard remained confident the royal couple were out of the action – and, in the case of the king, out of his mind – but he had underestimated the resolve of Margaret, who not only nursed her husband back to mental health but also raised the support of an army, settling it near Coventry, one of the few parts of England where Henry VI was still popular. This tense political situation overshadowed England for over thirty years, with attack and counter-attack between the two warring families as the War of the Roses dragged on. Even after Richard of York himself was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460 (an historic event said to have given rise to the mnemonic that enables children to memorize the colours of the rainbow: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), which should have put an end to the dispute, his son Edward, the new Duke of York, simply took over the reins and kept the conflict going.
