Inns and Taverns of Old London | Page 7

returned to the Bear, where his Waterman
awaited him with the gold and other things to the value of forty pounds
which the prudent diarist had left in his charge at the inn "for fear of
my pockets being cut."
Pepys himself incidentally explains why he had so friendly a regard for
the Bridge-foot tavern. "Going through bridge by water," he writes,
"my Waterman told me how the mistress of the Beare tavern, at the
bridge-foot, did lately fling herself into the Thames, and drowned
herself; which did trouble me the more, when they tell me it was she
that did live at the White Horse tavern in Lumbard Street, which was a
most beautiful woman, as most I have seen."
Yet another fair woman, Frances Stuart, one of the greatest beauties of
the court of Charles II, is linked with the history of the Beare. Sad as
was the havoc she wrought in the heart of the susceptible Pepys, who is
ever torn between admiration of her loveliness and mock-reprobation of
her equivocal position at court, Frances Stuart created still deeper
passions in men more highly placed than he. Apart from her royal lover,
there were two nobles, the Dukes of York and Richmond who
contended for her hand, with the result of victory finally resting with
the latter. But the match had to be a runaway one. The king was in no
mood to part with his favourite, and so the lovers arranged a meeting at
the Bear, where a coach was in waiting to spirit them away into Kent.
No wonder Charles was offended, especially when the lady sent him
back his presents.
Nearly a century and a half has passed since the Bear finally closed its
doors. All through the lively years of the Restoration it maintained its

reputation as a house of good cheer and a wholly desirable rendezvous,
and it figures not inconspicuously in the social life of London down to
1761. By that time the ever-increasing traffic over the Thames bridge
had made the enlargement of that structure a necessity, and the Bear
was among the buildings which had to be demolished.
Further south in the High street, and opposite the house in which John
Harvard, the founder of America's oldest university, was born, stood
the Boar's Head, an inn which was once the property of Sir Fastolfe,
and was by him bequeathed through a friend to Magdalen College,
Oxford. This must not be confused with the Boar's Head of
Shakespeare, which stood in Eastcheap on the other side of the river,
though it is a remarkable coincidence that it was in the latter inn the
dramatist laid the scene of Prince Hal's merrymaking with the Sir John
Falstaff we all know. The earliest reference to the Southwark Boar's
Head occurs in the Paston Letters under date 1459. This is an epistle
from a servant of Fastolfe to John Paston, asking him to remind his
master that he had promised him he should be made host of the Boar's
Head, but whether he ever attained to that desired position there is no
evidence to show. The inn makes but little figure in history; by 1720 it
had dwindled to a-mere courtyard, and in 1830 the last remnants were
cleared away.
[Illustration: COURTYARD OF BOAR'S HEAD INN,
SOUTHWARK.]
Inevitably, however, the fact that the Boar's Head was the property of
Sir John Fastolfe prompts the question, what relation had he to the Sir
John Falstaff of Shakespeare's plays? This has been a topic of large
discussion for many years. There are so many touches of character and
definite incidents which apply in common to the two knights that the
poet has been assumed to have had the historic Fastolfe ever in view
when drawing the portrait of his Falstaff. The historian Fuller assumed
this to have been the case, for he complains that the "stage have been
overbold" in dealing with Fastolfe's memory. Sidney Lee, however,
sums up the case thus: "Shakespeare was possibly under the
misapprehension, based on the episode of cowardice reported in 'Henry
VI,' that the military exploits of the historical Sir John Fastolfe
sufficiently resembled those of his own riotous knight to justify the
employment of a corrupted version of his name. It is of course untrue

that Fastolfe was ever the intimate associate of Henry V when Prince of
Wales, who was not his junior by more than ten years, or that he was an
impecunious spendthrift and gray-haired debauchee. The historical
Fastolfe was in private life an expert man of business, who was
indulgent neither to himself nor his friends. He was nothing of a jester,
and was, in spite of all imputations to the contrary, a capable and brave
soldier."
Sad as has been the havoc wrought by time