Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/143

12 S. 1. 12, 1916] the two together being especially liked. I have gathered foal-foot flowers with stalks and leaves for my father's use in the pipe, and his opinion was that foal-foot improved the tobacco weed, and that it acted as a tonic to the system. The gipsy folk, as we called them, also smoked various kinds of dried herbs in their pipes, and the chewing of bitter herbs was very common. "Foal-foot" was the usual name for colts foot.

(12 S. i. 90).—Drawings of the George Inn, Southwark can be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. References to these are given in Philip Norman's 'Drawings of Old London,' published by H.M. Stationery Office, price 6d. The drawings are described as follows:—

Historical incidents likely to be interesting to the ordinary reader appear to be scanty in the case of the George Inn, or St. George Inn, as it seems to have been styled in the days of old. In a lecture on 'Some of the Ancient Inns of Southwark,' by Mr. Geo. R. Corner, F.S.A., read before the Surrey Archæological Society in Southwark, May 12, 1858, the author states that it is mentioned under the latter name in 1544 (34 H. VIII.), as being situate (as it is) on the northern side of the Tabard. It is also named by Stow ('Survey,' p. 415, Kingsford's ed. ii. 62), but without comment. The next known reference is furnished by two tokens now in the Beaufoy Collection at the Guildhall Library. One of them was issued by "Anthony Blake. Tapster. Ye George in Southwark," and on the reverse are three tobacco-pipes; above them, four beer measures. The other token is inscribed: "James Gunter. 16— [?]," St. George and Dragon in field. Reverse, "In Southwarke": in the field, "L. A. G."

Some lines from the 'Musarum Deliciæ, or the Muses' Recreations,' 1656, upon a surfeit caused by drinking bad sack at the George Tavern in Southwark, have come down to our days, and are quoted in Walford's 'Old and New London,' vi. 85, so they need not be repeated here.

In 1670 the inn was in great part demolished by a serious fire which then happened in the Borough, and it was totally destroyed by the still more severe conflagration in 1676, when upwards of five hundred houses were burnt. From the records of the Parliamentary inquiry into the latter misfortune, still preserved at Guildhall, it appears that the owner of the George at that time was John Sayer, and the tenant, Mark Weyland. The fire was finally stopped by the substantial building of St. Thomas's Hospital, then recently erected; and a tablet, now, I believe, removed to the new hospital at Lambeth, commemorates the event.

In the year 1739 the George Inn was the property of Thomas Aynescomb, Esq., of Charterhouse Square, from whom it descended to his granddaughter, Valentina Aynescomb, who married Lillie Smith, Esq. In 1785 the inn, with considerable other property, was sold under an Act of Parliament by the trustees to Lillie Smith Aynescomb, Esq., of Thames Street, merchant; and early in the last century it was purchased by "the trustees of Guy's Hospital. In the conveyance of 1785 the inn is described as having been formerly in the occupation of Mary Weyland (probably widow of Mark Weyland, who was host in