A historical site about early London coffee houses and taverns and will also link to my current pub history site and also the London street directory
THE PALSGRAVE HEAD, TEMPLE BAR.
This once celebrated Tavern, opposite the Ship, occupied the site of Palsgrave
place, on the south side of the Strand, near Temple Bar. The Palsgrave
Frederick, afterwards King of Bohemia, was affianced to the Princess Elizabeth
(only daughter of James I.), in the old banqueting house at Whitehall, December
27, 1612, when the sign was, doubtless, set up in compliment to him. There is a
token of the house in the Beaufoy Collection. (See Burn's Catalogue, p. 225.)
Here Prior and Montague, in The Hind and Panther Transversed, make the Country
Mouse and the City Mouse bilk the Hackney Coachman :
" But now at Piccadilly they arrive,
And taking coach, t'wards Temple Bar they drive,
But at St. Clement's eat out the back ;
And slipping through the Palsgrave, bilkt poor hack."
References :
Lots of references are made to two sources on the
internet archive
:
Edward Callows, Old London Taverns &
John Timbs, Club life of London Volume 2