shops, but is now rare.  This roll represented what was called spun or twist tobacco.  Dekker, in James I’s time, speaks of roll tobacco.  The youngster who mimics the stage-gallants in Jonson’s “Cynthia’s Revels” as described in Chapter II (ante; page 31), says that he has “three sorts of tobacco in his pocket,” which probably means that it was customary to mix for smoking purposes tobacco of the three usual kinds—­roll (or pudding), leaf and cane.  One would have thought that a representation of the tobacco plant itself would have been a more natural and comprehensive sign than one particular preparation of the herb, yet representations of the plant were rare, while those of the compressed tobacco known as pudding or roll in the form of a “Tobacco Roll,” as described above, were very frequently used as signs.

From the examples given in Burn’s “Descriptive Catalogue of London Tokens” of the seventeenth century, it is clear that the “Tobacco Roll” was a warm favourite.  “Three Tobacco Rolls” was also used as a sign.  In 1732 there was a “Tobacco Roll” in Finch Lane, on the north side of Cornhill, “over against the Swan and Rummer Tavern.”  In 1766, Mrs. Flight, tobacconist, carried on her business at the “Tobacco Roll.  Next door but one to St. Christopher’s Church, Threadneedle Street.”

The shop-bill of Richard Lee, who sold tobacco about 1730 “at Ye Golden Tobacco Roll in Panton Street near Leicester Fields,” is an elaborate production.  Hogarth in the earlier period of his career as an engraver engraved many shop-bills, and this particular bill is usually attributed to him, though the attribution has been disputed.  There is a copy of the bill in the British Museum, and in the catalogue of the prints and drawings in the National Collection Mr. Stephens thus describes it:  “It is an oblong enclosing an oval, the spandrels being occupied by leaves of the tobacco plant tied in bundles; the above title (Richard Lee at Ye Golden Tobacco Roll in Panton Street near Leicester Fields) is on a frame which encloses the oval.  Within the latter the design represents the interior of a room, with ten gentlemen gathered near a round table on which is a bowl of punch; several of the gentlemen are smoking tobacco in long pipes; one of them stands up on our right and vomits; another, who is intoxicated, lies on the floor by the side of a chair; a fire of wood burns in the grate; on the wall hangs two pictures ... three men’s hats hang on pegs on the wall.”  Altogether this is an interesting and suggestive design, but hardly in the taste likely to commend itself to present day tradesmen.

A roll of tobacco, it may be noted, was a common form of payment to the Fleet parsons for their scoundrelly services.  Pennant, writing in 1791, describes how these men hung out their frequent signs of a male and female hand conjoined, with the legend written below:  “Marriages performed within.”  Before his shop walked the parson—­“a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin, or roll of tobacco.”