King’s House in Cornhill

Stow (1598 155) recounts a common belief relating to the Pope’s Head Tavern and the other stone buildings surrounding it: that it was at some point the property of the monarch, possibly as far back as King John. Sugden (418) accepts this as a possibility, but other writers have been skeptical; Joseph Moser, writing in The European Magazine, and London Review (14), says that
...it has been ſaid, that the Pope’s Head Tavern, Cornhill, was formerly one of King John’s palaces; but this ſuggestion aroſe merely from its having upon its front, which faced the high ſtreet, and was of ſtone, and, for the period, ſpacious and elegant, the arms of England before the time of Edward the IIId; viz. three lions paſſant, gardant, ſupported by two angels handſomely and largely carved : therefore a much more probable conjecture is, that, even in thoſe early days, this houſe was a tavern, and that the achievement which we have juſt noticed was intended for a ſign.

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