Phil on 25 Jun 2003  •  Link

The location above is vaguely right. The Latham Companion describes the location as "On the river side of the main street continuing the Strand towards Whitehall Palace, some eight doors south of Angel Court and just north of Scotland Yard." However, the inn was later known as the Rummer, and this 18th century map http://www.motco.com/Map/81002/Se… shows what I assume to be the Rummer on the other (non river side) of the road.

The Rummer is depicted in 'Night' by Hogarth: http://www.library.northwestern.e…

Glyn on 25 Sep 2003  •  Link

Its regular customers a generation or so earlier had included the Elizabethan dramatist Ben Jonson, and the Cavalier poet Robert Herrick who wrote the following:

An Ode for Ben Jonson

Ah Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the TRIPLE TUN;
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad?
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

My Ben!
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend;
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock,--the store
Of such a wit the world should have no more.

Bill on 15 Jun 2013  •  Link

General Monk lodged at this tavern on a memorable occasion in 1660.

But the next morning early, February 9 (1660), the General commanded the march of his army up into the City, without advising with any of his own officers. And having placed his main guards at the old Exchange, and other convenient places, he retired himself to the Three Tuns Tavern, near Guildhall, where he dispatched his orders.—Skinner's Life of Monk, p. 233.

Three Tuns are the arms of the Vintners' Company, and were consequently a favourite sign with Vintners. Besides the Guildhall Tavern there were in the City in the 17th century the Three Tuns in Ludgate Hill, in St. Paul's Churchyard, by the Conduit in Cheapside, in Cloth Fair, in Gracechurch Street, and one or two other places; and there are half a dozen Three Tuns in the City now.

I went to a little eating or chop house called The Three Tuns, where I used to dine for 13d., including a penny to the waiter.—Jeremy Bentham, Life, p. 133.

---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.