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."
John Timbs
Club Life of London Vol. II
London, 1866