The Naked Boy...could have been a reference to the baby Jesus

Is not Cupid a more likely candidate? He is, and was, always depicted naked, whereas the infant Jesus only sometimes is. Also, the infant Jesus would carry “papist” connotations for most Englishmen - though in the Manchester area perhaps that wouldn’t matter, might even be deliberate.

Thanks for linking to that post, Zythophile; your conclusion shows you’re a man of good sense:

The truth is that there is no single, easy answer to the origin of the Red Lion, such as “James I”, or “John of Gaunt”, but a multitude of answers, each one particular to a particular place. Each pub will have been called the Red Lion for its own specific reason, generally connected to specifically local concerns. The Red Lion, Cambridge will have a different origin for its name to the Red Lion, Cerne Abbas or the Red Lion, Osset, West Yorkshire, and only local research can tease out the likely true story for each different Red Lion pub.

It’s so hard to get people to abandon simplistic and/or romantic explanations!

Thank you for your kind comments, LH, much appreciated.

Syntinen Laulu - 02 April 2008 04:30 AM

The Naked Boy...could have been a reference to the baby Jesus

Is not Cupid a more likely candidate? He is, and was, always depicted naked, whereas the infant Jesus only sometimes is. Also, the infant Jesus would carry “papist” connotations for most Englishmen - though in the Manchester area perhaps that wouldn’t matter, might even be deliberate.

Indeed ... several families had Cupid on their arms or as their crest, including the nicely punning Hyman family - when Cupid carries a torch it’s a “hymeneal” torch, which, I’m making a WAG here, may be where “carrying a torch for someone” comes from - and crests contribute to pub signs just like arms on shields do, for example the Sheaf of Arrows, Cranborne, Dorset - a sheaf of arrows is the crest of the Cecil family, Marquesses of Salisbury, and Viscount Cranborne is the title borne by the eldest son of the Marquess.

only local research can tease out the likely true story for each different Red Lion pub

Agreed.  This applies not just to Red Lion pubs, but to all pubs.  So, until someone researches at local level and produces definitive, written proof of the origin of pub names, all we can do is speculate, which is always enjoyable to research, write, read and demolish.  I’d be the last to try to stop anyone.

ElizaD - 02 April 2008 10:59 PM

... until someone researches at local level and produces definitive, written proof of the origin of pub names, all we can do is speculate, which is always enjoyable to research, write, read and demolish.  I’d be the last to try to stop anyone.

No, I’ve no objection to speculation either, I greatly enjoy speculation, as long as it doesn’t ignore logic or easily discoverable facts.

What we’ve always done round here.

Image removed, link to see it

Charles II Stuart (1630-1685), named The Black Boy

The Stuart family plays a central role in my research on the black and coloured royalty in Europe from the Renaissance to the French Revolution: 1500-1789. I describe this period as ‘Reversed Apartheid,’ where it was a coloured and black minority which dominated white Europe. The many NPG engravings of Charles II show a royal, black skinned child and later as a black skinned man, who came from royal, black-skinned parents. How is such a thing possible and why don’t we hear about it? My research shows that Europe was dominated by a black and coloured minority elite, who considered themselves nobles. They symbolised their ethnicity by the little Moor or Black Page we find on many portraits of the nobility. This Moor is a symbol for the elusive term of Bleu Blood, and points to their ancestry and ideology. They are shown as white’s, just as Charles II is shown on many paintings, but most of them were dark of skin. This can usually be seen on engravings. Some painted portraits were later ‘whitened’ with beige paint. Some even had dark skin and classical African features as Charlotte Sophie of Mecklenburg Strelitz does on the Sir Ramsay portraits. She was the queen of George III and the grandmother to Queen Victoria. They were: “A European, intermarrying, fixed mulatto nation, with a black identity and members which looked more African or Asian or white.” I consider the French Revolution as the end of this apartheid like oppression. The coloured nobility then turned their attention to ‘breeding’ white offspring.

Egmond Codfried

History of The Black Boy Inn
Source: The Black Boy Inn

Over the years at the Black Boy Inn, there has been much debate as to how this lovely country inn came to gain its name. Built in the mid 16th Century, history leads us to believe that it may have been named after King Charles II who was born with a very dark complexion and was, during the civil war, sometimes referred to as ‘the black boy’. The following extract is taken from English Monarchs, The House of Stuart.
“Charles’ appearance was anything but English, with his sensuous curling mouth, swarthy complexion, black hair and dark eyes, he much resembled his Italian maternal grandmother, Marie de Medici’s side of the family. During his escape after the Battle of Worcester, he was referred to as ‘a tall, black man’ in the parliamentary wanted posters. One of the nick-names he acquired was ‘the black boy’.”

However there are other stories too. Reflecting the early slave trade, there is the story of the young black boy found hiding in the cellar and also that of the local village woman who purportedly gave birth rather unexpectedly to a dark coloured child. Turning to the archives, the Banbury Museum on the other hand tells us that prior to being an inn, the Black Boy may have been a tobacconist as they used to be called Black Boys around this time.
If you have any thoughts or ideas, do let us know. The same applies to our resident ghost. None of the current team has met with her yet!

Some National Portrait Gallery portraits of King Charles II Stuart

Image 1

Image 2

Image3

Image 4

Image 5

[Edit: embedded urls to eliminate horizontal scrolling--dw]

SO WHO WAS KING CHARLES II?

http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/stuart_3.htm

“Charles’ appearance was anything but English, with his sensuous curling mouth, swarthy complexion, black hair and dark eyes, he much resembled his Italian maternal grandmother, Marie de Medici’s side of the family. During his escape after the Battle of Worcester, he was referred to as ‘a tall, black man’ in the parliamentary wanted posters. One of the nick-names he acquired was ‘the black boy’. His height, at six feet two, probably inherited from his Danish paternal grandmother, Anne of Denmark, also set him apart from his contemporaries in a time when the average Englishman was far smaller than today.”

Some ignorant misinformation on the internet:
http://www.geocities.com/vue2sewell/CharlesII...

“CHARLES was born in 1630 and was nicknamed the Black Boy because his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, was ashamed of his dark and swarthy appearance.”

Image removed, link to see it

Image removed, link to see it

ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI

Queen Henriette Maria, Charles II mother, was the daughter of Maria de Medici, Queen of France, from a black noble family. She was the sister of Louis XIII and the aunt of Louis XIV, The Sunking. Many members of these families are described or shown as ‘swarthy’ and many as Alessandro the Medici, even have African facial treats. The National Portrat Gallery-site has some black engravings of a extremely black skinned queen Henriette and her black skinned husband Charles I Stuart. A grandson of black skinned Mary of Scots, who was beheaded by orders of her niece Elizabeth I Tudor.

Egmond Codfried

Image removed, link to see it

Louise de Kerouaille

Image removed, link to see it

The Countess of Lichfield with a ‘Black Boy.’

Louise de Kerouaille from France was a mistress of Charles II Stuart. She was from noble extraction which she symbolises by posing intimately with the symbol of Bleu Blood, a beautiful black child who offers her white pearls. There are many portraits of this kind in European art. The first thing a noble person wants to tell the world is of his or her Bleu Blood, which instantly gives power, privileges and riches to a person.

The nobility presents themselves as having Bleu Blood, which meant that they were also biologically superior. Nobility did not come with landholdings, but was something in their DNA. Because they choose a African with classical treats I conclude that they speak about their ethnic origins. The old French and Dutch nobility were descendents from the Franks, free people who conquered the Dutch Germanic tribes and the Roman Gallic peoples living in France. The Latin speaking Franks most likely descended from the Nubians and Iranians which Julius Caesar brought to Europe in 50 BC to fight the Germanic peoples, and who stayed on.

The Countess of Lichfield was considered an illegitimate daughter of Charles II Stuart and Barbara the Villiers, his maitresse-en-titre. She is shown with a different looking black who resembles her father when he was a child. This I consider a very witty use of the symbol for her Bleu Bloodedness. The face is whitened of course as no child of a swarthy father as Charles II could be so blindingly white.

Egmond Codfried

Don’t bother arguing.  This is a man on a mission.
I have been at it, day and night, for the last three years.

Wow.  Thanks for that context—I wondered what this guy was on about!

The website where Mr. Codfried got many if not all of his images has this expressed caveat:

Do not link directly to any graphics on this site, nor to a painting or engraving. Linking directly to an image file is bandwidth robbery.

It’s also just bad manners.  Every time this thread is read, all of the images have to be loaded from their server.

The University of Leicester has made the same request.  “No part of the University of Leicester Website may be posted or in anyway mirrored on the World Wide Web or any other part of the Internet without permission from the University of Leicester.”

Might be a good idea to delete the images.

The five links to the National Portrait Gallery don’t work for me.  I don’t know if Dave munged them when he edited them or if they didn’t work to begin with.

As far as Charles II being the “Black Boy” of pub names, a BBC publication, pdf downloadable here, offers support:

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Charles II and his Reign
...
8. Pubs across England called The Black Boy are
generally named after Charles. It was an early
nickname for him (coined by his mother) because
of the darkness of his skin and eyes.

Of course, aldi had already cited this suggested origin, and Mr. Codfried’s wider historical claims are off-topic for this forum.

I wouldn’t place much credence in that BBC article. “Fact” No 10 says that Charles II “is often credited” with popularising champagne-drinking in England. “Often credited” is of course a journalistic convention for “we heard it somewhere and don’t care if it’s true - it sounds fun so we’re printing it”. In fact it isn’t true. It’s generally agreed among wine historians that the man who popularised champagne-drinking in England was the refugee Marquis de St-Evremond; Charles II just happened to be on the throne at the time.