The first problem is that Judd’s almshouses have never been anywhere near Judd Street. They were originally several miles away in Bishopsgate and are now in Palmer’s Green.
Secondly, within a ten minutes walk from the Skinners’ Arms, you can find the Norfolk Arms, the Harrison Arms (now the Harrison), the Lucas Arms, the Northumberland Arms, the Lexington Arms (now the Lexington), the Carpenters’ Arms and the Calthorpe Arms. (There is also the Betjaman Arms in St Pancras Station, but that’s only been there for a year or two.) Within a mile there are also the Marlborough Arms, the College Arms, the Mortimer Arms, the Newton Arms, the Wilmington Arms, the Lyttelton Arms, another Carpenters’ Arms, another Northumberland Arms and two different Exmouth Arms.
Within that same roughly-defined area, there were four sets of almshouses - the St George’s Bloomsbury almshouses, the St Giles-in-the-Fields almshouses (both of which have now merged), the St Pancras almshouses (now in Maitland Park) and, a bit further afield, the St Martin’s almshouses.
In other words, none of the many pubs in that bit of London with ‘Arms’ in its name was named after a local almshouse.
I mean that alms might have referred to the act of giving whether it be almshouses or instead a local hospital or a school for poor children and that the name came from a recognition of the charitable deed done.
And I offered you some. The Bingley Arms, named so in 1780 when purchased by Lord Bingley. You can of course then say “Yes, but what about earlier times?” or “Yes, but he was created Baron, not of an old house.” And someone can dig for earlier records, and then you can go “Yes, but some alehouses could have been named ‘something alms’ after an almshouse even if that one isn’t”.
The fact is “Arms” meaning “Arms” is well established and matches other use of heraldy in naming alehouses and inns: Pub names - Wikipedia There’s really ample proof that’s what it means. Your theory on the other hand only has your tiny sample of observations, completely lacking in in depth research and contradicted by common knowledge and APBs small survey.
OK, I’ve changed my mind. I have read that Richard II in 1393 decreed that ale houses must show a sign. Obviously then, a coat of arms or a depiction of heraldry would play a part in this. The local gentry would in some way be responsible for the keeping of this law and so they could hardly object to their own coat of arms beng used in the signage of some of these pubs. I didn’t think that very old pubs had names up until finding this but since they were forced to show signage since 1393 then they would have gotten names and it is likely that heraldry and coats of arms would have been used.
I’m probably going to regret this, but here goes anyway…
That 1393 law is bogus. It’s an example of confused information being endlessly repeated uncritically. Moreover, I think I can pinpoint the source of that confusion.
The standard claim is that in 1393 Richard II passed a law stating that, ‘Whosoever shall brew ale in the town with intention of selling it must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale.’
But the 1393 Parliament passed no such statute. That is why the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica instead says that, ‘As early as the 14th century there was a law in England compelling them [publicans] to exhibit signs, for in 1393 the prosecution of a publican for not doing so is recorded.’ So it was not that the law dates from 1393 but that it can be inferred that a law to that effect must have been in existence by then.
But even that is dubious. What is being alluded to is the case of a brewer, Florence North, who was prosecuted in 16 Richard II for failing to display a sign. The printed source for that is Daniel Lyson, The Environs of London (1792-4), ii, p. 74. However, that prosecution appears to have been in the manorial court of the dean and chapter of Westminster and so, strictly speaking, is only evidence for the existence of such a requirement within the limits of the Westminster Abbey manors.
Moreover, the wording of this non-existant 1393 statute comes from elsewhere. It actually derives from an order by Parliament from 9 Henry VI. Information about this must have originally come from Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotton’s 1908 book, The History of Signboards, p. 10, because the original is in Latin and the English version always quoted is the translation given by Larwood and Hotton. Just as significantly, the sentence about this follows on immediately from the sentence in which they mention the 1393 case. It looks very much like some later writer will have conflated the two. But it gets worse. As Larwood and Hotton make clear, the order of 9 Henry VI applied only to Cambridge.
So both these bits of information are certainly precious early fragments hinting at the use of signs by brewers. But they are not evidence of any general law in that period.
Commons sense suggests that there would be no need for a law compelling publicans to hang out signs; they would have a commercial interest in doing so.
But, given that they were going to hang out signs, putting on them heraldic symbols with prestigious local assocations would be a pretty obvious thing to do.
