Let none the outward Vulture fear,
No Vulture host inhabits here.
If too well used you deem ye then
Take your revenge and come agen.

Taverns in those days were the resort of most of the prominent men
of the day, and were used in the same manner by them as the clubs
of the present time, as a friendly meeting place for business men,
authors, artists, lawyers, doctors, actors and the fashionable
persons of leisured ease with no particular calling, all of whom
treated "mine host" as an equal and not as a servant.

And so we find that men like Addison and Steele were much in
evidence at these friendly gatherings of their day; that Jonathan
Swift and his coteric foregathered in some cosy corner to discuss
the pros and cons of that great fraud, the South Sea Bubble; that
Daniel Defoe was a constant guest of the host of his time; that
John Wilkes and his fellow-members of "The Hell Fire Club" used the
house for their meetings, and many others the recital of whose names
would resolve into a mere catalogue.

In 1666 the inn succumbed to the Great Fire; but after the
rebuilding its fame was re-established and has never since waned.
John Strype, the ecclesiastical historian, in his addenda to Stow's
Survey of London, records that "Near Ball Alley was the George Inn,
since the fire rebuilt, with very good houses and warehouses, being
a large open yard, and called George Yard, at the farther end of
which is the 'George and Vulture' Tavern, which is a large house and
having great trade, and having a passage into St. Michael's Alley."