The Coach and Horses Inn

John Game issued this trade token, worth a half penny, for his business at sign of the The Coach and Horses in Aldgate within (now Aldgate Street), Aldgate Ward, City of London.

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 66; Obv inscription: IOHN.GAME.AT.THE.COACH (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A coach, below it ½ (in field); Rev inscription: AND.HORSES.AT.ALLGATE (around field, in Roman capitals) = A coach, below it ½ (in field).

Though the inscription is given simply as 'ALLGATE', the Coach and Horses was situtated on the south side of Fenchurch Street in the ward of Aldgate within. See number 6470 in the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, 59, The Norweb Collection: Tokens of the British Isles 1575-1750, Part VI - City of London. The Coach and Horses might have had a livery stable or operated some sort of hackney service. Samuel Pepys hired two horses from Mr Game in 1663: '...and after a glass of wine, we all took horses and I (upon a horse hired from Mr Game)... (1st May, 1663) and later in the year '..and so to Games's, where I got a horse and rode thither very pleasantly...' (The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a new and complete transcription; ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews (London, 1970-83), iv. 119-20, 218. John Game seems to have been resident in this neighbourhood from 1651 (K. Rogers, Signs and Taverns round about Old London Bridge, including Gracechurch Street, Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street (London, 1937) p 149. See also J. H. Burn, A Descriptive Catalogue of the London Traders, Tavern, and Coffee-house Tokens current in the Seventeenth Century, presented to the Corporation Library by Henry Benjamin Hanbury Beaufoy, 2nd ed. (London, 1855), no. 78.