The Swan

Ralph Sherwin issued this trade token, worth a half penny, for his business at the Swan in Clare Market (modern area between Clare Market and Houghton Street), Middlesex.

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 655; Obv inscription: RALPH.SHERWIN.AT.SWAN (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A swan (in field); Rev inscription: IN.CLARE.MARKETT.1668 (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = HIS / HALFE / PENNY / R.A.S. (in four lines of Roman capitals with triad of initials as bottom, in field).

See also token number 872 in the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, 62, The Norweb Collection: Tokens of the British Isles 1575-1750, Part VIII - Middlesex and Uncertain Pieces. Clare Market was named after John Holles, second Earl of Clare who established a small food market at Clement's Inn Fields in 1657, the market area spread over a wider area in time, with butchers' and grocers' shops covering many streets, 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), p. 69-70. The area lies in the City of Westminster, having formerly been part of Westminster, Middlesex.