The Mermaid Tavern

This trade token, worth a farthing, was issued at the Mermaid tavern in Cornhill, Cornhill Ward, City of London.

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 729 (variation); Obv inscription: THE.MERMAYDE.TAVERN (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A mermaid (in field); Rev inscription: IN.CORN.HILL.1651 (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = W.M.T. (triad of initials in Roman capitals, in field).

This issuer may be William Tapping, Vinter, md. Mary Souherly 1640, bd. St Michael Cornhill 1658, see Kenneth Rogers, 'On some issuers of seventeenth-century London tokens whose names were not known to Boyne and WIlliamson', NC, 5th series 8 (1928), p.72. See 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 365 and token number 6808 in the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, 59, The Norweb Collection: Tokens of the British Isles 1575-1750, Part VII - City of London.