The Bell Tavern

This trade token, worth a farthing, was issued at the Bell tavern in Distaff Lane.

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 835; Obv inscription: THE.BELL.TAVERNE.IN (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A bell (in field); Rev inscription: DISTAFFE.LANE.1657 (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = R.A.T. (triad of initials in Roman capitals, in field).

The issuer, is likely to be Richard Taylor of St Margaret Moses, Vinter, Master 1677; wife Anne, see Percival Boyd, [Inhabitants of London]. Society of Genealogists, MS. 31118 and 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. 73. See also token number 6862 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 and 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.391. Distaff Lane lies off Cannon Street, in Bread Street Ward, in the City of London.