The Boar's Head

John Sapcott issued this trade token, worth a penny, for his business at the Boar's Head tavern, in Great Eastcheap (now Eastcheap).

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 1259; Obv inscription: IOHN. SAPCOTT. AT. YE. BORESHED (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A boar's head (in field); Rev inscription: TAVERNE.IN.GREAT.EASTCHEAP (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = HIS / 1D / I.E.S. (in three lines of Roman capitals with triad of initials as bottom, in field).

John Sapcott, Vintne, flourished, 1667-1678; wife Elizabeth, see Kenneth Rogers, The Boar's Head tavern in Eastcheap, with some Account of the Parish of St Michael's Crooked Lane (London, 1928), pp. 29, 37-38, 41-42). The Boar's Head tavern burnt down in the Great Fire of London and was rebuilt in 1668, when John Sapcott seems to have become the lease holder, 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). See also token number 7032 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. Great Eastcheap (now Eastcheap), lies in Candlewick Ward, in the City of London.