The Maiden Head

This trade token, worth a farthing, was issued for a business at the Maiden's Head tavern, in Hartshorn Lane (now Northumberland Street), Middlesex. The tavern was likely to have been used by the company of mercers (textile traders), as the name relates to the Mercers' Company arms (as seen on the token).

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 1315; Obv inscription: AT.THE.MAIDEN.HEAD (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A bust of the Mercers' Company maiden (in field); Rev inscription: HARTS.HORNE.LANE.END (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = T.M.H. (triad of initials in Roman capitals, in field).

See also token number 8724 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. The arms of the Worshipful Company of Mercers are: Gules issuant from a bank of clouds a figure of the Virgin couped at the shoulders proper vested in a crimson robe adorned with gold, the neck encircled by a jewelled necklace, crined Or and wreathed about the temples with a chaplet of roses alternately Argent and of the first, and crowned with a celestial crown, the whole within a bordure of clouds also proper (J. Bromley, The Armorial Bearings of the Guilds of London: a record of the heraldry of the surviving companies with historical notes; with...[illustrations] by Heather Child...(London, 1960). It is possible that the use of The Maidenhead was in compliment to Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII, who's family adopted the maidenhead as one of their badges, 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.95. For additional information see also A. F.Sutton 'I Sing of a Maiden: The Story of the Maiden of the Mercers' Company (London, 1998). Hartshorn Lane (now Northumberland Street), formerly lay in St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Middlesex, it is now part of the City of Westminster.