The Maiden Head

This trade token, worth a farthing, was issued at the Maiden Head tavern, in Pudding Lane.

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 2283; Obv inscription: AT.YE.MAYDEN.HEADE (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = The Mercers' arms (in field); Rev inscription: IN.PVDIN.LANE.1657 (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = B.W.A. (triad of initials in Roman capitals, in field).

The issuer is known to have been Brian Appleby of St George Botolph Lane, Vinter, flourished, 1656-76, 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.89). See also, 96.66/916 and N2094, in the museum collection and token numbers 7487 and 7488 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.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). Pudding Lane runs north off Lower Thames Street, to Eastcheap, in Billingsgate Ward and Bridge Ward, in the City of London.