The Cock and Hen

Thomas Elkin issued this trade token, worth a half penny, for his business in Thames Street (now Upper Thames Street and Lower Thames Street).

Boyne & Williamson (1889) reference London number 3091; Obv inscription: THOMAS.ELKIN.AT.THE (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = A cock and a hen (in field); Rev inscription: IN.THAMES.STREET.1667 (around field, in Roman capitals) Device = HIS / HALF / PENY / T.E.E. (in four lines of Roman capitals with triad of initials as bottom, in field). [Boyne has T.T.E].

See also, A805, in the museum collection. 'In Thames Street at the south-west corner of Suffolk lane...on which before the Fire stood two messuages, one called "the Cock and Pye", occupied by Thomas Elken, cooke' (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.93, as cited in token number 7720 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). Suffolk Lane runs north off Upper Thames Street, in Dowgate Ward and Walbrook Ward, in the City of London (see Henry A. Harben, A Dictionary of London (London, 1918).