uds of the "great fire," indicating that all was
well with him, and the Rainbow still radiant. On the reverse the medal
was inscribed, "In Fleet Street--His Half Penny."

A large number of these trade coins were put out by coffee-house keepers
and other tradesmen in the seventeenth century as evidence of an amount
due, as stated thereon, by the issuer to the holder. Tokens originated
because of the scarcity of small change. They were of brass, copper,
pewter, and even leather, gilded. They bore the name, address, and
calling of the issuer, the nominal value of the piece, and some
reference to his trade. They were readily redeemed, on presentation, at
their face value. They were passable in the immediate neighborhood,
seldom reaching farther than the next street. C.G. Williamson writes:

Tokens are essentially democratic; they would never have been
issued but for the indifference of the Government to a public need;
and in them we have a remarkable instance of a people forcing a
legislature to comply with demands at once reasonable and
imperative. Taken as a whole series, they are homely and quaint,
wanting in beauty, but not without a curious domestic art of their
own.

Robinson finds an exception to the general simplicity in the tokens
issued by one of the Exchange Alley houses. The dies of these tokens are
such as to have suggested the skilled workmanship of John Roettier. The
most ornate has the head of a Turkish sultan at that time famed for his
horrible deeds, ending in suicide; its inscription runs:

Morat ye Great Men did mee call;
Where Eare I came I conquer'd all.

A number of the most interesting coffee-house keepers' tokens in the
Beaufoy collection in the Guildhall Museum were photographed for this
work, and are shown herewith. It will be observed that many of the
traders of 1660-75 adopted as their trade sign a hand pouring coffee
from a pot, invariably of the Turkish-ewer pattern. Morat (Amurath) and
Soliman were frequent coffee-house signs in the seventeenth century.

J.H. Burn, in his _Catalogue of Traders' Tokens_, recites that in 1672
"divers persons who presumed ... to stamp, coin, exchange and distribute
farthings, halfpence and pence of brass and copper" were "taken into
custody, in order to a severe prosecution"; but upon submission, their
offenses were forgiven, and it was not until the year 1675 that the
private token ceased to pass current.

[Illustratio