Tokens and Jettons

Well underway, a projected new Catalogue & History of Irish Communion Tokens will chart the history of the Irish Presbyterian’s ‘token of admission’ to the Eucharist. Giving a brief overview of the history of Irish Communion tokens, this ‘working paper’ calls for engagement and input, as set out in the penultimate paragraph.

In the late 1970s the author’s father, Harold J.M. Good, began a search for the surviving dies used to strike seventeenth century tokens. When he passed away in 1984,(1) the project was continued and updated with new findings. The results will be published in the next year or two. The following notes present two contemporary documents relating to the town issues of seventeenth century tokens from Hampshire. The first is a series of transcriptions from 1669 to 1680 for Southampton Corporation, found in the Southampton Assembly Book,(2,3) and is published here for the first time. The second revisits a document from the Winchester Book of Ordinances from 1669,(4) first published by H.S. Gill in 1889.(5) Several minor discrepancies were found between Gill’s transcription and the new readings. Gill’s original transcription is reproduced with corrections, along with images from the microfiche.

The four pieces presented here are all from the collection of the late Dr. David Rogers. Although they are obviously connected, they were not acquired at the same time. Though all are Æ and the style is very similar to that of 17th century tokens, their origins remain elusive.

This note presents a group of eleven cardboard advertising tokens which bear a printed design on one side of a photographic image of a very worn Victorian bun head coin. One is a half penny and the other ten are pennies. Background research on the issuers reveals a range of business activities, and possible dates of issue, as well as some common factors. The rarity of the pieces and geographical spread across the country means that these pieces would not normally be brought together for study. If any readers can add further tokens or fill the gaps in the business histories, please get in touch via the blog.

Publishing a book in late 2023 that could have had the title Bedfordshire Tokens – Everything that isn’t Seventeenth Century was always likely to lead to the discovery of new pieces. This note adds illustrations of a few pieces that were known at the time of writing, but had not been located for photography, along with the predicted new examples of tokens used by farmers and Market Gardeners along the Greensands Ridge.

This note presents a very recent shilling token issued for Manchester Christmas Market, 2013. Correspondence at the time with the designing artist and Manchester City Council revealed the story behind the token. The market is still going strong, unlike most of the web pages used only a decade ago  – a useful reminder that modern tokens need recording before they are forgotten.

This final instalment brings the story to a close with a simple graphical method to show how tokens were the likely precursors of coins and all currency. The only difference is that tokens are issued by individuals or small groups of people for local use and coins and currency are issued by a state or official body and defined to be current by law. Both tokens and coins rely on rules and an understanding of how they are to be used. The token story is bookended with a neolithic clay cone from Beldibi c.9000 BC and a stone cone used in a Bedfordshire pub in 1990. And here is access to the earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2

This Blog, and parts 2 and 3 to follow shortly, have been produced following a few requests for a permanent record of a talk that I gave at this year’s Token Congress. Each of the slides presented in this first instalment is essentially a summary of a whole talk given at some point in the past 20-30 years. Topics covered include; regal shillings, counterfeit shillings, token shillings, local tokens, world tokens and postal orders.

For well over a century the only known example of this seventeenth century token was a very corroded specimen held in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The surname is incomplete but begins DES and the central shield design is too worn to be identified. This is the only “incomplete” Cambridgeshire token to be listed in Searle, Williamson and Dickinson.As part of a project to study the tokens of Cambridgeshire two further pieces have recently been found that allow the description to be completed. Background details of the issuer and his family are presented that make connections to Oliver Cromwell and the witch trials in New England a generation later.