John Conyers (apothecary)

According to his younger friend John Bagford, Conyers "made it his chief Business to make curious Observations and to collect such Antiquities as were daily found in and about London.

"[2] His antiquarian collection won praise from the Athenian Mercury[1] and there was talk of opening it to the public, although this does not seem to have happened.

Conyers was present at the excavation in 1679 of the remains of a supposed elephant from a gravel bed at Battlebridge (King's Cross).

[1] A celebrated shield, bought by Conyers from a London ironmonger, was sold after his death by one of his daughters to John Woodward.

[7] Dr Woodward's Shield, also now in the British Museum, is now recognised as a classicising French Renaissance buckler of the mid-16th century, perhaps sold from the Royal Armouries of Charles II, but was thought by Woodward and others to be an original Roman work.