Lancashire, Halsall, Col. Charles Mordaunt, Penny, arms of the Earls of Peterborough, rev. value, edge engrailed, 16.16g/6h (DH 1). Usual small die flaw in reverse field, good very fine, nicely patinated (£40-50)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of 18th Century Tokens formed by Dr David L Spence.

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Collection

Provenance:
Fawcett/Litman Collection.

Col Charles Lewis Mordaunt (c.1729-1808), a former Guards officer appointed JP in March 1763, came into possession of the Mohun estate at Halsall, near Ormskirk, in the late 1760s. A decade later he had built a cotton mill there and by 1782 was employing 160 women and children. As early as December 1783 John Moon, Mordaunt’s superintendant, was in touch with Boulton & Watt, enquiring about having tokens made; it would seem that they were issued shortly after this time and, if this were the case, they would pre-date the pioneering Anglesey series. A document on the state of the copper coinage in circulation in Liverpool in 1791 infers that Mordaunt’s pennies were, by then, not in circulation (cf. Chaloner, SCMB 1972, pp.402-3). Today, Halsall Hall is an apartment block