Halsall, Col. Charles Mordaunt, Penny, arms of the Earls of Peterborough, rev. value, edge engrailed, 17.32g/6h (DH 1). Usual small die flaw in reverse field, good very fine, nicely patinated (£80-100)

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 seems that they were issued shortly after this time and, therefore, they pre-date the pioneering Anglesey series (cf. Dykes, BNJ 2004, p.165)