1/2 Daalder '1/2 St. Oswalddaalder' - William IV

The counts of Bergh occupied an awkward political position throughout the sixteenth century — nominally within the Habsburg Netherlands yet repeatedly drawn toward Orange and later Spanish factional pressures. William IV, who held the lordship from 1546 to 1586, issued this half daalder under the rights of a semi-autonomous lord still exercising mint privilege, a prerogative the Habsburg central administration was steadily working to extinguish across the Low Countries. The St. Oswald type takes its informal name from the patron saint associated with the Bergh territory, a designation used by collectors rather than anything struck into the coin itself.

By William IV's death in 1586, the lordship's independent minting had effectively ended under wartime pressures of the Dutch Revolt.