1/2 Penny - James Stanley

James Stanley, the 10th Earl of Derby, held the lordship of the Isle of Man and authorized this coinage under the ancient feudal rights the Stanley family had exercised over the island since 1405. The 1709 issue was among the first struck copper coinage produced for Manx circulation with any regularity, filling a genuine shortage of small change that had long plagued local trade. The Stanleys' authority to coin money for the island was a privilege that Parliament would eventually find intolerable — the family's lordship was compulsorily purchased by the British Crown in 1765 in what Manx historians call the Revestment.