1/2 Penny Lancashire - Lancaster / John of Gaunt

Lancaster's 1792 halfpenny conders were issued under the wave of provincial token coinage that flooded Britain after the Royal Mint's near-complete failure to produce adequate regal copper through the 1780s. The DH#31 specifically references John of Gaunt — Duke of Lancaster, son of Edward III, and the man whose son seized the English throne as Henry IV — a choice of historical figure that tied Lancaster's civic identity directly to its medieval ducal past rather than to any contemporary merchant or industry.

Dalton and Hamer's cataloguing of this piece places it firmly within the Lancashire series. The token circulated locally as functional small change until Boulton's Soho Mint regal recoinage of 1797 displaced most provincial issues.