1/2 Penny Middlesex – Whitfield's / Long Live The King

Middlesex was the most prolific county for 18th-century trade token production, and 1795 was the peak year of the second conder token wave — driven largely by the Royal Mint's near-total failure to produce regal copper coinage in the preceding decades. Whitfield's token falls squarely in the merchant-advertising tradition, where a halfpenny-sized copper piece served commercial exchange while doubling as a moving advertisement. The "Long Live The King" sentiment was politically pointed in 1795: George III had faced assassination attempts, anti-war riots, and the stone-throwing attack on his coach en route to Parliament that October.