William was the only child of William II, Prince of Orange and Princess Mary (1631-1660), eldest daughter of Charles I of England. He was born at The Hague in Holland on 4 November 1650, a few days after his father’s death. In 1677 he married his cousin Princess Mary at St James’s Palace in London and they returned to live in Holland. Although a Protestant herself, Mary’s father, who succeeded as James II in 1685, was a Roman Catholic and not popular in England because of his religion. When he had a son the English authorities did not want another Roman Catholic monarch so in 1688 they called on William to come to England and march against James to take the throne and reign jointly with Mary. However, before William reached London James had fled to France. William III and Mary II were crowned as joint monarchs in the Abbey on 11 April 1689.

William III Halfpenny Coinage

William Halfpennies have two different obverse dies and three different reverse dies. Obverse 1 die William is wearing a wreath made up of eight leaves and on obverse 2 there is no wreath arrangement. Reverse one die  ( 1695, 96, 97, 98, ) Britannia legend is split in two just like all reverses to come in the future with the date in the exergue, reverse two  ( 1698 1699 ) the date is in the legend and reverse three  ( 1699 1700 1701 ) is similar to reverse one but Britannia is smaller and her spray of leaves is far lower with date positioned in exergue, with over all inferior workman ship. These coins are very difficult to acquire well struck and very often theirs weak areas and patches.

This entire series of halfpenny coinage, including Farthings was minted by contractors and every attempt to save money to make them self’s money was put into place, faulty blanks which were cast and not rolled, illiterate and foreign workers employed along with badly made dies gave us the worse made coinage in history but a collectors dream.

Weight and size tolerance are 8.9 – 11.5 grams & 28-29 mm Rev alignment is down. Any coin out of these tolerances would be considered desirable, significantly out of these tolerances would be extremely desirable.