This tureen comes from a large dinner service commissioned in 1790 by William Henry (1765 - 1837), third son of George II, Duke of Clarence and later William IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland. The commission is mentioned in the diary of John Flight, a partner in the Worcester firm with his brother Joseph and his father Thomas, who purchased the company in 1783 from the associates of the late Dr. John Wall. In an entry of January 24, 1790, Flight noted that the firm was employing their best painters on designs for a service for the Duke of Clarence: three sample plates had been sent to London, the duke had chosen one decorated with the figure of Hope, ordered a service costing over 700 pounds, and allowed a year for its manufacture. Appointed in 1790 to his first command and promoted to rear admiral, William had a life-long interest in the navy, reflected in the decorations of this service, with the allegorical figure of Hope posed in various marine settings.

The service for the Duke of Clarence was not Flight's first royal commission. In John Flight's diary is recorded the visit to the shop and factory in August 1788 of the king and his family, who ordered a great deal of porcelain and granted Flight a patent allowing the company to call itself "Royal." John Pennington, who painted Hope in gray monochrome for the Clarence service, also painted monochrome portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte. When Pennington first came to Worcester in 1789, he was described by Flight as "a very clever painter in London"; shortly after completion of the Clarence service, he was made the firm's chief artist and foreman of the works. Kathryn B. Hiesinger, from Guides to European Decorative Arts: Porcelain (1984), p. 44.