retired from his duties, obtained a pension, and the same year died. His property amounted to £200,000, besides £1,000 a year landed estate. He had made large sums by loans during the war, a certain amount of which were always reserved for the cashier's office. It is supposed the faithful old Bank servant had lent large sums to the Goldsmiths, the great stockbrokers, the contractors for many of these loans, as he left them £500 each to buy mourning-rings.
The Bullion Committee of 1809 was moved for by Mr. Horner to ascertain if the rise in the price of gold did not arise from the over-issue of notes. There was a growing feeling that bank-notes did not represent the specified amount of gold, and the committee recommended a speedy return to cash payments. In Parliament Mr. Fuller, that butt of the House, proposed if the guinea was really worth 24s., to raise it at once to that price. Guineas at this time were exported to France in large numbers by smugglers in boats made especially for the purpose. The Bank, which had before issued dollars, now circulated silver tokens for 5s. 6d., 3s., and 1s. 6d.
Peel's currency bill of 1819 secured a gradual return of cash payments, and the old metallic standard was restored. It was Peel's great principle that a national bank should always be prepared to pay specie for its notes on demand, a principle he afterwards worked out in the Bank Charter. The same year a new plan was devised to prevent bank-notes being forged. The Committee's report says:—"A number of squares will appear in chequer-work upon the note, filled with hair lines in elliptic curves of various degrees of eccentricity, the squares to be alternately of red and black lines; the perfect mathematical coincidence of the extremity of the lines of different colours on the sides of the squares will be effected by machinery of singular fidelity. But even with the use of this machinery a person who has not the key to the proper disposition would make millions of experiments to no purpose. Other obstacles to imitation will also be presented in the structure of the note; but this is the one principally relied upon. It is plain that any failure in the imitation will be made manifest to the observation of the most careless, and the most skilful merchants who have seen the operation declare that the note cannot be imitated. The remarkable machine works with three cylinders, and the impression is made by small convex cylindrical plates."
In 1821 the real re-commencement of specie payments took place. In 1822 Turner, a Bank clerk, stole £10,000 by altering the transfer book. The rascal, however, was too clever for the Bank, and escaped. In 1822 Mr. Pascoe Grenfell put the profits of the Bank at twenty-five millions, in twenty-five years, after seven per cent. was divided.
By Fauntleroy's (the banker) forgeries in 1824, the Bank lost £360,000, and the interest alone, which was regularly paid, had amounted to £9,000 or £10,000 a year. Fauntleroy's bank was in Berners Street. He had forged powers of attorney to enable him to sell out stock. An epicure and a voluptuary, he had lived in extraordinary luxury. In a private desk was found a list of his forgeries, ending with these words: "The Bank first began to refuse our acceptances, thereby destroying the credit of our house. The Bank shall smart for it." After Fauntleroy was hung at Newgate there were obscure rumours in the City that he had been saved by a silver tube being placed in his throat, and that he had escaped to Paris.
Having given a summary of the history of the Bank of England, we now propose to select a series of anecdotes, arranged by dates, which will convey a fuller and more detailed notion of the romance and the vicissitudes of banking life.
The Bank was first established (says Francis) in Mercers' Hall, and afterwards in Grocers' Hall, since razed for the erection of a more stately structure. Here, in one room, with almost primitive simplicity, were gathered all who performed the duties of the establishment. "I looked into the great hall where the Bank is kept," says the graceful essayist of the day, "and was not a little pleased to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their several stations according to the parts they hold in that just and regular economy."
Mr. Michael Godfrey, to whose exertions, with those of William Paterson, may be traced the successful establishment of the Bank, met with a somewhat singular fate, on the 17th of July, 1695. At that time the transmission of specie was difficult and full of hazard, and Mr. Godfrey left his peaceful avocations to visit Namur, then vigorously besieged by the English monarch. The deputy-governor, willing to flatter the King, anxious to forward his mission, or possibly imagining the vicinity of the Sovereign to be the safest place he could choose, ventured into the trenches. "As you are no adventurer in the trade of war, Mr. Godfrey," said William, "I think you should not expose yourself to the hazard of it." "Not being more exposed than your Majesty," was the courtly reply, "should I be excusable if I showed more concern?" "Yes," returned William; "I am in my duty, and therefore have a more reasonable claim to preservation." A cannon-ball at this moment answered the "reasonable claim to preservation" by killing Mr. Godfrey; and it requires no great stretch of imagination to fancy a saturnine smile passing over the countenance of the monarch, as he beheld the fate of the citizen who paid so heavy a penalty for playing the courtier in the trenches of Namur.
On the 31st of August, 1731, a scene was presented which strongly marks the infatuation and ignorance of lottery adventurers. The tickets for the State lottery were delivered out to the subscribers at the Bank of England; when the crowd becoming so great as to obstruct the clerks, they told them, "We deliver blanks to-day, but to-morrow we shall deliver the prizes;" upon which many, who were by no means for blanks, retired, and by this bold stratagem the clerks obtained room to proceed in their business. In this lottery, we read, "Her Majesty presented his Royal Highness the Duke with ten tickets."
In 1738 the roads were so infested by highwaymen, and mails were so frequently stopped by the gentlemen in the black masks, that the post-master made a representation to the Bank upon the subject, and the directors in consequence advertised an issue of bills payable at "seven days' sight," that, in case of the mail being robbed, the proprietor of stolen bills might have time to give notice.