42 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
ORIGIN OF BANKING IN ENGLAND. 
Compiled by STUART STRATHY, from Macaulay and other 
sources, 
Lecture delivered on April 27, 1905, 
“Tn the reign of William, Prince of Orange, old men were still 
living who could remember the days when there was not a single 
banking house in the city of London. So late as the time of the 
Restoration of Charles II. every trader had his own strong box 
in his own house, and, when the acceptance was presented to him, 
told down the crowns and ecaroluses on his own counter. But 
the increase of wealth had produced its natural effect, the sub- 
division of labor. Before the end of the reign of Charles II. a 
new mode of paying and receiving money had come into fashion 
among the merchants of the eapital. A class of agents arose, 
whose office was to keep the cash of the commercial houses. This 
new branch of business naturally fell into the hands of goldsmiths, 
who were accustomed to traffic largely in the precious metals, 
and who had vaults in which great masses of bullion could lie 
secure from fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of the 
goldsmiths of Lombard street that all the payments in coin were 
made. Other traders gave and received nothing but paper. 
This great change did not take place without much opposi- 
tion and clamor. Old-fashioned merchants complained bitterly 
that a class of men who, thirty years before, had confined them- 
selves to their proper functions, and had made a fair profit by 
embossing silver bowls and chargers, by setting jewels for fine 
ladies, and by selling pistoles and dollars to gentlemen setting 
out for the Continent, had become the treasurers, and were fast 
becoming the masters, of the whole city. These usurers, it was 
said, played at hazard with what had been earned by the industry 
and hoarded by the thrift:of other men. If the dice turned up 
