liuynge" [living], some "by Idilnes," others "by vnnecessary busynes."

Sir John Lubbock,* banker and scientist, in an inaugural address as president of the Bankers' Institute of London, in 1879, shows how slow our English bankers are to discard old methods, by relating that not until 1826 did the old wooden tallies entirely pass out of use. "The tally," says Lubbock, "was a willow stick, about five feet long, an inch in depth and thickness, with the four sides roughly squared." On one of the four sides the amount of money involved was expressed in notches. On each of the two sides next to the notched side, the description of the payment was written. The stick was split in half through the notches, one half constituting the tally was given to the person making the payment, the other, the counter tally, was kept at the bank as a stub!

History tells us that bankers were wont to deposit their money for safe-keeping in the Tower of London; but Charles I broke up the custom by seizing all the money there, some £120,000. Later, the Exchequer itself was closed by Charles II, and all the money in sight, £1,328,000, was seized.

* Lord Avebury.

Gramont, the historian, throws a curious light upon the career of Sir Robert Vyner, a goldsmith-banker of the time of Charles II, who became all too fond of that prince of good-fellows. One time the king dined with his banker friend, and finding Sir Robert warming toward him to an uncomfortable degree, stole away; but Sir Robert pursued him. Catching the king by the hand, he cried out with an oath, "Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle." The bibulous monarch, not averse to the punishment prescribed, repeated from an old song the line

He that's drunk is as great as a King

then turned back and resumed his seat, manfully emptying t'other bottle.

The banker's reward for his loyalty was the closing of the Exchequer and the confiscation of all Sir Robert's funds there on deposit.

Pepys, author of the famous Diary, which has won its way into the list of immortals, writing on June 13, 1667, interestingly chronicles a run on the London banking house of Backwell. "They are so called upon for money," he writes, "that they will be all broke, hundreds coming to them for money: and they answer him, 'it is payable in twenty days: when the days are out, we will pay

you:' and those that are not so, they make tell over their money and make their bags false, on purpose to give cause to retell it, and so spend time." Thus gaining time, the banker saved his balances, and soon thereafter, as Pepys tells us, was able to extend his holdings in real estate.

Speed, in his sixteenth century history of Great Britain, speaks of a historic character as "embogging himself in the Bankers and Usurers Bookes."

Benbrigge, a century later, thus satirizes them: "Neither Banke nor Bankers

ceive they suffer any losse by

can con

lending

to the poor freely; because what they can even give is lent in usury to the Lord." Macaulay throws a side-light upon the period following the overthrow of Charles I. He relates that the father of the poet Alexander Pope retired from business about the time of the Revolution, carrying with him into the country a strong-box containing about £20,000, from which he drew out from time to time the money needed to defray expenses-so far removed was that prime essential of banking-namely, confidence-from the minds of men of wealth after the confiscation.

Seventeenth century manners are well illustrated by an entry of £50 on the books of a

Temple Bar banker to the credit of John Dryden, the poet, "for the discovery of Lord Rochester's bullies."* One night as the poet was returning home by Long Acre, he was barbarously assaulted and wounded by three persons hired for the purpose, as is now known, by the Earl of Rochester. Mr. Saintsbury, in his life of Dryden, attributes Rochester's contemptible course to an unfounded suspicion that Dryden was the author of an "Essay on Satire," which reflected on the earl.

Daniel De Foe, author of the great children's classic, "Robinson Crusoe," was a voluminous writer, his complete works covering, or aiming to cover, a wide range of subjects, from banking to fairy tales and ghost stories. He seems to have approached the most abstruse and complicated themes with absolute confidence in his ability to instruct the common mind. In the year 1698, in his thirty-eighth year, he published “An Essay on Projects"-consisting in fact of a series of essays on a variety of themes, "Banks and Bankrupts" among the number. Himself at the time a bankrupt in hiding, he wrote knowingly and feelingly of the wrongs and woes of his class.

*Price; Handbook of London Bankers, London, 1876.

Naturally he could not refrain from the irony with which impecunious authors are wont to write of banks and bankers. He wrote at a time when the English people were turning to the banks for relief from the usurious goldsmiths, and was compelled to concede that banks, if rightly managed, were, or might be, of great advantage, especially to trading people, bringing down the interest of money and taking "from the goldsmiths, scriveners, and others, who have command of running cash, their most delicious trade of taking advantage of the necessities of the merchant"; also encouraging the merchant "to venture farther in trade than otherwise he would do."

Further on, he takes up the well-worn cudgel of the impecunious, and belabors the bankers. "Our banks," says he, "are indeed nothing but so many goldsmiths' shops, where the credit being high (and the directors as high), people lodge their money; and they, the directors I mean, make their advantage of it."

Then follows an observant layman's picture of banking, as seen from the outside:

"If you lay it [money] at demand, they allow you nothing; if at time, 3 per cent., and so would any goldsmith in Lombard Street have done before; but the very banks themselves are so awk