above, displays the treasures of the Company in a pyramidal form with the happiest effect. Many of the separate articles of that pyramid have a history of themselves; we can only mention one of them :-the cup. This is by no less an artist than Cellini, and was presented by Queen Elizabeth (who Pennant observes was "particularly kind to the citizens, and borrowed money of them on all occasions") to Sir Martin Bowes, whilst he was Lord Mayor, by whom it was presented to his brethren the Goldsmiths, with a charge to drink his health at certain periods in it, and to have a good dinner afterwards: we believe we are not hazarding too much to say that neither of these debts of gratitude are neglected. On each side of the niche is a mirror of unusual size, with busts in front, at their base, of George III. and George IV. Between the scagliola pillars, adorning the side opposite to the window, are lofty portraits, kingly or queenly subjects as usual (the loyalty and church-and-state pride of the Goldsmiths' Company are well known); comprising portraits of Queen Adelaide by Sir Martin Archer Shee, William IV. in the appropriate costume of a "Sailor King," and her present Majesty, by Sir George Hayter. In looking again at the richly stained arms which Mr. Willement has placed in the windows, consisting of the arms of the twenty-five Members of the Court of Assistants, at the period of the opening of the Hall in 1835, and of other assistants who have since died, a suggestion occurs which we think deserves consideration. In the annals of the Company, many are the worthies whose life and character must have an interest for the members; surely their arms should be here. There is Gregory de Rokesley, for instance, goldsmith, who was eight times Lord Mayor of London, keeper of the King's Exchange, and chief Assay Master of all the English Mints. And if these recommendations are not sufficient, there is one better still. This is the man whom honest Stow praises for having refused to compromise the dignity of his office, by answering as mayor a mandate to attend the King's Justices in the Tower, but who showed his individual respect for it by throwing off his civic robes at the Church of Allhallows, Barking, and then obeying the mandate as a private individual. The act led not only to his arrest, but to the arrest of the liberties of the City for a time. Then again there is Sir Nicholas Farindon, who gives name to the Ward of Farringdon, and the various benefactors of the Company, among whom Thomas Wood, sheriff in 1491, should not be forgotten. This gentleman built "the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops" in Cheapside, which Stow describes as containing in number "ten fair dwellinghouses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly builded four stories high, beautified towards the street with the Goldsmiths' arms, and the likeness of woodmen in memory of his (the builder's) name, riding on monstrous beasts; all which is cast in lead, richly painted over, and gilt: these he gave to the goldsmiths, with stocks of money to be lent to young men having those shops," &c. These, we presume, were the goldsmiths' stalls which Hall so oddly describes in connexion with the pageants on the occasion of the marriage of Henry VIII. with his first wife, as "being replenished with virgins in white with branches of white wax." Numerous other members of still greater general reputation will readily occur it will suffice to mention the admirable Sir Hugh Middleton, and Sir Francis Child, goldsmith, Lord Mayor, and founder of the first regular bankinghouse in England, the well-known and highly respectable establishment in Fleet Street. The chief difficulty that might have been experienced in carrying into effect the plan proposed has been anticipated by the careful Stow; the arms of the oldest member we have here mentioned, Rokesley's, for instance, will be found among the engravings of the Survey.' ، The mention of Sir Francis Child recalls one of the most important circumstances in the history of the Company,-its connection with the origin of the mighty system of modern banking. Our earliest bankers were, as is well known, the Jews; though, as their system seems to have been to receive deposits of goods, or title-deeds, &c., as security, they were perhaps more correctly called pawnbrokers. In the thirteenth century a more respectable class of men, the Lombards, or Italian merchants, then recently settled in England, began to obtain much of this trade. The goldsmiths, we have already seen, were occasionally bankers, in the only sense in which banking as yet existed, so early as 1386, in imitation, probably, of the Lombards. And till the seventeenth century matters remained in this state. At that time a concurrence of peculiar circumstances led them to embark largely in the business. In Anderson's History of Commerce' is given a curious account of these circumstances, on the authority of a rare pamphlet of the date of 1676, entitled, ، The Mystery of the new-fashioned Goldsmiths, or Bankers, discovered.' From this publication it appears that the London merchants had been generally accustomed to deposit their money in the Tower, in the care of the Mint Master. A little time before the meeting of the Long Parliament, Charles I. seized there 200,000l., professedly as a loan, of course not only without the consent, but to the extreme indignation, of the unfortunate owners. No more money after that time found its way into the Mint for the sake of security. And then, according to the pamphlet, it became customary with merchants and traders to intrust their cash to their clerks and apprentices: a striking evidence, by the way, of the terrible state of insecurity of men's property before the breaking out of the civil war. When the latter burst like a storm over the whole country, many of these clerks and apprentices took the opportunity of relieving themselves of the dulness of the shop and desk, and their masters at the same time of the superfluous cash they had placed in their hands; and thus a new and better mode of disposing of such money became indispensable. At last, about the year 1645, the merchants began to place their funds in the hands of the Goldsmiths, who now first added this the essential feature of a bank to their ordinary occupations of buying and selling plate and foreign coins of gold and silver, of melting and culling these articles, some to be coined at the Mint, and the rest to be used in supplying the general dealers in the precious metals, jewellers, &c. The wealth and reputation of the Company would at once give confidence in the new mode, and consequently the business transacted increased so greatly in amount as to become a matter of very high importance and consideration. "It happened," says the writer of the pamphlet," in those times of civil commotion, that the Parliament, out of the plate and from the old coin brought into the Mint, coined seven millions into half-crowns; and there being no mills then in use at the Mint, this new money was of very unequal weight, sometimes twopence and threepence difference in an ounce; and most of it was, it seems, heavier than it ought to have been in proportion to the value in foreign parts." What follows is a sad charge against the respectable Company which has a St. Dunstan for its founder. "Of this the goldsmiths made, naturally, the advantages usual in such cases, by picking out or culling the heaviest, and melting them down, and exporting them. It happened also that our gold coins were too weighty, and of these also they took the like advantage. Moreover, such merchants' servants as still kept their masters' running cash had fallen into the way of clandestinely lending the same to the goldsmiths at fourpence per cent. per diem (about six per cent. per annum), who by these and such-like means were enabled to lend out great quantities of cash to necessitous merchants and others, weekly or monthly, at high interest; and also began to discount the merchants' bills at the like or an higher rate of interest." It would have been worth while to see the puzzled looks of the merchants when they first found the ingenious use their clerks had made of their money; and the whole affair must have occasionally led to some amusing scenes,-clerks perhaps sometimes discounting themselves instead of through the goldsmiths, and, possibly, their own masters' bills as they circulated in due course of trade, not for their masters, but with their masters' own money; but their impudence may not have ventured quite so far as that. Respecting the goldsmiths as bankers, the pamphlet continues,-"Much about the same time they began to receive the rents of gentlemen's estates remitted to town, and to allow them and others who put cash into their hands some interest for it (the clerks had taught them this, we suppose) if it remained but for a single month in their hands, or even a lesser time. This was a great allurement for people to put their money into their hands, which would bear interest till the day they wanted it. And they could also draw it out by one hundred pounds, or fifty pounds, &c., at a time, as they wanted it, with infinitely less trouble than if they had lent it out on either real or personal security. The consequence was, that it quickly brought a great quantity of cash into their hands, so that the chief or greatest of them were now enabled to supply Cromwell with money in advance on the revenues, as his occasions required, upon great advantages to themselves." This system continued on the Restoration, the goldsmiths principally confining the lending part of the new business to Government, but borrowing, we presume, from whoever chose to lend. They gave receipts for the sums deposited, which, passing from hand to hand, became a virtual kind of bank-notes. In this brief detail we see in operation nearly all the parts of a modern banker's business. But concerns of such magnitude, and involving principles which, according as they are right or wrong, materially influence to prosperity or distress the entire nation, require all the thought and skill and capital of those concerned in its management. Some of the more intelligent goldsmiths soon perceived this, and also that magnificent fortunes would no doubt be realized by those who, possessing the requisite qualifications, should first devote their exertions solely to it. Francis Child was the first of these persons, and may, therefore, be very properly called the "father of the profession."* He was originally an apprentice to William Wheeler, goldsmith and banker, whose shop was on the site of the present banking-house. Child married his master's daughter, and thus succeeded to the estate and business. The latter, we presume, from the very circumstance of his being generally acknowledged to be the first regular banker, * Pennant. thenceforth, or at least subsequently, confined his business entirely to the banking department. He died in 1713 as Sir Francis Child, and after having served the offices of sheriff, lord mayor, and member of parliament for the City. Having been so recently erected, of course the Hall has, properly speaking, no history, unless the splendid banquet which marked its opening on the 15th of July, 1835, be esteemed such, when the Duke of Wellington, and many other distinguished personages connected with the same political party, were among the guests. There was certainly one feature of that meeting worthy of noticethe declaration of the Prime Warden, who, in stating that the creation of a building-fund had long been in contemplation for the re-erection of their mansion, added, " by means of that fund they had been enabled to complete this great structure without trenching on the charitable funds of the Company: not one pension had been abridged-no charity was diminished-not one single petition for the relief of their poorer brethren was rejected." |