Bancroft (grandson of Archbishop Bancroft), who, March 18, 1727, left freehold estates of the value of £28,000 and upwards to the Company of Drapers, for their erection and endowment. Each pensioner had lodging, coals, and £20 per annum. The buildings in the Mile End Road have been pulled down, and the charity is now applied entirely for educational purposes. A school for 100 boarders and 200 or more day scholars is being built at Woodford, Essex (1888). Bancroft was an officer of the Lord Mayor's Court, and is said to have acquired his fortune by harsh acts of justice in his capacity as a City officer-by unnecessary informations and arbitrary summonses. So unpopular was he that the mob hustled the bearers of his coffin, and the church bells rang out a merry peal at his funeral. His tomb, erected and endowed in his lifetime, is in the church of St. Helen, Bishopsgate. On certain occasions the Wardens, Court of Assistants, and other Members of the Drapers' Company, pay an official visit to the vault and raise the lid of the coffin-which, by Bancroft's directions, is fitted with hinges so as to open like a trunk— in order to view the corpse, which was embalmed shortly after death, but is in a hideous stage of decay.1 There is an engraving of the tomb by J. T. Smith.

Bangor House, SHOE LANE, was situated in Bangor Court (now swept away) on the west side of Shoe Lane, at the back of St. Andrew's Church.

In this Shoe Lane was a messuage called Bangor House, belonging formerly, as it seems, to the Bishops of that See; which messuage, with the waste ground about it, Sir John Barksted, Knight, did, in the year 1647, purchase of the trustees for the sale of Bishops' lands, for the purpose of erecting messuages and tenements thereupon.-Strype, B. iii. p. 247.

June 20, 1657.-A proviso for Sir John Barkstead . . . who did in the year of our Lord God, 1647, purchase from the trustees for sale of Bishops' lands the reversion of one messuage, with the appurtenances, situate in Shoe Lane, called Bangor House, to enable him on paying "one year's value, at an improved value and full rent, to the Lord Protector, to erect and new build such messuages, tenements, and houses thereupon as he may think fit; the said place being at present both dangerous and noisome to the passengers and inhabitants near adjoining." 2 In 4 William and Mary (1692) was passed "An Act to enable Humphry, Lord Bishop of Bangor, to make a lease of Bangor House, with the appurtenances in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, for a competent term of years, in order to the new building, and improving the rent thereof, for the benefit of his successors.

In 1826 an Act was passed enabling the Bishop of Bangor to sell the house, etc., to the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, the proceeds to accumulate for the purchase of a London house for the See. The last Bishop of Bangor who resided in Bangor House was Bishop Dolben (d. 1633). Bentley's well-known printing offices occupied the site for many years; and were succeeded by a gloomy-looking house which stood at the corner of St. Andrew Street, a short new street from Holborn Circus.

1 Inspection of April 27, 1881.

2 Commons Journals, Burton, vol. ii. p. 295.

Bank of England-"The principal Bank of Deposit and Circulation, not in this country only, but in Europe,"—is an isolated building bounded by Threadneedle Street on the south, Lothbury on the north, Princes Street on the west, and Bartholomew Lane on the east, and covers an area of nearly four acres. The public entrances are in Threadneedle Street, Lothbury, Bartholomew Lane, and Princes Street. The Bank was founded in 1694, its principal projector being Mr. William Paterson, an enterprising Scotch gentleman, who submitted his scheme for a National Bank to the Government in 1691. Nothing was done in the matter for nearly three years, when funds being necessary to carry on the war in which the country was then engaged, Charles Montague, then one of the Lords of the Treasury, and the leading financial authority in the Ministry, took up Paterson's scheme, and with the assistance of Michael Godfrey, one of the wealthiest and most influential merchants in the City, soon brought it into a practical shape. A Bill was brought by Montague before the House of Commons, by which subscribers to a loan of £1,200,000 to the Government were to be paid interest at the rate of eight per cent, and to be incorporated by the denomination of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England-the name it is still known by. The project was received with avidity in the City. The entire amount required was subscribed within ten days; the Bill passed quickly through both Houses of Parliament and received the royal assent, and on July 27, 1694, the Great Seal was affixed to the Charter of Incor poration. The entire sum which the Company was to lend to the Government was paid into the Exchequer before the first instalment was due.

The Bank commenced business in Grocers' Hall, which it rented for the purpose [See Grocers' Hall], and there it continued till June 5, 1734, when it removed into premises of its own, part of the present edifice. The first Governor was Sir John Houblon, whose house and garden occupied the site of the present Bank, and the first DeputyGovernor was Michael Godfrey, author of "A short Account of the intended Bank of England. The number of persons employed was at first only fifty-four; there are now above nine hundred. During the great recoinage in 1696 a crisis occurred, and the Directors were compelled to suspend the payment of their notes. This, however, they got over, and, in order to prevent the like occurrence, the capital was increased from £1,200,000 to £2,201,171. Further increase of capital was made from time to time, the last being in 1816, when the total was raised to £14,553,000, at which it now stands. The Charter was renewed in 1695 until 1711; and subsequently at intervals, usually from 20 to 30 years apart. The great events in the history of the Bank were the run on the "Black Friday" of 1746, when so great was the pressure for cash payments for the notes that the Directors are said to have averted suspension by the device of gaining time by paying each note separately in shillings and sixpences; and one still more serious which occurred in 1797, when cash payments were suspended. On Saturday, February 26, 1797, a Gazette Extraordinary was published,

announcing the landing of some troops in Wales from a French frigate. The alarm on the subject of invasion was deep and universal, and the Bank, though possessing property, after all claims upon her had been deducted, to the amount of £15,513,690, had only £1,272,000 of cash and bullion in her coffers. There was every prospect of a violent run, and on the next day (Sunday) an Order of Council was issued, prohibiting the Directors from paying notes in cash until the sense of Parliament had been taken on the subject. The Parliament concurred with the Privy Council, and the Restriction Act, prohibiting the Bank from paying cash except for sums under twenty shillings, was passed at this time. Payments in specie were not fully resumed till 1821. Bank of England notes are now a legal tender in England, except at the Bank and its branches. The tendency of all recent legislation, in connection particularly with the renewals of the Bank Charter, has been to place the convertibility of the Bank of England note into gold on a perfectly secure basis; and this as regards all but those extraordinary circumstances against which provision can hardly be made, has probably been accomplished. In the panics of 1847 and 1857 it was deemed necessary by the Government to authorise the Directors to issue notes in excess of their Parliamentary powers, but this was mainly with a view to the restoration of credit and confidence in a great monetary crisis; the stability of the Bank was in neither instance in peril.

The Bank building on the present site was designed by Mr. George Sampson, architect, and opened in June 1734. On January 1, 1735, the statue of William III. was set up. East and west wings, including the Bank parlour, a room 60 feet 6 inches x 30 feet × 22 feet high, were added by Sir Robert Taylor between the years 1766 and 1786. Sir John Soane, R.A., subsequently receiving the appointment of architect to the Bank, and the business of the Governor and Company increasing, much of Sampson's first building, and of the wings erected by Sir R. Taylor, were either altered or taken down, and the (one-storied) Bank as we now see it completed in 1827 by the same architect, who designed in 1795 the Rotunda, 57 feet diameter. The breastwork behind the balustrade was added in 1848 by Mr. C. R. Cockerell, R.A., who also effected many alterations and improvements in the interior, as the New Dividend Warrant Office, 1835, pulled down for the large Drawing Office, 1849, being 138 feet 6 inches x 42 feet 7 inches × 35 feet 6 inches, and 44 feet to the lantern. The plan has the merit of being well adapted for the purposes and business of the Bank. The corner towards Lothbury, a free adaptation of the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, is much admired, especially by architects; as is also the Lothbury Court. The arch leading into the Bullion Yard is, as Mr. Fergusson points out, imitated from that of Constantine at Rome. The area, planted with trees and shrubs, and ornamented with a fountain, was formerly the churchyard of St. Christopher-le-Stocks.

The government of the Bank is vested in a Governor, Deputy

Governor, and twenty-four Directors, four of whom go out every year. The qualification for Governor is £4000 stock, Deputy-Governor £3000, and Director £2000. The Court-room, in which the Directors meet every Thursday at half-past eleven, is called the Bank Parlour. In the lobby of the parlour is a portrait of Abraham Newland, who rose from a baker's counter to be chief clerk of the Bank of England, and to die enormously rich. The number of clerks employed is over 900, and the salaries range from £50 to £1500 a year. An excellent library is provided for their use, and a medical officer looks after their health.

The Bullion Office is situated on the east side of the Bank, along Bartholomew Lane, in the basement story, and formed part of the original structure. It was afterwards enlarged by Sir Robert Taylor, and eventually altered to its present form by Sir John Soane. The office consists of—a public chamber for the transaction of business, a vault for public deposits, and a vault for the private stock of the Bank. The duties are discharged by a principal, a deputy-principal, clerk, assistant clerk, and porters. The public are admitted to a counter, separated from the rest of the apartments, but are not allowed to enter the bullion vaults except in company of a Director. The amount of bullion in the possession of the Bank of England constitutes, along with their securities, the assets which they place against their liabilities, on account of circulation and deposits; and the difference (which is never allowed to fall below £3,000,000) between the several amounts is called the "Rest," or guarantee fund, to provide for the contingency of possible losses. Gold is almost exclusively obtained by the Bank in the "bar" form; although no form of the deposit would be refused. A bar of gold is a small brick, weighing 16 lbs.; and worth about £800.

In the Bullion Office there is a remarkable piece of mechanism for checking the weights of bars as received from the Mint and other quarters. It was invented in 1877 by Mr. James Murdoch Napier, of Glasgow, and is the only one of the kind ever made. Though presenting the appearance of a somewhat ponderous pair of scales, its construction is so delicate that when loaded with a weight of 14 lbs. it nevertheless indicates the weight of a postage stamp.

By the Bank Act of 1844 all persons are entitled to demand from the Bank notes in exchange for gold bullion of standard fineness at the rate of £3:17:9 per ounce, the gold to be melted and assayed, it necessary, at the expense of the party tendering it.

The automatic balance invented by Mr. Cotton, a former Governor of the Bank, with glass weights, weighs at the rate of thirty-three sovereigns a minute. The machine presents the appearance of a square brass box, inside which, secure from currents of air, is the strikingly ingenious machinery which, on receiving the sovereigns, separates those which are of full weight from those which are light, and pushes them into their respective heavy and light receptacles. On

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the top of the box is a small cylindrical hopper, which will hold about forty sovereigns, and from which the sovereigns pass one by one on to an exquisitely poised scale-plate. Two bolts are placed at right angles to each other, and on each side of the scale there is a part cut away so as to admit of the bolts striking so far into the area of the scale as to remove anything that would nearly fill it. These bolts are made to strike at different elevations, the lower striking a little before the upper one. If the sovereign be full weight, the scale, which turns to the tenth of a grain, remains down, and then the lower bolt, which strikes a little before the upper, knocks it off into the full weight box. If the sovereign be light, it rises up, and the first bolt strikes under it, and misses it, and the higher bolt then strikes and knocks it off into the light box. Ten of these machines are in operation, weighing and sorting between sixty and seventy thousand pieces daily.

The value of bank-notes in circulation, December 29, 1887, was £24,138,160. All notes issued are cancelled when paid in, even if returned to the Bank on the same day, or carried straight from the issue counter to the receiver's desk. On an average above 30,000 notes are thus cancelled daily. The cancelled notes are, however, preserved for a certain time, and a lady visitor is sometimes permitted to hold in her hand a million of money. According to an official memorandum :

The stock of paid notes for 5 years is about 68,000,000 in number, and they fill 13,000 boxes, which, if placed side by side, would reach 24 miles; if the notes were placed in a pile, they would reach to a height of 5 miles; or, if joined end to end, would form a ribbon 11,000 miles long: their superficial extent is rather less than that of Hyde Park: their original value was over £2,200,000,000; and their weight over 80 tons.

Previous to 1759 the Bank did not issue any notes for less than £20; £10 notes were then first issued. £5 notes were first issued in 1794, and £1 and £2 notes (since discontinued) in 1797. The first forgery of a Bank-note occurred in 1758, when the person who forged it was convicted and executed. The total loss to the Bank from Fauntleroy's forgeries amounted to £360,000.

The whole of the printing for the Bank is done within the walls of the establishment, where also the postal orders and the notes for the Indian Government banks are produced. Although the operation of printing Bank of England notes is surrounded in the popular imagination with a certain amount of mystery, there is really very little to distinguish it from the ordinary well-known printing processes. Down to the year 1855 or thereabouts the notes were printed from copper plates, and a curious collection, of old bank notes of various dates from 1699 downwards is exhibited in the printing department. Since the year above named they have been printed from a raised surface like ordinary type, the consecutive number being impressed whilst the note, or rather pair of notes, for they are printed in twos, is passing through the machine. The presses, which were designed by Mr. M'Pherson, one