THREE CENTURIES OF BANKING.*

THE " Grasshopper " denoted, and, it may be said, still denotes, the south-eastern corner of a block of buildings bounded on the south by Lombard Street, and on all other sides by one or other of the branches of Change Alley. The name carries us back to the Greshams, who found in the grasshopper (Teutonice " Grassheim ") an appropriate crest. Mr. Martin quotes as a curious instance of the popular fondness of myths. the story of how Thomas Gresham was a castaway infant discovered by a passer-by, whose attention was attracted by the loud chirping of a grasshopper. The Greshams, as a matter of fact, were a Norfolk family of good position, and the great Sir Thomas's father, Sir Richard, was Lord Mayor of London in 1537. Thomas Gresham was entered as a pensioner of Caius College (then Gonville Hall), Cambridge, where John Caius (Kaye), the second founder, was then a fellow. Camas after- wards spoke of Gresham, who was nine years younger than himself, as doctissimus mercator. It is an interesting coincidence, even if it is nothing more, that the account of the College has been kept at the banking establishment which, under various names, has occupied the " Grasshopper" for many years. (The early books of the firm have been lost ; but the name appears in 1751.)

Sir Thomas Gresham died in 1579, and " with his death," as Mr. Martin writes, " the curtain falls on the Grasshopper, not to be raised again for a period of nearly a century." In 1677, in The Little London Dictionary, appears, among the names of "goldsmiths that keep running cashes," Charles Duncombe and Richard Kent, at the Grasshopper in Lom- bard Street. Charles Dancombe, warned by Lord Shaftes- bury, withdrew his money from the Exchequer in time to escape the confiscating hands which in 1672 Charles II. laid on the goldsmiths' deposits. Possibly he did not forget this when in 1688, being then Receiver of Customs, he refused a request of the fugitive James for £1,500. He was among the first to give in his adhesion to William of Orange. He went on making money, and Evelyn speaks of him as one who," not long since a mean goldsmith," had bought the Duke of Buckingham's estate " at neere £90,000," and was " reputed to have neere as much in cash." The Helmsley property, the principal seat of the now ennobled family of the Duncombes, was thus acquired. Whether Evelyn was right in speaking of him as a " mean goldsmith," it is certain that his after-career was not very reputable. In 1697, he was expelled from the House of Commons, for an alleged fraud on Government (making Exchequer bills bear interest before reissue). The House of Lords acquitted him by one vote, and he escaped. with no further penalty than imprisonment, by the act of the Commons, till the end of the Session. He is the " Euclio " of Pope's Moral Essays. Duncombe took into the firm one Richard Smith, and Smith employed a certain Andrew Stone, who, either before or after his coming into the house, married his employer's niece. Another of Smith's employes was Thomas Martin. In 1703, we find the names of Andrew Stone and Thomas Martin associated as partners (Richard Smith, it must be understood,

• The" Gras.hopp r" in Lombard Street. By John Biddulph Martin. London : The Leadenhall Preee. 1892.

died in 1699). A succession of Stones and Martins (the latter name being a constant quality), with other partners, carried on the business down to the year 1851, when the last Stone retired. He died ten years afterwards, and the family became extinct in the male line. Mr. R. B. Martin makes out a case, which, though it would not satisfy a Court of Law, is sufficiently convincing for ordinary readers, for connecting the family of this Martin with a well-known gold- smith of Gresham's time, Lord Mayor in 1588-89, and again in 1593-94, being in both cases suffectus. The style of the house is now " Martin and Co.," but since 1890 it has yielded to the demands of the time, and calls itself " Limited." It is a curious fact that the fifty-two private bankers who owned the Clearing House in 1810, had diminished in 1841 to twenty- nine, and to twenty-four in 1852, and that now only five sur- vive,—survive, i.e., in their original status. Two failed, Pim in 1866, and Willis in 1863; others joined various Banks, joint-stock or private; others have registered themselves under the Companies Acts. The five that remain are Barclay (which includes Spooner), Brown, Fuller (including Sapte), Robarts (including Lubbock), and Smith.

It would require a professional knowledge, to which the present writer lays no claim, to appreciate Mr. Martin's book in its technical aspect; but that it contains abundance of matter that will interest the general reader, we may safely say. The earliest balance-sheet still existing is in the simplest form. It may be quoted whole :-

Drs. to Severall.

s. d. Crs.

£

a. d.

In the Ledger 139,995 3 2 Discount Book a3,177 4 11 In the Note-Book 19,476 16 9 Ledger at Cash 1,724 7 3

Balance in Cash 74,570 7 9

159,471 19 11

1.59,471 19 11

The cash reserve, it may be noticed, is very different from the attenuated sum which now appears in the balance-sheets of some of the great joint-stock Banks. Mr. Martin evidently regards with special regret the destruction of the balance- sheet for 1720, the year of the South-Sea catastrophe,— "When not a guinea clinked on Martin's boards," as Gay puts it. He consoles himself by the deduction that guineas were in those days to be looked for at the Grass- hopper as long as they were to be found anywhere. It is explained, in reference to the balance-sheet, that while the " ledger " refers to current accounts, the " note-book " gives the deposits. On the creditor side, the first item explains itself, the second gives overdrawn accounts, while the balance consisted of £12,516 in the vaults, £758 13s. 11d. in the tills, and the remainder in cash-notes, representing what bankers now keep with the Bank of England. Things are not a little changed now, when on one day two cheques for more than two millions each passed through the 41 Grasshopper " books. But bankers now are the paymasters of Kings ; whereas in one of the earliest accounts of a financial crisis that has come down to us (Tacitus' Annals, vi., 17), it is the Roman Emperor who helps the Banks oat of a crisis, and that by lending them what would not have half satisfied one of these mammoth drafts,—a million pounds. Even here the figures of the Clearing House were almost exactly doubled between 1870 and 1890, from nearly four thou- sand millions to nearly eight. It is in accord with the smallness of early transactions, that Ebenezer Blackwell, a partner in the firm between 1746 and 1790, rented in the former year a house behind "The Grasshopper," known as " The Three Cross Daggers," for £31 10s. The house belonged to the Martin family. James Martin, the senior partner, bought it in 1741 for £2,890. Forty years before it had fetched £2,000. It is not easy to guess what the price would be now.

Ebenezer Blackwell, happily for posterity, was a careful man who kept his private accounts with no little detail; and the extracts that we get from these are not the least interest- ing part of the book. Blackwell had a country-house at Lewisham, besides the dwelling in Change Alley, a building, by-the-way, of very modest proportions, which a bank-porter nowadays would think very small. The total outgoings, including his personal expenditure, were a little more than £700 for the year. His wife had an allowance of £40, and £15 for travelling. His clothing cost about £70, the only item that seems large, except, indeed, £7 for the barber. The New River Company's charge was £1 2s. 8d. (on a rental of £31 10s.) Coals cost £10 3s., and food for the two establish- ments, £264 10s. 7d. Yet tea coat 12s. 6d. per pound, a dozen of claret is put down at £2 14s. The woman-servants

received £6, £6, and £5, and a man-servant £9. A flitch of bacon is charged £1 2s. 6d. Taking the flitch or side at 70 lb., this would give rather less than 4d. per lb. It should be said that Blackwell had then no children. One of the items under the year 1754 is : " Gave the watchman at Clapham, who prevented my wife from being robbed, £1 la." Twenty odd years before, a partner who lived at Clapham had been robbed by a highwayman of a gold watch and seven guineas. Blackwell was on terms of intimate friendship with John Wesley, who frequently visited him at his Lewisham house. " Upward of forty years this has been my place of retirement when I could spare two or three days from London," he writes on August 24th, 1782, when he has paid a visit to Blackwell's widow. Blackwell, though an estimable and kindly man, did not regulate his life altogether as Wesley would have liked to see it. He pays £25 subscription to a ball, and is in the habit of wagering. He betted Daivies Bar- rington, for instance, five guineas to fifty that Barrington would marry. More than fifty years afterwards, Barrington died unmarried. He betted that the Land-tax would not be reduced for two years ; that Parliament would be dissolved within a certain time; that the story of Elizabeth Canning, a famous impostor of the time, was true. Possibly Wesley would not have been very hard on the propensity, for the gigantic gambling of the Lottery was in full swing. The business-books of the " Grasshopper " record many transac- tions in lottery-tickets (in the way of agency, Mr. Martin explains). For the twenty years 17474766, the average profit thus gained was £244 per annum. Blackwell enters the pur- chase of a quarter-ticket for his maid and a fellow-servant ; but we find him making good their loss. In 1777, he gives the clerks in the Bank a lottery-ticket. We do not know what happened to it. In 1801, the item disappears. A more legiti- mate mode of speculation was the " tontine." One of the Martins had £100 invested for him in a " tontine " in 1777, the year of his birth. Government then raised a loan of about a quarter of a million at 7 per cent. interest, in £100 shares. The capital was lost at the death of each subscriber, but the entire interest was paid to the survivors. James Martin lived to 1870, and during the last year of his life received £7,766 10s. 6d. He was then one of two survivors. The other subscriber outlived him, and received one half-year's undivided dividend. Government, it is interesting to calculate, paid the capital back more than seven times.

Mr. Martin gives a chapter to " Queer Customers " of the Bank, a slang phrase by which he means persons who have defrauded it. The list is not a long one. In the last thirty- seven years, the Bank has lost in the way of forgery little more than £3,500. In one of the two cases of " raised" cheques, " eight" was changed to " eighty." Mr. Martin remarks that in this case the customer, who allowed a boy paid 14s. a week to fill up the cheque, was guilty of contribu- tory negligence. In the other, £21 was changed to £2,100. The method is described; we should say, injudiciously, but that the mode of drawing is now changed. Mr. Martin remarks of the fraudulent classes, that "If they knew their opportunities, they might almost paralyse banking."

As we have said, our author is not least entertaining when he digresses. If we have seemed to disparage the old in com- parison with the new, let us do justice to a bygone genera- tion in one matter at least. Among the customers of the eighteenth century was a famous cricketer, Benjamin Aislabie. propos of him, we learn that the allowance at a cricket dinner, eaten, it must be remembered, during the play, was a pint of port per man, with a fine of a bottle of port for every chance missed. Truly, as Mr. Martin remarks, " there were giants in those days."