ABSTRACT
The scheme of a central State bank had been mooted before it was advocated by William Paterson. As long ago as the first year of Queen Elizabeth John Yonge had written a Discourse for a Bancke of Money to be established for the Relief of the Common Necessitie. There is among the Harleian MSS., No. 600, p. 38, a scheme relating to plans for meeting “the devices that doe fall the Exchange and keepe it farre too lowe, to the great and intolerable losse of the whole Realme of Englande.” The most interesting of these remedies is the third, which suggests the desirability that “the Queen’s highness should have a bank of money of £10,000 or moare in her factores hande at Antwerpe.” Bacon’s vague proposals have already been mentioned. Samuel Lamb (or, as Thorold Rogers says, John Lambe) had twice during the later years of the Protectorate endeavoured to persuade Cromwell to establish a national bank, but he was unsuccessful. Paterson, in the course of his Brief Account of the Intended Bank of England, alludes to still another scheme. Writing in 1694, he tells us that
