The subscription of the £66,666, 13_s._ 4_d._ allowed to Scotland began at the appointed time, the Marquis of Tweeddale, his majesty’s commissioner to parliament, and his son, Lord Yester, being the first who put down their names. The subscription of the remaining £33,333, 6_s._ 8_d._ was effected in London in one day, the chief adventurers being Scotsmen resident there. The heads of the concern in Edinburgh felt themselves sadly ignorant of the arrangements required for a public bank, and deemed it absolutely necessary that Mr Holland should come down to advise and superintend their proceedings. He very generously agreed to do so, reside for some time in Edinburgh, and return upon his own charges; while they, as liberally, took care, by a rich present to his wife, that he should be no loser by the journey. He relates[154] that his proposals were all at first objected to and controverted by the Scotch managers, in consequence of their utter ignorance of banking, yet all in perfect good-humour, and manifestly from a pure desire to get at the expedients which were best; and all were ultimately agreed to. This occasioned a difficulty at starting, and to this was added no small amount of jealous opposition and distrust; nevertheless, Mr Holland remarks that, within two months, and even while the Bank of England was notoriously unable to pay its bills, those of the Scottish establishment had attained to a surprising degree of credit. It may here be remarked, that, ere long, by consent of the English proprietors, the whole twenty-four directors were elected from the Scottish shareholders, leaving thirteen English ones to act as trustees, ‘to manage what affairs the company [Sidenote: 1695.] should have at London;’ and in time, when there were no longer so many as thirteen proprietors in England, even this arrangement was abandoned. Several of the prominent Scottish shareholders were members of the African Company; but it appears that there was anything but a concert or good agreement between the two sets of projectors. Paterson regarded the Bank of Scotland as in some degree a rival to his scheme, and talked of the act appointing it as having been ‘surreptitiously gained.’ While so sanguine about the African Company, he thought the bank unlikely to prove a good thing to those concerned in it, little foreseeing that it would flourish for centuries after the Indian Company had sunk in its first calamitous venture.