Another company was also struggling with difficulties, as the following extract from the same Report shows:— “10th March, 1675. The petition of the Master, Warden, Assistants and Commonaltie of the Corporation of Pin-makers, London, to the King; with paper of proposals attached thereto Reminding his Majesty of a contract made between Him and their Company, for the benefit alike of His Majesty and the London Pin-makers, that came to nought in consequence of the Great Plague and the Dutch, the Pin-makers beg for an aid of £20,000—£10,000 thereof to be laid out in wire, to be bought of His Majesty at 30d. per hundred weight about the current rate of such wire; and the other £10,000 thereof to be used as a fund by Commissioners, and the pins being distributed to buyers at a cost sufficient only to cover the charge of production. By operation of the scheme, embodied in these proposals, it is urged the trade of the pin-making will revive, the pin-makers will have full and lucrative employment, and his Majesty will by his profit on the wire receive a revenue of at least £4000 per annum.” The most important civic event in the reign of William was the foundation of the Bank of England. The bankers of the City had been, as we have seen, the goldsmiths, who not only received and kept money for their customers, but lent it out, for them and for themselves, on interest. Thus, when Charles the Second, on January 2, 1672, closed the Exchequer, his creditors could obtain neither principal nor interest. He then owed the goldsmiths of London the sum of £1,328,526. Some of the older banks of London trace a descent to the goldsmiths of the seventeenth century—Child’s, for instance, Hoare’s, and others. [Illustration: A PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND, 1743 From Maitland’s _History and Survey of London_.] The idea of a National Bank seems to have been considered and discussed for some years before it was carried into effect. The principal advocate of the scheme was a Scotchman named William Anderson. The advantages which he put forward in defence of the Bank were the support of public credit and the relief of the Government from the ruinous terms upon which supplies were then raised. There was great difficulty in getting the scheme considered, but it was at last passed by an Act of Parliament in 1693. By the terms of this Act it was provided that the Government should take a loan of £1,200,000 from the Bank, this amount to be subscribed; additional taxes were imposed which would produce about £140,000 a year, out of which the Bank was to receive £100,000 a year, including interest at 8 per cent, and £4000 a year for management. The Company was empowered to purchase lands, and to deal in bills of exchange and gold and silver bullion, but not to buy or sell merchandise, though they might sell unredeemed goods on which they had made advances.