judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging himself in Bridewell. The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed, and even after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries--which dates from the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be treated of in the succeeding chapter--"Old Patch" was still remembered as the Cæsar of Forgers. CHAPTER II. In the history of crime, as in all other histories, there is one great epoch by which minor dates are arranged and defined. In a list of remarkable events, one remarkable event more remarkable than the last, is the standard around which all smaller circumstances are grouped. Whatever happens in Mohammedan annals, is set down as having occurred so many years after the flight of the Prophet; in the records of London commerce a great fraud or a great failure is mentioned as having come to light so many months after the flight of Rowland Stephenson. Sporting men date from remarkable struggles for the Derby prize, and refer to 1840, as "Bloomsbury's year." The highwayman of old dated from Dick Turpin's last appearance on the fatal stage at Tyburn turnpike. In like manner, the standard epoch in the annals of Bank-Note Forgery, is the year 1797, when (on the 25th of February) one-pound notes were put into circulation instead of golden guineas; or, to use the City idiom, 'cash payments were suspended.' At that time the Bank-of-England note was no better in appearance--had not improved as a work of art--since the days of Vaughan, Mathison, and Old Patch; it was just as easily imitated, and the chances of the successful circulation of counterfeits were increased a thousand-fold. Up to 1793 no notes had been issued even for sums so small as five pounds. Consequently all the Bank paper then in use, passed through the hands and under the eyes of the affluent and educated, who could more readily distinguish the false from the true. Hence, during the fourteen years which preceded the non-golden and small-note era, there were only three capital convictions for the crime. When, however, the Bank-of-England notes became "common and popular," a prodigious quantity--to complete the quotation--was also made "base," and many persons were hanged for concocting them.