There were Exchanges in London in the sixteenth century. Merchants from Lombardy had given their name to a street, and had flourished so well that they had branched out in the business of money-changing--that is, of exchanging worn, abrased and clipped coins, foreign and domestic, for those of standard weight and fineness. As trade increased and the first faint signs of progress in the matter of wealth began to develop, it was seen that this business of exchanging money was sufficiently important to warrant royal recognition; accordingly there was created the office of Royal Exchanger, and the person entrusted with this office was given the privilege of exchanging coins in the manner described. Smaller offices for the purpose were farmed out in other English towns, and each place where the business was carried on thus came to be known as “The Exchange,” a name that was ultimately applied to any covered place where merchants met to buy and sell commodities. After the money-changers came the money-lenders--Jews, more Lombards, and finally the Guild of Goldsmiths. The last named, having long practised the business of money-lending, finally became money-borrowers, issuing receipts for these borrowings known as Goldsmiths’ Notes--the earliest form of English bank-notes--and the first step in the convenient process of translating capital, and debt, and credit, into bits of interest-bearing paper.[102] This was the state of English finance until 1694, when the Bank of England was founded, and stocks and shares came into being since the bank was a joint-stock affair. That the invention of stock certificates was a popular one, and that the authorities and the public seized upon it as a convenient means of directing capital into new and hitherto untried forms of enterprise is seen by the rapidity with which fresh undertakings were put forth. In 1698 the New East India Company loaned its capital to the government; by 1711 there was a funded debt of £11,750,000 in the shape of bank stock, East India stock, and annuities. There was also the famous South Sea Company, to be followed ten years later by a reorganization of the company with its first subscription of a million in £100 stock at £300, and a second and third subscription of larger magnitude, each accompanied by prodigious promises, and each snapped up with avidity by a public saturated with the new and hazardous pastime of speculation.