In 1694, the Government of William III., which was generally in a state of monetary tightness, found that the war with France was draining its resources, and, having failed to raise sufficient funds by the imposition of taxes, it resolved, apparently as a kind of _dernier ressort_, to accept Paterson's financial scheme, which had been shelved some three years earlier; and on 27th July, 1694, a charter was granted to the "Corporation of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England." The capital of the company, £1,200,000, was subscribed by some forty London merchants, and lent to the Government. It is only reasonable to assume that the subscribers were supporters of the Government, and that they were Whigs, whose aim, in supplying William with the sinews of war, was the crushing of James, whose pusillanimity had disgusted even his own followers at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. Then, again, the commercial morality of the Stuarts was notoriously bad in the City. Charles I., when the City of London refused him a loan, took forcible possession of £200,000 deposited by the Goldsmiths in the Exchequer; and Charles II., in 1672, robbed them of considerably over £1,000,000. The Goldsmiths, in those days, were the private bankers with whom the London merchants left their cash, receiving an acknowledgment or receipt in return, promising payment on demand, and the Goldsmiths deposited their surplus cash in the Exchequer, just as the banks of to-day do with the Bank of England. Through this act of spoliation the Goldsmiths were unable to meet their liabilities, and many of them, together with their customers, were involved in common ruin in consequence. James II. added to the financial sins of his house by debasing the currency: so small wonder that the merchants of London had had enough of the Stuarts, whose theory of the "Divine right" of kings did not even stop short at the pockets of their subjects--always their most vulnerable point. The Bank of England, which to-day is quite outside party politics, was at its inception a Whig finance company, incorporated solely for the purpose of lending its capital to the Government at the rate of eight per cent. per annum; and out of this creation has evolved the present "Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," whose career, if chequered, has been one of unquestionable integrity.