5. RESULTADOS
5.1 Descripción de la población
5.1.3 Población final estudiada
As has been suggested previously, the history of the London agency houses has been a subject inadequately studied by historians. What follows in this chapter is therefore an attempt to provide a more detailed examination of such an agency banks, through an examination of the early history of Forster, Lubbock & Co, the third most important of the
London agency houses at the end of the century.1 Despite its rapid rise and clear
importance in London by the end of the eighteenth century, very little is known of the bank
itself.2 This must be attributed to the apparent loss of the bulk of the bank’s records, both
for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A small collection of documents from the firm’s early years do however survive, deposited in the Lubbock MSS in the Kent archives. The most significant surviving document of the bank is an out-letter book dated 1 October 1771 to 14 August 1773, which covers the initial formation of the London bank. The only problem with this book is that it is impossible to say exactly who wrote the letters, as signatures were not included on these copyletters. However they offer a valuable insight
into the operations of the bank and its interaction with its clients.3 This collection of
documents forms the basis of the following chapter. It adds important detail on the activity of City banks, in the process reinforcing many of the themes of the previous two chapters. Furthermore it provides an opportunity to gain a rare insight into the process and challenges of establishing a new bank in the City.
In common with a number of the City agency banks, including Jones, Loyd & Co and Smith, Payne & Smith, Forster, Lubbock & Co’s origins can be traced to a provincial banking company, in this instance the Miners Bank of Truro, Cornwall. The Miners Bank (Sir William
Lemon Bart., Furley,4 Lubbock, Willyams, & Co) was formed in January 1771, but may have
dated back as early as 1759. As the name implies, it derived its business initially from the mining interests of the area, but soon expanded to include the business of county families,
the leading commercial interest and local public institutions.5 As was the case with a
1 See table above p. 113. For consistency, I refer to the London bank as Forster, Lubbock & Co,
despite this name only emerging around 1800. The other principal names of the house were Sir William Lemon, Buller, Furley, Lubbock & Co at its foundation and Forster, Lubbock, Bosanquet & Co from 1785 to about 1800, with other minor name changes in between.
2 Even for the period of the nineteenth century, a biography of a later Sir John Lubbock, Lord
Avebury, largely manages to avoid dealing with the bank in which he was a partner. See Adrian Grant Duff, The Life-Work of Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) 1834-1913 (London, 1924), pp. 13, 51- 3.
3 Although it is impossible to say if this was the only out-letter book of this period, there are two
reasons to believe it probably covers the majority of the bank’s non-London customers. Firstly, the letters are written in date order and are not grouped by client, which implies that these were the only clients at that time. Secondly the index covers the full range of the alphabet, reducing the possibility that letters were grouped alphabetically.
4 Furley is probably a modern spelling of this name; in the seventeenth and eighteenth century it
appears to have been spelt Furly, the version used here.
5 See John Orbell and Alison Turton, British Banking; A guide to the Historical Records (Aldershot,
2001), pp. 547-8; Dawes and Ward-Perkins, Country Banks, vol. 2, pp. 595-6; Philip W. Matthews, and Anthony W. Tuke, History of Barclays Bank Limited (London, 1926), pp. 264-8. The complete set of initial partners is thought to have included Francis Basset, John Rogers and Humphrey
123 number of firms from the South West of England in the second half of the eighteenth century, a London house was also established, in this instance under the title of Sir William
Lemon, Buller, Furly, Lubbock & Co.6 The London house was opened for business on 5
February 1772, as indicated by a letter to James Willyams Junior which explained that ‘Your Friends Messrs Lemon & Buller were with me as they Attended yesterday at the Opening of
our Bank’.7 The initial agreement to form the London house had been drawn up by early
October 1771, when John Buller has sent copies of the partnership agreement to London to
be signed by the partners located there.8 The evidence is not clear on the precise
motivation of the partners for establishing the bank. A consideration of their background provides indications of their interests, as well as the personnel requirements of a successful banking venture in this period.
The senior partners in both establishments were John Buller and William Lemon, and both brought considerable status to the new undertaking. The two men were brothers-in-law, Lemon having married John Buller’s eldest sister Jane, while Buller was married to Lemon’s
sister Anne.9 Both families were also independently important, the Buller family having sat
as Members of Parliament since the time of Queen Anne and acted as election managers for the Pelhams. John Buller’s mother was a daughter of Earl Bathurst, while Buller himself
became an MP for Exeter in 1768.10 William Lemon’s father, also William, is noted as having
‘had very extensive mining and commercial concerns’ in Cornwall. This William was created
a baronet in May 1774 and also sat as an MP, first for Penryhn, then for Cornwall.11 Lemon
was certainly involved in the Cornish mining industry and his move into banking was not unusual: there was a strong connection between tin-smelters, who were also financiers ‘advancing money to the miners against tin bills they themselves issued as receipts for the
tin left with them for smelting’, and banking in Cornwall.12 Having said this, the family does
not feature prominently in any of the literature on the mining industry, while Lemon’s exact role with the bank is also not clear.
There is a bit more clarity on Buller’s role within the bank. Pressnell states that Buller was introduced to both partnerships to reform the existing Cornish bank in 1771 and to set up the new London house, while Sir John Lubbock permanently moved to London to manage Mackworth-Praed, who left shortly thereafter to from Praed & Co (the Cornish Bank), at which point Buller was introduced as a partner in the Truro Bank.
6
See above, p. 112-3, for other agency houses that originated from provincial banks. The South West was also responsible for the emergence of a number of merchant banking houses in London, notably the Barings and Gibbs bank.
7 For the initial style of the firm, see the front cover of the letterbook, KHAC, EK-U1979/B2; for the
opening of the bank see KHAC, EK-U1979/B2 letter to James Willyams Junior, 6th February 1772.
Similarly the plan to open the bank on that day can be found in KHAC, EK-U1979/B2, letter to John Buller, 11 January 1772.
8
KHAC, EK-U1979/B2, letter to John Willyams Jr, 3 October 1771.
9 Debrett’s Baronetage of England, 7th edition (London, 1839), pp. 201, 240-1.
10 Ian R. Christie, ‘Private Patronage versus Government Influence: John Buller and the Contest for
Control of Parliamentary Elections at Saltash, 1780-1790’ The English Historical Review 71 (1956), pp. 249-50.
11 Debrett’s Baronetage of England, p. 201.
12
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the house there in 1776.13 From the surviving letterbook, the first part of this statement
appears plausible. Buller regularly received letters in Cornwall and seems to have spent much of his time there, although as indicated in the extract above, he did visit the London house as well. Throughout the correspondence, Buller appears to be the more active of the two senior partners, and it is to him that the junior partners often looked for final
guidance.14 Pressnell’s comments on Lubbock are however probably mistaken. The letters
and circumstantial evidence indicate that Lubbock was in London prior to 1776 and in fact was never in Cornwall. It is known that Lubbock’s family originated in Norwich and that he became a partner in a merchanting business in London with his father-in-law Frederick
Commerell.15 He also continued in business with one Mr Preston, as seen by these
comments :
Having lately Commenced partnership in ye Banking business with Wm Lemon Esq of Truro Cornwall Jn Buller Esq, Member of Parliament for Exeter & Mr Jn Furly of this place [London] ... I thought it needful to give you this Notice for fear you
should not know I was ye partner ... and if we can render you any Services here, or
at Truro where we have a Bank... I continue my Business as usual with Mr Preston,
in which we are always at yr Service.
This letter was written because the bank wished to use Berte to pay any bills the bank had negotiated on Leghorn and on which the original payee had defaulted, ‘to protect the
Honour’ of the bank.16 Given these strong connections to the London financial and
commercial world, it seems highly unlikely he would ever have been based in Cornwall. It is more plausible that Lubbock was, together with Furly, an active partner in the London bank who managed the business there from the outset. John Furly’s precise background is less clear than Lubbock’s, but again he appears to have been active in trade. He was a descendent of Benjamin Furly, originally of Colchester, but who emigrated to Holland
around 1660 and became one of the leading merchants of Rotterdam.17 This Benjamin’s
13 Pressnell, Country Banking, pp. 107-9. This was based on information in Mathews and Tuke,
History of Barclays Bank, p. 264.
14 This judgement is partially impressionistic, however there are letters that refer to seeking Mr
Buller’s opinion in a way that cannot be said about Mr Lemon. See for example KHAC, EK-U1979, to James Willyams, 16 and 21 July 1772, or to John Buller himself 19 Nov 1771. It is not possible to comment on their engagement with the Truro bank.
15 Robert Birkbeck, Notes on the History and Genealogy of the Family of Lubbock (London, 1891), pp.
7-8 and 28-30. Few records of this partnership of Commerell and Lubbock survive in the Kent Archive Centre, however KHAC, EK-U1979/B1/10 shows a proposal for admitting one Mr Tuckwell to this partnership. It indicates that the partnership employed a capital of about £20,000, so was a business of reasonable size.
16
KHAC, EK-U1979/B2, to Francis Berte, 29 May 1772. The business with Preston appears to have been in insurance.
17 Julius F. Sachse, Benjamin Furly and Symon Jansz Vettekeücken, ‘Benjamin Furly’, The
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 19.3 (1895), p. 277-8;Henry Horwitz and James
Oldham, ‘John Locke, Lord Mansfield, and Arbitration during the Eighteenth Century’, The Historical
Journal 36.1 (1993), p. 139; Charles R. Simpson, ‘Benjamin Furly, Quaker Merchant, and his
Statesmen Friends’ Journal of the Friends’, Historical Society vol. XI (1914) pp. 62-73. He was
certainly resident in Rotterdam in 1696, in 1696, but also appears to have been declared bankrupt in London in 1705, see H. R. French, ‘“Ingenious & Learned Gentlemen”: Social Perceptions and Self- Fashioning among Parish Elites in Essex, 1680-1740’, Social History 25.1 (2000), p. 59.
125 sons were Benjamin, John and Arent, the elder two both merchants, while he also had a daughter named Dorothy. The younger Benjamin, like his father, appears to have remained in Rotterdam, for he died there in 1738. John Furly is known to have been active both in Amsterdam and London and it is possible that he eventually moved permanently to London
and was the original partner in the bank.18 Thus, in common with many of the City banks to
emerge in this period, the London end of the business was in the hands of two men from families with significant mercantile pedigree and commercial experience in their own right. Together the four partners of the bank therefore offered a useful combination of status, commercial expertise, and local knowledge of both London and the Cornwall economy, that was likely helpful in ensuring the bank’s viability and later success.
The business over which they presided was initially small as judged by the number of customers outside of London. The index to the letterbook lists 71 distinct correspondents; however it is apparent that not all of these were clients of the bank, as some received only one or two letters, often in relation to a request by another client. Excluding recipients of three or fewer letters brings the total number of provincial customers down to 33 at this point. The index also provides details on the location of most of these clients, which has been summarised in Table 6.
Location Number of customers % of Total
Cornwall and Devon 11 33%
Bristol and Bewdley 5 15%
Other South England (mainly Norwich) 6 18%
Northern towns, inc Birmingham 7 21%
Unknown 4 12%
Total 33
Table 6: Non-London based customers of Messrs Lemon, Buller & Co, 1771-3 (Source: KHAC, EK-U1979/B2, index)
Although there are clearly notable concentrations in certain regions, it is apparent that the bank’s connections were quite widespread. Given the partners’ connection to Truro, the region of the South West is unsurprisingly well represented, with customers in Cornwall and Devon, especially Exeter. The Bristol merchants are also prominent, including important people of that town such as Ewbank & Co, Benjamin Loscombe, a banker in
Bristol by 1774, and John Champion.19 Other clients were distributed in identifiable clusters
around the country: there are 3 entries for Norwich. There are also contacts in newer cities, including Leeds, Sunderland, Whitehaven and Birmingham. One notable correspondent from this list is Samuel Skey & Co: by 1782, Samuel Skey was involved in the banking in
18 Sachse, Furly and Vettekeücken, ‘Benjamin Furly’, p. 296. They state that very little is known of
this John, and give no date of birth. It is possible that the he is the banker, although he would have been old by this point: Benjamin was born in 1681, while Dorothy was born in 1710. There is therefore potentially a generation in between. Dorothy provided a key connection between the Rotterdam merchants and the bank, see below, p. 125.
19
Benjamin Loscombe was a partner in Peach & Co, which existed by 1774 to 1781, then operated as a banker by himself for another two years, failing in 1783, see Dawes and Ward-Perkins, Country
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Bewdley, Worcestershire, with Forster, Lubbock & Co as their agent.20 Finally, although
none were regular contacts and therefore do not appear in the above table, this index shows the existence of an international network covering Amsterdam, Barcelona, Verona,
Ghent and Leghorn.21 This analysis demonstrates that the core of a new bank’s customers
was clustered around the original home locality of the partners. However to function effectively, the network of correspondents needed to be reasonably broad and new business could be acquired almost anywhere in the country. The experience of this bank is also in contrast to Sayers’ opinion of London banks rarely doing business for provincial
firms.22 Instead it suggests that the engagement in this type of business was very much at
the discretion of the partners and may have varied considerably from bank to bank. Indeed there is no reason why a bank that engaged as an agent for country banks should not wish to carry out the London business of a large provincial firm, presuming the volume of business was adequate.
The principal correspondent by number of letters received was James Willyams. His father was John Willyams of Carnanton, who as well as being a customer of the London bank, was
probably related to Sir William Lemon.23 James Willyams was a partner in the Truro bank,
and probably managed the business in Cornwall on a day-to-day basis.24 From 1777 to
1785, he was also apparently a partner in the London house.25 The letters he received,
covering the opening of the London house, are particularly informative in providing an insight into the way the business between the two connected houses was to be managed. The first point that becomes readily apparent is that the London operation was acting as the agent of the Truro bank before the articles of partnership were formally signed and the bank opened. Letters from October 1771 through to February 1772 shows that they were
already accepting remittances and paying drafts of the Truro Bank at this point.26 Clearly
there were difficulties that needed to be addressed at this stage. For example cheques that were due for payment in Cornwall found their way to London, which had the potential to
cause difficulties for the London house and which were therefore important to iron out.27
Other suggestions for the simpler running of the London account was that Willyams should add the Christian names to all bills mentioned in letters, so that the London house would
20 See Dawes and Ward-Perkins, Country Banks, pp. 50-1; Crick, and Wadsworth, A Hundred Years of
Joint-Stock Banking, pp. 46-7. Skey was in partnership as a banker with the attorney Wilson Roberts
until 1790, when he set himself up independently. He had been apprenticed to a grocer and drysalter, going on to build a large works and to make a fortune through manufacturing sulphuric and nitric acid, as well as brass and pewter ware. In 1821 the bank had a capital of £21,000.
21 KHAC, EK-U1979/B2, Letter Book of Lubbock Forster & Co, 1771-3, index.
22 Sayers, Lloyds Bank, pp. 89-91.
23
Debrett’s Baronetage of England, p. 201. Sir William Lemon’s father was married to Anne,
daughter of a John Willyams of Carnanton. If there was no generational gap, then the John Willyams in this correspondence would be Sir William Lemon’s grand-father, however given the ages implied, it is more likely that he was an uncle or cousin.
24 Dawes and Ward-Perkins, Country Banks, p. 596.
25 KHAC, EK-U1979/B8/1. From this he may he have replaced Buller’s position in the London
partnership.
26
See for example KHAC, EK-U1979/B2, letters to James Willyams on 1 Oct, 26 Nov 1771. There are many other instances.
27
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be clear to whom these bills referred.28 Other issues addressed included simple
administrative tasks, such as getting cheques for both banks printed.29 Equally there was a
degree of caution at this early stage. The London house was reluctant to take on any new
customers in London until both Lemon and Buller had arrived in the capital.30 This
highlights that the senior partners’ did not just lend their names to the firm, but were genuinely engaged with the business, particularly perhaps in the management of client relationships. However there was also recognition on the part of the London bank that they could not afford to keep their new clients waiting too long as was explained to John Buller:
those Friends who intend opening accounts with us are very desirous to know
when we intend to begin that I beg the Fav’r to know whether the 1st February
w[oul]d Suite Mr Lemon & You & whether you would permit me to fix it for that