Oldal 187 [187]
OCR
COMMERCE I65 ruined, and retiring to Holland on a pension, died there in 1679. His sons, however, joining Child’s, are reckoned among the founders of that prosperous and now ancient house, for a further account of which I may refer the reader to Mr. Price’s Handbook, already quoted. He mentions five houses as still extant whose predecessors kept “running cashes ~ in 1677. Of these, Child’s is in Fleet Street, the first house on the right as you enter the city; Hoare’s, No. 37 in the same street, is marked by the “Golden Bottle," originally set up in Cheapside; Stocks, now Barnett’s, is at the Black Horse in Lombard Street, now No. 62; and Williams’s, now Willis’s, at the Crown, No. 76 in the same street. In 1694 London banking entered on a new phase. The Bank of England was opened at Grocers’ Hall in the Poultry. It encountered great opposition at first. Child's and Hoare’s united to break it without success, and notwithstanding the loss of its chief promoter, Godfrey, who was killed at the siege of Namur when attending William III with money, and notwithstanding also its having on one occasion in 1696 actually to close its doors, it grew and prospered, and moved into a new building in 1734. This was in Threadneedle Street, which has ever since been its headquarters, and the “‘old lady of Threadneedle Street” is famous all over the world. The name of the street is said, with great prob
