These bankers were the goldsmiths. Previous to this period, the business of the goldsmith was similar to what it is in our own time. They bought and sold plate and foreign coins; they procured gold to be coined at the mint, and supplied refiners, plate-makers, and others with the precious metals. To deal in gold and silver bullion to any large extent implies the possession of considerable wealth; and as all the money in the country then consisted of gold and silver coin, it was natural enough that the goldsmiths should become the bankers of those who had money for which they had no immediate use.

An account of the bankers of those days is related in a curious pamphlet, published in the year 1676, and entitled, "The Mystery of the New-fashioned Goldsmiths; or Bankers Discovered." The author says: "This new banking business soon grew very considerable. It happened in those times of civil commotion, that the Parliament, out of plates and old coins brought into the mint, coined seven millions into half-crowns; and there being no mills then in use at the mint, this new money was of a very unequal weight, sometimes twopence and threepence difference in an ounce, and most of it was, it seems, heavier than it ought to have been in proportion to the value in foreign parts. Of this the goldsmiths made naturally the advantage usual in such cases, by picking out or culling the heaviest, and melting them down and exporting them.

"Moreover, such merchants' servants as still kept their masters' running cash, had fallen into a way of clandestinely lending the same to the goldsmiths at four-pence per cent per diem, who, by these and such-like means, were enabled to lend out great quantities of cash to necessitous merchants and others, weekly or monthly, at high interest, and also began to discount the merchants' bills at the like or higher interest.

"Much about the same time, the goldsmiths (or new-fashioned bankers) began to receive the rents of gentlemen's estates remitted to town, and to allow them and others who put cash in their hands some interest for it, if it remained but a single month in their hands, or even a lesser time. This was a great allurement for people to put money into their hands, which would bear interest till the day they wanted it; and they could also draw it out by one hundred pounds or fifty pounds, etc., at a time as they wanted it, with infinitely less trouble than if they had lent it out on either real or personal security.

"The consequence was, that it quickly brought a great quantity of cash into their hands, so that the chief or greatest of them were now enabled to supply Cromwell with money in advance, on the revenues, as his occasion required, upon great advantages to themselves.

"After the Restoration, King Charles II being in want of money, the bankers took ten per cent of him barefacedly and by private contracts; on many bills, orders, tallies, and debts of that king, they got twenty, sometimes thirty per cent, to the great dishonor of the government.

"This great gain induced the goldsmiths more and more to become lenders to the king, to anticipate all the revenue, to take every grant of Parliament into pawn as soon as it was given; also to outvie each other in buying and taking to pawn bills, orders, and tallies, so that in effect all the revenue passed through their hands."