London - Edward Rutherfurd [444]
The Earl of St James lived to a very great age. In 1693 he passed his ninetieth year, and though he walked with difficulty, his mind remained keen. Nor was he ever lonely; for apart from his children and grandchildren, a stream of visitors came to talk to the man who had been born on the last day good Queen Bess was still the queen of England. From the Gunpowder Plot to the Glorious Revolution: “He’s seen it all,” they said. And in 1694, the last year of his life, he was allowed to see one thing more.
In that year, after much discussion, the city of London gained a new institution. Financed by a number of prominent London merchants, it was a joint stock bank. Its function was to finance long-term government debt by issuing bonds on which interest was payable. They called it the Bank of London.
“I told the first King Charles it could be done,” the earl explained to his visitors, with perfect truth. “But he wouldn’t listen. Perhaps,” he would nowadays concede with a smile, “it was just as well.” It also pleased him greatly that for its first premises the new bank should have taken offices in the rebuilt Mercers’ Hall in Cheapside. “Our family’s livery company,” he remarked proudly. And indeed he might have added that by choosing this location, the new institution, which before long was being called not just the Bank of London but the Bank of England, was beginning its life on the very site where once had stood the family house of Thomas Becket, London’s martyred saint.
Two months after the Bank of England’s founding, Julius died, one peaceful dawn. He therefore missed by a year a small event that would have given him pleasure. Richard Meredith, like his own father, had married late; but he had married well, and in 1695 he was blessed with a son.
A month afterwards, one rainy morning, Meredith received a visit from Eugene Penny.
The Huguenot had come with a present contained in a little box, which he opened with evident pride. Inside, Meredith saw, was a handsome silver watch. But as Penny drew this out, the clergyman also noticed that there was something unusual about it.
Taking his spectacles off to give them a careful wipe, Penny smiled. “Look,” he said, and opening the back of the watch he pointed with his little finger to explain its workings.
It was twenty years since Tompion of London had started making watches with a hair spring, but now the great clockmaker had devised a new refinement that was to carry London watchmaking to a position of prominence in all Europe. The tiny mechanism to which Penny pointed, and which was termed a cylinder escapement, made possible one great improvement in the portable watch. It allowed all the cog wheels within to be arranged horizontally, making the watch flat, so that it could be slipped into a pocket.
“It’s the neatest thing I ever saw in my life,” Meredith exclaimed.
It was to celebrate the birth of his son, and to say thank you for the kindly clergyman’s help in getting the Huguenot his job back with Tompion the master clockmaker.
Soon after the new century dawned, there was one other addition to Meredith’s life. In the year 1701 his friend Wren designed a splendid steeple for his church of St Bride’s. It was a remarkable affair. Set over a fine square tower, like that of St Mary-le-Bow, it consisted of a series of eight-sided hollow drums, with open arches and pillars, arranged in tiers, each smaller than the one below, like an inverted telescope, and completed by an obelisk on top. Taller even than the Monument, the new steeple of St Bride’s could be seen the whole length of Fleet Street, and made the church one of the