London - Edward Rutherfurd [492]
“But you must never forget,” Fleming went on, “that this is only possible because of one thing.” He indicated two frigates moored just upstream at Deptford. “The navy.”
After two centuries of struggle against the Spanish, Dutch and French, the vessels fitted and supplied at Tudor King Harry’s naval base at Deptford had confirmed their supremacy of the seas. If Queen Elizabeth’s buccaneers had begun England’s trading empire, Nelson and his successors had now guaranteed it. “No navy, Eugene,” his godfather remarked, “no city.”
Eugene asked many questions. Had, for instance, the War of Independence with America affected commerce?
Fleming shrugged. “Not much. You see trade’s like a river, really. You can try to stop it but it usually seeps through. Tobacco used to be the thing, but it’s cotton now. They grow it, we manufacture. Independence or not, bad feeling or not, trade carries on.”
“Not always, though,” Eugene pointed out. In the long conflict with Napoleon when the mighty French emperor had barred English trade from most of Europe, only the smugglers had managed to get through.
“That’s true,” Fleming agreed, “and it was thanks to our sea power that we could take up the slack in other places. For Asia and South America, you know, are the emerging markets now. But there was something else too, Eugene, that even Napoleon couldn’t control.”
“Which was?”
“Money, Eugene. Money.” He grinned. “You see, while Napoleon was turning Europe upside down, every foreigner with money to spare sent it to London for safe keeping – including the French! Old Boney made us the money centre of the world.” And he chuckled at the thought of the striking phenomenon of capital flight.
The following afternoon, announcing that, as he had business to attend to, this would be their last expedition together for a while, Fleming led Eugene along Cheapside to the Poultry, and there, with scarcely suppressed excitement, he paused. Ahead of them at the foot of Cornhill was the imposing outer façade of the Royal Exchange. To their right stood a splendid classical house. “The Mansion House,” Fleming explained. “The Lord Mayor’s official residence. Built in my father’s day.” His tone changed entirely as he pointed to another long, blank Roman façade, to the left of the Exchange and separated from it by a narrow lane known as Threadneedle Street.
“That, Eugene,” he said with hushed reverence, “is the Bank of England.”
Since it began its life in the Mercers Hall as a joint stock company, the Bank of England had outlasted all its rivals. “The South Sea Company burst with the South Sea Bubble of 1720,” Fleming reminded him. Even the mighty East India Company had been so mismanaged that the Bank had helped the government take it over. Time and again, as England was forced into wars, the Bank had found the funds and seen the country through. His godfather proudly described the way it had helped the government through every crisis, how its clerks now administered most of the government’s accounts, paid the army and navy overseas, and even administered the state lotteries. Though the Bank was, strictly speaking, a private company, it had become practically part of the constitution.
“So mighty are its reserves, and so carefully managed, that all the money houses and merchants in London look to it for funds when they need them,” Fleming explained. “The Bank’s authority is complete. It’s only the Bank, in London, that has a charter to issue banknotes for the general public. And that’s because money must be sound, you see. For a note from the Bank of England, Eugene, is as sound as … why, as sound as …” Here, at last, words failed him.
“And this soundness