Throughout the period of this book the Bank of England remained, as
it had been since its foundation in 1694, a joint-stock company operating
under Royal Charter granted in accordance with the Bank of England
Act 1694 and successive Acts of which the most important was the Bank
Charter Act of 1844. These conditions were discussed in Sir John
Clapham's volumes published soon after the Bank completed the first
250 years of its existence. They are not repeated here, but it is important
to remember that until the formal status was transformed by the Act of
1946 the Bank remained in exclusively private ownership. By the time
this book opens in the 1890s, this private ownership had become in
most ways irrelevant to what the Bank was doing; the exceptions, not
then insignificant, find some place in the first two chapters. Broadly,
the Bank was conducting itself as a public institution, and from 1914
onwards this could be said without any qualification.^a

Between 1890 and 1946 the formal constitutional arrangements of the
Bank were modified only once, by a Supplemental Charter granted in
1896, though its duties, in relation for example to the issue of notes and
payments in gold, were affected by twelve Acts of Parliament between
1913 and 1939, ¹ The Supplemental Charter of 1896 was granted under
Section 7 of the Bank Act 1892 (55 & 56 Vic. c. 48). The main business
of this Act was to give effect to the new and niggardly financial settlement
negotiated between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Governor

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