Bank of England
The Bank of England is incorporated by royal charter
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Five days after the charter, the Bank opened for business with seventeen clerks and two gatekeepers.
27 July 1694: a charter for a private company
On 27 July 1694, William III and Mary II granted the charter incorporating the subscribers as the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.
It was a private joint-stock corporation, created principally to finance the government's war against France. Sir John Houblon was appointed its first governor, with Michael Godfrey as deputy governor.
£1.2 million, lent straight back out
The incorporated subscribers' capital of £1,200,000 went to the government as a loan carrying 8 percent interest. The Bank's museum history says the target was raised in 11 days; many secondary accounts say 12.
The subscribers were not only City men. William and Mary themselves held £10,000 of Bank stock, alongside merchants, doctors, grocers and carpenters.
What the charter was not
The April 1694 Tonnage Act had already authorized the subscription scheme. The charter was the incorporation — not the opening of the subscription drive, and not the Bank's first day of business.
Trading began on 1 August at Mercers' Hall in Cheapside, with a staff of 17 clerks and two gatekeepers. The Bank remained owned by its stockholders until it was nationalized in 1946.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- The Bank’s current museum account says the £1.2 million was raised in 11 days, while many secondary accounts say 12. The Bank’s own archival history is used here.
- Bank sources variously report more than 1,200 investors, 1,268 members of the public, or 1,520 separate names in the first subscription. These figures may count people, names, or entries differently, so no single subscriber count is presented as definitive.