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COMMERCE I65
ruined, and retiring to Holland on a pension, died there in 1679. His
sons, however, joining Child’s, are reckoned among the founders of that
prosperous and now ancient house, for a further account of which I may
refer the reader to Mr. Price’s Handbook, already quoted. He mentions
five houses as still extant whose predecessors kept “running cashes ~
in 1677. Of these, Child’s is in Fleet Street, the first house on the right
as you enter the city; Hoare’s, No. 37 in the same street, is marked by
the “Golden Bottle," originally set up in Cheapside; Stocks, now
Barnett’s, is at the Black Horse in Lombard Street, now No. 62; and
Williams’s, now Willis’s, at the Crown, No. 76 in the same street.
In 1694 London banking entered on a new phase. The Bank of
England was opened at Grocers’ Hall in the Poultry. It encountered
great opposition at first. Child's
and Hoare’s united to break it
without success, and notwith¬
standing the loss of its chief
promoter, Godfrey, who was
killed at the siege of Namur
when attending William III with
money, and notwithstanding also
its having on one occasion in
1696 actually to close its doors, it
grew and prospered, and moved
into a new building in 1734.
This was in Threadneedle Street,
which has ever since been its
headquarters, and the “‘old lady of
Threadneedle Street” is famous
all over the world. The name of
the street is said, with great prob¬