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By Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Bart. (1860).
The public is here presented with a Memoir, the genuine composition of Sir William Forbes, regarding the history of a mercantile establishment, of which he was long the chief. The manuscript having been accidentally shown to the editor, he saw in it so much that was interesting, as to be induced to plead with Sir William’s surviving friends for permission to place it before the world. It is consequently published at the distance of fully fifty-six years from the time when it was written, for the author appears to have closed his narration in May 1803.
The private banking-house so long known in Scotland in connection with the name of Sir William Forbes—merged since 1838 in the joint-stock Union Bank of Scotland—had a somewhat complicated genealogy, reaching far back in the last century—the century of progress in Scotland—and even faintly gleaming through the obscurities of the one before it, when mercantile efforts and speculations were taking their birth amidst the embers of scarcely extinct civil wars and all kinds of private barbarisms. The genealogy is here traced through a firm styled John Coutts & Co., of which the principal member was John Coutts, lord-provost of Edinburgh in the years 1742 and 1743, to Patrick Coutts, who carried on considerable merchandise at Montrose in the reign of William III. The concern is shown as the main stock from which branched off the eminent London banking firms of Coutts & Co., Strand, and Herries & Co., St James’s Street.
You can read this book at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ing/coutts.htm
Alastair
The public is here presented with a Memoir, the genuine composition of Sir William Forbes, regarding the history of a mercantile establishment, of which he was long the chief. The manuscript having been accidentally shown to the editor, he saw in it so much that was interesting, as to be induced to plead with Sir William’s surviving friends for permission to place it before the world. It is consequently published at the distance of fully fifty-six years from the time when it was written, for the author appears to have closed his narration in May 1803.
The private banking-house so long known in Scotland in connection with the name of Sir William Forbes—merged since 1838 in the joint-stock Union Bank of Scotland—had a somewhat complicated genealogy, reaching far back in the last century—the century of progress in Scotland—and even faintly gleaming through the obscurities of the one before it, when mercantile efforts and speculations were taking their birth amidst the embers of scarcely extinct civil wars and all kinds of private barbarisms. The genealogy is here traced through a firm styled John Coutts & Co., of which the principal member was John Coutts, lord-provost of Edinburgh in the years 1742 and 1743, to Patrick Coutts, who carried on considerable merchandise at Montrose in the reign of William III. The concern is shown as the main stock from which branched off the eminent London banking firms of Coutts & Co., Strand, and Herries & Co., St James’s Street.
You can read this book at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ing/coutts.htm
Alastair