Catalog
1 Guinea
| Issuer | Royal Bank of Scotland |
|---|---|
| Year | 1824 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | An engraved copperplate note in the early nineteenth-century Scottish tradition, with a circular vignette at upper centre enclosing a profile portrait bust, flanked by the imprints EDINBURGH and ONE GUINEA. A decorative guilloche border panel at left carries ROYAL BANK in vertical letterpress, while the body of the note bears a formal promise-to-pay text in flowing copperplate script with ONE GUINEA set in bold relief against a dark underprint panel. The authorisation concludes with the line By order of the Court of Directors. |
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| Obverse lettering | EDINBURGH ONE GUINEA ROYAL BANK The Royal Bank of Scotland promise to pay to Andrew Bogle or the bearer ONE GUINEA on demand at their Office here By order of the Court of Directors. |
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| Comments |
The guinea denomination — defined as twenty-one shillings — had no equivalent coin in circulation by 1824; sterling coinage had moved on, but Scottish banks clung to the unit well into the nineteenth century, partly for prestige in professional and legal fee-setting, and partly because the differential shilling made accounting convenient for certain transactions. The Royal Bank of Scotland was among the last institutions still printing guinea notes at this date.
Arch Bonar served as the bank's cashier from 1795 until his death in 1833 — an unusually long tenure that means his signature appears across decades of the bank's note history. Geo Laing was accountant. The pairing places this note firmly in the bank's pre-reform period, before the upheavals of the Scottish banking legislation of the 1840s.