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| Issuer | Commercial Bank of Scotland / Commercial Banking Company of Scotland |
|---|---|
| Year | 1827 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | COMMERCIAL BANK ONE POUND The Commercial Banking Company of Scotland promise to pay to Robt. Paul or Bearer ONE POUND on Demand at their Office here Edinburgh 2 July 1827 By Order of the Committee of Management Cashier |
| Reverse description | No reverse image is available for this note; the reverse is understood to be plain or bear only minimal printer's imprint typical of early Scottish private bank issues of this period. |
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| Comments |
The Commercial Bank of Scotland was founded in 1810 by a group of Edinburgh merchants and professionals who felt the established banks — the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank — operated too conservatively and too much in the interests of their own shareholders. It was a genuinely oppositional institution at its founding, and early note issues reflect a bank still asserting its right to exist in a crowded Scottish market.
Scottish banks retained the legal right to issue their own notes long after English provincial banking was brought under Bank of England control — a distinction rooted in the 1707 Acts of Union, which left Scots banking law largely intact. This 1827 note predates the wave of consolidation that would eventually fold the Commercial Bank into the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1959.
Cotton paper at this period was not a standardized security substrate — it varied considerably by supplier, and early Commercial Bank notes are known to suffer brittleness along fold lines.