Catalog
1 Pound Sterling = 20 Shillings Sterling
| Issuer | Royal Bank of Scotland |
|---|---|
| Year | 1807 |
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| Value | 1 Pound Sterling |
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| Obverse description | Unilateral note engraved in intaglio on cream paper, with the denomination ONE POUND displayed in bold letterpress at the top centre beneath a Royal Crown vignette radiating sunburst lines. The abbreviations 'Edinbr.' and 'Ster°' appear at the upper left and right respectively, flanking the crown device. The body of the note carries the bank's promise to pay text in copperplate script, concluding with the authorization 'By order of the Court of Directors,' above two manuscript signatures. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Edinbr. ONE POUND Ster° ROYAL BANK The Royal Bank of Scotland promise to pay to Andrew Bogle or the Bearer TWENTY SHILLINGS Sterling on demand at their office here By order of the Court of Directors. |
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| Comments |
The Royal Bank of Scotland was chartered in 1727 as a deliberate counterweight to the Bank of Scotland, established with backing from supporters of the Hanoverian crown. By 1807 it had been issuing pound notes for decades under Scotland's distinctive free banking system, which permitted multiple private banks to issue their own currency simultaneously — a legal arrangement that persisted well into the nineteenth century and produced a far more competitive note-issuing environment than England ever allowed.
Scottish pound notes of this period were printed locally and hand-dated, with serial numbers and cashier signatures applied individually at the branch level. Genuine 1807 survivors are rare; paper of this age is vulnerable to fold fractures along heavy crease lines, a known weakness in the cotton-linen mix used by Edinburgh printers of the period.