1 Pound White, 1797 Issue

The Bank of England had never issued a £1 note before 1797. The trigger was the Restriction Period, which began in February of that year when a French landing in Wales — the last foreign invasion of mainland Britain — sparked a bank run severe enough that the government suspended convertibility of paper to gold. Overnight, the Bank needed small-denomination notes to substitute for the coin the public was hoarding.

These early £1 notes were hand-signed, hand-dated, and hand-numbered by Bank cashiers — a laborious process that became increasingly untenable as production volumes climbed. The suspension lasted until 1821, far longer than anyone anticipated in 1797.