15 Pounds White, 1778 issue

The Bank of England's early handwritten notes occupy a peculiar place in monetary history — they were legal instruments as much as currency, each one individually signed and dated by a cashier. This 15-pound denomination sits in an awkward middle ground: high enough to be a serious commercial instrument, yet not the round-sum notes that dominated interbank clearing. The £15 value was likely dictated by a specific commercial need rather than any systematic denomination planning.

Forgery was the defining crisis for this series. William Wynne Ryland, executed in 1783, and a wave of subsequent cases pushed the Bank toward increasingly aggressive prosecution — a policy that remained brutal through the Napoleonic period. Survivors of this issue are genuinely rare; most circulated hard before being cancelled.