The eighteenth-century Bank of England was an institution that operated for the benefit of its shareholders – and yet came to be considered, as Adam Smith described it, a great engine of state. Anne Murphy explores how this private organization became the guardian of the public credit upon which Britains economic and geopolitical power was based. Drawing on the voluminous and detailed minute books of a Committee of Inspection that examined the Banks workings in 1783-84, she frames her account as a day in the life of the Bank of England, looking at a days worth of banking activities that ranged from the issuing of bank notes to the management of public funds.
