22 Pounds 1697 handwritten note

The Bank of England was chartered in 1694, and its earliest notes were entirely manuscript — written out by hand by the bank's cashiers, each one a unique document rather than a printed instrument. This is one of those notes. The denomination itself, 22 pounds, reflects the running cash note system then in use, where notes were issued for whatever sum a depositor placed with the bank, not rounded to a convenient face value.

Fewer than a handful of notes from the bank's first decade are known to survive in private hands. Most were presented for payment and destroyed upon redemption — which was, after all, their purpose.