‘Publick matters and in hearing and telling news’

On 7 July 1684 John Farrington, ‘a citizen and haberdasher of London’, deposed to the court of Chancery how, fourteen years earlier, he had ‘become partners’ with three other citizens ‘in the borrowing and taking of money at interest … which was to be employed in a common or joint bank’. He was already familiar with the merchant Edmond Page, the two having dealt ‘together in partnership in the trade of wholesale mercer in London and also as Merchants in diverse particular wares and merchandise in parts beyond the sea’. The new, ‘unhappy acquaintance’ was with merchant Edward Nelthorpe and confectioner Richard Thompson – two citizens who ‘did also before that time deal together in partnership in wines and other commodities and merchandise’. According to Farrington, it was Thompson and Nelthorpe who claimed ‘upon long and mature consideration’ to have concocted a ‘way of dealing in the world which would unquestionably turn to a great account of profit’. Based in Thompson's ‘dwelling house’ in Woollchurch Market, at the commercial heart of the City of London, ‘in a short time the said joint bank and dealing grew into a very great credit and esteem’. Success was, however, short-lived. According to Farrington, Nelthorpe and Thompson were too ambitious, unskilled, and untrustworthy for commerce, committing themselves to designs that were ‘expensive and fruitless’ in the mistaken belief that ‘by the ruin of others’ they would be ‘suddenly rich’.