Note 102 — Chapter IX · THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE, AND COMPARISONS WITH ITS NEW YORK PROTOTYPE

The English Exchequer has left a permanent impression on the language no less than on the world’s finance. Such words as “cheque,” “tally,” and “stocks,” in the sense of securities, possess an interesting history easy to trace. If one lent money to the Bank of England down to so comparatively recent a period as one hundred years ago, tallies for the amount were cut on willow sticks just as they were cut at the Exchequer in the time of the Crusades; the bank kept the “foil,” and the lender the “stock”—the earliest “bank-stock” on record. Very recently a bag of Exchequer tallies was found in a chapel of Westminster Abbey.