‘The Bold Adventurers’: A Quantitative Analysis of the Darien Subscription List (1696)

Journal of Scottish Historical Studies

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 22-42

  Jones, W Douglas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85195167229     PISSN: 1748538X     EISSN: 17551749     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3366/jshs.2001.21.1.22     Document Type: Note

References (38)

1. The best and most comprehensive account of the Darien Scheme may be found in George Pratt Insh, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (London, 1932). See also John Prebble, Darien: The Scottish Dream of Empire [The Darien to Disaster] (Edinburgh, 1968 and 1978, re-issue 2000).
2. There were two subscription books: One remained in Edinburgh, and the other in Glasgow, though there is evidence that this book also travelled to Ayr and perhaps elsewhere. NAS, Adv. MS. 83.1.1, Edinburgh Subscription Book; NAS, MS. Adv. 83.1.3, Glasgow Subscription Book.
3. So called by Professor Smout; the other three disasters were the costly continental wars, the prolonged famine, and tariff battles with England. T. C. Smout, Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union 1660-1707 (London, 1963), 244-51.
4. ‘First-party’ subscribers signed the Company’s books on their own behalf. ‘Second-party’ subscribers authorised a deputy to make their pledge.
5. A comparison from the Glasgow book in confounded by the small size of the second-party sample.
6. NLS, MS. 1031, f. 206, Hamilton Papers.
7. Smout, Scottish Trade, 22.
8. In a 16 December 1702 letter to Viscount of Stairs, Clerk wrote, ‘I am no ane highflown East-India-goose’, acknowledging his decision not to invest in 1696. Smout, Scottish Trade, 151.
9. Smout, Scottish Trade, 282-4. The figure 1.2 million is based upon the estimate of Alexander Webster (1755, printed in J. G. Kyd (ed.), Scottish Population Statistics, Scottish History Society, 1952), which Professor Smout considers ‘the first tolerably reliable estimate’. Smout also offers estimates of 30,000 and 14,000 for Edinburgh and Glasgow at the Restoration, figures which he indicates ‘may have doubled or trebled’ by 1700 (see pp. 5, 131, 144); Michael Finn et al., Scottish Population History: From the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), 191, 198-9.
10. John Simpson (ed.), ‘The Papers of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (The Darien Company), 1696-1707’ [microfilm] (Edinburgh, 1981), Minutes of the Court of Directors, 3 April 1696.
11. There are only eighteen subscriptions from the whole of Lanarkshire in the Edinburgh book even though the Glasgow book did not arrive in Glasgow until 5 March and was open for less than two months.
12. There were only fifteen subscriptions of £1,000 or more recorded in the Glasgow book, or 6.1% of all Glasgow entries.
13. Pratt Insh, Company of Scotland, 66.
14. Ibid., 67.
15. He later acknowledges this fact in letters to William Carstares pointing out that the whole nation considered him the design’s main opponent and the tool of a malevolent court. Popular distrust for the Earl of Seafield crystallised on 20 June 1700 when an angry Edinburgh mob vandalised his High Street residence by breaking every last pane of glass in his stately windows. Joseph McCormick, State Papers and Letters Addressed to William Carstares (Edinburgh, 1774), Letter from the Earl of Seafield to Mr Carstares, 24 July 1700, 577-8.
16. Though only ninety-one female subscribers appear in the Company’s list, we know that many other women invested smaller sums as part of municipal subscriptions. See John Stewart Shaw, The Political History of Eighteenth-Century Scotland (New York, 1999), 2-11.
17. There were only seven women among the Bank of Scotland’s 172 investors, all of whom were ladies of property and standing. This 4% female participation is compared to the Company’s 6.4% - of which only 39.6% were landed or noble. See Alan Cameron, Bank of Scotland, 1695-1995: A Very Singular History (Edinburgh, 1995), 21.
18. Even before the conclusion of the Peace of Ryswick (1697), the English Parliament was pressing William to reduce his standing army. The ‘standing army controversy’ that ensued was reaching its height just as the Darien crisis broke in Scotland. See Lois G. Schoewer, No Standing Armies! The Anti-Army Ideology in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1974), 155.
19. The Writers to the Signet also considered making a common pledge of £300 and passed a motion accordingly at their 9 April 1696 meeting. But for some reason no entry was ever made for their organisation. See Francis J. Grant et al. (eds), A History of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet, 1594-1890 (Edinburgh, 1890), 342.
20. The incorporations of wrights, hammermen, maltmen and tailors made common good pledges in the Glasgow book.
21. Craig Muir, Mercat Cross and Tolbooth: Understanding Scotland’s Old Burghs (Edinburgh, 1988), 113.
22. Shaw, The Political History of Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 6.
23. An ‘Act allowing the Administrators of the Common Good of Burrows to Adventure their Stock or any Part there-of in the Company of Forraign Trade’ was clearly intended to benefit the Company of Scotland and included all municipalities, incorporations, companies, and even colleges. Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, ed. T. Thompson and Cosmos Innes (Edinburgh, 1814-75), 463.
24. Smout, Scottish Trade, 205. This figure is based upon a 1706 report of the Council of Trade that was laid before the English Parliament during the ratification of the Treaty of Union.
25. The value of Scotland’s total exports in 2000 was estimated at £43.9 billion. See Table 1.8: ‘Scottish Exports and Imports by Industry 1996 (Producers Prices)’, Scottish Economic Statistics 2000, The Scottish Executive, The Internet, www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/ses200/secs-19.asp
26. Smout, Scottish Trade, 205. £1 Sterling was equal to £12 Scots.
27. As much as £40,000 Sterling may have left Scotland during these crisis years to purchase grain from abroad. This figure was supplied by William Paterson in 1706 - who had by this time become a strong advocate of Union with England (‘An Inquiry into the Reasonableness and Consequences of an Union with Scotland’, 1706, 124). Smout, Scottish Trade, 119.
28. In fact, the first call of 25% on 1 June 1696 produced £98,223 Sterling. Pratt Insh, Company of Scotland, 67.
29. Cameron, Bank of Scotland, 21.
30. This sum represents only those 823 entries recorded by 1 April 1696 and 76.3% of the Company’s nominal capital.
31. Cameron, Bank of Scotland, 25. The £34,000 figure most likely reflects the Company’s balance after laying out several large expenditures. Pratt Insh’s estimate described above (£98,223) is a more accurate reflection of the Company’s capital assets before these purchases.
32. Richard Saville, Bank of Scotland: A History, 1695-1995 (Edinburgh, 1996), 34.
33. James Samuel Barbour, A History of William Paterson and the Darien Company (Edinburgh, 1907), 26.
34. There was a popular ballad that appeared in Edinburgh around 1697 which indicates the tight credit market. Anon., ‘USURER, To the Tune of, Such a parcel of Rogues in a Nation, By a Cabal of Young Ladies’, Old Scottish Ballads, NLS, Ry.III.A.10, folio 95.
35. NAS, GD 172/1595. There is also evidence that the Company itself was financing payments on subscriptions, as it did for William Bennet of Grubet’s quarter-share. See NAS, GD 6/1259.
36. ‘Irrational exuberance’ is the term that US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan used to describe the booming investment culture that brought American markets to record highs in 1996. Bob Woodward, Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom (New York, 2000), 179.
37. Andrew W. Kerr, History of Banking in Scotland (London, 1918), 24.
38. Investors were compensated for their shares after August 1707 with an addition of 5% annual interest. If a £100 investor had met all of the required calls, he received £60 8s. in 1707 even though he had contributed only £42 10s. Interest was only paid on the portion of each share that had been called. Burton, Darien Papers, xxxviii. The unpaid balance to Darien subscribers was subsequently paid in treasury debentures, which were essential public securities. These debentures were quickly discounted and returned to London where they, in 1727, formed the capital core of the Royal Bank of Scotland.