← Back to the front page

The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

28. Going After the Bank of England

‘Sealing of the Bank of England Charter, 1694’, by Lady Jane Lindsay, 1905. Wikimedia

Chaloner’s next scheme targeted the newly established Bank of England, which had introduced new £100 banknotes in 1695. Chaloner got his hands on a stock of the right kind of paper, and began churning out £100 notes. He was caught, but he got away on a legal technicality. Astonishingly, although counterfeiting coins had long been a capital offense, forging banknotes did not make it into the statute book as a crime until 1697.

Chaloner immediately turned King’s Evidence (state’s witness), and snitched on his accomplices to curry favor. He did such a good job snitching that he received formal thanks from the Bank of England, and a £200 reward. He also got to keep all the profits he had made from his earlier £100 bank note forgeries.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.