| Description | Bank history
There is no evidence for a formal foundation for Mortlock's Bank. There are no documents of constitution and it is not until late in John's life that documentary evidence for the running of the bank is present in this archive. Rather, the banking activities grew out of John Mortlock's commercial business. H. Gunning, quoted in Clark-Kennedy, p.1, says 'he began to engage in money transactions for which it was not easy at the time to find an agent. . .' He was able to lend money at interest; he received dividends, purchased stock and furnished letters of credit' to such members of Cambridge town and university as were desirous of not running the risk of losing their guineas by an encounter with a highwaymen.' He goes on to note that Mortlock dealt 'liberally and cheerfully with all comers', and that this made him popular, even though his note circulation was small. But he also comments that, at that time, even Bank of England notes were not universally trusted, especially in rural areas.
The earliest banking activities were carried out from Mortlock's woollen drapery business at the Market Square end of Rose Crescent - a business he would appear to have sold in 1799 to Richard Bishop (509/4/11). Helen Cam notes that by 1782 Mortlock is described as 'banker' (rather than the 'woollen draper' of 1778) in the Common Day Book of Cambridge, which recorded the proceedings of the corporation.
She gives 1780 as the year the bank was founded (p.3); that was also the year in which John Mortlock was elected one of the twenty-four common councilmen of Cambridge; this opened the way to his later becoming mayor. In 1783 Mortlock bought the property in Bene't Street which housed both the residential mansion and the new Bank premises (Clarke Kennedy p.153). The site is marked with a blue plaque and subsequently the building became a restaurant. It would appear from the document 509/4/14 that Richard Bishop Senior bought Mortlock's woollen draper's business in 1799.
Clark-Kennedy (p.14), taking his information from Roth (pp. B84ff), notes how Mortlock 'with foresight and skill' had steered the bank through the financial crises of 1793 and 1797' Profits had improved (by four times at the end of the [Napoleonic] war and the total value of deposits increased from £50,000 before the war to £144,000 at the end of it. Individual accounts had increased from 350 to 1,200 and by 1815 turnover had risen from an average of £90,000 in the early nineties to nearly £400,000. Helen Cam notes (p.5) he was also Banker to the University, but gives no dates; later, under Thomas, Mortlock's bank was again the University's bank in 1833 (Matthews p.184). When Mortlock died in 1816 not only was his banking business flourishing, but his landed estate was said to be worth over £120,000.
John Mortlock did not appear to bring any of his sons into the banking business until fairly late in his life (he died in May 1816). The document 509/1/1/2 (dated 1814) implies that before this date the eldest son, John Cheetham, had been brought into partnership, but if there had been any formal documentation it has not survived in the archive. The son clearly had been unhappy about some of his father's business practices (too many overdrawn accounts and some advances not backed by securities), and Griffiths (p.20) adds that John Cheetham was also tired of trying to 'control the incorrigible Frederick', the favorite son who had also clearly been involved in the bank. These dissatisfactions led to John's leaving the partnership somewhat acrimoniously, and joining a rival bank in Cambridge.
There not being at this time any legal way to limit the liability of businesses, John Mortlock sought to protect his personal fortune from collateral damage from the bank should that business not thrive. He left his Pampisford estates to support his wife and unmarried sisters, and his Abington estate to his bachelor son Thomas, who at that time had no connection with the bank. Though Thomas was not legally obliged to use money from the estate to continue to bail out the bank after John's death, his father had stipulated that any bank debts outstanding on his death could be met from estate income.
The banking business he left solely to Frederick; this was one of only two really bad business decisions that John Mortlock seems to have made. (The other was his large loan, referred to below, to his friend Sir Benjamin Hammet, which was never repaid.)
Frederick had shown no aptitude for banking, his interests being in field sports and other gentlemanly pursuits (Clark-Kennedy p.18). Unlike most of his brothers he had not had a university education. It is not clear why his father selected him to run the bank; perhaps he recognised something of his own adventurous spirit in Frederick's elopement in 1807 to Gretna Green (at least he chose a wealthy heiress). The marriage was regularized later the same year appears not to have led to any bad feeling between Frederick and his father. He served as mayor in 1810, 1812 and 1814, alternating with his brother John Cheetham, but probably as his fathers' puppet (Clark-Kennedy p.18).
The next few years were to prove crucial to the bank; Frederick Cheetham was his father's choice, but it could not have been a wise one. The archive reveals certain facts, but says nothing about motive or about the attitude of the people concerned. Thus we know that less than eighteen months after John Mortlock's death in May 1816, Thomas had to intervene in bank affairs to limit the damage being done by Frederick. The extent of the damage is not clear, though 509/1/1/10/15 reveals a debt of £10,350. There must have been other concerns and in October 1817 Thomas went into partnership with his brother and then bought him out in May 1820 (509/1/1/10/10,13), providing Frederick with an annuity. Without further research it is difficult to judge how fair the annuity arrangements were. What is certain is that Fredericks' eldest son (John Frederick) held a violent grudge against his uncles, believing that they had withheld the inheritance from his father. In 1842 attacked his uncle the Revd Edmund Davy, but did him no serious harm. He was condemned and sent to Botany Bay in Australia, as described by Clark-Kennedy in From Cambridge to Botany Bay. By 1866 John Frederick was writing to his uncle Edmund John Mortlock informing him of his intent to take proceedings against him and Rev. Edmund Mortlock to recover property of Frederick Cheetham Mortlock, left in trust for his children (509/1/5/1/9, dated 4 October 1866). The case was settled in 1859 (the Bank won); the documents can be found under 509/1/5 Lamprell v. Mortlock.
Despite John Mortlock's attempts to keep bank affairs separate from his personal estate, his complicated will meant that all the heirs' inheritances were bound up with the fortunes of the bank. Thomas' action in gaining control of the bank had repercussions a generation later, culminating in court action settled in 1859, of which the details are given in 509/1/5.
John Mortlock had started to expand his business as early as 1810, when a branch was founded at Ely. The balance sheets show that further branches were active in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire (1813), Saffron Walden, Essex (1818), and Royston, Hertfordshire for which only the 1825 balance sheet remains, but which Griffiths (p.21) says was established in 1825 and closed in 1827. He also gives closing dates of 1826 for Bishop's Stortford and Saffron Walden. The Ely branch remained active until the amalgamation with Barclays in 1896.
In John Mortlock's lifetime there had been politically motivated runs on the bank with the intention of ruining him (Cam, p.5). Mortlock neatly turned the tables, calling in loans and thus bankrupting his opponents. In Thomas' time, in the more general banking crisis of the 1820s, not only did two branches close, but a serious run on the Cambridge bank was only averted through the actions of the clergy; Revd Edmund Davy and his brother-in-law Bishop John Kaye (in full regalia) took their stand at a temporary counter erected on the pavement and calmly handed out sovereigns, thereby quelling fears that the bank could not meet its obligations (Griffiths, p.21).
There were also troubles with the London corresponding bank, Esdaile's (Esdaile., Esdaile, Esdaile and Hammett); John Mortlock had made a considerable loan to Sir Benjamin Hammett, which proved to be one of the few ill-judged decisions of his banking career. Hammett was not only Mortlock's London banker, but also a family friend, so there was already a possible conflict between business and personal decisions. Further, there were family links within Esdaile's - Hammett was also son-in-law to Sir James Esdaile, whom he persuaded in 1781 to found the bank. He defaulted on the Mortlock loan in 1815 (Griffiths p. 21) and it may have been this, Griffiths suggests, that led to John Cheetham Mortlock's objection to unsecured loans, as noted above. Thomas tried, unsuccessfully, to get the loan repaid and relations between the two banks deteriorated to such a degree that in 1827 Esdaile's wrote to terminate the connection (509/1/3/28) and Thomas promptly took the bank's business to Messrs Smith, Payne and Smith of Lombard Street. John Payne had been a London merchant and linen draper and also had been chairman of the East India Company. He died in 1799, and, although the business retained his name, ownership passed entirely to the Smith family (www.heritagearchives.rbs.com). This archive contains papers dating from 1827 to 1859.
Thomas brought a steady and methodical mind to the banking and estate business; he never married and lived mainly in the Bank House in Cambridge, though he kept a pied-a-terre in Abington. He appears to have been a fair landlord, though not necessarily a kindly one. Towards the end of his life he looked to the younger generation of Mortlocks to carry on the family business; Charles Junior, son of his brother Charles, had started on a career in the Madras army, but was invalided out and then went to St John's College, Cambridge. After graduating he joined his uncle Thomas, in about 1850. Some misdemeanor caused him to be sacked, and another nephew, Henry's son Edmund John joined the bank in his place (Griffiths p.22). Thomas died in 1859 and Edmund John, who had been answering letters on his uncle's behalf for some time, took over the bank and also inherited the Abington Estate.
Edmund John lived in Great Abington (at Abington Lodge), rather than in Cambridge, and took much more interest in the estate than his uncle. The bank continued steadily under his leadership and in 1889 Edmund John registered the bank as a Limited Company, under the title of John Mortlock and Co. Ltd. Later, at a time when small country banks were beginning to have outlived their usefulness, he successfully amalgamated with other local banks in 1896 to form Barclay's Bank Ltd. At the time of the amalgamation Mortlock's bank was the only one of the twenty banks which was not a private firm (Matthews p.184). Edmund John remained a local director at Cambridge, alongside Edmund Henry Parker (who was also a Barclay's director) until a year before his death in 1902.
References
Cam, H.M. 'John Mortlock III, "Master of the Town of Cambridge"' in Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (C.A.S.) Vol. XL (1939-1942), 1-12. (Cambridgeshire Archives C.08)
Clark-Kennedy, Dr A. E., From Cambridge to Botany Bay, 1983 (Cambridgeshire Archives C.52)
Griffiths, R.J.H., Mortlock - Two Cambridge Dynasties. (A submission to Trubshaw, 2000) (Cambridgeshire Archives C.32.8) [This work has valuable family trees for many generations and some branches of the Mortlock family; the text has many interesting details, but sources are not cited.]
Gunning, H., Reminiscences of the University, Town, and County of Cambridge from the year 1780, [ends 1830]. 2 vols 1854 (Cambridgeshire Archives C. 44.47)
Matthews, P.W. (compiled), and Tuke, A.W. (edited), [Extracts from] 'History of Barclay's Bank Ltd including the many private and joint stock banks amalgamated and affiliated with it'. London 1926. (Cambridgeshire Archives Cambridgeshire Archives C.32.8 )
Namier, L. and Brooke, J. (Eds) The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790. 1964. From www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790
Pickles, John D., Dictionary of National Biography, entry for John Mortlock
Pressnell, Leslie S., Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution. Oxford University Press 1956
Roth, J-P., Les Debuts de la Banque Mortlock a Cambridge, 1780-1816, bound typescript, Sorbonne 1969 (Cambridgeshire Archives C.32.8)
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