Rufus Folorunso Akinyooye - St Clements University

CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
As a further demonstration of his break with Rome and the Roman Catholic Church, King
Henry the VIII of England dissolved the monasteries in 1530.Up to that time the monasteries
were where the gentry and aristocracy kept their wealth of gold. They had to move them to the
Towers of London only to have them seized by King Charles 1(1600-1649) to finance his Wars.
The English Civil war and the unsettling aftermath led the gentry and aristocracy to seek a
safer place for their gold and this they found in the vaults of the London goldsmiths. By 1677
there were forty-four goldsmiths in London who accept gold for safe-custody giving receipts in
exchange. As mentioned above the receipts became the forerunner of banknotes. Their clients
could also request a fractional sum to be given to a third party, and these too eventually
became the forerunner of modern day cheques.
a) The history of Money and the banks
According to Joe Cribb (1999) it is not known exactly when money was first used. The oldest
written record of it he said, are from Ancient Mesopotamia (now in Southern Iraq) about 4.500
years ago. Ancient Mesopotamia cuneiform inscriptions according to him, describe payments
being made with weighted amount of silver. Since then, weighted amount of metals have been
used as money in many parts of the world, and this led to the invention of coins.