Capitalism by Generalists: The Governance of the Ayr Bank and the Emergence of Professionalism in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Scottish Banking

Although the Bubble Act nominally applied to Scotland, it was never much of a deterrent to financial innovation particularly as the Bank of England monopoly did not extend there. During the Bubble Act period Scottish bankers innovated with a wide range of financial products and structures, despite the failure of the experimental Ayr Bank in the 1770s. This episode has been traditionally seen as an aberration in an otherwise enviable narrative of success, and often attributed to the inappropriate backgrounds and training of the lawyers managing the bank. This chapter argues that the bank’s governance was not inherently weaker than that of its more resilient peers, and that lawyers in particular could be an appropriate demographic to supply bank executives in a gradually professionalising business. The unpublished writings of George Home WS (1734–1820), liquidation factor to the bank and intimate of Henry Dundas, form a central case study of the chapter.