Co Antrim, Belfast, Belfast Commercial Bank, One Pound British, 18—, proof on card by Perkins & Heath for William Tennent, Robert Callwell, James Luke and John Thomson, text in bottom border 'Equal to £1.1s Irish'. A few light spots, otherwise good extremely fine (£1,000-1,200)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Bob Blake Collection of Irish Banknotes.

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Amalgamated with Batt & Co to form the Belfast Banking Co in 1827. William Tennent (1760-1832), a native of co Antrim, served his apprenticeship with John Campbell, a Belfast merchant and banker, and held partnerships in the distilling firm of John Porter & Co and the Belfast Insurance Co. Arrested on suspicion of belonging to the United Irishmen after the rebellion of 1798, he was interned in Scotland for two years before returning to Belfast. He was co-founder of the city’s Commercial Bank in 1809 and remained as a director after it became the Belfast Banking Co in 1827; he died in the cholera epidemic of 1832. Robert Callwell, aka Caldwell, merchant and banker, was, like Tennent, one of the 12 founders of the Presbyterian Volunteer Movement broadsheet, The Northern Star, in 1792. John Thomson (1767-1824), banker, Castleton; he may be the fourth partner described on the note, or it may be his second son, John Thomson (b. 1794), of Low Wood, Belfast, JP for Down and Antrim and a subsequent director of the Belfast & Ballymena Railway