Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Plates, Figures and Tables
- Editorial Note
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Varieties of Innovation: Ireland, Scotland and the Financial Revolution 1688–1720
- 2 Banking and Investment on the Periphery: The Case of Ireland
- 3 Investment from the Periphery: Irish Investors in the South Sea Company in Comparative and Transnational Perspective
- 4 ‘Most of Our Money of This Kingdom is gone over to the South Sea’: Irish Investors and the South Sea Company
- 5 ‘Nothing here but Misery’? The Economic Impact of the South Sea Bubble on Ireland
- 6 ‘A Thing They Call a Bank’: Irish Projects in the South Sea Year
- 7 The Proposals for a National Bank and the Irish Investment Community in 1720
- 8 ‘A Strong Presumption That This Bank May be a Bubble’: Misreading the Bubble and the Bank of Ireland Debates, 1721
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Plates, Figures and Tables
- Editorial Note
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Varieties of Innovation: Ireland, Scotland and the Financial Revolution 1688–1720
- 2 Banking and Investment on the Periphery: The Case of Ireland
- 3 Investment from the Periphery: Irish Investors in the South Sea Company in Comparative and Transnational Perspective
- 4 ‘Most of Our Money of This Kingdom is gone over to the South Sea’: Irish Investors and the South Sea Company
- 5 ‘Nothing here but Misery’? The Economic Impact of the South Sea Bubble on Ireland
- 6 ‘A Thing They Call a Bank’: Irish Projects in the South Sea Year
- 7 The Proposals for a National Bank and the Irish Investment Community in 1720
- 8 ‘A Strong Presumption That This Bank May be a Bubble’: Misreading the Bubble and the Bank of Ireland Debates, 1721
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In March 1733, on reporting the death of Sir Ralph Gore – the long-time chancellor of the Irish exchequer and one-time national bank promoter – a leading Irish politician, Marmaduke Coghill, noted with some surprise that Gore had ‘no ready money or any out on securities’. Almost thirteen years after the South Sea bubble, it was clearly expected that members of the Irish elite would have some of their wealth laid out in stocks or securities, whether in London or Dublin. This is evident from other sources too. The diaries for the same period of John Perceval, now 1st Earl of Egmont, are replete with references to his investments, both his own, and on behalf of his Irish and English relations, including regular purchases of South Sea stock. His negative personal experience, of what Egmont still termed in 1737 ‘that vile scheme’, had not led him to retreat entirely from investment in the stock market. Instead, despite his losses during the bubble, income from stocks and shares continued to be important for him and his extended family circle. In this he had much in common with many, if not most, investors during the bubble. The ‘plaguy South Sea’, while it initially led to increased levels of suspicion and distrust among the British and Irish investing public, did not mark a watershed in terms of wider financial and investing practices. The innovations and developments of the financial revolution had become too embedded in contemporary society for them to be easily undone.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The South Sea Bubble and IrelandMoney, Banking and Investment, 1690–1721, pp. 181 - 182Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014