From its very beginning the Bank of England had responsibilities as a Registrar. The original Charter of 1694 entrusted the Bank with the management of its own newly created Capital Stock, and directed ‘that there shall be constantly kept in the public Office of the said Governor and Company of the Bank of England, a Register, or Book or Books, wherein all Assignments and Transfers shall be entered’. Maintaining the registers was the duty of the ‘First Accomptant’, and trade in the new stock was quite brisk from the start: Acres notes that many prominent Whigs disposed of their holdings within a year or so of the foundation of the Bank, and that the £10,000 which had been subscribed in the names of King William and Queen Mary was transferred to William Lowndes of the Treasury, who sold it in May 1695. The sum of five shillings was payable to the Bank by the transferor on every transaction, towards the cost of ‘Books, Accountants, Law Duty, and other like expenses’.

The work proceeded on this footing for the next two decades, but one of the earliest Acts of King George I, the Ways and Means Act of 1715, not only enlarged its scope, leading ultimately to stock registration activities on a gigantic scale, but also had more far-reaching effects with regard to the Bank's power and influence in the country's financial affairs.