Law’s Background
John Law was born in Edinburgh in 1671. His father was a goldsmith at a time when the Scottish goldsmiths were becoming embryonic bankers by lending money against the deposits that they obtained for safekeeping.
Noted for his agile mind and mathematical abilities at school, Law travelled to London in the 1690s acquiring the reputation of a dandy, philanderer and rake. Known as “Beau” Law he killed another “Beau”, Edward Wilson in a duel in Bloomsbury Square in 1694. The cause of this duel has been disputed. Law was sentenced to death for Wilson’s murder but escaped from prison through the connivance of leading British politicians of the day. He travelled to the Continent where he changed from his hitherto dilettante gambler role to that of the equivalent of an eighteenth-century bookmaker using his mathematical skills to make a fortune at the gambling tables in France and Italy. More importantly Law turned his intellect to money and banking, writing a paper “Essay on a land bank” (now published as John Law’s Essay on a Land Bank - Law 1994) which he sent to Lord Godolphin in the hope that the English authorities would be interested in his proposal. Rejected by the English, he returned from the Continent to Edinburgh where he wrote Money and Trade Consider’d with a Proposal for Suppllying the Nation with Money (1705). This book contained his recommendations to the Scottish Parliament for the establishment of a paper money in Scotland. However, he was turned down by the Scottish Parliament and forced to leave Scotland because of the signing of the Act of Union in 1707. Law, still a convicted murder on the run from British justice, travelled back to the Continent where he attempted over the next nine years to encourage various European monarchs and states to implement his monetary proposals.