Thomas Coutts

Thomas Coutts learnt all about the need for discretion while growing up in Edinburgh during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. The fourth son of a merchant banker, he was ten and a pupil at the local high school when Edinburgh was besieged. His father, John Coutts, was on the town council from 1730, and served as Lord Provost from 1742 to 1744. He took care to keep on good terms with George II's ministers in Scotland, Lord Ilay and Lord Milton, because his family in Montrose had Jacobite leanings and his wife, Jean, daughter of Sir John Stuart and Margaret Kerr, had relatives who were similarly suspect. It was reckoned these early experiences encouraged Thomas Coutts's naturally cautious nature and gave him a readiness to hedge his bets.

At fifteen he was sent to London with his eldest brother, Patrick, and for ten years worked in his father's import and export business in Jeffreys Square, where he gained valuable commercial experience. In 1761, he joined his elder brother James at a banking house in the Strand, founded in 1692 by John Campbell, a goldsmith-banker under the patronage of the Duke of Argyll. By 1775, James Coutts had married John Campbell's granddaughter, and after the death of her father in 1760, he inherited the bank, which in 1761 was styled James and Thomas Coutts.

When James became MP for Edinburgh (1762-7), Thomas took most of the responsibility at the bank. Later his brotherhad a mental breakdown, and he died in 1778, after which Thomas took sole charge. He displayed a masterly ability to delegate and made some shrewd choices in new partners at the bank, helping to turn the failing business of 1761, into a highly profitable and prestigious bank by the time Thomas Coutts died in 1822.

Coutts had other indispensable qualities which made him a top-drawer banker. He was the soul of discretion and he understood human nature well, inspiring trust and lasting affection among his clients. Allied to this, he ran the bank with clockwork efficiency, devising a daily routine for every clerk. He was of course operating in turbulent times at home and particularly abroad with the Napoleonic War occupying the energies of the government and populace. Coutts kept closely in touch with public affairs at home and throughout the world, through leading politicians such as Chatham and by maintaining a close network of Scottish friends and relatives abroad. Lord Macartney brought him wallpaper from China and Lord Minto news from India. He knew Paris well and followed the French Revolution with a personal interest, establishing a lasting link between his bank and the French royal family: Louis Philippe kept in touch with him during his years of exile. Many refugees left their valuables with him.

Some of the most influential aristocrats were Coutts's customers, but his greatest coup came when George III became a patron at the beginning of his reign, through the influence of his Prime Minister and Keeper of the Privy Purse, the Earl of Bute, who had known their father, Provost Coutts. So began the lasting connection between Coutts & Co. and the royal family. The king trusted the discretion of his banker and in November 1787, admitted him to the Privy Chamber. Royal customers brought prestige to Coutts & Co., but the accounts of the king's spendthrift sons caused Thomas Coutts more headaches than profit.

In spite of the huge wealth that Coutts built up, he lived relatively modestly. The simplicity, even shabbiness, of his dress led strangers to mistake him for a poor man. Unlike other great bankers, Thomas Coutts built no great country house, and he was happier in London in his modest villa and lovely garden on Highgate Hill than in his large house, 1 Stratton Street, Piccadilly. He preferred, he claimed, to keep his fortune liquid so that he could help his friends. Modestly, Coutts always referred to his prestigious bank as 'my shop'.

Outside of business he had a genuine love of the arts, and always carried a volume of Shakespeare in his pocket. A supporter of Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres, he was a friend of Garrick and other actors. Coutts married twice. His first wife, a nursemaid to his brother's daughter, produced three daughters, all of whom married well. She died in 1815, and Coutts remarried soon after. His new bride was Harriot Mellon, an actress, and she made Coutts a happy man in his remaining years. To show his respect for Harriot's good judgement he bequeathed to her the bulk of his property, and his half share in the bank. After his death in 1822, William Cobbett wrote in his Political Register that:
A million or more of money got together during a marriage with one wife has been made to pass to a second.
That £1m fortune would be worth £3.5bn in today's money.