William Forbes

Sir William Forbes was a Scottish banker born in Edinburgh 5 April 1739. His father Willam Forbes, heir to a Nova Scotia baronetcy, was an advocate; the family estate at Monymusk in Aberdeenshire, had been sold by his grandfather.

A friend of the family, Sir Francis Farquharson of Haughton, arranged with Messrs. Coutts, a prominent firm of bankers in Edinburgh, to admit Forbes as an apprentice, and he entered their service in 1754. The apprenticeship lasted four years, and then he was clerk in the counting-house for two years more, at the end of which he was given a small share in the business as a partner.

In 1761 John Coutts, the principal partner of the Edinburgh firm died, and his brother Patrick due to illness was in no position to run it. A new partnership, including Forbes, was proposed and established in 1763. After seven years (in 1770) he married Elizabeth Hay,

From 1763 to 1773 the active members of the firm, still under the original name, were Sir Robert Herries, Forbes, and James Hunter. The name Coutts was retained till 1773, when a new contract was made and the firm became Forbes, Hunter, & Co. From 1775 Forbes was the head of the firm, and decided to confine the transactions of the house to banking alone. The house became one of the most trusted in Scotland, and remained stable in the financial crises and panics of 1772, 1788, and 1793. In 1783 the firm, after difficult preliminaries, began to issue notes.

Forbes had become an authority on finance, and in 1783 he took part in preparing the revised Bankruptcy Act. William Pitt used to consult him, and adopted in 1790 some of his suggestions on the stamps on bills of exchange. In 1799 Pitt offered him an Irish peerage, which he declined.

Forbes worked to win back some of the alienated possessions of his ancestors through purchases. He improved the estate and laid out the village of New Pitsligo in 1783. Forbes was also involved in philanthropic projects in Edinburgh: the High School, the Merchant Company, the Morningside Lunatic Asylum, and the Blind Asylum.

Forbes declined invitations to stand for parliament. He was a member of Samuel Johnson's literary dining club, and he is mentioned in James Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides. Lady Forbes, with whom he made his only lengthy visit to the continent in 1792–3, died in 1802. He died 12 November 1806.