John Scott (banker)


John Scott was an English banker and evangelical Christian. He held pacifist views, and was the first Treasurer and a founding member of the Peace Society.

Life

He was the son of William Scott and his wife Elizabeth Watts. At age 12 he was apprenticed to a City of London jeweller. He went to work for a private bank. When Henry Thornton joined it during the 1780s, the name was Down, Thornton & Free, or just Down & Co. In 1815 both Thornton and Richard Down, an original partner, died, and a new partnership was formed that involved Scott. It traded as Pole, Thornton, Free, Down & Scott, with Henry Sykes Thornton as one of the incoming partners.
Initially a Calvinist of the Church of England, Scott became a Calvinistic Methodist. He attended the Tabernacle Chapel, City Road, Moorfields, He later joined a Congregationalist chapel in Stoke Newington. In 1816 he was one of the founding committee of the Peace Society. In a tract of 1817, his address is given as Islington.
The bank failed in the Panic of 1825. Scott suffered a large personal loss.
A funeral sermon for Scott was preached at Stoke Newington by the Congregationalist minister John Jefferson. His place as the Peace Society's Treasurer was taken by Samuel Gurney.

Works

Scott married, firstly, Mary Whinnell, daughter of Benjamin Whinnell of Wimborne; and secondly Anne Ley. Among the children of the first marriage was Benjamin Whinnell Scott, a Clerk of the Chamber of the City of London, who was the father of Benjamin Scott who himself became Chamberlain, James Renat Scott Clerk and Registrar of the Coal Market and Syms Scott.