Bank of England

The mother of central banks, built to fund a war. The model conquered the world.

The Bank of England (1694): founded by subscription to fund war against France, converting sovereign debt into circulating credit — the model every central bank copied. Nationalized 1946, operationally independent 1997. Documented file items: its wartime Bernhard response, the 2012 LIBOR-era communications (Tucker-Diamond), and its gold custody role (the 2019 Venezuela reserves dispute — the Bank refusing Maduro's withdrawal on UK government recognition grounds, a documented case of custody as policy). The node anchors the central-banking lineage the money file argues about.