Peters, George -1797)
George Peters, a London merchant and director, and governor of the Bank of England from 1785 to 1787, was a financial supporter of many worthy eighteenth-century causes, as was his friend, the noted philanthropist and traveller, Jonas Hanway (1712-1786). G. D. Hobson in his English bindings in the library of J. R. Abbey. London, 1940, no 88, illustrates and describes this binding and suggests that it might have been bound as a present from Jonas Hanway to Admiral Sir George Pocock on the occasion of his marriage to Sophia Pitt Drake in 1763. However, the crest is unmistakeably that granted to George Peters of London in 1748, that of Pocock is Out of a naval coronet an antelope's head. The arms that were granted to George Peters with the crest are: Or a lion rampant sable on a chief sable three mascles or. Burke's General Armory attributes arms and crest to James Peters Esq. of Park Street, Grosvenor Square with the motto Invidiâ major. Jonas Hanway, the philanthropist, was in the habit of presenting copies of his own books expensively if eccentrically bound. A detailed account of these bindings is to be found in G. D. Hobson English bindings in the library of J. R. Abbey.