The Bank of England's earliest surviving banknote (1697) is a handwritten running-cash note, not evidence of watermarked paper in circulation that year

The trade-press narrative behind claim-bank-of-england-adopted-watermarked-banknote-paper-1697 dates the Bank's adoption of watermarked banknote paper to 1697. Separately, the Bank's oldest surviving note specimen is also dated to 1697 — but it is not the printed, watermarked paper the adoption story describes. The 1969 Quarterly Bulletin's own plate caption describes it as "Entirely written by hand; signed by Robert Hedges, who was 2nd Cashier; for £22, with a payment of £5 and a balance of £17." A Bank of England Museum collections blog post dates this same note to 18 June 1697 and calls it "one of the earliest known examples of a running cash note."

Read against the Bulletin's separate statement that partly-printed notes came into "regular use" only "probably... between 1696 and 1699," the earliest surviving note and the claimed watermark-adoption event are two different things that happen to share a year. Whether the surviving manuscript note's own paper carries a watermark is not addressed by either source — and the paper stock for a one-off manuscript note and the paper stock for a print run are not necessarily the same commission. This suggests the "1697" date circulating in trade press may conflate "the oldest note we still have" with "the year watermarked paper started."