The Bank of England's own history documents 1724 (Henry Portal) as its earliest named paper-supply contract, and no Tier 1–2 source names the Sutton Courtenay mill or Rice Watkins for a 1697 watermark

The popularized version of the Bank of England's early watermark history names a specific mill and papermaker: the Sutton Courtenay Mill, under Rice Watkins, supplying watermarked paper from 1697. The Bank's own 1969 Quarterly Bulletin history states, as its earliest named paper-supply arrangement: "In 1724 the Bank entered into an agreement with the firm of Henry Portal of Whitchurch in Hampshire for the supply of bank note paper, a connection which has lasted till the present day." This is presented as a specific, dated, institutionally significant event — the kind of detail a Bank history would be expected to record if an equivalent 1697 arrangement existed.

Neither the bulletin's text nor its bibliography — Clapham (1944), Acres (1931), Feavearyear (1963), Mackenzie (1953), the standard scholarly literature on exactly this question — mentions Sutton Courtenay, Rice Watkins, or a 1697 watermark-supply contract. This is a negative finding, not a refutation: a popular-history bulletin need not mention every prior mill arrangement, and the general 1697 watermark date itself remains Tier-2 corroborated elsewhere (British Association of Paper Historians, via claim-bank-of-england-adopted-watermarked-banknote-paper-1697). What is unconfirmed at Tier 1–2 is narrower and more specific: the mill's name and the papermaker's identity.