We use daily transactional ledger data from the Bank of England's Archive to test whether and to what extent the Bank of England during the mid-nineteenth century adhered to Walter Bagehot's rule that a central bank in a financial crisis should lend cash freely at a high interest rate in...

1. Introduction -- 2. Business, Monetary and Credit Cycles in Theory -- 3. Statistical and Econometric Analysis of the Cycle -- 4. GDP data for Analysing Business Cycles -- 5. Metrics and Turning Points of Cycles 1660-2018 -- 6. A Narrative History of UK Business Cycles -- 7. Conclusions