The history of banknotes

I am back in the big city of Edinburgh - Scotland's capital - where it is history month.  So I took myself off to a most enlightening talk about the history of the banknote given in the Museum of Banking which until fairly recently was the headquarters of The Royal Bank of Scotland.
Apparently bank notes where first used in Europe by The Royal Bank of Scotland in about 1711.  It was a huge advance in banking because it meant the bank could start to pretend it had money that it did not have. I reckon that this was where the system went wrong. This was where the rot set in