sentences:  By 1901, British Linen's branch network was given as joint third to the Royal Bank and the Commercial Bank of Scotland.British Linen, now formally a bank, had distanced itself from the amalgamations in Scottish banking and by 1914 it had "declined from a position somewhere in the middle of the scale to the bottom".By the end of the First World War British Linen realised it needed an association with a larger bank with good overseas connections and agreement was reached for Barclays to buy the bank in 1919.