at their deaths, their wives (as well as those of the clergy), are sometimes left in a mean, if not indigent condition. For as a Churchman's preferments are only for his life, so neither can a physician practise nor a lawyer plead in the other world. I have, therefore, sometimes wondered why the clergy should be upbraided with steeple-house jointures, since the wives of other professions are in this respect as liable to be exposed as the clergy.'*

Yet further, on consideration he saw that his scheme of Life Assurance might be of great convenience and service to gentlemen of landed estate, who, by the general usage of the time, were required to settle incomes on their wives, in case of their widowhood, in the proportion of £100 per annum for every £1000 which the ladies brought to their husbands. 'A. B., pos

sessed of an estate in land,' urged Mr. Assheton, of 300l. per annum, proposeth marriage to C. D. whose portion is 3000l. For which portion, according to the custom of England, she expects a jointure of 300l. per annum. Which, being the whole of A. B. his estate (and which, perhaps, is not only charged with the payment of debts, but also portions for younger children) cannot conveniently be all settled as a jointure without the ruin of the family in the next generation, especially should C. D. marry to a second husband . . . Now with what ease are all difficulties met by this proposal? For by paying 1000l. to the Mercers' Company, his wife is jointured in 300l. per annum. He hath 2000l. to answer other occasions. And his land is cleared, to be enjoyed by his eldest son, even during his mother's life.'

...

Of course Dr. Assheton's proposal was ridiculed by dull wits as the fanciful suggestion of a crack-brained projector. Like nearly every inventor or original thinker before or since his time, the doctor was derided as a quack and impostor, and encountered many a rebuff from sapient gentlemen who, speaking with the authority of practical knowledge, assured him that no practical man of business would pay an hour's serious attention to his fantastic device for interfering with Providence and

* Vide A Full Account of the Rise, Progress, and Advantages of Dr. Assheton's Proposal (as now improved and managed by the Worshipful Company of Mercers, London) for the Benefit of Widows of Clergymen and others, by settling Jointures and Annuities at the rate of Thirty per cent.' (1700.)

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putting an end to poverty. He laid his plan before the managers of the Corporation of the Clergy', as persons specially concerning in the work which it was designed to accomplish: but they held themselves incapable to accept his proposal!' He solicited attention from the Governors of the Bank of England, who decided that they were not in a position to take up his scheme. After these rebuffs, he went before a general court of the Mercers' Company, on Friday, Nov. 11, 1698, and entreated them to enter the business of life assurance in accordance with his proposals. Fortunately the rulers of the company saw the prudence and soundness of the scheme, which they forthwith acted upon, after amending it in certain particulars.

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Pledging the rents of their large landed estates as security for the fulfilment of their contracts with insurers, the Mercers entered on business as life assurance agents. Limiting the entire amount of subscriptions to 100,000l. they decided that no person over sixty years of age should become a subscriber; that no subscriber should subscribe less than 50l.-i.e. should purchase a smaller contingent annuity than one of 15l.; that the anunity to every subscriber's widow or other person for whom the insurance was effected should be at the rate of 30l. for every hundred pounds of subscription. It was stipulated that subscribers must be in good and perfect health at the time of subscription.' It was decided that all married men of the age of thirty years, or under, might subscribe any sum from 50l. to 1,000l.; that all married men, not exceeding sixty years of age, might subscribe any sum not less than 50l. and not exceeding 3001. The company's prospectus further stipulates that no person that goes to sea, nor soldier that goes to the wars, shall be admitted to subscribe to have the benefit of this proposal, in regard of the casualties and accidents that they are more particularly liable to.' Morover it was provided that in case it should happen that any man who had subscribed should voluntarily make away with himself, or by any act of his, occasion his own death, either by duelling, or committing any crime whereby he should be sentenced or put to death by justice: in any or either of these cases his widow should receive no annuity, but upon delivering up the company's bond, should have the subscription money paid to her.'

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...

The bond by which the Mercers obliged themselves to pay to such person or persons, as by his last will and testament ’ every subscriber should direct and appoint to receive the annuity accruing from his subscription,' was drawn thus:'We, the Wardens and Commonalty of the Mercers of the City of London, do acknowledge to have received of . . . Inhabitant in the Parish of . . . in the . . . of . . . the sum of . . . which he hath subscribed for the benefit of such person or persons as the said by his last will and testament shall direct and appoint, during the natural life of . . . his now widow, aged years, the daughter of . of . . in the ... of .. in case he dies before her. And we do promise and oblige ourselves, and our successors, in case the said .. shall dye (except in such manner as is excepted in the general proposal made by us for payment of the annuities to widows) to pay unto such person or persons as the said . . . by his last will and testament shall direct, during the natural life of the said . . . his wife . . . yearly, free of all taxes and charges, being after the rate of Thirty Pounds per cent. per ann. of the said . . . his subscription, at the two usual feasts of the annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Michael the Archangel. The First Payment to be made on the First of the said Feast Days that shall happen Four months or more after the Decease of the said . . . the person or persons being so entitled, producing such his, her, or their title, together with this obligation, and due certificates of the Death of the said . . . and the life of the said . . . To the which payment we bind ourselves and our successors firmly by these presents. In testimony whereof we have hereunto affixed the seal of the said Company the . . . day of . . . in the year of our Lord.'

The success which attended the Mercers' operations was so decided that it soon gave rise to companies specially created to secure the public against some of the calamitous consequences of death. In 1706, the Amicable Life Assurance Office-usually, though, as the reader has seen, incorrectly, termed the first Life Insurance Office-was established in imitation of the Mercers' Office. Two years later, 'The Second Society of Assurance,' for the support of widows and orphans, was opened in Dublin, which, like the Amicable, introduced numerous improvements upon Dr.

Assheton's scheme, and was a Joint-stock Life Assurance Society, identical in its principles with, and similar in most of its details to, the modern Insurance Companies, of which there were in London as many as one hundred and sixty in the year 1859.

No

CHAPTER VI.

ELIZABETH'S TWELFTH INJUNCTION.

O observer of England's social story can fail to remark the wide difference between the clerical homes of the present century and the clerical homes of the earlier generations of the Reformed Church, or can fail to be struck by the completeness with which the results of sacerdotal marriage have falsified the gloomy predictions of the Churchmen who foretold that grave evils would ensue from the abolition of the ancient laws which denied the blessings of matrimony to the priestly order.

Conceded reluctantly as an objectionable alternative that would afford society an escape from the inconveniences and iniquities of ecclesiastical celibacy, sacerdotal marriage was granted as a means for the avoidance of atrocious sin, rather than as an aid or instrument for the attainment of positive virtue. The experience of its effects upon the character of the clergy and the moral life of the nation, during Edward the Sixth's brief and distracted reign, had done so little to weaken and dissipate the popular prejudices against so needful a change, that, when the privilege of marriage was for a second time expressly accorded to ecclesiastics, it was guarded with provisions and restrictions expressive of the fear prevalent amongst the Reformers that it would be more productive of scandals and embarrassments than of social health and spiritual edification. Whilst the Catholic majority of the realm declared their disgust at what they regarded as a shameless avowal of the unholy appetites of the heretical priests, the influence of ancient usage and conservative preference for old ways to new fashions, induced a considerable proportion of the Protestant minority to regard the hazardous experiment with a disapprobation not altogether devoid of abhorrence.

Whilst the statesmen who had insisted most strongly on the