The Office where their Monies are to be paid in, and they receive their Tickets, and where the several Volumes or Prizes may be daily seen, (by which visual Speculation understanding their real Worth better than by the Ear or printed Paper,) is kept at the Black Boy, over against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street. The Adventurers may also repair for their better Convenience, to pay in their Monies, to Mr. Peter Cleyton, over against the Dutch Church, in Austin Friars, and to Mr. Baker, near Broad Street, entering the South door of the Exchange, and to Mr. Roycroft, in Bartholomew Close.
The certain Day of Drawing, the Author promiseth (though but half full) to be the twenty-third of May next. Therefore all Persons that are willing to Adventure, are desired to bring or send in their Monies with their Names, or what other Inscription or Motto they will, by which to know their own, by the ninth of May next, it being Whitson Eve, that the Author may have Time to put up the Lots and Inscriptions into their respective Boxes.
Notwithstanding the positive promise given as to the date of the drawing, there seems, judging by the advertisements first quoted, to have been two alterations in the time. Mr Ogilby assorted his wares in the most tempting manner, and it is interesting to know what were considered the most marketable books, with their relative values, over two hundred years ago. Even then, and long before either became familiar to the bulk of English readers, the Iliad was worth a pound more than the Odyssey. Æsop was rated, entire, at more than the best of the Homeric books, but divided, he was inferior to either, and Virgil complete was worth exactly the same amount as the Iliad. A contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine, about a hundred years back, states that he had seen a then very old but undated “Address to the Learned, or an advantageous lottery for books in quires; wherein each adventurer of a guinea is sure of a prize of two pounds value; and it is but four to one that he has a prize of three, six, eight, twelve, or fifty pounds.” The proposals for this lottery were, one thousand four hundred lots, at a guinea each, to be drawn with the lots out of two glasses, superintended by John Lilly and Edward Darrel, Esqs., Mr Deputy Collins, and Mr William Proctor, stationer; two lots of £50, ten of £12, twenty of £8, sixty-eight of £6, two hundred of £5, and one thousand two hundred of £3. Letters-patent on behalf of the promoters of Lotteries were from time to time renewed, and from the Gazette of October 11, 1675, it appears by those dated June 19 and December 17, 1674, there were granted for thirteen years to come, “all lotteries whatsoever invented or to be invented, to several truly loyal and indigent officers, in consideration of their many faithful services and sufferings, with prohibition to all others to use or set up the said lotteries.” These officers were also granted powers to give licences and name agents.
In the Examiner, about the time when Lotteries were suppressed, there is much information concerning them, and the writer among other things finds, from a copy of the London Gazette of May 17, 1688, that “Ogilby, the better to carry on his ‘Britannia,’ had a lottery of books at Garraway’s Coffeehouse in ’Change Alley.” Lotteries of various kinds seem to have been very general before this date; indeed so much so that Government issued a notice in the London Gazette, September 27, 1683, to prevent the drawing of any lotteries (and especially a newly-invented lottery under the name of the riffling, or raffling, lottery) “except those under his Majesty’s letters-patent, for thirteen years, granted to persons for their sufferings, and have their seal of office with this inscription, ‘Meliora Designavi.’” In 1683, Prince Rupert dying rather poor, a plan was devised to obtain money by disposing of all his jewels; but as the public were not satisfied with the mode of drawing the lotteries, on account of the many cheats practised on them, they would not listen to any proposals until the King himself guaranteed to see that all was fair, and also that Mr Francis Child, the goldsmith at Temple Bar, would be answerable for their several adventures, as appears by the London Gazette, October 1, 1683:—
THESE are to give notice, that the Jewels of his late Royal Highness Prince Rupert have been particularly valued and appraised by Mr. Isaac Legouch, Mr Christopher Rosse, and Mr. Richard Beauvoir, Jewellers, the whole amounting to Twenty Thousand Pounds, and will be sold by way of Lottery, each Lot to be Five Pounds. The biggest Prize will be a great Pearl Necklace, valued at 8,000l., and none less than 100l. A printed Particular of the said Appraisement, with their Divisions into Lots, will be delivered gratis by Mr. Francis Child, at Temple Bar, London, into whose Hands, such as are willing to be Adventurers are desired to pay their Money, on or before the 1st Day of November next. As soon as the whole Sum is paid in, a short Day will be appointed which, (it is hoped, will be before Christmas) and notified in the Gazette, for the Drawing thereof, which will be done in his Majesty’s Presence, who is pleased to declare, that he himself will see all the Prizes put in among the Blanks, and that the whole will be managed with Equity and Fairness, Nothing being intended but the sale of the said Jewels at a moderate Value. And it is further notified, for the Satisfaction of all as shall be Adventurers, that the said Mr. Child shall and will stand obliged to Each of them for their several Adventures. And that each Adventurer shall receive their Money back if the said Lottery be not drawn and finished before the first Day of February next.
This Mr Child is said to have been the first regular banker. He began business soon after the Restoration, and received the honour of knighthood. He lived in Fleet Street, where the shop still continues in a state of the highest respectability.[44] A subsequent notice says that
The King will probably, to-morrow, in the Banquetting House, see all the Blanks told over, that they may not exceed their Number; and that the Papers on which the Prizes are to be written shall be rolled up in his Presence; and that a Child, appointed, either by his Majesty or the Adventurers, shall draw the Prizes.
The most popular of all the schemes of the time was that drawn at the Dorset Garden Theatre, near Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, with the capital prize of a thousand pounds for a penny. The drawing began on October 19, 1698; and in the Protestant Mercury of the following day its fairness was said to give universal content to all that were concerned. In the next number is found an inconsistent story as to the possessor of the prize. It runs thus: “Sometime since, a boy near Branford going to school one morning, met an old woman, who asked his charity; the boy replied, he had nothing to give her but a piece of bread and butter, which she accepted. Sometime after, she met the boy again, and told him she had good luck after his bread and butter, and therefore would give him a penny which, after some years keeping, would produce many pounds: he accordingly kept it a great while, and at last, with some friends’ advice, put it into the Penny Lottery, and we are informed that on Tuesday last, the said lot came up with £1000 prize.” This is a very fair specimen of the stories which were always afloat concerning the chief prizes in the principal lotteries, and which had always some superstitious current underlying them, much to the benefit of the vendors of tickets. The scheme of the Penny Lottery was assailed in a tract entitled “The Wheel of Fortune, or Nothing for a Penny; being Remarks on the Drawing of the Penny Lottery at the Theatre Royal, in Dorset Garden.” (1698, 4to.) Afterwards this theatre was used for exhibitions of sword-and-cudgel players, prize-fighters, &c.; but the building was totally deserted in 1703. In the last years of the century, schemes were started called “The Lucky Adventure; or, Fortunate Chance, being 2000l. for a groat, or 3000l. for a shilling;” and “Fortunatus, or another Adventure of 1000l. for a Penny;” but purchasers were more wary, and the promoters’ plans in both cases fell to the ground. The royal patentees also advertised against the “Marble Board, alias Woollich Board lotteries; the Figure Board, alias the Whimsey Board and the Wyre Board lotteries.” The patentees were, in addition, always quarrelling among themselves; and the following lines from the Post-Boy, January 3, 1698, were very popular at the time, as giving an estimate of the disputes between the legalised rogues:—
A Dialogue betwixt the New Lotteries and the Royal Oak.
New Lott. To you the Mother of our Schools,
Where knaves by license manage Fools,
Finding fit Juncture and Occasion,
To pick the Pockets of the Nation;
We come to know how we must treat ’em,
And to their hearts’ content may cheat ’em.