In addition to these chances, there was the liability to “plague, pestilence, and famine.” The black pest, the sweating sickness, the small-pox, are names to conjure up frightful images. Nothing is now certainly known of the numbers which these diseases swept away in our early history, but the rapidity with which whole families disappeared tended to exaggerate the feeling of insecurity. It seems, therefore, almost impossible to suppose that any plan of life assurance could have existed during these ages, when there were no documents to give the number of deaths, and no laws to determine the value of life. But if assurances were rare, we have constant evidence that annuities were familiar enough. The State employed them for its wants; scriveners employed them for the necessities of their clients; Pole and Whittington, Canning and Gresham, invested their mercantile gains in them; the usurer made his money breed by granting them in many forms and on various securities; and although to arrive at a just system of annuities was as difficult as a just system of assurance, yet the usurer took as much care in the one case to secure his own interest, as he would in the other had it been an operation into which he chose to enter.
The sixteenth century gave birth to one of these men, who, before life assurance was understood, exercised great genius in granting and receiving annuities. The name of Audley is one of the earliest we possess in this line: he was originally a lawyer’s clerk, with a salary of 6s. a week; but his talent for saving was so well supported by his self-privation, that he lived upon half, keeping the other half as the superstructure of his future fortune. He was so great an adept in the tricks of law, that he was soon enabled to purchase his apprenticeship; and, with the first 600l. he had saved, bought of a nobleman an annuity of 96l. for nineteen years. The nobleman died; his heir neglected to pay the annuity, and Audley made him suffer for his neglect to the tune of 5000l. in fines and forfeitures.
The usurer soon found money trading better than law writing. He became a procurer of bail; he compounded debts; he enticed easy landowners into granting well-secured annuities; he encouraged their extravagance, and, under pretence of ministering to their wants, became possessed of many a fine estate. The following story will illustrate his craft:—In the early part of his career, a draper of mean repute was arrested by his merchant for 200l. Audley bought the debt of the latter for 40l., and was immediately offered an advance on his bargain by the fraudulent tradesman. Audley refused the terms; and when the draper pressed, as if struck by a sudden whim, he consented to discharge the debt, if his creditor would sign a formal contract to pay within twenty years from that time one penny, to be progressively doubled on the first day of twenty consecutive months, under a penalty of 500l. The terms seemed easy, and the draper consented. The knave was one of those who “grow rich by breaking.” But here Audley had him in his net. Year after year he watched his prey; he saw him increase in wealth, and then made his first demand for one penny. As month succeeded month he continued his claim, progressively doubling the amount, until the draper took the alarm, used his pen, found that to carry out his agreement would cost him more than 4000l., and, to avoid it, paid the penalty of 500l.; his only revenge being to abuse Audley as a usurer, probably anticipating the wish of Jaffier, that he could “kill with cursing.”
Audley, like many of our own day, was equally ready to lend money to the gay gallants of the town on annuities, as he was to receive it from the thrifty poor who took, on “the security of the great Audley,” the savings of their youth to secure an annuity for their age. But needy as the youngsters of that day might be, the usurer was as willing as they were needy. He lent them, however, with grave remonstrances on their extravagance, and took the cash they paid him, with an air of paternal regret.
His money bred. He formed temporary partnerships with the stewards of country gentlemen, and, having by the aid of the former gulled the latter, finished by cheating the associates who had assisted him to his prey. The annuity-monger was also a philosopher. He never pressed for his debts when he knew they were safe. When one of his victims asked where his conscience was, he replied, “We monied people must balance accounts. If you don’t pay me my annuity, you cheat me; if you do, I cheat you.” He said his deeds were his children, which nourished best by sleeping.
His word was his bond; his hour was punctual; his opinions were compressed and sound. In his time he was called the great Audley; and though the Fathers of the Church proclaimed the sin of usury to be the original sin, Audley smiled at their assertions and went on his way rejoicing. As his wealth increased he purchased an office in the Court of Wards; and the entire fortunes of the wards of Chancery being under his control and that of the other officers of the court, it may be supposed that Audley’s annuity-jobbing increased. When he quarrelled with one who disputed the payment of an annuity, and who, to prove his resisting power, showed and shook his money-bags, Audley sarcastically asked “whether they had any bottom?” The exulting possessor answered in the affirmative. “In that case,” replied Audley, “I care not; for in my office I have a constant spring.” Here he pounced on incumbrances which lay on estates; he prowled about to discover the cravings of their owners, which he did to such purpose that, when asked what was the value of his office, he replied, “Some thousands of pounds to any one who wishes to get to heaven immediately; twice as much to him who does not mind being in purgatory; and nobody knows what to him who will adventure to go to hell.” Charity forbids us to guess to which of these places Audley went. He did not long survive the extinction of the Court of Wards, and died “receiving the curses of the living for his rapine, while the stranger who had grasped the million he had raked together owed him no gratitude at his death.”
It must have been the widow of some such shrewd assurer who dared the dangers of Chancery in 1682, and endeavoured to file a bill, the purport of which was to compel 500 individuals to declare the amounts they owed her husband, who is designated as “a kind of insurer.” The boldness of this woman in attacking 500 persons attracted attention; and the alarm which must have possessed her creditors was no doubt heightened by the fact that 60 skins of vellum and 3000 sheets of paper composed the bill, and that each would be compelled to have a copy, provided the plaintiff were successful. Not only, however, did Lord Chancellor North, “amazed at the effrontery of the woman,” dismiss the bill on the ground of the enormous expense which each defendant would incur, but he directed the plaintiff’s counsel to refund his charges and to “take his labour for his pains.”