JUDAH MANASSEH LOPEZ, THE JEW USURER--HIS TRICK ON THE DUKE
OF BUCKINGHAM--SUSPICIONS CONCERNING HIM.--THE INCREASE OF
LONDON.--POPULATION OF LONDON.--PROCLAMATIONS.--HALLEY’S MOVEMENT IN
LIFE ASSURANCE--HIS TABLES.
Among the frequenters of St. Paul’s, when the noble, the merchant,
and the citizen congregated in its walk, was an old man known to all
who met there in their daily avocations as Judah Manasseh Lopez. A
Lombard, a Jew, and a usurer, it was difficult to say whether the
outward respect he received from his customers was not counterbalanced
by the curses he received from the public. The bullying mien of the
self-dubbed captain sunk into a more subdued tone as he asked for loans
or deprecated payment. The spendthrift who was dicing away his paternal
inheritance, and who had security to offer for the money he wanted,
was more indifferent, while the goldsmith shrunk from his approach
with a contemptuous expression he did not always care to conceal.
This man employed his wealth in the purchase and sale of annuities.
He lent to merchants when their vessels failed to bring them returns
in time to meet their engagements. He advanced cash on the jewels of
those whom a disturbed period involved in conspiracies which required
the sinews of war. But annuities were his favourite investment; and to
him, therefore, resorted all that were in difficulties and were able
to deal with him. With the highest and the lowest he trafficked. He
was feared by most, and respected by none. One remarkable feature in
his business was, that no one found it easy to recover the property
he had pledged, provided it much exceeded the amount advanced. In
an extremity, Buckingham, the favourite of Charles, applied to and
received assistance from the Jew on the deposit of some deeds of value.
When the time approached which had been stipulated for repayment,
Lopez appeared before the Duke in an agony of grief, declaring his
strong-room had been broken into, his property pilfered, and the Duke’s
deeds carried away. But Buckingham had dealt too much with men of
this class to believe the story on the mere word of such a Jew. He,
therefore, kept the usurer while he ordered some retainers to proceed
to the city and to search out the truth, placing the Hebrew at the same
time under watch and ward, with an utter indifference to his comfort.
When the messengers returned, they avouched that all Lombard Street was
in an uproar at the violation of its stronghold. Still the Duke was
dissatisfied, and refused to part with his prey until he had received
full value for his deposit. In vain the Hebrew fell on his knees, in
vain did he call on Father Abraham to attest his innocence, for in the
midst of one of his most solemn asseverations Buckingham was informed
that a scrivener was urgent in soliciting an audience, and he saw at
the same time that a cloud came over the face of Lopez. The request of
the scrivener being granted, to the Duke’s astonishment he produced the
missing document, explaining to his Grace that Lopez, believing the
scrivener too much in his power to betray him, had placed it in his
charge until the storm should blow over, but that, fearing the Duke’s
power and trusting to his protection, he had brought it to York House.
On the instant Buckingham confronted the two. The Jew’s countenance
betrayed his crime, and, fawning on the very hem of the Duke’s garment,
he begged forgiveness, and crouched like a dog to procure it. From that
time it is probable that the Duke had his loans on more equitable terms
and on smaller security, as he dismissed the Jew with a consideration
the latter did not deserve.
But darker and more dangerous things were hinted of this man. He was
well versed in medical lore. He was reputed to possess subtle drugs;
and it was often noticed that the healthiest of those to whom he was
bound to pay life annuities were sometimes cut off in a remarkable way,
and that, too, after they had been closeted with him. Whether Lopez
granted insurances on lives is unknown, but he lived himself to a bad
old age, hated as much as he was feared, and sought after as much as he
was despised.
Such men made large profits. They knew nothing and they cared nothing
for the chances of life. Their charges covered all risks. And so little
was known of the number of the people, that a few desultory facts
concerning this and a previous period, being gathered from various
sources, may not be unacceptable or uninstructive. Up to this time,
and long after, the population of London and of England was a riddle.
The utmost exaggeration prevailed in all the accounts which we possess
concerning it. Fitzstephen writes of London being peopled with a
multitude of inhabitants; and adds, that, in the fatal wars under King
Stephen, 80,000 men were mustered. Allowing for the martial fury of the
time, this would give a population of 400,000 in the twelfth century
dwelling in London. Everything points to the fact that the metropolis
augmented more than the authorities thought good.
The progressive increase of London was a continual source of alarm. In
1581 a proclamation was issued, forbidding any new buildings. Elizabeth
caused a statute to be passed to the same effect, because “such
multitudes could hardly be governed, by ordinary justice, to serve God
and obey her Majesty;” and because “such great multitudes of people in
small rooms, being heaped up together, and in a sort smothered, with
many families of children and servants, in one tenement, it must needs
follow, if any plague or any universal sickness come among them, it
would presently spread through the whole city.” These proclamations
were continued. James said, so many people “cumbering the city were
a general nuisance;” adding, that the single women who came from the
country marred their reputations, and that the married lost them. Still
the people flocked, in spite of proclamations, and in opposition to
statutes. Old country establishments crowded by the score to “upstart
London,” “pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and burying all
the treasures of the kingdom in a few citizens’ coffers.” At last some
effect was produced, not however by the proclamation, but by fining
one Mr. Palmer a thousand pounds. Still, if we may judge by what Howel
writes, the city of London continued to increase “For the number of
human souls breathing in city and suburbs, London may compare with any
in Europe in point of populousness.” This he estimates, taking “within
that compass where the point of the Lord Mayor’s sword reacheth,” at a
million and a half of souls. Foreigners could scarcely understand the
huge concourse which thronged London, and which for a long time baffled
our earlier political economists, who wondered how it was that the
annual deaths outbalanced the annual births. Our satirists were very
hard on the new comers. Ben Jonson describes them as “country gulls,”
who come up every term to learn to take tobacco and see new notions.
They paid heavily for their lesson in London life; and many an annuity
was wrung out of the fat land of the country gentleman from his visit
to the metropolis. Sir Richard Fanshawe, in an elegant and elaborate
poem,--an evidence that the subject occupied public attention,--asks,
“Who would pursue
The smoky glory of the town,
That may go till his native earth,
And by the shining fire sit down
On his own hearth,
“Free from the griping scrivener’s hands
And the more biting mercer’s books,
Free from the bait of oiled hands
And painted looks?”
It is clear, from these and other facts, and from the circumstance
that it would be very difficult to separate the casual visitors from
the fixed inhabitants of London, that up to the year 1700 there was
little information on which to found an argument. All that we possess
is vague and desultory. Lord Salisbury, in a letter written to Prince
Henry prior to 1612, says, “Be wary of Londoners, for there died here
123 last week.” On the 1st of May, 1619, we learn by another source
that the number of deaths in London was from 200 to 300 weekly. At
the accession of James I., London was said to contain little more
than 150,000 inhabitants; and at the restoration of Charles II.,
120,000 families were said to be within the walls of London. “Before
the Restoration,” said Sir William Petty, “the people of Paris were
more than those of London and Dublin put together; whereas, in
1687, the people of London were more than those of Paris and Rome.”
Evelyn, again, says, in his Diary, in 1684, that he had seen London
almost as large again as it was at that time. Judging from various
independent sources, however, the population of England at the time of
the Revolution may be fairly estimated as ranging from 5,000,000 to
5,500,000.
That the tables of Graunt and Petty had produced small practical
effect, and that little or nothing was known as to the chances of
life, may be gathered from a pamphlet printed in 1680, in which the
whole doctrine of the value of life as then understood and acted on
is affirmed: the utmost value allotted to the best life was 7 years,
at which the life of a “healthful man,” at any age between 20 and 40,
was estimated; while that of an aged or sickly person was from 5 to 6
years, the various limits between these two extremes constituting the
whole range of difference in value.
Such was the limited nature of the statistics of life when the
Astronomer Royal Halley compiled those calculations which make his name
honoured by directors and actuaries. To him we owe the germ of all
subsequent developments of this science, in that general formula for
calculating the value of annuities which is yet regarded with so much
respect.
Up to the period in which he lived--the latter half of the seventeenth
century--the town of Breslau, in Silesia, was the only place which
recorded the ages of its dead; and from these Halley drew a table of
the probabilities of the duration of human life at every age. This
was in 1693, and was the first table of the sort ever published.[8]
In it he taught, with great clearness and exactness, the conditions
needful for the formation of rates of mortality; the manner of forming
them with complete geometrical precision; of deducing a corresponding
table of the present state and annual movement of the population; of
reading in them the probability of survivorship of any person taken at
random in a given society; of, in truth, concluding upon the probable
duration of the co-existence of several individuals from the sole
knowledge of their age. He also first developed the true method of
calculating life annuities, taking for his guide the rate of mortality
during five successive years in Breslau.
That the tables of Dr. Halley were very much wanted may be assumed,
as in 1692 annuities were granted on single lives at 14 per cent., or
only 7 years’ purchase; and that the State took very little trouble to
apply these tables is as true, for we read that, soon after they were
published, annuities were estimated on 1 life at 9 years’ purchase,
on 2 lives at 11 years’, and on 3 lives at 12 years’ purchase. Some
allowance must, of course, be made for the difficulty of raising money
and the difference of interest; still the price paid was out of all
proper proportion. But the most singular circumstance connected with
government annuities at this period is, that, when life annuities were
changed into annuities for 99 years, the owner of a life annuity might
secure an annuity for 99 years, by paying only 4-1/2 years’ extra
purchase. Thus, by the payment of 15-1/2 years’ purchase, a certain
annuity of 99 years could be procured.