The First English National Lottery
In 1567, permission for the holding of ‘a very rich Lottery General’ in England was granted by an increasingly cash-strapped Elizabeth I.
Elizabeth I and her Privy Councillors had constantly to seek fresh sources of income. Spasmodic royal extravagance and a creaking administration vied with each other in draining the exchequer. The essential conservatism of the government’s fiscal policy, trimming here or selling royal lands there, occasionally grew bolder as some new scheme for profit and perhaps useful application was suggested.
The lottery for fund raising was an idea imported from Italy, probably by John Calthrope (or Calthorp), but it is no surprise to find an Italian name mentioned by Cecil in his note of March 1567, where he states that permission for a lottery had been given to Peter Grimaldi and George Gilpin.
In September of the same year State Papers refer to ‘the lottery that was in London’, and it looks as if this was a private scheme that the Queen decided to take up when it looked promising. At any rate, the printer Henry Bynneman produced a publicity broadsheet in August 1567 that listed and illustrated in tempting detail the prizes on offer in the first royal national lottery:
‘A very rich Lottery General, with out any blanks, containing a great number of good prizes, as well of ready money as of plate, and certain sons of merchandizes, having been valued and priced by the commandment of the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, by men expert and skilful; and the same lottery is erected by her Majesty’s order to the intent that such commodity as may chance to arrive thereof... may be converted towards the reparation of the havens and strength of the Realm, and towards other such public good works. The number of lots shall be four hundred thousand and no more; and every lot shall be the sum of ten shillings only, and no more.’
Since the Queen and council hoped to raise some £200,000 by the lottery, with £100,000 set aside as prizes, the great prize was to be a princely £5,000, that is £3,000 in cash, plate valued at £700 and the rest in hangings and drapes of tapestry, linen covers and so on. The second prize was to be £3,500, with £2,000 in ready money, plate valued at £600 as well as tapestries and linen.
The third, fourth and fifth prizes were £3,000, £2,000 and £1,500 divided like the grander prizes between cash and goods. At the lower end of the prize list came twenty-four prizes of £50; sixty four of £24 10/-; ninety of £22 10/- as well as two thousand of £2 in plate, one thousand of 15/- in money and nine thousand four hundred and eighteen of 14/- in cash.
To make the lottery as attractive as possible to people who were probably not totally unfamiliar with the procedure from continental examples, prospective buyers coming into towns to purchase tickets were given freedom from arrest (except for felonies and the grosser crimes of murder, piracy or treason). How far this was exploited by criminals is not clear, but apparently the immunity was not always observed, for in May 1569 John Alday wrote to Cecil from the Counter to complain about his imprisonment, when he had expected other treatment.
With tickets priced at ten shillings only the well-to-do could afford the risk, and those buying a substantial number of tickets were wealthy. To appeal to this elite in London and larger country towns the organizers declared that anyone buying thirty tickets or more within three months of August 24th, 1567, and who failed to win a prize of not less than one third of the total cost of tickets bought would receive a yearly pension to begin from the day when the lottery ended.
Moreover, as a further inducement to the wealthy, anyone buying runs of tickets and winning a prize also received a bonus calculated from the number of tickets bought. Since the descriptive broad-sheet could only whet the appetite for the acquisitive, be they rich or poor, the prizes were then put on show in Cheapside, London, in the home of the goldsmith to the Queen, Mr Derrick.
The closing dates for buying tickets were April 15th, 1568 in the country, and May 1st in London, thus giving the hard-up and nervous some eight months to effect their purchases. In fact, this time limit was not enough, since Elizabethans regarded the whole operation somewhat balefully; even the view of the prizes failed to stimulate interest, and the long wait between the opening date for ticket purchases and the draw seems to have deterred many who preferred to risk their capital in other ways.
There also lurked the suspicion that the lottery was bound to favour the wealthy courtiers and that prizes might never materialize. In order to lure people to buy tickets and dispel some of the rumours of chicanery that flourished, the Lord Mayor of London, Roger Martin, bravely issued a proclamation on September 13th, 1567, that under no circumstances would the draw be deferred beyond February 2nd, 1569. In addition, interest would be payable on money invested between June 25th, 1568 and the day of the draw.
In the November after this proclamation, the new Lord Mayor, Thomas Rowe, underlined the importance of the lottery to the government by writing an appeal to the Company of Grocers, doubtless one of the many he sent out. The wardens of the Company considered the matter and then risked buying forty tickets.
But not all the widely voiced suspicions had been allayed even now and despite strenuous efforts to boost the venture, the small number of purchasers meant that in January, 1568, another proclamation appeared in an attempt to explain the mechanics of the draw. Yet again subscriptions were so poor that the draw scheduled for June, 1568 had to be postponed.
This did nothing to increase confidence, and in the following month a body of some twenty agents or purveyors was being sent out to explain the scheme in the market-places where most of the tickets were likely to be sold. With the help of treasurers, collectors and constables, it was hoped to ‘animate the people’, so that not a parish escaped its clear patriotic duty to buy. From the royal residence of Havering came another proclamation on July 13th that September 30th was the last, the very last date for the central collection of money, and that the draw would begin on November 3rd.
The day before this proclamation, the Earl of Leicester and Cecil, on behalf of the Privy Council wrote to local officials and collectors in the south-east of England that John Johnson had been appointed to the position of Surveyor of the Lottery. Johnson also anticipated the announcement of his appointment by writing to William More of Loseley Park in Surrey, Treasurer for the county, about his dismay at the conduct of the sales of tickets.
A Mr Moys, one of the collectors, had not been very ardent in his pursuit of buyers and he needed, according to Johnson, to be stirred by letter or some other means. The Surveyor also laid emphasis on the need to seek out customers in market towns:
‘I pray you give commandment to every collector that every day between this and the 20th September next, they do in every market town within the circuits sit decently at a table in some convenient place openly or near to the place where the market is kept, and to have before them open their books of numbers, the printed chart and the proclamation. This being done, the people shall be provoked to lay in their monies when the collector in this order shall be in their eyes... otherwise the people will not seek them at their houses being commonly out of the way and uncertain to find them. I told Mr Evelyn of this, and he sayeth he will do it; as for Mr Moys, what he will I know not, but this must be done, and therefore if he will not, appoint some other...’
Johnson’s harrying of minor officials of the lottery, as well as men of standing like More seems to have had some effect, and in the boroughs, towns and villages, the administrators of local funds were persuaded at last to buy. On July 30th, the authorities at Winchester bought six tickets; in Leicester ten were paid for by the most prosperous burghers so that if no prize was won there was no loss to public funds. Clearly it was regarded as a civic duty to buy tickets, however reluctant individuals might be when the odds of winning one of the twelve £100 prizes were 16,000 to one.
Certainly as the time for the draw approached this was not reduced by the slackness of the numerous collectors, however energetic and urgent the demands that the books of tickets be returned to London. The result was a further dispiriting postponement of the draw announced by Elizabeth on November 2nd, 1568. It was now proposed that the draw should begin on January 10th, 1569, according to the proclamation that was distributed by the pursuivants (employees of the College of Arms).
But even as the new date came close the returns for the draw remained woefully short and the organizers of the lottery urgently sought advice on how to arrange matters. On December 3rd Cecil received in his enormous correspondence a letter from Etienne Perrot summarizing a scheme for drawing a lottery in these special circumstances, as well as regulating the prizes since £5,000 was manifestly far too great a proportion of the sum so laboriously collected.
When the day for the draw arrived it was clear to the Queen and the council that the whole idea had failed. On January 9th, 1569, it was proclaimed that since about only one twelfth of the anticipated £200,000 had come in, so the prize-list would be reduced to a total of about £9,000. The method adopted for rearranging the draw was essentially Perrot’s; each 10/- ticket holder had his name placed twelve times in the draw.
Thus in one box were 400,000 counterfoils with name or identifying posies (rhymes or catchphrases), while in another were placed 29,505 prize tickets bearing one twelfth of the original value, together with 370,495 blanks. This huge number of blanks made the business of the draw very lengthy; according to the historian-tailor John Stow, ‘A great lottery being holden at London in St Paul’s churchyard at the West door, was begun to be drawn the 11th of January, and continued day and night till the sixth of May’.
Who were the winners of a fraction of the intended prizes? Some of their names and their prizes have survived in a small book in the Loseley manuscripts, though the list of individual and municipal winners is far from complete, since it covers only three weeks of the draw. With the names, some very familiar, are the posies - brash, covetous, charming, lewd and even mysterious. Imagine the groan of recognition as Roger Martin was announced as a winner, and the titters of amusement as his prize was one twelfth of 15/- (1/3d)! He had written on his ticket, ‘Think and thank God’.
The Board of Greencloth, functionaries of the Queen’s household, fared no better - the prize to be divided was 1/2d. The citizens of Bexley - ‘Out of this rich Lottery, God send advancement to Bexley’ - won 1/3d, as did Cambridge - ‘For the town of Cambridge, in this open place, God save the Queen and the Duke of Norfolk’s grace’ (A vain prayer, Norfolk was executed in 1571). Alice Crewe also won 1/3d, as did John Brome of Suffolk. A. and C. Hilliard of London won 1/2d, and Lord Thomas Howard (Viscount Bindon) 2/1d - ‘Hope helpeth’.
Thomas Riggs collected 1/2d with the gnomic posy ‘God bless the White Tower of London’. The well-known Italian merchant Acerbo Velutelli 1/2d, while the most successful ticket holder noted was Richard Frennis - ‘Not covetous’ - who won the twelfth great prize, now reduced from £200 to £16 13s 3d. Sir George Speake collected 5/6d after writing ‘What chance to me befall, I am content withall’. William St Ledger who noted with a certain asperity, ‘In God I hope, and a fart for the Pope’, won 1/3d. Thomas Watson, ‘The head of a snake with garlic is good meat’ - 2/1d.
William More (unable to resist the pun) ‘I looked for no more’, 1/3d; Sir Thomas Gresham 1/3d - ‘Fortune amy’, and Thomas Lawley ‘All is well that endeth well’, 1/3d. It seems somehow appropriate that the Queen herself - ‘Video et taceo’ - did not win anything, although the idea of the lottery for ad hoc fundraising was not totally cast aside.