Life Insurance and the War of Independence
Even by the standards of the eighteenth century — a period when it was still possible to be the master of more arts than one — Richard Price was conspicuous for the vast variety of his interests. Nicholas Lane describes how they embraced divinity, philosophy, mathematics, life assurance, the problems of population, the cause of the American Colonists and the revolutionary movement in France.
One of the most attractive features of the eighteenth century, as we look back on it from the specialism of our own time, is the vast diversity of interests that so many of its leading figures managed to encompass. There is nothing wildly improbable about finding a link between the American War of Independence and actuarial practice; there may be several such links.
What is surprising is to find one of them in the person of a dissenting minister in Newington Green. Richard Price is indeed one of the more unlikely characters in the dramatic history of the City of London. He had more than one connection with the City, but he had wider interests outside it, and he deserves to be better remembered than he is.
He was born in 1723, in Glamorgan, of Nonconformist parents, and his cousin, it may be noted in passing, was the Maid of Cefn Idfa, whose death in 1727 has passed into Welsh legend. Both his parents died before he was seventeen; and he came to London to seek the advice and help of his uncle, Samuel Price, who shared a pastorate with Isaac Watts.
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