If mercantile or marine assurance were so common, it is difficult to imagine that some approximation to life assurance, however imperfect or normal it might be, was entirely unpractised. It must necessarily have occurred to the captain of a trading vessel, that the storm or the whirlwind, which might send his merchandise to the bottom of the sea, might also send himself with it; and the thought that, if his goods were worth insuring for the benefit of the owners, his own life was worth insuring for the benefit of his family, arose naturally from the risks he ran. And in those days there was not merely a risk of storm or whirlwind. Man was more cruel than the tempest; and the galleys of the Turks were then as much feared, by the masters of trading vessels, as the corsairs of the Algerine were dreaded at a later period. They roved the seas as if they were its masters; they took the vessels, disposed of the cargo in the nearest market, and sold the navigators like cattle. The only way of mitigating this terrible calamity was by some mode of insurance, to procure their rescue if taken; and we find that to attain so desirable a result they paid a certain premium to their merchant freighters, who, in return, bound themselves to pay a sufficient sum to secure the navigators’ freedom within fifteen days after the certificate of their captivity, the ordinary days of grace being lessened on such policies. In those days, also, when crusades were common, and men undertook pilgrimages from impulse as much as from religion, it was desirable that the palmer should perform his vow with safety, if not with comfort. The chief danger of his journey was captivity. The ballads of the fifteenth century are full of stories which tell of pilgrims taken prisoners, and of emirs’ daughters releasing them; but as the release by Saracen ladies was more in romance than in reality, and could not be calculated on with precision, a personal insurance was entered into, by which, in consideration of a certain payment, the assurer agreed to ransom the traveller, and thus the palmer performed his pilgrimage as secure from a long captivity as money could make him. It is true, that this care for his personal safety may detract somewhat from a high religious feeling; but truth is sadly at variance with sentiment, and the pilgrims of the crusading period were but too glad to lessen the chances against them. Another mode of assurance was commonly practised, by which any traveller departing on a long or dangerous voyage deposited a specific amount in the hands of a money broker, on condition that if he returned he should receive double or treble the amount he had paid; but, in the event of his not returning, the money broker was to keep the deposit, which was in truth a premium under another name.