At length the legislature interfered, and in order to hinder the growth of gambling in life assurance, it was enacted, that “no insurance shall be made on the life of any person, or on any event whatsoever, where the person on whose account such policy shall be made _shall have no interest_, or by way of gaming or wagering; and that every such insurance shall be null and void. “It shall not be lawful to make any policy on the life of any person, or on any other event, without inserting in the policy the name of the person interested therein, or for what use, or on whose account such policy is so made. “Where the insured has an interest in such life or event, no greater sum shall be received from the insurer than the amount of the interest of the insured in such life or event.”[14] This statute was some time before it came into effective operation. It was after this that policies and wagers were carried on to such an incredible degree in the trial of her Grace of Kingston. The underwriters were fully aware that their movements were illegal; but the spirit of gambling by means of assurance was too common to be put down at once by an act of parliament, and in 1777, a singular instance of the determination to grant wager policies came before the public eye. Charles Genevieve Louise Auguste d’Eon de Beaumont, popularly known as the Chevalier d’Eon, was the cause of a trial before Lord Mansfield, as to the validity of a policy without an insurable interest. The career of this man or woman, for the question was long doubtful, was familiar to the public, and will illustrate the excitement of the period. Equerry to Louis XV. doctor of law, ambassador and royal censor, employed in a confidential mission to the Russian court, and said to be a favourite of its empress, D’Eon came to England with a reputation ready made. He soon quarrelled with le Duc de Nivernois, ambassador from the most Christian King, and as D’Eon proved unsuccessful in his attempt to injure his grace, he was so incensed that he disclaimed all connection with the court and ambassador, declared that the peace had been accomplished in England by the agency of French gold; denouncing also, in no measured terms, those who had been accomplices, and pointing almost by name to men who, under the guise of patriotism, had betrayed their country. As a patriot’s capital is his public character, the accused parties waxed wroth, defied their calumniator, and talked of prosecuting him. The people, unwilling to lose their faith in English probity, took the part of their countrymen, and mobbed the knight wherever he appeared.