It did not, however, pursue its affairs without opposition. Petitions were presented against the Company by private underwriters who foresaw ruin ahead of them, on the ground that it was doing business which the Charter did not entitle it to do. It is impossible to say what might have happened to this Company had not some ingenious mind amongst its Directors recognised, or had not some hint been given by one of His Majesty’s Ministers, that King George’s Civil List was short of six hundred thousand pounds. The two Insurance Companies--that fathered by Lord Chetwynd and now known as the “London Assurance Corporation,” and the “Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation,” which was covered by the wing of Lord Onslow--proposed to make good this deficiency in return for their Charters. Accordingly in the year 1720, on May 4th, King George recommended his faithful Commons to grant the requests of these Corporations, and the Bill conceding them their Charters received the Royal Assent on June 10th. It was after the Charter was granted that the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation took the title which it has since retained. Billingsley was, as we have said, a member of the Mercers’ Company. He had established the offices of the Corporation in the Royal Exchange, and no name could have been more suitable. But it is to be observed that this was the year during which the South Sea Bubble swelled and burst. The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation failed to fulfil the conditions of its Charter almost as soon as it had received it. The Corporation was organised on a sound financial basis, for in 1720, it had a surplus of £14,000 odd, after all obligations had been discharged. But it owned stock in the South Sea Company, and when that Company crumbled and all credit was shaken to its foundations, the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation passed through a troublous time. It declared a dividend, but it could not pay it, and by September of that year it was short of two instalments of £50,000 each, which it owed to the Civil List. A subsequent Act of Parliament, however, relieved the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation and the London Assurance Corporation of their liabilities in this direction, after they had paid between them something like a quarter of a million. The subsequent history of the Royal Exchange Assurance has been one of sound business and consequent prosperity. It began with Marine insurance and in 1721 added life and fire. CHAPTER V. ON ASSURANCE.