Insurance in Elizabethan England. The London Code

Abstract

English insurance came into being almost entirely during the Elizabethan period. However, the Great Fire of 1666 consumed most of London’s mercantile records, and therefore little is known about early English insurance. Using new archival material, this study provides the first in-depth analysis of early English insurance. It focuses on a crucial yet little-known text, the London Insurance Code of the early 1580s, and shows how London insurance customs were first imported from Italy, then influenced by the Dutch, and finally shaped in a systematic fashion in the Insurance Code. The London Code was in turn heavily influenced by coeval contin- ental codes. This deep influence attests to the strong links between English and European insurance, and questions the common/civil law divide on the history of commercial law.