Nicholas Barbon ( 1640 – 1698) was an English economist, physician, and financial speculator. Historians of mercantilism consider him to be one of the first proponents of the free market.
In the aftermath of the Great Fire of London, he became an active London property developer and helped to pioneer fire insurance and mortgages as a means of financing such developments.
Early life
Nicholas Barbon was born in London in either 1637 or 1640. and was the eldest son of Praise-God Barebone (or Barbon), after whom Barebone's Parliament of 1653—the predecessor of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate—was named. Nicholas's purported baptismal name–"If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned"–was given to him by his Fifth Monarchist father and is an example of a hortatory name: religious "slogan names" were sometimes given in Dissenting families in 17th-century England.
Conflicting sources claim the name "Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned" was given to Nicholas' father, or to his uncle and Nicholas' hortatory name was supposedly a variant on this name. He became a religious separatist with Millenarianist beliefs, with fervent views in favour of infant baptism in particular.
He studied medicine at the Universities of Leiden and Utrecht in the Netherlands, and received his Doctor of Medicine qualification from the latter in 1661. Three years later, he became an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London.
Property development
He soon turned from the medical profession to the building trade, which suddenly became important in 1666 when the Great Fire of London devastated most of the City of London which at the time was separated from Westminster, the seat of Britain's government, by two miles of countryside, dotted with grand mansions. Within a few years he was "the most prominent London builder of his age". He built houses streets at a time, often around squares, and his developments were mostly to the west of the City of London, where land was plentiful.
Barbon was responsible for joining the city to the seat of government at Westminster for the first time as a result of developments along the Strand, Bloomsbury, St Giles and Holborn. Barbon did this despite long-established restrictions on new buildings associated with various Acts of Parliament and royal declarations in the late 16th century: he often simply disregarded legal and local objections, demolished existing buildings without permission and rebuilt speculatively in search of a quick profit.
On 11 June 1684, Barbon's expansionary speculation brought him and his building tradesmen into conflict with lawyers based at Gray's Inn. Barbon started his largest project yet, the redevelopment of Red Lion Square, and environs in Holborn without being authorised to do so. The Gray's Inn lawyers, Inns of Court adjacent saw their rural outlooks jeopardised, and started physical fist fights with Barbon's workmen, but the developer and his men fought back. The lawyers subsequently obtained warrants for his arrest but Barbon had these set aside and the development scheme was completed. Another setback came when houses he had built at Mincing Lane collapsed because of inadequate foundations.
"He was unique in the unscrupulousness and brazenness of his business tactics" and his contemporary Roger North, who studied his dealings and interviewed him on the subject, called him "an exquisite mob master" in recognition of his ability to manipulate people to carry out his schemes.
Insurance and mortgages
At the same time, Barbon took an interest in the development of insurance and the banking industry, and helped to pioneer both. In 1680–81, with 11 associates, he founded an "Insurance Office for Houses" which offered fire insurance for up to 5,000 households in London. Fires were a major danger in London at the time: the Great Fire destroyed more than 13,000 houses and displaced about 100,000 people, and another conflagration in 1678 damaged the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court. In 1690, together with John Asgill, he founded the National Land Bank. This was Britain's first land bank—a financial institution which issued loans in the form of mortgages against real estate.