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Concept
Nicholas Barbon
Summary
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.
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.
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.
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