Elizabethan who wrote his name under the conditions of a given risk at
sea.

Joint-stock companies were in one sense old when Elizabethan men of
business were young. But the Elizabethans developed them enormously.
'Going shares' was doubtless prehistoric. It certainly was ancient,
medieval, and Elizabethan. But those who formerly went shares generally
knew each other and something of the business too. The favorite number
of total shares was just sixteen. There were sixteen land-shares in a
Celtic household, sixteen shares in Scottish vessels not individually
owned, sixteen shares in the theatre by which Shakespeare 'made his
pile.' But sixteenths, and even hundredths, were put out of date when
speculation on the grander scale began and the area of investment grew.
The New River Company, for supplying London with water, had only a few
shares then, as it continued to have down to our own day, when they
stood at over a thousand times par. The Ulster 'Plantation' in Ireland
was more remote and appealed to more investors and on wider
grounds--sentimental grounds, both good and bad, included. The Virginia
'Plantation' was still more remote and risky and appealed to an
ever-increasing number of the speculating public. Many an investor put
money on America in much the same way as a factory hand to-day puts
money on a horse he has never seen or has never heard of otherwise than
as something out of which a lot of easy money can be made provided luck
holds good.

The modern prospectus was also in full career under Elizabeth, who
probably had a hand in concocting some of the most important specimens.
Lord Bacon wrote one describing the advantages of the Newfoundland
fisheries in terms which no promoter of the present day could better.
Every type of prospectus was tried on the investing public, some