proper proposal for widows.

We have abundance of women, who have been bred well and lived well,
ruined in a few years, and perhaps left young with a houseful of
children and nothing to support them, which falls generally upon the
wives of the inferior clergy, or of shopkeepers and artificers.

They marry wives with perhaps 300 pounds to 1,000 pounds portion,
and can settle no jointure upon them. Either they are extravagant
and idle, and waste it; or trade decays; or losses or a thousand
contingencies happen to bring a tradesman to poverty, and he breaks.
The poor young woman, it may be, has three or four children, and is
driven to a thousand shifts, while he lies in the Mint or Friars
under the dilemma of a statute of bankruptcy; but if he dies, then
she is absolutely undone, unless she has friends to go to.

Suppose an office to be erected, to be called an office of insurance
for widows, upon the following conditions:

Two thousand women, or their husbands for them, enter their names
into a register to be kept for that purpose, with the names, age,
and trade of their husbands, with the place of their abode, paying
at the time of their entering 5s. down with 1s. 4d. per quarter,
which is to the setting up and support of an office with clerks and
all proper officers for the same; for there is no maintaining such
without charge. They receive every one of them a certificate sealed
by the secretary of the office, and signed by the governors, for the
articles hereafter mentioned:

If any one of the women become a widow at any time after six months