User:Ww2censor/Charles Povey

Charles Povey (1652?–4 May 1743) was a English pamphleteer and entrepreneur who challenged the Royal Mail's postal monopoly by running the "Halfpenny Carriage", a local London postal system similar to William Dockwra's Penny Post. His most successful enterprise was the insurance company "Sun Fire Office" that remains in business today as the RSA Insurance Group.

Halfpenny Carriage

In 1708 Povey established a private postal system for the delivery and collection of mail within the City of London, City of Westminster and Borough of Southwark known as the Halfpenny Carriage with receiving houses within those areas. Povey's scheme was similar to Dockwra's Penny Post, that had been taken over by the government in 1683, except the charges were a halfpenny and a penny instead of a penny and twopence charged by Dockwra. Povey set up receiving houses at various traders and shopkeepers around the city and employed bells ringers who collected and delivered mail for the public contrary to the known laws of the kingdom.

Sun Fire Office

Sun Fire Office insurance plaque on a building

Publications

Amongst Povey's publications are the following:

• A Challenge to all Jacobites (1689)

• A Challenge in vindication of the Revolution (1690)

• Proposals for raising One Thousand Pounds (1699)

• A Discovery of Indirect Practices in the Coal Trade (1700)

• The unhappiness of England, as to its Trade by Sea and Land truly stated (1701)

• Meditations of a Divine Soul (1703)

• Holy Thoughts of a God-made Man (1704)

• An inquiry into the miscarriages of the four last years reign (1714)

• A tender and hearty address to all the freeholders and other electors of members for the ensuing Parliament of Great Britain & Ireland. (1714)

• English inquisition: or, Money rais'd by the new secret extent law, without act of Parliament (1718)

• Britain's Scheme to make a New Coin of Gold and Silver to give in Exchange for Paper-Money and South-Sea Stock (1720)

• The Secret History of the Sun Fire Office (1733)

• Memorial to obtain Right and Property as promised in Her Majesty's Speech from the Throne, humbly presented to the King, Lords and Commons for the restoration of an Estate and Fortune taken away by the Crown and Parliament, contrary to the Laws of Great Britain (1737)

• The Torments after Death (1740)

• The Virgin in Eden, or the State of Innocency- . . . Presenting a Nobleman, a Student, and Heiress, on their progress from Sodom to Canaan (1741)

• WorldCat Charles Povey search result

References and sources

Notes

Sources

•  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Povey, Charles". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

External links

• Catalogue of Povey items held by National Library of Australia

• http://apps.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=074-sun_2-0-400&cid=0#0 National Archives of the UK
• https://archive.org/stream/propertyinsuran00unkngoog#page/n82/mode/2up Property insurance pg 63
• http://books.google.com/books?id=S4CffIcMB9UC&pg=PA313 Povey's will
• http://www.archive.org/stream/earlydaysofsunfi00baumuoft/earlydaysofsunfi00baumuoft_djvu.txt The early days of the Sun Fire Office
• https://archive.org/stream/anaccountfirein00reltgoog#page/n24/mode/2up An account of the Fire Insurance companies ... in Great Britain and Ireland by Francis Boyer Relton 1893 Pg6 ??
• http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/post/1472.pdf ref to Povey in history of Royal Mail
• https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb50-udx43 Paper of the Sun Fire Office