ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the records of government loans to study the participation of female lenders and to call attention to the extent to which women from all social ranks were active participants in government finance at the end of the seventeenth century. They were a different group from the speculating ladies of the much studied South Sea Bubble of 1720. The chapter deals with the hitherto unstudied history of the female holders of the so-called Bankers Annuities beginning in the 1670s. It considers female lenders on other annuities and lottery loans, and compares them with stockholders in the Bank of England. A new financial policy was developed, by which specific taxes were designated to repay loans, and lenders received numbered orders to secure repayment in a predictable way. The story of the Bankers Annuitants begins in the 1660s with hundreds of women wanting a way to earn income on very short-term deposits.
