In 1878, General Pitt Rivers excavated the motte and bailey castle on the downs behind Folkestone and published the results with characteristic promptness and accuracy. Today, over three-quarters of a century later, only four excavations, all in the past ten years, have advanced our knowledge further. While these have solved many problems, they have posed others, for few mottes are adequately documented (Old Aberystwyth is an honourable exception) and the dating of results can only be approximate.
Staple Inn and the Patent Office are only separated by the width of a garden, and it might be wondered why none of the many ingenious schemes of insurance has ever been protected by patenting it. Such protection of an idea should be impossible, as will be explained later, but in 1778 one John Knox ‘Of Richmond in the County of Surry, Gentleman’ took the first step towards such a patent by petitioning King George III ‘that with great assiduity, art and pains and after many laborious calculations and at a considerable expence’ he had invented ‘A Plan, Different to any before that Time Discovered, for Assurance on Lives from Ten to Eighty Years of Age, upon a Twofold Beneficial Principle, Making a certain provision as well for Subscribers or their Representatives upon the Death of the Person on whose Life Assurance should be made within the Term Assured for, as also by Means of a Reserved Capital for the Surviving Subscribers whose Nominees should be Living at the Expiration of such Term….’
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.