Financier and Company director Sir Theodore Janssen had been a founding investor in the Bank of England, a financial polemicist, and, as of 1717, a member of Parliament. He had thus been perfectly situated to get in on the game early. By late spring his Company holdings were said to be worth a million pounds, and he was seen in public sporting a new diamond ring, a gift, it was known, from the Prince of Wales—the reward for services the public could infer.
