
Luke Batterham
Senior Valuer
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Senior Valuer
The National Freehold Land Society had been founded by Richard Cobden, John Bright and others to secure the vote for those without land or, as Cobden put it, 'to enable individuals, by means of small monthly subscriptions, to accumulate a fund by which they should be enabled, in the best and cheapest way, to possess themselves of the county franchise' (Times, 27 November 1849). From it grew the present-day property British Land and Abbey National (Santander). When she wrote the second cheque Christina Rossetti was already seriously ill with the cancer that was to kill her that December, so it may have issued as part of a settlement of her affairs.