sponge in one hand, in the other a sword, which he shakes
at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting; the
spell by which she has turned all things around her into treasure is
broken; the money-bags shrink like pricked bladders; the piles of gold
pieces are turned into bundles of rags, or fagots of wooden tallies."

In 1696 (very soon after its birth) the Bank experienced a crisis. There
was a want of money in England. The clipped silver had been called in,
and the new money was not ready. Even rich people were living on credit,
and issued promissory notes. The stock of the Bank of England had gone
rapidly down from 110 to 83. The goldsmiths, who detested the
corporation that had broken in on their system of private banking, now
tried to destroy the new company. They plotted, and on the same day they
crowded to Grocers' Hall, where the Bank was located from 1694 to 1734,
and insisted on immediate payment--one goldsmith alone demanding
L30,000. The directors paid all their honest creditors, but refused to
cash the goldsmiths' notes, and left them their remedy in Westminster
Hall. The goldsmiths triumphed in scurrilous pasquinades entitled, "The
Last Will and Testament," "The Epitaph," "The Inquest on the Bank of
England." The directors, finding it impossible to procure silver enough
to pay every claim, had recourse to an expedient. They made a call of 20
per cent. on the proprietors, and thus raised a sum enabling them to pay
every applicant 15 per cent. in milled money on what was due to him, and
they returned him his note, after making a minute upon it that part had
been paid. A few notes thus marked, says Macaulay, are still preserved
among the archives of the Bank, as memorials of that terrible year. The
alternations were frightful. The discount, at one time 6 per cent., was
presently 24. A L10 note, taken for more than L9 in the morning, was
before night worth less than L8.

Paterson attributes this danger of the Bank to bad and partial payments,
the giving and allowing exorbitant interest, high premiums and
discounts, contracting dear and bad bargains; the general debasing and
corrupting of coin, and such like, by which means things were brought to
such a pass that even 8 per cent. interest on the land-tax, although
payable within the year, would not answer. Guineas, he says, on a sudden
rose to 30s. per piece, or more; all currency of other money was
stopped, hardly any had wherewith to pay;