Company, L50,000. It also
appeared that Mr. Stanhope had received the enormous sum of L250,000, as
the difference in the price of some stock, through the hands of Turner,
Caswall, and Co., but that his name had been partly erased from their
books, and altered to Stangape.

The punishment fell heavy on the chief offenders, who, after all, had
only shared in the general lust for gold. Mr. Charles Stanhope, a great
gainer, managed to escape by the influence of the Chesterfield family,
and the mob threatened vengeance. Aislabie, who had made some L800,000,
was expelled the House, sent to the Tower, and compelled to devote his
estate to the relief of the sufferers. Sir George Caswall was expelled
the House, and ordered to refund L250,000. The day he went to the Tower,
the mob lit bonfires and danced round them for joy. When by a general
whip of the Whigs the Earl of Sunderland was acquitted, the mob grew
menacing again. That same day the elder Craggs died of apoplexy. The
report was that he had poisoned himself, but excitement and the death of
a son, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, were the real causes. His
enormous fortune of a million and a half was scattered among the
sufferers. Eventually the directors were fined L2,014,000, each man
being allowed a small modicum of his fortune. Sir John Blunt was only
allowed L5,000 out of his fortune of L183,000; Sir John Fellows was
allowed L10,000 out of L243,000; Sir Theodore Janssen, L50,000 out of
L243,000; Sir John Lambert, L5,000 out of L72,000. One director, named
Gregsley, was treated with especial severity, because he was reported to
have once declared he would feed his carriage-horses off gold; another,
because years before he had been mixed up with some harmless but
unsuccessful speculation. According to Gibbon the historian, it was the
Tory directors who were stripped the most unmercifully.

"The next consideration of the Legislature," says Charles Mackay, "after
the punishment of the directors, was to restore public credit. The
scheme of Walpole had been found insufficient, and had fallen into
disrepute. A computation was made of the whole capital stock of the
South Sea Company at the end of the year 1720. It was found to amount to
L37,800,000, of which the stock allotted to all the proprietors only
reached L24,500,000. The remainder of L13,300,000 belonged to the
Company in their corporate capacity, and was the profit they had made by
the national delusion. Upw