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 amounting in the whole to between £4000 and £5000. A list of many of them paid in full is left with the Common Council of Bread Street Ward, of which I am alderman. I do further declare, that it is my determined resolution to continue living in the same frugal manner, till the last shilling is discharged; and in case any turn of fortune should happen to me, my whole just debts shall be discharged so much the sooner, as I am determined to persevere in preserving the character of an honest man.

His brother, Sir Abraham, left him an annuity of £500 (this was in 1765). Stephen offered it for sale at Garraway’s, when his brother, Sir Henry Janssen, bought it for £5000; this was paid to the creditors. The amiable brother did not long survive; he died in 1766, and the City Chamberlain succeeded to his title and fortune. Sir Stephen had some years of prosperity. He was elected a Director of the French Hospital on 4th October 1769. On 6th February 1776 he resigned the office of Chamberlain, “by reason of age and infirmity.” He died, the last survivor of the five brothers, on 7th April 1777, “universally respected for his many public and private virtues” (Gent. Mag.). He had no son, so that the baronetcy became extinct. He left an only daughter, Henrietta, born in 1752, to whom her grandfather, Soulegre, had bequeathed £20,000.

The South-Sea Company was one of those Joint-Stock Companies which were known as Bubbles, and induced people to subscribe large sums of money, under an assurance that the King in Council would grant charters to all such companies. However, an Order in Council, dated 12th July 1720, gave warning that petitions for charters would be dismissed. The Historical Register of that year gave many names of such Bubble Companies, some of which are worthy of our friend Punch:—

For carrying on a General Insurance from losses by Fire. For supplying London with sea-coal (£3,000,000). For erecting salt-pans in Holy Island (£2, 000,000). For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is. For insuring of horses (£2,000,000). For a wheel for perpetual motion (£1,000,000). For importing beaver fur (£2,000,000). The Bottomry Society. For insuring to all masters and mistresses the losses they shall sustain by servants (£3,000,000). For effectually settling the Island of Blanco and Sal-Tortugas. For extracting silver from lead. For the transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable metal.

Nearly 100 such undertakings, proposing to raise about £300,000,000, are named in the list. “Most of the said Bubbles found many subscribers, some of whom sold their permits, or first subscriptions, at a great profit, whereby the last buyers were at last bubbled out of considerable sums.”

 

Like Hatfield, Whittlesey became a scene of the draining operations of Sir Nicolas Vermuyden, and about the year 1646 a French congregation endeavoured to establish itself there. But in 1652 it united with the French Church of Thorney Abbey, about four miles distant, and also situated in the Isle of Ely and county of Cambridge. Among the settlers was Philippe de Bailleu, who is so named in the baptismal register for twenty years, numely, from 1659 to 1679; he became Bailleu in 1681, and so continues till 1692. Ultimately he adopted the surname of Bayley, and in his will, dated 30th July 1705, and proved 18th December 1706, he calls himself Philip Bayley the elder, of Whittlesey, in the Isle of Ely, in the county of Cambridge, yeoman. From the register and from his will we find that he was married four times: — 1st, in 1658 to Jeanne de la Chasse; 2d, in 1664 to Ester, youngest daughter of Andre Clerbau of the Levels, in the parish of Hatfield, Yorkshire; 3d, in 1678 to Marthe Descamps; and 4th, after 1692, to Susanne de Lo; she survived him, and received as his widow £110 in cash, and “one of my best beds with the bedstead, bedding, and furniture thereunto belonging, and all that chest of linnen I had with her at the time of our intermarriage.” His brother, Jean de Bailleu, otherwise John Bayley, survived him, and is named in his will;