ut
the directors again upon their mettle, and they set to work with fresh
rumours and pushed them up to L1,000, from which they suddenly went
down, with a few fluctuations, until utterly worthless. The treasurer of
the Company ran away to France when the blow fell, but the directors
were arrested and their estates ultimately confiscated. Thousands of
people were ruined, and the public credit received a blow from which it
took many years to recover.

Meanwhile the South Sea Company had not been altogether idle. Besides
the slave vessels they were entitled to send _one_ ship annually to the
Carthagena and Porto Bello fairs, this being called the _Navio de
permisso_. It was not to be larger than five hundred tons, yet the
Company picked out the biggest they could find and filled it with goods,
to the exclusion of food and water, which were carried in small store
vessels that waited outside the harbour. This caused a great deal of
dissatisfaction, as the English brought so much that they could
under-sell the Spanish merchants in their own market. In 1715 the
_Bedford_, nominally of six hundred tons, was seized at Carthagena on
the ground that her burden was excessive. By the Spanish measurements
the cargo was said to have amounted to 2,117-1/2 tons, and the excess
was confiscated and ordered to be sold. However, the English protested,
at the same time passing over some valuable presents to the authorities,
with the result that a remeasurement was ordered, which made the amount
only 460 tons.

In 1716 the Spaniards took Campeachy and sixty English logwood vessels,
which occasioned another war. The English claimed that they had an
undoubted right to cut logwood at that place, and that former kings had
always maintained them in this. For a long time they had quietly
possessed a part of Yucatan, uninhabited by Spaniards, and they claimed
not only the privilege of wood-cutting, but of settlement as well.
Probably the little notice taken of their attack on the Darien colony
made the Spanish authorities think England ready to bear any insult, but
they soon found out their mistake. War was declared in 1718, and all the
property of the South Sea Company, including debts, was confiscated, the
whole amounting to L850,000. This would have been a great blow to the
Company had it been genuine, but as we have seen, its mercantile
transactions were secondary considerations.

Peace was restored by the Treaty of Madrid in June 1721, when