A succession of distinguished ministers continued the lecture until 1694, when the Calvinistic question again cropped up, arising out of the reprinting of the works of Dr. Tobias Crisp, which were published under the editorship of his son in 1690, and written against by Mr. Williams, one of the lecturers. Discord sprung up, and an attempt was made to exclude him from the lectureship, upon which four of the lecturers,—Dr. Bates, and Messrs. Williams, Howe, and Alsop,—sent in their resignations, and set up an opposition lecture at Salters' Hall, at the same day and hour. At the expiration of the lease the lecture was removed to Little St. Helen's, and afterwards to the chapel in New Broad Street, about 1780, but was very thinly attended. The Independent Chapel in New Broad Street, to which the Merchants' lecture migrated, was built in 1728, for Dr. Guyse and a congregation who separated with him from Miles Lane. Dr. Guyse was a learned man and Merchant lecturer at Pinners' Hall, and was author of _A Paraphrase on the New Testament_, 1739, a voluminous and valuable work, as well as of some other works. He was followed by John Stafford, D.D., who died in 1800, and was buried in Bunhill-fields; author of _The Scripture Doctrine of Sin and Grace_, _Twenty-five Sermons on the Seventh Chapter Romans_, _etc._ A writer in Knight's _London_ says: "If a stranger from any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, however remote, were to pause in the midst of Broad Street, and enquire to what purpose that large pile of buildings opposite to him were appropriated, he would, ten to one, on learning that it was the Excise Office, have a livelier idea of the operations of the Board of Revenue, which has its seat there, than the inhabitant of London, provided that neither had been brought into direct contact with its officers by the nature of his business." In 1626, King Charles I. attempted to introduce the excise, but a unanimous vote of the Houses of Parliament compelled him to renounce the scheme. Nevertheless, in 1643, Parliament itself levied an excise, for the maintenance of the forces raised by them; the first articles on which the duty was laid were ale, beer, cider, and perry. The Commissioners of Excise sat in Haberdashers' Hall. An account of its establishment was given by Prynne, in a tract published in 1654, entitled, "A Declaration and Protestation against the Illegal and Detestable and oft-contemned New Tax and Extortion of Excise in General, and for Hops, a native and uncertain commodity in particular." An excise office was built in Smithfield, which was burnt down by the populace, and many riots took place in London in opposition to the tax, especially when salt and meat and other of the common necessaries of life were subjected to it; and a multitude of pamphlets, some of a very scurrilous character, appeared in opposition to it. The Excise office was afterwards removed to the mansion of Sir J. Frederick, in