In February, 1674, the jobbers were taken by surprise, and a sudden fall of fourteen per cent. in India Stock occurred, owing to an unexpected war in the East. The incident is only remarkable, that from this period, marked by a fall in their stock to so large an extent, commenced the political greatness of the Company. A violent dispute had arisen between Lord Clive and the directors; but their foreign affairs assumed so serious an aspect, that the latter were forced to yield. Every vessel brought alarming tidings. The natives, unable to bear the oppressive exactions to which they were subject, arose and defied the government. The directors of the Company grew alarmed. They forgot their feuds, they remembered only their dividends, and called Clive to their rescue. But Clive refused to act so long as one Sullivan, his bitter enemy, occupied the position of chairman; and as the proprietors would have removed the whole court of directors rather than miss the services of Clive, Sullivan not only lost his chairmanship, but was within a single vote of losing his seat as director. During this exciting period, so great was the bustle, that Cornhill and Cheapside were filled with the carriages of the voters; and from this dispute, which commenced with so ominous a fall in their stock, may the territorial dignity of the East India Company be dated. Sampson Gideon, the great Jew broker, as he was called in the city, and the founder of the house of Eardley, as he is known to genealogists, died in 1762. This name, as the financial friend of Sir Robert Walpole, the oracle and leader of ’Change Alley, and the determined opponent of Sir John Barnard, was as familiar to city circles in the last century as the names of Goldsmid and Rothschild are to the present. A shrewd, sarcastic man, possessing a rich vein of humor, the anecdotes preserved of him are, unhappily, few and far between. “Never grant a life-annuity to an old woman,” he would say; “they wither, but they never die.” And if the proposed annuitant coughed with a violent asthmatic cough on approaching the room-door, Gideon would call out, “Ay, ay, you may cough, but it sha’n’t save you six months’ purchase!” In one of his dealings with Mr. Snow, the banker,—immortalized by Dean Swift,—the latter lent Gideon £20,000. Shortly afterwards, the “forty-five” broke out; the success of the Pretender seemed certain; and Mr. Snow, alarmed for his beloved property, addressed a piteous epistle to the Jew. A run upon his house, a stoppage, and a bankruptcy, were the least the banker’s imagination pictured; and the whole concluded with an earnest request for his money. Gideon went to the bank, procured twenty notes, sent for a phial of hartshorn, rolled the phial in the notes, and thus grotesquely Mr. Snow received the money he had lent.