Mr. Guy already had become very wealthy. During the wars of William and Anne with Louis XIV., the soldiers and seamen were sometimes unpaid for years, from lack of funds. Tickets were given them, and they were willing to sell these at whatever price they would bring. Mr. Guy bought largely from the seamen, and has been blamed for so doing; but his latest biographers, Messrs. Wilks and Bettany, in their interesting and valuable "Biographical History of Guy's Hospital," think he did it with a spirit of kindness rather than of avarice. "It is at least consistent with his general philanthropy to suppose that, compassionating the poor seamen who could not get their money, he offered them more than they could get elsewhere, and that this accounts for his being so large a purchaser of seamen's tickets. Instead of being to his discredit, we think rather that it is to his credit, and that he managed to benefit a large number of necessitous men, while at the same time, in the future, benefiting himself." Mr. Guy also made a great amount of money in the South Sea Company. With regard to the South Sea stock, says the _Saturday Magazine_, "Mr. Guy had no hand in framing or conducting that scandalous fraud; he obtained the stock when low, and had the good sense to sell it at the time it was at its height." Chambers's "Book of Days" gives a very interesting account of this "South Sea Bubble." Harley, Earl of Oxford, who had helped Queen Anne to get rid of her advisers, the Duke of Marlborough and the proud Duchess, Sarah, with a desire to "restore public credit, and discharge ten millions of the floating debt, agreed with a company of merchants that they should take the debt upon themselves for a certain time, at the interest of six per cent, to provide for which, amounting to £600,000 per annum, the duties for certain articles were rendered permanent. At the same time was granted the monopoly of trade to the South Seas, and the merchants were incorporated as the South Sea Company; and so proud was the minister of his scheme that it was called by his flatterers, 'The Earl of Oxford's Masterpiece.'"