All the directors were forced to send in inventories of their respective estates to the Parliamentary Committee. These were confiscated for the benefit of their dupes, their owners being allowed some small portion of their former wealth to keep them from starvation. Peculation and dishonesty were not confined to the city. Peers of the realm and cabinet ministers were charged with receiving large bribes either in money or stock. The Earl of Sunderland, first commissioner of the Treasury, was reported by the committee of investigation to have received £50,000 stock without any consideration whatsoever, and although the House of Commons refused to find him guilty,[51] the Earl felt compelled to give up his post. Craggs, who was Secretary of State, and Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not to mention others, were convicted by the House of receiving similar bribes.[52] Craggs died of an attack of small-pox, pending the enquiry, but he left a large estate, and this was confiscated for the relief of sufferers. Aislabie was expelled the House, and committed to the Tower. Among the directors who were thus made to feel the heavy hand of Parliament was Edward Gibbon, grandfather of the great historian of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Out of an estate of £60,000, Parliament allowed him to retain no more than £10,000. That the action of Parliament towards the directors was afterwards condemned by the historian as arbitrary and unjust, and only to be excused by the most imperious necessity, need not therefore cause surprise.[53] [Sidenote: The action of Parliament upheld by the City.] The city fathers, on the other hand, upheld the action of Parliament, and urged it to take further measures to alleviate the prevalent distress by presenting to the House the following petition (3 April)[54]:-- "Your peticoners think it their duty most humbly to represent to this Honoble House the present state of the City of London (so considerable a part of the kingdom) now filled with numberless objects of grief and compassion (the sad effects of the mismanagemts avarice and fatal contrivances of the late Directors of the South Sea Company, their aiders, abettors and confederates in the destruccõn of their country.) "Nor is it the case of this great city alone your peticoners lament, but the general decay of trade manufactures and of public creditt, whereof this Honoble House have been alwaies so extreamly tender, as also of the honour of the British name and nacõn.