Some remained and others transferred their place of business to South Sea House, to the offices of the East India Company and of the Hudson's Bay Company. The great bulk of them, however, made Change Alley their market-place because of its suitable open space, undisturbed by traffic, and its convenient coffee-houses. Garraway's coffee-house became a very popular resort of the stockbrokers and their clients, and, to a greater extent still, so did Jonathan's. For the first three quarters of the eighteenth century, that is, from its beginning until the year 1773, Change Alley was the Stock Exchange. It was there that, in the year 1720, the scenes of the great Stock Exchange boom, panic, and collapse known as the South Sea Bubble were enacted. In the year 1733 an attempt was made to abolish speculative stock transactions altogether by the passing of Sir John Barnard's Act. It rendered it illegal to buy stock for which one did not pay, or to sell stock which one did not deliver. It outlawed mere speculative transactions for differences. That Act was not repealed until 127 years afterwards, in 1860, but at no time was it seriously operative. It spread dismay throughout the ranks of the stockbrokers at first, because a great deal of their business naturally consisted in time bargains, enabling the payment of differences instead of cash or stock down; but the proverbial coach and four was soon at hand and the Act proved a dead letter. In the course of the evolution of the profession of stockdealing, the more respectable of the brokers found themselves using Jonathan's, and by the year 1762 that coffee-house was almost regarded as the Stock Exchange, the other frequenters of Change Alley being looked upon more or less as outsiders. The aristocracy of the profession, who assembled at Jonathan's, was really the nucleus of the present Stock Exchange organisation. Amid the jealous sneers of some of their less reputable brethren, who charged them with an attempt to form an exclusive ring, they eventually, in 1773, raised a subscription, and obtained the control of a coffee-house at the north end of what are now called Royal Exchange Buildings--opposite the north-east corner of the Royal Exchange, where the Peabody statue stands. Over the door of this building was placed the inscription "The Stock Exchange." It was the first building to bear the title. But even to this building, the first Stock Exchange, admission could be obtained by the outsider at the cost of sixpence for a day ticket.