Parliament confiscated South Sea director Edward Gibbon's £106,543 in 1721 and left him £10,000; he rebuilt the fortune and willed it past his son

Edward Gibbon had a fortune of £60,000 when he became a director of the South Sea Company. In early August 1720 the company's stock reached about 1,000 percent of par. It fell to 700 by 2 September and later to 135. Parliament then barred the directors from transferring property and ordered each to swear an inventory of his estate. Gibbon swore to £106,543 5s 6d. The House of Commons voted what each director could keep. A motion to leave Gibbon £15,000 failed, and £10,000 carried without a division. Charles Mackay counts £2,014,000 taken from the directors' estates; Sir John Blunt kept £5,000 of more than £183,000, and Sir Theodore Janssen £50,000 of £243,000. Gibbon started again. Over sixteen years he bought land in Sussex, Hampshire and Buckinghamshire, shares in the New River Company and a house at Putney. He died in December 1736, aged 70. His will enriched his daughters Catherine and Hester at the expense of his only son, Edward, whose marriage he had not fully accepted. The son's son, Edward Gibbon, born in 1737, became the historian of Rome. In his memoir he called Parliament's proceedings "violent and arbitrary" and wrote that he was "neither a competent nor a disinterested judge" of his grandfather's guilt. The historian died in 1794 with an estate of about £26,000, left mostly to cousins.