The run upon the Bank is too well known to need a particular relation:  for it never can be forgotten, that no one person whatever (except the directors themselves, and some of their particular friends and associates) could convert a bill all that day into specie; all hands being employed to serve them.

In the several churches of the city and suburbs, there were seven thousand two hundred and forty-five, who publicly and solemnly declared before the congregation, that they took to wife their several kept-mistresses, which was allowed as valid marriage, the priest not having time to pronounce the ceremony in form.

At St Bride’s church in Fleet-street, Mr. Woolston,[2] (who writ against the miracles of our Saviour,) in the utmost terrors of conscience, made a public recantation.  Dr. Mandeville[3] (who had been groundlessly reported formerly to have done the same,) did it now in good earnest at St James’s gate; as did also at the Temple Church several gentlemen, who frequent coffeehouses near the bar.  So great was the faith and fear of two of them, that they dropped dead on the spot; but I will not record their names, lest I should be thought invidiously to lay an odium on their families and posterity.

[Footnote 2:  Thomas Woolston (1669-1733), a deistical writer, born at Northampton; became a Fellow of Sidney College, Cambridge.  For his work, “Six Discourses on the Miracles of Christ,” he was sentenced to imprisonment for one year and fined one hundred pounds. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  Bernard de Mandeville, M.D., author of the “Fable of the Bees,” a deistical work, the scope of which was to prove, that private vices are public benefits.  The work was attacked by Bishop Berkeley in his “Alciphron.”  De Mandeville was born in Holland about 1670, but came over to England and settled there about the middle of the eighteenth century.  He also wrote “The Virgin Unmasked,” “The Grumbling Hive,” and “Free Thoughts on Religion.”  He died in 1733. [T.S.]]

Most of the players, who had very little faith before, were now desirous of having as much as they could, and therefore embraced the Roman Catholic religion:  the same thing was observed of some bawds, and ladies of pleasure.

An Irish gentleman out of pure friendship came to make me a visit, and advised me to hire a boat for the ensuing day, and told me, that unless I gave earnest for one immediately, he feared it might be too late; for his countrymen had secured almost every boat upon the river, as judging, that, in the general conflagration, to be upon the water would be the safest place.

There were two lords, and three commoners, who, out of scruple of conscience, very hastily threw up their pensions, as imagining a pension was only an annual retaining bribe.  All the other great pensioners, I was told, had their scruples quieted by a clergyman or two of distinction, whom they happily consulted.

It was remarkable, that several of our very richest tradesmen of the city, in common charity, gave away shillings and sixpences to the beggars who plied about the church doors; and at a particular church in the city, a wealthy church-warden with his own hands distributed fifty twelve-penny loaves to the poor, by way of restitution for the many great and costly feasts, which he had eaten of at their expense.