ABSTRACT

In amongst Toland’s papers upon his death at Putney in 1722 was A Secret History of the South Sea Scheme, which Pierre Des Maizeaux admitted was heavily annotated in Toland’s hand. 1 This offered an initiate’s rendition of the trauma, arguing against the common understanding that it was a concatenation of the directors’ mismanagement and the foolishness of the crowd that had brought down the company. 2 Rather, as it synopsized its own contents, the thesis it laid out was that:

The authors of it were Appius, the Treasurer and the Negromancer. The disposing of the fictitious stock, which raised so much clamour, was the work of the Cabinet Council: the rest of the Directors were intirely ignorant of it. The giving Premiums for the Midsummer dividend, was deemed a wicked contrivance. Appius and the Negromancer were the only persons concern’d in that base design. 3