Terminer; but the grand jury
refused to find a true bill. These abortive proceedings were followed by a
riot at St. Paul's.(425) Before the House had been in session a fortnight
Strafford was ordered into custody.

(M173)

The L50,000 which the City had advanced went but a little way towards
meeting the king's necessities. The two armies in the north had to be
paid, and there was not the wherewithal to pay them. The City was ready to
lend a further sum of L25,000, on condition that the Londonderry estate
was restored, the garrison in the Tower removed and the ordnance
dismounted from its walls. Unless this were done, said Cradock, "such
jealousies would possess the city, it would hinder supply."(426)
Parliament agreed to the loan being repaid, as a first charge, out of the
L100,000 ordered to be raised for the relief of the army and northern
counties;(427) and the Common Council lost no time in preparing a petition
to parliament for the restoration of the Irish lands.(428) Nor was it only
in their corporate capacity that the citizens came forward to render
pecuniary assistance to the government. On the 21st November Isaac
Pennington, alderman of the ward of Bridge Without, and one of the city's
representatives in parliament, announced to the House that his
constituents had subscribed L21,000 to the loan.

(M174)

The general feeling of distrust that prevailed was heightened by an attack
made upon a member of the House who, in his capacity of a justice of
peace, had prepared a list of recusants, in pursuance of a recent
proclamation.(429) So great was the alarm among the Commons that
Pennington offered the House a guard of three hundred citizens, and at
first there was a disposition to accept the alderman's offer, but in
course of time better counsel prevailed and the idea was abandoned.

(M175)

The tendency of the city towards Puritanism at this time was very marked.
On the 28th November Prynne and Burton entered London, and their entry was
made one long triumphal procession. This circumstance was specially noted
by the royalist writer Clarendon as a remarkable "instance of the unruly
and mutinous spirit of the City of London," which he is pleased to term
"the sink of all the ill humour of the Kingdom."(430) A fortnight later
(11 Dec.) a petition for church reform and the abolition of episcopacy
"root and branch" was presented to parliament, signed by 15,000
Londoners.(431) The blow was aimed at Laud, who was lo