ter transaction of the business and for the purpose of
raising money for the plantation, which otherwise could never have been
effected--were fined L70,000. Seeing that the matter reflected so badly
upon the justice of the late as well as the present king, the petitioners
humbly prayed that a full investigation of the whole proceedings might be
made and justice done.

Such was the nature of the petition which the Common Council ordered in
January (1641) to be submitted to parliament. The House had its hands too
full to pay much attention to the City's grievance until recently; but
now, within a fortnight of their adjournment for a well-earned rest, the
Commons declared(462) the sentence in the Star Chamber to have been
unlawful and unjust. They declared that, in the opinion of the House, the
citizens of London had been solicited and pressed to undertake the
plantation of Londonderry, that the king had not been deceived in the
grant to the new corporation of the Irish Society, that no breach of
covenant (if any there were) had been committed sufficient to cause a
forfeiture of the lands, that the Star Chamber proceedings were _ultra
vires_, and that the citizens of London and all those against whom
judgment had been given in the _scire facias_ should be discharged of that
judgment and reinstated as they were before the sentence in the Star
Chamber.

(M191)

Before the Houses again met, Richard Gurney, a man of the same royalist
proclivity as Garway, and on that account, perhaps, described by Clarendon
as "a man of wisdom and courage," had been elected mayor in succession to
Edmund Wright.(463) The last days of Wright's mayoralty were days of
sickness and tumult in the city. Numbers of disbanded soldiers from the
north had made their way to London, where they carried on a system of
rapine and outrage. The mayor issued precepts for search to be made in
every ward for suspected persons and disbanded soldiers, as well as for
keeping the streets well lighted at night by candle and lanthorn, whilst
public proclamation was made by the king for soldiers to repair to their
own homes.(464)

(M192)

Shortly after the House of Commons had resumed its session attention was
again drawn towards Ireland, where a rebellion had broken out. Seeing how
successful Scotland had been in its resistance to England, the Irish had
determined to strike a blow for the recovery of lands handed over to
Protestant colonists, as well as for religi