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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
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