Of all this it is probable that the House of Commons knew little, and as in 1691 it had appointed Commissioners to inquire into the public accounts, it doubtless awaited their report before taking any active step. In 1694, however, the House was rudely surprised by certain revelations respecting a notorious crimp of London, named Tooley, who went so far in his zeal to procure recruits that he not only forced the King's shilling on them when they were drunk--a practice which was common in France and has not long been extinct in England--but resorted to kidnapping pure and simple.[270] Here was one gross infringement of the liberty of the subject; and this scandal was quickly followed by another. At the end of 1694 there came a petition from the inhabitants of Royston, complaining that the troops quartered there were exacting subsistence from the townsfolk on a fixed scale. Inquiry proved the truth of the allegation: the troops were unpaid, and had taken their own measures to save themselves from starvation. Almost simultaneously the Commissioners of Public Accounts reported that their inquiries had been baffled by the refusal of several regimental agents to show their books; and they gave at the same time an unvarnished relation of the shameful extortion practised by agents towards officers and men, and of one case of glaring misconduct on the part of a colonel. The House brought the recalcitrant agents to their senses by committing them to custody, and addressed the King with an earnest prayer that he would put a stop to these iniquities.[271] The King accordingly cashiered the colonel[272] and promised amendment, which promise was discharged so far as orders could fulfil it. But the case demanded not new orders but execution of existing regulations. There, however, the matter rested for the time, the Commons being occupied with the task of purging corruption from their own body, which was very inadequately performed by the expulsion of the Speaker. Nevertheless, to the end of the war fresh petitions continued to come in from towns, from widows of officers, and from private soldiers, all complaining of the dishonesty of officers and of agents; and the House thus established itself as in some sort a mediator between officers and men. Such a mediator, it must be confessed, was but too sadly needed, but in the interests of discipline it was a misfortune that the House should ever have accepted the position. The immediate result was to overwhelm the Commons with a vast amount of business which they were incompetent to transact, and to suggest an easy remedy for soldiers' grievances in the abolition of all soldiers. [Sidenote: Dec. 11.]