6. =The Attack on the City. 1682-1683.=--The difficulty which Charles had experienced in bending the city to his will made him anxious to provide against similar resistance in the future. Taking care to effect his objects under, at least, the form of law, he enforced on the electors in the City, who were called in December to choose the Common Council, the oath of supremacy and the proof required by the Corporation Act of having received the Sacrament in the Church. The result was that a Tory majority was returned on the Common Council. Following up this blow in =1683=, he called on the City to show cause, by a writ known as '_Quo Warranto_,' before the King's Bench, why its charter should not be forfeited, in consequence of its having imposed irregular tolls and having attacked the king's authority in a petition exhibited in =1680=. The King's Bench decided against the City, and the king then offered to restore the charter on certain conditions, of which the principal was, that he was to have a veto on the election of its principal officers. At first the City accepted his terms, but, before the end of the year, it drew back, and the king then named the Lord Mayor and other officers directly, paying no further regard to the municipal self-government under which the City had, for many centuries, conducted its own affairs. 7. =The Remodelling of the Corporations. 1683-1684.=--A large number of other corporate towns were treated as London had been treated. By a plentiful use of writs of _Quo Warranto_, the judges on circuit obtained the surrender of their charters, after which the king issued new ones in which Tories alone were named as members of the corporations. It was said of Jeffreys, one amongst the judges who was most subservient, that he 'made all charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down before him.' The object of these proceedings was to make sure of a Tory Parliament when the time came for fresh elections. In a large number of boroughs the corporations chose the members, and in such cases wherever the corporation had been remodelled, there would be a safe Tory seat. At the same time the laws against the Dissenters were strictly executed, and the prisons filled with their ministers. 8. =The Rye House Plot. 1683.=--When injustice is done under legal forms, there are usually some persons who think it allowable to appeal to force. Some of Shaftesbury's more violent followers formed a plot to attack the king and his brother at the Rye House on their return from Newmarket, and either to seize or murder them. The plot failed, as Charles passed the Rye House some days earlier than was expected, and several of the conspirators were taken and executed.