This half-suppressed jealousy soon disclosed itself in the famous controversy between the two houses about the case of Skinner and the East India Company. This began by a petition of the former to the king, wherein he complained, that having gone as a merchant to the Indian seas, at a time when there was no restriction upon that trade, the East India Company's agents had plundered his property, taken away his ships, and dispossessed him of an island which he had purchased from a native prince. Conceiving that he could have no sufficient redress in the ordinary courts of justice, he besought his sovereign to enforce reparation by some other means. After several ineffectual attempts by a committee of the privy council to bring about a compromise between the parties, the king transmitted the documents to the House of Lords, with a recommendation to do justice to the petitioner. They proceeded accordingly to call on the East India Company for an answer to Skinner's allegations. The company gave in what is technically called a plea to the jurisdiction, which the house over-ruled. The defendants then pleaded in bar, and contrived to delay the enquiry into the facts till the next session; when the proceedings having been renewed, and the plea to the Lords' jurisdiction again offered, and over-ruled, judgment was finally given that the East India Company should pay £5000 damages to Skinner. Meantime the company had presented a petition to the House of Commons against the proceedings of the Lords in this business. It was referred to a committee, who had already been appointed to consider some other cases of a like nature. They made a report, which produced resolutions to this effect; that the Lords, in taking cognisance of an original complaint, and that relievable in the ordinary course of law, had acted illegally, and in a manner to deprive the subject of benefit of the law. The Lords in return voted, "that the House of Commons entertaining the scandalous petition of the East India Company against the Lords' house of parliament, and their proceedings, examinations, and votes thereupon had and made, are a breach of the privileges of the House of Peers, and contrary to the fair correspondency which ought to be between the two houses of parliament, and unexampled in former times; and that the House of Peers, taking cognisance of the cause of Thomas Skinner, merchant, a person highly oppressed and injured in East India by the governor and company of merchants trading thither, and over-ruling the plea of the said company, and adjudging £5000 damages thereupon against the said governor and company, is agreeable to the laws of the land, and well warranted by the law and custom of parliament, and justified by many parliamentary precedents ancient and modern."