Parliament had hardly met before Windbank was called up before the House of Commons, and questioned as to the number of priests and Jesuits in London. That assembly further brought pressure to bear upon the King, which resulted in a proclamation banishing Catholics to a certain distance from London. It was even suggested that new and stricter laws should be made against the recusants, and thorough-going people recommended that all Catholics found in a chapel, either that of the Queen or anybody else, should be immediately seized and hanged. The hatred of the country, and particularly of the city of London, for anything savouring of Popery was further shown by the presentation of the Root and Branch petition, which asked for nothing less than the abolition of Episcopacy in the National Church. But these vexations, distressing as they were, sank into insignificance before the new blow which threatened the royal power. On November 11th Strafford was impeached by Pym of high treason and committed to the Tower, whence he was only to come out to his death. It was a poor consolation to the Queen that her old enemy, Laud, the persecutor of the Catholics, was also thrown into prison, for she had learned to see in him, if not a friend, at least a political ally. No blow could have been more crushing than that which at this critical moment deprived the King and Queen of the services and counsels of their best friend; but Henrietta was to find herself attacked in more personal matters, matters which a few months earlier would have seemed to her of more consequence than any misfortune which could happen to the Viceroy of Ireland. Experience, however, was teaching her to measure men and things by another standard than that of personal feeling, though to the end the lesson would be imperfectly learned. Indeed, in the very next trial she failed again. The contribution of the Catholics in 1639 was a matter of common knowledge. Parliament, which was already exasperated by the Queen's intervention on behalf of a priest named Goodman who had been condemned to die, and who was particularly odious to the Puritans as the brother of the Romanizing Bishop of Gloucester, determined to strike at those through whom it knew that it could wound Henrietta. No one at this time was nearer to the Queen than Walter Montagu, who was her confidant and helper in the correspondence which she was carrying on with the Court of Rome on the subject of communications between herself and the Pope. Closely associated with him was Sir Kenelm Digby, whose departure for Rome was rendered impossible owing to the rancour of the Puritans. Sir John Winter was the Queen's own private secretary. These three gentlemen were called to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for their share in the contribution of 1639, and it was significantly remarked that the two latter were the sons of "Powder Plotters," who had lost their lives for complicity in that famous treason.