prompt action even if Wentworth had taken the opposite view. After a lecture from the Viceroy on their duty to the King, the Council broke up, and next morning Wandesford proposed a resolution to give six subsidies 'to be levied in a parliamentary way in four years,' two in the first and second years, and one each in the third and fourth. Some of the Recusant party, finding themselves in a temporary majority, at once moved to postpone the vote until the House had been purged, and carried it by twenty-eight. But this was recognised as being what is nowadays called a snap division, and when the original motion was nevertheless put both parties feared to lose their credit with the Government. The Roman Catholics, having made their protest, supported Wandesford's motion, which passed unanimously, and all was over before noon. The rest of this session, said the Lord Deputy compendiously, 'we have entertained and spun them out in discourses, but kept them nevertheless from concluding anything. No other laws passed but the two Acts of subsidies, and that other short law for confirming all such compositions as are or shall be made upon the commission of defective titles.' The Government was strengthened by a difference of opinion between the two Houses, which prevented a joint petition in favour of the graces. The Commons claimed the right to sit covered at a conference; this was denied them, no conference took place, and the petition forwarded was in the name of the Lower House only. Wentworth took no trouble to reconcile the two chambers, having learnt in England that a strict understanding between them was not favourable to the Crown. The Lords were, however, quite as anxious for the graces as the elected chamber, and especially for that which promised that sixty years possession should be a good title against the Crown. Indeed, Lord Fingall and Lord Ranelagh were more perseveringly outspoken than any member of the House of Commons. The first, as the head of an ancient family with a very chequered history, who had been treated with scant civility by Wentworth, and the latter, as the son of Archbishop Jones, had doubtless many reasons to fear an inquisition into their titles.[196] [Sidenote: Wentworth is refused an earldom.]