The Londoners offered to compromise their case by paying a fine of 30,000_l._, but this was refused. After a hearing which lasted seventeen days, judgment was given in the Star Chamber at the end of February 1635, when a fine of 70,000_l._ was imposed and the charter declared forfeited. The actual sum levied seems to have been 12,000_l._, which was handed over to the Queen. 'The King,' said Wentworth's correspondent Garrard, 'now hath good store of land in Ireland.' 'The Londoners,' said another gossip, the letter-writer Howell, 'have not been so forward in collecting the ship-money, since they have been taught to sing heigh-down derry, and many of them will not pay till after imprisonment, that it may stand upon record they were forced to it. The assessments have been wonderfully unequal and unproportionable, which is very ill taken, it being conceived they did it on purpose to raise clamour through the city.' In the following May an order was given in the Star Chamber to levy the fine in London, and to sequester the estates in Ireland. Bramhall, who had a dispute of his own about some of the lands, was appointed chief receiver, and the appointment was not likely to be a sinecure in his hands. Wentworth declared himself ready to carry out the forfeiture in the most drastic way. 'Would your Majesty,' he wrote, 'be pleased to reserve it entire to yourself, it might prove a fit part of an appanage for our young master the Duke of York. It may be made a seigniory not altogether unworthy his Highness; and for so good purpose I should labour night and day, and think all I could do little.' James's experiences in connection with Londonderry were fated to be of a much less agreeable kind. The hostility of the Londoners had much to say to both Charles and Wentworth losing their heads.[222] FOOTNOTES: [215] A faulty commission was issued in April 1633, but the corrected version which was acted upon is calendared at June 29, 1634. The commissioners besides Wentworth were Lord Chancellor Loftus, Cork, Parsons, Chief Justice Lowther, Wandesford, Radcliffe, and the Barons of the Exchequer; Sir C. Coote and Mainwaring were added later. A fresh commission, dated September 1, 1638, is in Rymer's _Foedera_, xx. 263. _Irish Statutes_, 10 Car. I. cap. 3. Wentworth to the King, December 9, 1636, _Strafford Letters_, ii. 41. In February 1640-1 the Irish House of Lords asked 'whether it stood with the integrity of the judge to take 4_s._ per £ out of all increases to His Majesty upon compositions of defective bills, by avoiding such patents as the same judge condemns in an extra-judicial way' (_Nalson_, ii. 575). [216] Wentworth to Coke, December 16, 1634; to Laud, March 10, 1634-5; Commissioners of plantation to Coke, August 25, 1635; Wentworth's notes on the Irish revenue, July 6, 1636, _Strafford Letters_. Details as to Edough are in Prendergast's _Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution_, part iii. chap. i.