mild government which preceded Strafford's had allowed Ireland to grow rich, while he had only reaped the harvest.[268] [Sidenote: Roman Catholic majority.] [Sidenote: The queries.] Owing probably to the confusion among the official class and to the absence of some officers with the new army in Ulster, the Roman Catholics had a majority in Parliament during the early months of 1641. There were able lawyers among them who drew up a paper of queries or interrogatories which they sent up to the Lords for the opinion of the judges. The first shows the line taken: 'Whether the subjects of this kingdom be a free people, and to be governed only by the common laws of England, and statutes of force in this kingdom?' This the judges answered generally in the affirmative, pointing out that both in England and Ireland there was necessarily a certain amount of judge-made law to meet cases not covered by statute. The general drift of the queries was to dispute the jurisdiction of the Council and the Star Chamber. By what law, runs the sixteenth query, 'are jurors, that give verdict according to their conscience and are the sole judges of the fact, censured in the Castle-chamber in great fines, and sometimes pilloried, with loss of ears, and bored through the tongue, and marked sometimes in the forehead with an hot iron; and other like infamous punishments?' The judges did not deny the facts, but maintained that perjured jurors were properly censurable in the Castle-chamber, and they made a not very successful attempt to derive this jurisdiction from writs of attaint at common law. The House of Commons were not satisfied with the judges' answers, and made a declaration disposing of each query in their own sense.[269] [Sidenote: Prorogation, March, 1640-1.] [Sidenote: Impeachments.]