The next step was the appointment of a commission to carry out the Declaration. It consisted of thirty-six persons, including many peers and all the King's counsel. The attorney and solicitor-general were afterwards excluded lest the Crown should be made a judge in its own cause, but in truth there were but few disinterested men among these Commissioners, for they were all concerned in Irish land, though often differing in opinion. Massereene, Petty, and Audley Mervyn, for instance, were naturally inclined to maintain the Cromwellian arrangements, while Lord Montgomery, Domvile, and Lane were more in favour of the old Protestant inhabitants. Some of their colleagues were disposed to do justice to the Roman Catholics, but the latter had no direct representation. It is unnecessary to enlarge on the subject, for little or nothing was done by this unwieldy body, and the instructions for its guidance had to be applied by a smaller and less prejudiced commission. Of the three Lords Justices Orrery and Mountrath leaned towards the adventurers and soldiers, while Eustace thought more of 'the old English interest which lately overspread the land far different from such as did rise up with Cromwell,' mushrooms who considered themselves the true representatives of England and ignored those who came in with the Conqueror and never made any defection before 1641. Were they, he asked, all to be cast out for one fault? In several months the Commissioners had only succeeded in relieving one widow, though the streets were 'full of those miserable creatures of all sorts noble as well as of inferior degree.' He thought they were criminal who had deluded the King into believing that there was a great scope of available land. Orrery and Mountrath felt the responsibility though averse to restoring the Irish, and to avoid the odium of inaction did of their own motion restore a few notable Roman Catholics, but the great mass were reserved for the new commission.[16] [Sidenote: Composition of the Irish Parliament, May 1661.] [Sidenote: Speaker Mervyn.]