The result of the first day spent by the Commissioners in hearing claimants was that two were declared innocent and one nocent. 'If,' said Ormonde, 'the lottery would hold out so to the end of their commission it would prove no ill one for the Irish,' and they accordingly began to indulge in extravagant hopes. The more violent among them declared that Orrery and the other leaders who had restored the King should be rooted out as heretics and damned traitors as soon as the army became 'Catholic loyal.' It was said, probably with truth, that many forged conveyances were produced and admitted by the Court. There was angry consternation among the Adventurers and soldiers who did not believe in the impartiality of the Commissioners. The House of Commons, meeting after a short recess, lost no time in giving a voice to the prevailing discontent. Ormonde had forwarded the explanatory Bill as desired, but it was altered in England, and when it came back was, as he foretold, promptly thrown out by the Commons on the motion for a second reading. 'When,' he wrote to Clarendon, 'anybody of credit among these people finds himself like to be pinched in his interest he causes a cry to be raised that all is lost to the English and that the Irish be their masters.' Timid people sold their goods and departed, while the alarmists stayed and got cheap bargains. Monks and friars added to the panic by holding chapters as openly as in Spain, while prudent Roman Catholics would have liked a sharp proclamation against the regulars as a protection to themselves. The House of Commons were bent on making the Act of Settlement more stringent, and unanimously agreed to twenty proposals for the purpose. Founding an argument upon the last clause of the Act which gave the Lord Lieutenant power to alter the procedure of the Commissioners before a date which had already passed, they called upon him to define the English quarters as existing from time to time until he left Ireland in 1647, no witnesses outside the line being admitted to prove innocence, since the rest of the island was assumed to be rebels' quarters. Another proposal was that no claimant once adjudged nocent should be allowed to make any other claim. Ormonde was asked to admit a committee of the House to confer with a committee of the Council, the action of the Commissioners being suspended in the interim. The House of Commons had of course no jurisdiction over the Court of Claims, and Clarendon reported that the King was 'horribly angry' at their presumption in seeking to treat with the Council.[30] [Sidenote: Speaker Mervyn represents the malcontents.] [Sidenote: Titles not regarded as permanently valid.]