Though fully determined not to yield to parliamentary pressure, Ormonde promised that the proposals of the House should have 'such speedy answer as the weight and number of these would permit.' The Lord Lieutenant was treated with respect throughout, but the Speaker's speech on the occasion was not conciliatory in substance. The Act of Settlement, he said, was the Irish Magna Charta and not to be infringed in any way: 'our strength lies in this as Sampson's in his locks; if those be cut we are as weak as others when the Philistines shall fall upon us.... I shall never forget that expression of His Majesty at a full council "my justice I must afford to you all, but my favour must be placed upon my Protestant subjects."' He descanted with some force upon the anomalous powers of the Commissioners who both found the facts and laid down the law. The House of Commons asked for juries, since they were certain to be composed of Protestant freeholders. Mervyn clearly understood that Irish claims would still be made whatever law or lawyers might say, and to defeat them proposed to impound all nocents' title-deeds. 'Sir,' he said, 'in the North of Ireland, the Irish have a custom in the winter, when milk is scarce, to kill the calf and preserve the skin, and stuffing it with straw they set it upon four wooden feet which they call a _Puckan_, and the cow will be as fond of this as she was of the living calf; she will low after it and lick it and give her milk down, so it stands but by her. Sir, these writings will have the operation of this _Puckan_, for wanting the land to which they relate they are but stuffed with straw, yet, sir, they will low after them, lick them over and over in their thoughts, and teach their children to read by them instead of horn-books. And if any venom be left they will give it down upon the sight of these _puckan_ writings, and entail a memory of revenge, though the estate tail be cut off.' This was prophetic: for many generations and perhaps even to this day obsolete title-deeds were handed about, though useless for any purpose but to make property insecure and to perpetuate the memory of wrongs long past.[31] [Sidenote: The Court of Claims satisfied no one.]