With his customary self-complacency and patronising air James told the assembled Commons that he had brought them two gifts, the one peace abroad,(26) and the other the union of England with Scotland under the title of Great Britain,(27) and he expressed no little surprise and indignation when he found that neither one nor the other was acceptable. The question of the union of the two kingdoms, seeing that it involved some political difficulties necessary of solution, was referred to a commission.(28) James showed his displeasure at the want of compliance displayed by the Commons by refusing to accept a scheme of commutation of his rights of purveyance and wardship, which had now grown so burdensome. (M10) The abuse of purveyance, more especially, had become a standing grievance to the burgesses of London as well as of other cities and towns, in spite of attempted remedies by statute or charter.(29) An offer of £50,000 a year was made to the king by way of commuting any shred of right he might still have to purveyance after thirty-six statutes had pronounced it altogether illegal. This, however, he refused, and the matter was allowed to drop. Two years later, almost to the day (23 April, 1606), the king endeavoured so far to remedy the evil as to issue a proclamation against exactions and illegal acts of his purveyors,(30) and yet scarcely a month elapsed before the lord mayor had occasion to call the attention of the lords of the council to the great inconvenience caused in the city by their recent demand for 200 carts with two horses to each, together with the lord mayor’s own barge, for the purpose of conveying his majesty’s effects to Greenwich. As for the barge, the mayor wrote that the lord chamberlain sometimes borrowed it for conveying the king’s guard, and it might haply be required again for the same purpose, "but for carringe anie stuffe or lugedge whereby it maie receave hurt it was never yet required," and he hoped their lordships would see the matter in that light.(31) (M11)