The mayor, who owed his election to pressure of parliament, and who was on that account never really popular in the city, unwittingly assisted the royal cause by another act of injudicious meddling. On Sunday, the 9th April, 1648, he sent a detachment of trained bands to interfere with the amusement of some boys playing tip-cat in Moorfields. A crowd of apprentices and others took the part of the boys, and attacked the trained bands, getting possession of their arms and colours. With these they marched, some three or four thousand strong, along Fleet Street and the Strand, raising the shout of "Now for King Charles!" and intending to make their way to Whitehall, but before they reached Charing Cross they were scattered by a troop of cavalry quartered at the King’s Mews, and for a time the disturbance was at an end. During the night, however, the apprentices again arose and made themselves masters of Ludgate and Newgate. Laying their hands on whatever ammunition they could find, and summoning their friends by drums belonging to the trained bands, they proceeded to attack the mansion of the unpopular mayor. Whilst a messenger was hurrying off to Fairfax for military aid, the mayor, the sheriffs and the Committee of Militia had to repel as best they could the attacks of the mob, who kept firing through the windows of the lord mayor’s house. At last the troops arrived, and were admitted into the city by Aldersgate. They followed up the rioters to the Leadenhall, where arms were being collected. Resistance to a disciplined force soon proved useless. The ringleaders were taken and led off to prison, and the crowd was dispersed, but not without some little bloodshed.(841) The affair made the city poorer by the sum of £300, that amount being voted by the Court of Aldermen out of the city’s cash to the officers and soldiers sent by Fairfax to suppress the riot.(842) (M417) On the 13th April the city authorities submitted to both Houses an account of what had recently taken place, which the Houses ordered to be printed. Parliament accepted their assurance that they were in no way responsible for the outbreak, and thanked the mayor and all others concerned for the part they had taken in its suppression. A day was appointed for a public thanksgiving for deliverance from the threatened danger. The Tower garrison was augmented and the city’s chains removed, in view of a recurrence of danger, whilst a commission of Oyer and Terminer was issued for the punishment of those implicated in the late riot.(843) (M418) (M419)