On the 13th January, by which day a High Court of Justice had been especially established for the king’s trial and all royalists had been banished the city by order of Fairfax,(919) the new Common Council began to assert itself. The court had been summoned to meet at eight o’clock in the morning (not an unusually early hour in those days), but the mayor did not put in an appearance until eleven, and then was only accompanied by two aldermen, the number necessary to form a court. It was soon seen that there was something wrong. The mayor refused to acknowledge the authority of the council or to allow the minutes of the last court to be read in accordance with custom. The council took but little notice of this and passed on to the next business. This was a petition to the House of Commons, drawn up and approved by a committee,(920) asking the House to execute justice impartially and vigorously "upon all the grand and capital authors, contrivers of and actors in the late wars against parliament and kingdom, from the highest to the lowest," and to take steps, as the supreme power of the nation, for the preservation of peace and the recovery of trade and credit.(921) Such a petition was so diametrically opposed to the sentiments of the royalist lord mayor and his brother aldermen that they got up and left the court rather than allow the petition to be sanctioned by their presence. Strictly speaking there was no longer any court. Nevertheless an attempt was made to get the Common Sergeant and then the Town Clerk(922) to put the question, but they refused to do so in the absence of the mayor and aldermen, and they too got up and left the council chamber. Thus left to themselves the members of the court voted Colonel Owen Rowe into the chair. The petition was then three times read, and after due deliberation unanimously agreed to, twenty members of the council being nominated to carry it up to the House, together with a narrative of the proceedings that had taken place that day in court.(923) (M471)