On the 13th May the Common Council passed a vote of thanks to the city members for their faithful services in the last three parliaments, and more especially in the late parliament at Oxford. It also agreed by a narrow majority of fourteen to present an address to the king praying him to cause a parliament to meet and continue to sit until due provision be made for the security of his majesty’s person and his people.(1451) The first attempt (13 May) to present this address failed, the deputation being told to meet the king at Hampton Court another day (19 May). When it was presented the deputation were told to go home and mind their own business. Other addresses—one from the lieutenancy of London and another from the borough of Southwark—presented the same day, in which thanks were tendered to his majesty for dissolving the last two parliaments, met with a very different reception. Undismayed at the rebuff thus administered to the City, the Grand Jury at the Old Bailey passed a vote of thanks (20 May) to the mayor for the part he had taken in presenting the address, and ordered a similar address to that of the City to be presented to Charles on their own account.(1452) CHAPTER XXX. (M737) The country seemed to be on the verge of another civil war. A re-action, however, in favour of the king set in. The nation began to view the situation more dispassionately and to entertain serious doubts whether parliament had acted rightly in pushing matters to such an extremity. The religious question after all might not be so important or so fraught with danger as they had been led to believe by professional informers. Addresses of the type of those presented by the lieutenancy of London and the borough of Southwark, among them being one signed by over twenty thousand apprentices of the city,(1453) began to flow in; and proceedings were commenced against Protestants on no better evidence than had previously been used against Catholics. (M738) Among the first against whom proceedings were taken was a Londoner named Stephen College, a joiner by trade, who from his zeal in the cause of religion came to be known as the "Protestant joiner." An attempt to get a true bill returned against him at the Old Bailey, where the juries were empanelled by the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, having failed, he was removed to Oxford and tried there on a charge of high treason. After much hard swearing a verdict was at length obtained.(1454) (M739)