Irish Society was adjudged by sentence of the Court of Star Chamber in Hilary Term a° 10 Charles I (1635) to pay a fine of £70,000 and to lose their estate on the ground that the said Letters Patent had been "unduly and surreptitiously obteyned to the prejudice and deceipt of his majestie." The companies refused to surrender their estates, and divers lands belonging to the City and to the Bridgehouse were seized to satisfy the fine, to the great prejudice of the City. Being otherwise unable to redeem themselves from the penalty of the Star Chamber sentence, the companies were forced to consent to relinquish their Irish estate and all arrears of rent, amounting to £20,000. A _scire facias_ was brought in and judgment allowed by default, whereupon the companies lost their estates, whilst the mayor and commonalty and citizens of London, although not parties to any patent or plantation—having done no more than lend their name for the better transaction of the business and for the purpose of raising money for the plantation, which otherwise could never have been effected—were fined £70,000. Seeing that the matter reflected so badly upon the justice of the late as well as the present king, the petitioners humbly prayed that a full investigation of the whole proceedings might be made and justice done. Such was the nature of the petition which the Common Council ordered in January (1641) to be submitted to parliament. The House had its hands too full to pay much attention to the City’s grievance until recently; but now, within a fortnight of their adjournment for a well-earned rest, the Commons declared(462) the sentence in the Star Chamber to have been unlawful and unjust. They declared that, in the opinion of the House, the citizens of London had been solicited and pressed to undertake the plantation of Londonderry, that the king had not been deceived in the grant to the new corporation of the Irish Society, that no breach of covenant (if any there were) had been committed sufficient to cause a forfeiture of the lands, that the Star Chamber proceedings were _ultra vires_, and that the citizens of London and all those against whom judgment had been given in the _scire facias_ should be discharged of that judgment and reinstated as they were before the sentence in the Star Chamber. (M191)