Not long after this, the Court of Aids, the Chamber of Accounts, the Grand Council, and the Parliament formed a union which was pretended to be for the reformation of the State, but was more probably calculated for the private interest of the officers, whose salaries were lessened by one of the said edicts. And the Court, being alarmed and utterly perplexed by the decree for the said union, endeavoured, as much as in them lay, to give it this turn, to make the people have a mean opinion of it. The Queen acquainted the Parliament by some of the King's Council that, seeing this union was entered into for the particular interest of the companies, and not for the reformation of the State, as they endeavoured to persuade her, she had nothing to say to it, as everybody is at liberty to represent his case to the King, but never to intermeddle with the government of the State. The Parliament did not relish this ensnaring discourse, and because they were exasperated by the Court's apprehending some of the members of the Grand Council, they thought of nothing but justifying and supporting their decree of union by finding out precedents, which they accordingly met with in the registers, and were going to consider how to put it in execution when one of the Secretaries of State came to the bar of the house, and put into the hands of the King's Council a decree of the Supreme Council which, in very truculent terms, annulled that of the union. Upon this the Parliament desired a meeting with the deputies of the other three bodies, at which the Court was enraged, and had recourse to the mean expedient of getting the very original decree of union out of the hands of the chief registrar; for that end they sent the Secretary of State and a lieutenant of the Guards, who put him into a coach to drive him to the office, but the people perceiving it, were up in arms immediately, and both the secretary and lieutenant were glad to get off.