As it had these, and many other, advantages and helps to be rich, so it was looked upon too much of late time as a common stock not easy to be exhausted, and as a body not to be grieved by ordinary acts of injustice; and therefore it was not only a resort in all cases of necessity for the sudden borrowing great sums of money, (in which they were commonly too good merchants for the Crown,) but it was thought reasonable upon any specious pretences to avoid the security that was at any time given for money so borrowed. So, after many questions of their charter, (which were ever removed by considerable sums of money,) a grant made by the King in the beginning of his reign, in consideration of great sums of money, of good quantities of land in Ireland, and the city of Londonderry there, was avoided by a suit in the Star-Chamber, all the lands (after a vast expense in building and planting,) resumed into the King's hands, and a fine of £50,000 imposed upon the city. Which sentence being pronounced after a long and public hearing, during which time they were often invited to a composition, both in respect of the substance and the circumstances of proceeding, made a general impression in the minds of the citizens of all conditions much to the disadvantage of the Court; and though the King afterwards remitted to them the benefit of that sentence, they imputed that to the power of the Parliament, and rather remembered how it had been taken from them than by whom it was restored: so that at the beginning of the Parliament the city was as ill affected to the Court as the country was, and therefore chose such burgesses to sit there as had either eminently opposed it or accidentally been oppressed by it. A PROCLAMATION AGAINST THE CITY (1643). On the outbreak of civil war it soon became clear that many of the trading centres of the country, including London, would take up arms against the King. The commercial interests of the country had been so persistently assailed, royal interference in matters of trade had been so marked, that this situation was not at all surprising. It is hardly necessary to point out that the King, in the preamble to this proclamation, shows either insincerity or ignorance. The citizens of London and of the other towns had no particularly strong object in their resistance beyond obtaining reasonable security for their interests, and the attempt to isolate London from intercourse with the rest of the country was as ill-advised as it was futile. =Source.=—Rushworth's _Collections_, part iii., vol. ii., p. 365.