"There is due to the petitioner for his fee of 100 marks per annum (£66, 13s. 4d.), as Master and Comptroller of the Posts, being in arrear for 19 years and more. £1266, 13s. 4d., which petitioner, when he enjoyed the said place, was in some sort better able to forbear, and therefore did not importune for the same; but now, having resigned the said office, full sore against his will, but in obedience to His Majesty's pleasure, signified to him by the Commissioners for the Posts,--the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Keeper, the Lord Treasurer, Lord Cottington, and the Secretaries Coke and Windebank,--he has lost divers profits incident thereunto, which were a great help to his support (his other means left by his father being small as yet, and most of it in his mother's hands), whereby, since the loss of his office, he is disabled to maintain himself in the degree of an English baron. In consideration of his free yielding of his place, prays order for payment of the arrear, and some satisfaction for his office. A man of quality, and honourable knight, would willingly have given petitioner £5000 for his office." Lord Stanhope states that he resigned his office "sore against his will," and "in obedience to His Majesty's pleasure"; but no hint is given of the immediate cause for this pressure being applied. An event happened in 1629, however, which may have had some bearing upon the present matter. On the 2nd of March in that year, the king desired, by means of the Speaker, Sir John Finch, to dissolve Parliament before the Commons could proceed with certain business which they had in hand. In order, however, to carry their protest, certain patriots in the House, Denzil Hollis among the rest, laid hands upon the Speaker and held him in the chair while the House voted its protest. In consequence of the violence thus shown to the Speaker, the chief actors in the scene were thrown a few days thereafter into the Tower. While these men lay in confinement, they were visited by certain of their friends. In a paper dated 1629, found among the Coke Manuscripts, and headed "The Lieutenant of the Tower's information of such as had visited the prisoners in the Tower, from their first imprisonment to the 19th March 1629," it is recorded that "the Lord Hollis (brother of Denzil) brought the Lord Stanhope, Postmaster, and other persons to visit Denzil Hollis." It is quite possible from this, and other circumstances which have not come down to us, that Stanhope may have been suspected of sympathy with the Parliamentary party, and that, on that account, he was no longer to be relied upon as a faithful adherent of the king. Although the removal of Stanhope was not effected till 1637, at which period the tension between the royalists and the popular party was becoming more severe, it is possible that the event of the Tower may have had its share in bringing about his loss of office.