On the 1st August, 1660, a frigate left Dublin by royal command to fetch the Earl of Donegall to England. To forestall the enemy Clotworthy presented a petition on the 6th August, 1660, praying the King to confirm Basil’s lease. At the same moment the London Corporation was moving for a royal charter to replace Cromwell’s. Thus there were stirring around Whitehall three rival claimants for the northern fisheries. Charles felt bound, as Cromwell did, to respect the pledges made to the Corporation as to their Ulster estate. He was largely a stranger to events in Ireland during his exile; and was attended at Court for Irish affairs by Bishop Bramhall, late of Derry, and formerly chaplain to Strafford. Bramhall had followed Charles to the Continent, and exercised there “curiously unepiscopal functions as a Royalist prize-agent.” To him Clotworthy’s petition was referred; and, on the day it was received, the Bishop reported in its favour, without making the smallest inquiry. Such haste in an Episcopalian dignitary to help a Presbyterian “malignant” shows how these Christians loved one another. Sir John’s petition was a network of falsehoods. It re-hashed a number of old fables about the long-lost “pension,” with a few new ones for garnish. Beginning with a lie in point of date, it set forth that Sir John had a pension of 6s. 8d. a day granted him by Patent on the 2nd July, 1640. In 1640 Bramhall was Strafford’s chaplain; and this romance cannot have imposed on him. Strafford sailed from Ireland in April, 1640, to crush the Scotch rebellion, knowing that Clotworthy was his bitter enemy. He left behind him as Deputy a loving friend, Wandesforde, who was also Bramhall’s patron; and Bramhall, of all men, was aware that Wandesforde would not have sanctioned a pension to an opponent deep in intrigue with the Parliamentarians to compass the Lord Lieutenant’s downfall. Besides in 1640 Sir John was only 34 years old, and had performed no service to merit reward. The pension to his father was dated the 2nd July, 1618, twenty-two years earlier. So a false date was put forward lest, if 1618 were mentioned, inquiry might be set on foot to unravel the mystery of a pension to a child under twelve years of age. The Petition went on to pretend that Sir John had been “obstructed in the receipt of his pension by the usurper Oliver.” This was colossal mendacity, but the account given of Basil’s lease surpassed it:—“On application, the late Oliver granted him, in lieu of the said pension, a lease of 99 years for Lough Neagh and the River Bann, with the fishing thereof.”