Every inch of the Bann had, in the previous January, been granted to the Londoners without regard to MacDonnell’s rights, while Hamilton and Chichester, in the teeth of Sir Randal’s Patent, had taken pay for it as the true owners. Yet with pompous cynicism the Star Chamber, at Chichester’s call, elaborately took steps to overlay the felony, and deck it with legal splendour in the shape of a State Trial ostentatiously held in pretended vindication of the prerogatives of the Crown. Lawless as the Star Chamber was, even its procedure was befouled by the device adopted to mask the illicit grants and their transfer to the Deputy. Thus was a love for English law first implanted in the heart of Ulster! Davies blazons the decision in Norman-French in his publication of the cases which established the English Common Law as the basis of Irish justice. With like emanations of the bewigged knavery of the period the judgment is still cited as an authority in modern legal text-books. The proof of Chichester’s participation in the £4,500 levied off the Crown and the Corporation endures under his own hand in a parchment which for 300 years mouldered unnoticed. In the compost of conveyancing with which his Deputyship reeks no document is more striking than that in which he commemorates this transaction. Weighted with the winnings collected for him by Hamilton, Sir Arthur, in April, 1611, thought it prudent to set down and enrol a pretext for having pocketed them. By formal “surrender” he caused a deed in the King’s favour to be witnessed before Jones, Archbishop of Dublin, renouncing all claim to the Bann and Lough Foyle. Jones, being Lord Chancellor, was head of the Rolls Office, and entitled as such to accept “surrenders” without the authority of a King’s Letter. The deed which Chichester executed set forth the lie that the Castle of Culmore, with 300 acres and fishings (Lough Foyle), had lately been given to him by two Letters Patent; that the non-tidal Bann and one-fourth of the tidal Bann had been sold to him by Hamilton, who had paid him £550 “for and in behalf of the King’s Majesty, who hath given satisfaction to the said Hamilton for the whole fishing of the Bann.” Then it granted the fishings, land, and castle to the King; and wound up with this stately flourish:—“To that part of these presents remaining with his Majesty, the said Sir Arthur Chichester hath set his hand and seal; and to that part of these presents remaining with the said Sir Arthur, his Majesty hath caused a seal to be set.”