A King’s Letter of the 24th September, 1638, was obtained by the Commissioners to authorise them to accept the surrender. No mention was made of the Bann, for no one regarded it as Chichester’s. The King’s Letter cast doubt even on his right to Lough Neagh, and sarcastically narrates that his Majesty had been informed that the fishing and soil thereof were “granted away” by Letters Patent to the late Lord Chichester, but were found “so commodious for upholding the fishing of the Bann that the London Corporation were necessitated to farm the same at £100 a year—which fishing of the Bann is now come to our hands.” Short work was thus made of the 1621 Patent and of Allen’s “finding” at Carrickfergus. The Letter further recited that Viscount Chichester had compounded for a surrender of Lough Neagh in consideration of £40 a year; and that this sum could be deducted from the rent payable to the Crown under a new Patent. The Chichesters were to have liberty to take salmon for domestic use, and to retain the eel-weirs at Toome, subject to royal regulations. On the 7th December, 1638, the Commissioners made an “Order of Composition” embodying these terms, but the family evidently contended that the allowance of £40 a year was not a fair set-off for the £100 paid by the Londoners. Brisk haggling followed, and at length Strafford agreed to an amended “Order of Composition,” dated the 19th September, 1639. This raised the £40 annual allowance to £60, but all privileges of fishing were withdrawn. The Chichesters agreed. This amendment brought their rent under the proposed new Patent to within £2 16s. 6d. of that previously paid, and the fine was fixed at £467 17s. 6d. An indefeasible Patent was now to be granted them, and with this bargain they and Strafford were satisfied. The arrangement dealt a deathstroke at the oft-challenged title of the Devonians to the great Ulster fishery. It submerged the Patent of 1604 with those of 1606, 1608, and 1621 in a common condemnation. When the terms of the surrender came to be drawn up in 1639, although the King’s Letter mentioned Lough Neagh only, Strafford required that the Bann should be also renounced, and this was agreed to. Before he finally left Ireland the new Patent was not ready. It was sealed in September, 1640, by his Deputy, Wandesforde, after his departure. Everything was accepted by the Chichesters without a murmur. Neither on Strafford’s impeachment at Westminster in 1641 nor when the Planters in the Dublin Parliament impeached his chaplain, Bramhall, did they join in hounding him down.