Complaint was made to Parliament, and the Commons passed a resolution "that the office of Postmaster, inland and foreign, is and ought to be in the sole power and disposal of the Parliament." The same year the city posts were suppressed.[750] [747] _Jo. H. C._, 1640-42, p. 722. [748] These were the same judges who had decided in favour of Stanhope's patent in Stanhope _v._ Witherings. [749] _Rep. Com._, 1844, xiv, 601, app., p. 67 (42). [750] Chas. Knight, _London_, 1842, iii, p. 276; R. R. Sharpe, _London and the Kingdom_, 1894, pp. 322-23. Oxenbridge and his friends who had set up posts of their own gave Prideaux and Manley the hardest fight that any Postmaster-General ever had to encounter from interlopers. Joyce says that Oxenbridge had acted as Prideaux' deputy.[751] If this is so, he was soon up in arms against his superior. In accordance with the judicial decision that the clause in Witherings' patent giving him a monopoly of the carriage of letters was void, Oxenbridge, Blackwall, Thomson, and Malyn had undertaken the private conveyance of letters and had set up posts of their own. Prideaux had charged 6_d._ for each letter and had organized weekly posts from and to London. Oxenbridge charged only 3_d._ and his posts went from and to London three times a week. Prideaux then did the same and set up posters announcing that the interlopers' posts would be stopped. His agents assaulted Oxenbridge's servants and killed one of them. He also stopped his rival's mails on Sundays but allowed his own to proceed as on other days. In addition to his regular tri-weekly mails, Oxenbridge provided packet boats for Ireland and intended to settle stages between London and Yarmouth and the other places named by the Council of State.[752] To proceed in Oxenbridge's own words: "Suddenly contracts were called for. We offered £9100 a year through Ben Andrews, £800 more than was offered by Manley, yet Colonel Rich allowed Manley to take advantage of an offer made by Kendall then absent and not privy to it for £10,000 a year. Consideration had been offered by Council, but Manley had broken into our offices, taken letters, and had forbidden us from having anything to do with the post." An order of the Council of State, bearing the same date as the grant to Manley, was sent to Oxenbridge and his friends, informing them that Manley had been given the sole right to the inland and foreign letter offices.[753] This did not end the controversy, for six months later we find Oxenbridge and Thomson complaining that a monopoly in carrying letters had been given to Manley. They claimed that all who wished should be allowed to carry letters at the ordinary rates.[754] [751] Joyce, p. 29. [752] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1653-54, pp. 22-24, 372. See p. 33, note. [753] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1652-53, p. 456. [754] _Ibid._, 1653-54, p. 372.