Incensed at such contempt of their orders, the Lords authorised Warwick to seize the mails. After one or two half-hearted attempts to carry this authority into effect, arrangements were made for a more strenuous effort. On the 19th of December two of Warwick's agents lay in wait at Barnet and there surprised the mail as it came from Chester. Seizing the letters and the man that carried them, they made the best of their way towards London, but had not proceeded further than the foot of the hill beyond Highgate when they were themselves surprised by five troopers "on great horses with pistols," who barred the road, and, in the name of the House of Commons, captured the captors. Meanwhile a still more exciting scene was enacting before Warwick's office near the Royal Exchange. There two of his men kept watch for the mail from Plymouth, and, as it passed on its way to Burlamachi's house hard by, they dashed into the street and seized the letters. Their success was but for the moment. Before they could regain the office, Prideaux had swooped down upon them at the head of some half-dozen adherents, and with his own hands had torn the letters away. "An order of the House of Commons," cried one of the bystanders, "ought to be obeyed before an order of the House of Lords." On these occurrences being reported to the Lords, Burlamachi and all others who had been concerned in them, Prideaux alone excepted, were ordered to prison. Among these was the man who had been captured at Barnet and afterwards rescued, one Hickes by name; and this fellow proved to be Prideaux's own servant. On the part of that wily politician one looks in vain for any effort to procure Burlamachi's release, or even for the slightest indication of concern that he had been arrested; but the arrest of his own servant, the servant of a member of the House of Commons, excited his keenest resentment. This, in Prideaux's view, was a clear breach of privilege, and the House was pleased to agree with him. No sooner, therefore, had Hickes been imprisoned by the Lords than he was released by the Commons, and no sooner had he been released by the Commons than the Lords ordered him to be imprisoned again. Matters having come to this pass, the two Houses held a conference. The result might easily have been foreseen. The Lords yielded to the Commons, and Burlamachi, on rendering an account which had long been called for, was released from custody together with the others who had been imprisoned at the same time. Concerning the next two years little is known; but it seems probable that Burlamachi, who in his petition praying for release had pleaded old age and infirmities, did not long survive the indignity to which he had been exposed. At all events, in 1644, either by death or resignation, the office of Master of the Posts had become vacant, and, as Burlamachi's successor, the House of Commons appointed Prideaux.