hesitate to call into aid the King's most tyrannical powers, as exercised by the arbitrary Court of High Commissioners, towards the suppression of all differences of religious opinion. The jurisdiction of the Star Chamber was enforced with less scruple, and we hear of many persons being censured for their disobedience to the King's ridiculous proclamations against the increase of the London suburbs. While such a prerogative as this prevailed, of establishing arbitrary courts and commissions of enquiry, there is little cause for surprise that the citizens of London experienced such continual difficulty in vindicating their chartered privileges in regard to exclusive jurisdiction within the City.

"The citizens were but once called upon by James to furnish their quota of soldiers towards a projected war; on which occasion they supplied only two thousand men; and that it would seem, more out of goodwill than from anything like compulsion. In an attempt, however, to raise a Benevolence, the citizens evinced a more refractory spirit. Twenty thousand pounds were demanded, but they refused to advance more than half that sum ; a plain indication of the knowledge they had acquired of their own rights in regard to taxation. One citizen, however, upon application refused to contribute anything; but on it being intimated to him that the King might require his services to carry a

dispatch to Ireland, he deemed it an easier task to comply than to assert his own right against the claims of the monarch.

66

King James conferred on the City of London those possessions in Ireland which became the occasion of founding what is called the Irish Society. It is foreign to the object of this work to detail the nature of these possessions, or to examine the functions of the Society in consequence of this grant. It will be sufficient to mention, that the province of Ulster having become depopulated, and for the most part forfeited to the Crown through frequent rebellions, it was judged expedient to colonize it with a body of Protestants. That province, comprising the city of Londonderry and the town of Colerain, was accordingly granted by charter to the Corporation, who immediately formed a committee (afterwards incorporated into the Irish Society), with power to raise a sum of money, and to take measures for the plantation of it. For this purpose, all the land was divided into thirteen lots; the first containing the city and town, with the public fisheries, were reserved in the hands of the Society; the other lots were disposed of, in conformity with the King's charter of license, to the twelve Great Livery Companies in perpetuity.

"A good understanding generally prevailed between the citizens and James, who took pleasure

in associating with them. He granted them three valuable charters, the substance and tenor of which sufficiently testified his good will to the Corporation and his anxiety to support its privileges."

"The King being informed of the dilatory proceedings of the citizens of London in settling the province of Ulster, in Ireland, lately conferred upon them, and also upon the many scandalous practices and abuses in the prosecution of that undertaking; he therefore commanded the Governor and Committee of Direction in that affair to attend him at Greenwich, where he upbraided them with their neglect and careless management in the execution of so valuable and laudable a work. This reprimand occasioned the calling of a Common Council at their return, wherein Henry Montague, one of the King's Sergeants, laid home to the Lord Mayor and citizens their several faults and omissions in the prosecution of so beneficial an enterprise, and acquainted them, that it was his Majesty's pleasure they should immediately send over a deputation from the Common Council to superintend the work of plantation for the more effectual carrying on of the same.

"The Common Council highly approving of this proposition, chose an Alderman and a Commoner for their deputies, to whom were added by the Governor and Committee of Direction three gentlemen of

* Norton, pp. 261, 264–267.

great knowledge and experience as assistants, who arriving in Ireland, carefully surveyed everything relating to the undertaking; and what was found amiss they rectified, and things defective immediately supplied: and having settled everything belonging to the colony upon the best foundation, they returned and reported their proceedings to the Common Council-which to their great honour were unanimously approved of." *

At Michaelmas this year, 1613, Sir Hugh Middleton completed that most useful and expensive scheme of supplying this City with sweet and wholesome water by means of the New River.

"At this time (1615) the side of the streets of this City being paved with pebble stones, walking was thereby rendered very troublesome, wherefore the inhabitants of the principal streets set about paving their several doors with broad freestones.

"Soon after, Sir Peter Proby,t an Alderman of this City, and governor of the colony of Ulster, in Ireland, by a special commission from the King and City of London, repaired thither, attended by divers of the most eminent citizens for regulating certain affairs belonging to the plantation, taking along with him two rich Swords of State as a present from the City, to be carried before the Mayors of Londonderry and Colerain; the former whereof being by the King * Maitland, p. 294.

Ancestor of Lord Carysfort.

some time before erected into a city, and the latter into a corporate town." *

CHARLES I.

1625 TO 1648.

"AT this time the City greatly abounded in riches and splendour, such as former ages were unacquainted with. Then it was beautiful to behold the glorious appearance of goldsmiths' shops, in the south row of Cheapside, which in a continued course reached from the Old Change to Bucklersbury, exclusive of four shops only of other trades in all that space, which occasioned the Privy Council, on the eighteenth of November, to make the following order :

"Forasmuch as His Majesty hath received information of the unseemliness and deformity appearing in Cheapside, by reason that divers men of mean trades have shops amongst the goldsmiths, which disorder it is his Majesty's express pleasure to be removed.' +

"It would be unjust to deny that Charles had some of the qualities of a good and even great prince. He wrote and spoke, not like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well-educated gentlemen. His