186 THE COMPANY AND THE KING pleased to hearken unto it," fell on deaf ears. The Company had tried his Majesty's courts in vain; it had tried his Majesty's Privy Council in vain; it had tried the king in person in vain. Slowly and very reluc- tantly it resolved once more to try the House of Com- mons. Charles became afraid. The same need of money which had tempted him into a confederacy against the Company now compelled him to summon a Parliament. Within four days of its meeting in April, 1640, the Company was considering whether it should not lay its wrongs before the Commons. Mr. Recorder, how- ever, counselled it not " to make his Majesty's pro- ceedings notorious," and the abrupt dissolution of Par- liament, after a three weeks' wrangle with the Crown, seemed to put an end to the project. The Company's stock fell so low that £100 of it sold for £60, as is shown by the entries of the Court Book. But in November of the same year the king, with a mutinous army and the Scotch war on his hands, was forced again to call together the estates of the realm. The Long Parliament met in wrath at the king's creatures, and promptly arrested Strafford. In January, 1641, the Company, feeling that it was once more on the flood-tide of pop- ular feeling, petitioned Parliament against Courten and against Endymion Porter, his Majesty's groom of the bedchamber. Charles in distress sent hurried messages to the governor of the Company to attend at Whitehall. The counsellors, on whose audacity he had relied, were
