The difficulty of the succession also occupied him, and he co-operated thus early in the design of legitimizing Monmouth as a rival to James.
At the Restoration, in which they heartily co-operated, there were in Ulster seventy ministers in fixed charges, with nearly eighty parishes or congregations containing one hundred thousand persons.
The Post Office co-operated with the London County Council to put difficulties in the way of the company which had placed wires underground in London with the consent of the local road authorities.
There remain two other dramatic works, of very different kinds, in which Ford co-operated with other writers, the mask of The Sun's Darling (acted 1624, printed 1657), hardly to be placed in the first rank of early compositions, and The Witch of Edmonton (printed 1658, but probably acted about 1621), in which we see Ford as a joint writer with Dekker and Rowley of one of the most powerful domestic dramas of the English or any other stage.
Thus, in spite of his academic sympathy with liberal ideas, he became, together with Metternich, a champion of political stagnation, and co-operated willingly in the reactionary measures against the revolutionary movements in Germany, Italy and Spain.
