[Sidenote: Archbishop Fitzgibbon on the Continent, 1571.]
Foreign powers, however, were not likely to want information, for Fitzmaurice sent Maurice Reagh Fitzgibbon, the papal Archbishop of Cashel, to Philip. Fitzgibbon went from Spain to Bordeaux, where the Bishop presented him with a good horse to ride during his stay. He told certain Youghal merchants that he was come to seek help from the French King, and was allowed openly to rig ships and to press men. The Guises sent emissaries to keep Ireland disturbed, and the appearance of a fleet under the Duke of Medina Celi was the appointed signal for a general rising. A combined invasion by French and Spaniards was looked for daily, and one of Burghley's spies, a Catholic by birth and in constant communication with the Bishop of Ross, obtained accurate information as to the hopes of the papal party in Ireland.
The gentry of the Pale and of the greater part of Leinster were Catholics at heart, looking for an opportunity to throw off the mask. In Ulster all were ardent Catholics, banded together under the influence of the Jesuit David Wolfe, whose orders, issued from his prison in Dublin Castle, were generally obeyed. All Connaught was anti-English. In the Desmond half of Munster all were Catholics and confederates, who expected a large army from Spain and France, in which latter country Thomond had sowed good seed. Ormonde, indeed, was unnaturally loyal, but that was the only dark spot. The Ulster, Connaught, and Munster bishops were Catholics; those of Leinster only Protestant. The Northern clergy looked to Raymond O'Gallagher, Bishop of Derry, who had lately returned from Rome with a large budget of orders; the Southern waited on the word of Maurice Reagh Fitzgibbon, who was already in Spanish pay, and who was the head and front of the whole conspiracy.[198]
[Sidenote: Fitzgibbon's account of Catholic Ireland.]
The case of the Catholic confederates can best be told in Fitzgibbon's own words. In recommending his suit to Philip and to the Pope, he recited the fidelity of Ireland to the Holy See during the 1,127 years which had elapsed since the time of St. Patrick and Pope Celestine, and then continued:--
'Notwithstanding that for fifty years they have been very often sorely provoked, molested, and afflicted by divers schisms, errors, and heresies of the unstable and restless sect and nation of the kingdom of England, yet has God's clemency preserved all your people firm and steadfast in their accustomed Catholic faith, obedience, and devotion, and has inspired them not to acquiesce in the errors propounded to them.