This revolution however might entail important results. The Irish people was Catholic: while the Protestant settlers were split into two hostile factions, and thereby the highest authority in the land, which bore a really Protestant character, was systematically weakened and almost destroyed, the thought of ridding themselves of it altogether was sure to arise in the nation. The steed, never completely broken in, felt itself suddenly free from the tight rein which hitherto it had unwillingly obeyed. The contending principles contributed also to bring about this result. For it had been part of Strafford’s system to allow some toleration to the Catholics: they had been by him introduced into the army; he had winked at a crowd of priests from the Spanish and Netherland seminaries entering the country and acquiring an ecclesiastical authority to which the natives willingly submitted. On the other side the national religious constitution which the Scots had attained by their example induced the Irish to attempt the same thing, but in the Catholic sense appropriate to their case. No doubt the old Irish antipathy of the natives against the Saxons was stimulated thereby; how could it be otherwise? Still it was the common object of all Catholics, alike of Anglo-Saxon and of Celtic origin, to restore to the Catholic Church the possession of the goods and houses that had been taken from her, and above all to put an end to the colonies established since James I, in which Puritan tendencies prevailed. The Catholics of the old settlements were as eager for this as the natives. The idea originated in a couple of chiefs of old Irish extraction, Roger O’More and Lord Macguire, who had been involved in Tyrone’s ruin, but were connected by marriage with several English families. The first man whom O’More won over was Lord Mayo, the most powerful magnate of old [A.D. 1641.] English descent in Connaught, of the house of De Burgh, of whose ancestors one, a half-brother of William the Conqueror, came over with him to England; another came to Ireland with Henry II[271]. The best military leader in the confederacy, Colonel Plunkett, was a Catholic of old English origin: he had numerous connexions among the Catholics of Leinster, and had preserved through the wars in Flanders the religious enthusiasm which led him thither. Among the natives the most notable personage was Phelim O’Neil, who after having been long in England, and learning Protestantism there, on his return to Ireland went back to the old faith and the old customs: he was reckoned the rightful heir of Tyrone, and possessed unbounded popular influence.