Finally, as a Catholic, he turned to Cardinal Manning for advice. His first interview with the head of the Roman Catholic {291} Church in England was on October 19th, 1889, when the question of separation as against divorce was discussed. A long correspondence followed. Manning was reluctant to agree to the proceedings for divorce, and delayed his decision till December 4th, when he laid down the course to be pursued, viz., (1) to collect all evidence in writing; (2) to lay it before the Bishop of the Diocese and ask for trial; (3) the latter would appoint a day for hearing; (4) judgment having been given, the case would go to Rome with a full report of the proceedings. O'Shea had already become impatient, and when, in another interview, Manning described to him the constitution of the Ecclesiastical Court which would report to Rome, he declared that he hesitated to approach a tribunal not having the right to administer the oath, and respectfully intimated his intention to take the case into the English Divorce Court. The letters close in 1891 with a correspondence between Captain O Shea and the Primate of Ireland in which the former repudiates a suggestion made by the Bishop of Galway (Dr. MacCormack) in February of that year that "in 1886 after having failed to foist Captain O'Shea upon a neighbouring county, the then leader had the effrontery of prostituting the Galway City constituency as a hush gift to O'Shea." Describing this as a "grotesquely false" libel, Captain O'Shea details the course of events before the election, his refusal to take the Nationalist pledge, and his support by the then Bishop of Galway (Dr. Carr) and his clergy.