better claimants in the case. Hopes at Rome were rising high with regard to Ireland. Urban VIII, in 1628, had thought it would be a nice arrangement for all concerned if that island were handed over to the Holy See. Innocent X's designs were not quite so far-reaching, and he recommended loyalty to the King of England; but he thought that it might be possible to coerce a faithless and heretic Prince by means of the Confederate Catholics. Moreover, that body, which had agents all over Europe, was fortunate enough to have in Rome a representative as able and effective as Sir Kenelm Digby was the reverse, in the person of Father Luke Wadding, of the Order of St. Francis. This friar left Ireland when he was a boy of fifteen, and he never saw again his native land; but throughout a long life which he spent roaming about the Continent he preserved a fervid Hibernian patriotism, of which the effects are felt to the present day.[335] At this time he was living in Rome, and any slight feeling of loyalty to the King of England which he may have once possessed had long ago been lost in the desire to see his faith and his race triumph over the hated oppressor. It was he who had prevailed upon Cardinal Francesco Barberini to send money to Ireland, and though he had not been able to rouse the cautious Urban VIII to any considerable effort,[336] he prepared with undiminished hope to use all his influence to win over Innocent X, from whose Spanish sympathies he augured the happiest results. And indeed it was largely owing to the representations of this Irish friar that, in the summer of 1645, while Sir Kenelm Digby was still fêted in Rome, an envoy on his way from the Pope to the Confederate Catholics appeared in Paris bearing a large sum of money, which the indefatigable Wadding had amassed for the use of the faithful in his native land. Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, was a worthy ecclesiastic of middle age. It is said that he was appointed to this delicate mission to pleasure the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose subject he was. He had, however, a certain interest in the British Isles, because as a young man he had been associated with a Scotch Capuchin, by name George Leslie, of whom he wrote an edifying biography, which may be considered an early example of religious romance.[337] Clarendon stigmatizes him as a "light-headed envoy," but the epithet is hardly happy as applied to this stern, unbending Churchman, whose unalterable determination it was that the money of the Church should not be squandered to further the interests of a heretic sovereign. In this respect, indeed, he followed with fidelity the instructions given to him which dwelt upon the necessity of the strongest guarantees of real benefit to the Catholics before money was advanced to the King of England, and which altogether would have been instructive, if not pleasant, reading for Charles and Henrietta.