In a letter sent to Cromwell (1538) Agarde informed him that the power of the Bishop of Rome was still strong, that the Observant Friars upheld it boldly, that nobody dared to say anything against them as nearly all in authority were in favour of the Pope except Browne, Alen, Master of the Rolls, Brabazon the Vice-Treasurer, and one or two others of no importance, and that the temporal lawyers who drew the king's fees could not be trusted.[11] Everywhere throughout the country it was the same story. Those who should set an example to others resorted to the Friars for confession, and were encouraged in their boldness; Nangle, who had been intruded into the See of Clonfert by the king, was driven out by Roland de Burgo, the papal bishop, and dared not show himself in his diocese; never was there so much "Rome- running" in the country, four or five bishops together with several priors and abbots having been appointed lately by the Pope, while a friar and a bishop, probably Rory O'Donnell of Derry, who had been arrested, were tried and acquitted at Trim,[12] because the people in authority were hypocrites and worshippers of idols.[13] From 1536 therefore till 1538 the new gospel had made small progress in Ireland. Had the men entrusted with its propagation been of one mind they might have used the king's power with some effect, but the Deputy, the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Bishop of Meath were at each others throats almost continually. The Deputy treated the archbishop with studied contempt, spoke of him as a "poll-shorn" friar and obstructed his plans. According to Browne and his friends Alen and Brabazon, the Deputy befriended the papists and the friars, knelt in prayer before the shrine of Our Lady of Trim, and supported a bishop appointed by Rome against one appointed by the king. Edward Staples, a former protégé of Cardinal Wolsey, by whom he was recommended to Rome, was appointed by the Pope to Meath in 1530, but being a steady opponent of the Geraldines he was obliged to escape to his own country in 1534. There he took the side of the king against Clement VII., and on his return to Ireland, after he had received a sharp admonition from the king, he undertook to preach in favour of royal supremacy. But his views did not coincide with those of the Archbishop of Dublin. The latter was obliged to complain that Staples denounced him as "a heretic and a beggar with other rabulous revilings," and that not content with this, he preached in the church at Kilmainham where "the stations and pardons" were used as freely as ever, and attacked the archbishop before his face with "such a stomach as I think the three- mouthed Cerberus of hell could not have uttered it more viperously." He glossed every sentence (of the archbishops sermons) after such opprobrious fashion that every honest ear glowed to hear it, and "he exhorted them all, yea, and so much as in him lay he adjured them, to