In 1564 several bodies of commissioners were appointed to visit certain portions of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught to enforce the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, and about the same time a royal proclamation was issued enforcing the fine of twelve pence for each offence on those who refused to attend Protestant service on Sundays and holidays. Whether these commissioners acted or not is not clear, but undoubtedly the commissioners appointed for the Pale made a serious attempt to carry out their instructions. They brought together juries chosen out of the parishes situated within the sphere of English influence "and upon the return of their several verdicts they found many and great offences committed against her Majesty's laws and proceedings. But among all their presentments they brought nothing against the nobility and chief gentlemen, who yet have contemned her Majesty's most godly laws and proceedings more manifestly than any of the rest, and therefore they determined to call them before them, and to minister to them certain articles, unto which they required the nobility to answer upon their honours and duty without oath. The rest of the gentlemen answered upon their oaths. And when they brought their several answers, they found by their own confession, that the most part of them had continually, since the last Parliament, frequented the Mass and other services and ceremonies inhibited by her Majesty's laws and injunctions, and that very few of them ever received the Holy Communion, or used such kind of public prayer and service as is presently established by law." "Whereupon," Loftus added, "I was once in mind (for that they be so linked together in friendship and alliance one with another, that we shall never be able to correct them by the ordinary course of the statute) to cess upon every one of them, according to the quality of their several offences, a good round sum of money, to be paid to your Majesty's use, and to bind them in sure bonds and recognisances ever hereafter dutifully to observe your Majesty's most godly laws and injunctions. But for that they be the nobility and chief gentlemen of the English Pale, and the greatest number too; I thought fit not to deal any further with them until your Majesty's pleasure were therein specially known."[58] So long as her Majesty required the noblemen of the Pale to fight against Shane O'Neill and the other Irish chieftains she was too prudent to insist on strict acceptance of her religious innovations.