Bacon was of a different opinion from Carew. The late Lords Justices had been mainly concerned with Limerick and Kilkenny, where they saw the difficulty but suggested no remedy, 'rather warily for themselves than agreeably to their duties and place.' Bacon himself was for proceeding very warily. He was against tendering the oath of supremacy to these town magistrates at all, and in favour of trusting to gradual remedies. The plantation of Protestant settlers, he said, 'cannot but mate the other party in time' if accompanied by the establishment of good bishops and preachers, by improvement of the new college, and by the education of wards. These were the natural means, and if anything stronger was necessary it should be done by law and not by force. And only one town should be taken in hand at a time so as not to cause panic. St. John himself was in favour of a general attack on the municipalities who refused to elect mayors or recorders, and of carrying this policy out to its logical consequences, otherwise he said the State would only spin and unspin. It was resolved to proceed in the case of Waterford by legal process as Bacon had advised. Before the end of 1615 a decree was obtained in Chancery for forfeiture of the charter, unless the corporation surrendered under seal by a certain day. In July 1616, over six months after the appointed time, Alexander Cuffe refused to take the oath of supremacy as mayor, and at the end of the year this matter was referred to the English Privy Council. In the dearth of magistrates there was no regular gaol delivery and the criminal law was at a standstill; but it was not till October 1617 that the Earl of Thomond and Chief Justice Jones, sitting as special commissioners, obtained a verdict from a county of Waterford jury 'even as the King's counsel drew it.' As late as May 1618 the forfeiture was not complete, and the citizens were allowed to send agents to England. The charter was surrendered in the following year, and Waterford, 'of whose antiquity and fidelity,' in Docwra's language, 'the citizens were wont to brag, reduced to be a mere disfranchised village.' And so it remained until the end of the reign.[138] [Sidenote: The Waterford charter is forfeited,] [Sidenote: but a Protestant corporation is unobtainable.]