on pain of excommunication to give their voices to no Protestant.' A sheriff in Dublin who seemed inclined to yield to these influences was fined 700_l._ and declared incapable of serving, and his successor promptly returned Sergeant Catelin and a Protestant alderman.[192] [Sidenote: Parliamentary precedents.] [Sidenote: The primacy secured to Armagh.] [Sidenote: Political value of etiquette.] [Sidenote: The opening ceremonies.] [Sidenote: Wentworth and Ormonde.] In matters of form and ceremony Wentworth was willing to be guided by precedents. He found all the officials very ignorant about parliamentary order, as Falkland's blunder had already shown, and he sent to England for full instructions. Questions of precedence being left by special commission entirely in his hands, the primacy of Armagh over Dublin was settled by an order in Council, and in the established Church this point was never again disputed, a decision which was undoubtedly right; but Archbishop Talbot afterwards attributed it to the slavish fears of Wentworth's Council, to his leaning in favour of Ussher, and to the prevalent ignorance of Latin in high places. He admitted that Bishop Leslie of Raphoe was learned, but then was he not a suffragan of Armagh? Wentworth decided such questions when they came in his way, but they had little interest for him--'this matter of place I have ever judged a womanly thing.' If it had turned out that he could not determine between the rival claims of peers and prelates, they would, he thought be 'fit to keep the House itself busied about,' and prevent them from talking politics. It was arranged that six or seven lords on whom the Lord Deputy could rely should hold four or five proxies each, so that he was in no danger of being outvoted, for the bishops were safe enough. It was not until 1661 that the number of proxies which could be held by any one peer was reduced to two. The committee for privileges in Wentworth's House of Lords proposed that every peer having Irish honours but no Irish estate should be obliged to purchase land in proportion to his rank, but this was never carried into effect. When the day of meeting came, Wentworth accompanied the Peers to St. Patrick's Cathedral in great state. His Parliament opened, Wentworth wrote, 'with the greatest civility and splendour Ireland ever saw, where appeared a very gallant nobility far above that I expected ... my Lord Primate made a very excellent and learned sermon.' The afternoon was spent in formalities and the taking of oaths. One incident at the beginning of the business session is worth recording on account of the great celebrity of the person principally concerned. Orders had been given to admit no one armed into either House, and when the young Earl of Ormonde, who had carried the sword of state at the opening ceremony, presented himself, Black Rod peremptorily demanded his weapon. 'In your guts,' was the contemptuous answer.