Carew left Dublin on July 30 accompanied by Chichester, Ridgeway, Wingfield, and Lambert. For three weeks there was unceasing rain, and Carew was near being drowned in fording a flooded river. The commissioners found large numbers of Irish still upon lands from which they ought to have departed according to the theory of the plantation, and at Ballyshannon they addressed a warrant to the sheriff of each escheated county to remove them all by May 1 next. The work was, however, being imperfectly done, and Carew's real opinions may best be gathered from a paper drawn up by him three years later. Formerly, he said, there was always a strong royalist party among the older population of Ireland, but religious feeling had brought the old English and the native Irish much nearer together. Many had learned something of war abroad, and something also of policy, and they would have the advantage of giving the first blow. They would 'rebel under the veil of religion and liberty, than which nothing is esteemed so precious in the hearts of men,' and even the inhabitants of the Pale would be drawn in for the first time in history. 'For this cause, _in odium tertii_, the slaughters and rivers of blood shed between them is forgotten and the intrusions made by themselves or their ancestors on either part for title of land is remitted.' [Sidenote: which was fulfilled.] [Sidenote: A settler's precautions.] Tyrone's return was still looked for, and if that were unlikely on account of his age, there was always the chance of a foreign invasion. If the King of Spain sent 10,000 men into Ireland 'armed with the Pope's indulgences and excommunications,' all the modern English and Scotch would be instantly massacred in their houses, 'which is not difficult to execute in a moment by reason they are dispersed, and the natives' swords will be in their throats in every part of the realm like the Sicilian Vespers, before the cloud of mischief shall disappear.' The reconquest would be a Herculean labour. Citadels at Waterford, Cork, and some other places, and a small standing army always ready to move were the chief precautions to be taken. Carew was a true prophet, though the crisis did not come in his lifetime. Officers from the Netherlands, indulgences and excommunications, with occasional supplies of arms and ammunition, but without the 10,000 men of Spain, were enough to maintain a ten years' war, and the labour of ending it was indeed Herculean.[73]