After staying a few days at Kilkenny, Ormonde went to his other house at Carrick, so that he might be near Waterford and in a position to confer with the clergy; but they were past the reach of argument. Rinuccini issued a decree ordering them all to denounce the peace publicly and to threaten actual excommunication by himself of all who favoured it. He had seen, he said, 'with grief of heart that the Protestant ministers in some places appear, and threaten that they will recover both the churches and the exercise of their religion.' Finding that nothing could be done on the Waterford side, Ormonde set out for Cashel, intending to encourage those who had proclaimed the peace there; but he was met on the road by a messenger from the mayor begging him not to draw down upon the town the vengeance of O'Neill, who was already at Roscrea. Piers MacThomas Fitzgerald, with the Munster horse, 'appeared upon a hill to the left hand, near Clonmel.' Preston had been summoned to attend, but he pleaded ill-health, and a few days later declared that, though he distrusted the Ulster army, he had 'received a positive inhibition from the clergy that neither myself nor any of my commanders, upon pain of excommunication, shall obey any orders from my Lord lieutenant.' The position of Ireland could scarcely be better described than in this letter of Preston's. The Confederates had all along professed loyalty to the Crown, and had never denied that Ormonde was the King's representative. But when it came to a trial of strength between the viceroy and the papal nuncio, it was the latter that they were forced to obey.[97] [Sidenote: Ormonde driven back to Dublin.] [Sidenote: The many-headed monster.]