Ludlow says he 'put 3000 to the sword, taking the priests even from under the altar: of such force is ambition when it seizes upon the minds of men.' The soldiers sold the plunder, including the sacred vessels, to the people who flocked in from the neighbouring villages 'as if to a fair.' Pictures of saints were used as horse-cloths, and insults were offered to statues of the Virgin.[115] [Sidenote: Rinuccini without money.] [Sidenote: _Disputatio Apologetica._] [Sidenote: The book publicly burnt at Kilkenny,] [Sidenote: and condemned at Lisbon.] Money was expected from Rome at the beginning of the year, but did not come for twelve months, during which Rinuccini's influence waned; and to this delay he attributed the expulsion of Glamorgan, the action of Muskerry, and the defeat of Preston. Six thousand crowns would have prevented it all. With eight thousand more O'Neill could have retaken Sligo, subdued Connaught, and 'marched into Ulster to reduce the fort of Enniskillen, and to take possession of the Holy Place of St. Patrick's Purgatory, now about one hundred years in the hands of the heretics.' Having seen Ormonde safe out of Ireland, the nuncio himself withdrew to Galway, where his presence would still have some of the charm of novelty and where he might expect less resistance than at Kilkenny or Clonmel. But Clanricarde carefully avoided paying him any attention, and he was confronted with a new difficulty immediately after his arrival. A Jesuit named Cornelius Mahony, a native of Cork but living at Lisbon, published in 1645 what he called an 'apologetic disputation,' with an exhortation to his countrymen. He proves to his own satisfaction that the English Crown had no claims upon Ireland, having broken the conditions of Adrian's bull, and urges the Irish to 'elect a Catholic king, a vernacular or natural Irishman.' 'You have already,' he says, 'killed 150,000 enemies in these four or five years, as your very adversaries' howling openly confess in their writings, and you do not deny. I think more heretic enemies have been killed: would that they had all been! It remains for you to slay all the other heretics, or expel them from the bounds of Ireland, lest they infect our Catholic country with their heresies and errors.' A copy of this incendiary production reached Ireland from France, and others followed from Portugal. At Kilkenny the book was publicly burned, and close search was made at Galway. Rinuccini expressed no disapproval of its doctrines, and refused to punish John Bane, parish priest of Athlone, with whom a copy was found. He attributed the outcry against it to those who were in possession of ecclesiastical lands, and to those who hated O'Neill, the only possible 'natural and vernacular' hero who could be chosen king. The Portuguese kingdom had only lately been re-established, and Mahony argued that the Irish had just the same right to upset a heretic dynasty as the Portuguese had to drive out their Castilian oppressors.