Rinuccini was completely beaten, though the great bulk of the clergy were with him. He could claim seventeen bishops against eight, and the vast majority of the religious orders, excepting the Jesuits. He had with him the Celtic population, as represented by Owen Roe O'Neill, and the poorer classes generally, who cared much for the Church and very little for the Crown. But the nobility and the legal profession were against him. 'A few days,' he wrote, 'after my arrival in Kilkenny some lawyers inquired from Father Scarampi if I were going to erect a tribunal. When he said yes, they replied that they would not put up with it by any means.... In the public assembly Viscount Muskerry said that the day of my arrival was a fatal one for the country; in short, they have shown in every action that they cannot endure the authority of the Pope; they are even not ashamed to say in private and in print that his succours were mere empty hopes, vanity, and vexation. It may be therefore by the will of God that a people Catholic only in name, and so irreverent towards the Church, should feel the thunderbolt of the Holy See, and draw upon themselves the anger which is the meed of the scorner.' Rinuccini declared that a nuncio to a heretic viceroy was an absurdity, and prepared to leave the country. With difficulty he succeeded in securing the very _San Pietro_ on board of which he had first come. Plunket and French went to Galway to report the result of their Roman mission, but he did not await their arrival, and it was thought that he feared orders from the Pope incompatible with his late proceedings. He sailed on February 23, crowds of weeping people accompanying him to the ship; the poor were much better Catholics than the lords and lawyers. The demonstration on his arrival had been less than 'on the completion of his mission to a poor and persecuted minister, and could not be ascribed to the hopes of assistance which they entertained.' He thought the corrupted nations nearer Rome should 'journey to a distant clime where the sun is never seen, that they may fully comprehend the due subjection of the faithful to their head.' In the meantime he sent his confessor to Rome with instructions to press for certain specific measures. The authorities were called upon to suspend Bishop Rothe of Ossory, to summon Archbishop de Burgo to Rome, to call Peter Walsh 'before the Inquisition or any other tribunal in Rome,' to summon the chiefs of the recalcitrant Carmelites, and to order Malone, provincial of the Irish Jesuits, out of Ireland. Arcamoni arrived in March, but Rinuccini lingered long in France and in his native Florence, and did not reach Rome till the second week in November. No one there approved of his proceedings in Ireland, and the Pope accused him of rashness. More than two years before he had abstained from making him a cardinal, though urged to do so by Bishop Macmahon.[137] FOOTNOTES: