The printed proceedings of the Clonmacnoise prelates reached Cromwell at Youghal, and he lost no time in answering it. The task of uniting clergy and laity, he said, was only necessary because the distinction had been invented by 'the Antichristian Church' of Rome, and maintained by her priests as the foundation of their own power. Their royalism was a 'fig-leaf of pretence,' whereas they really fought for their own supremacy. Cromwell had a right to say that they began the war, but he much exaggerated the goodness of the terms on which English and Irish had lived before the outbreak. No doubt there were some friendships, but all competent observers had long realised that the Ulster settlement would be disturbed whenever the children of the dispossessed natives had the chance. As to liberty of conscience, he took his stand upon the purely English ground that the mass had long been prohibited by law, and that he could not extirpate what had no root. He reiterated his statement to the governor of Ross and said plainly, 'I shall not, where I have power, and the Lord is pleased to bless me, suffer the exercise of the mass where I can take notice of it.... As for the people, what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach; but think it my duty if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same.' He defended the raising of money by mortgaging lands which rebels would forfeit, but denied that there was any intention to extirpate the people. He defied anyone to give an instance since his arrival in Ireland of 'one man not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished' with impunity. Those who had been exiled to the West Indies were all in fact liable to be put to the sword according to the laws of war. All who had not been actors in the rebellion should be spared and protected. 'And having said this,' he concluded, 'and purposing honestly to perform it,--if this people shall headily run on after the counsels of their prelates and clergy and other leaders, I hope to be free from the misery and desolation and blood and ruin that shall befall them; and shall rejoice to exercise utmost severity against them.' Cromwell's ideas about toleration were in advance of his age, but his knowledge of Ireland before 1641 was derived from the published histories of May and Temple.[167] [Sidenote: Lady Fanshawe at Cork, Nov. 1649.]