The assembly began to meet at Loughrea on November 15, but did not constitute themselves until the 25th, when Sir Richard Blake was elected chairman. The lay element from the first asserted itself, and some bishops, who in purely ecclesiastical manifestoes considered themselves bound by the majority, showed a certain amount of independence. On December 7 an agreement was rather unexpectedly arrived at, and probably this was hastened by the fact that Ormonde was on shipboard and might leave Ireland without delegating his authority. First the prelates were induced to say that they had no intention at Jamestown of usurping the royal authority, and no aim but the 'preservation of the Catholic religion and people.' The assembled 'Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Gentry' then declared their conviction that the royal authority was the best bond of union, and that no body of men in Ireland had any power to impair it. It is to be observed, and no doubt Ormonde did observe, that the deposing power of the Pope is not referred to. They then besought the Lord Lieutenant to leave his authority in some person faithful to his Majesty 'and acceptable to the nation,' to whom they promised ready obedience. And they fully acknowledged that the retiring viceroy had risked person and property for the royal cause, and that, even when unsuccessful, he had 'faithful intentions and hearty affections to advance his Majesty's interests and service.' This manifesto reached Ormonde at Gleninagh in Clare, where he had put in before taking his final departure. He wrote to say that he was not fully satisfied, but that he had sent a commission as Deputy to Clanricarde, and he left it to him to get further explanations and to accept or reject the charge according to their tenor. This was his last act in Ireland until after the Restoration and, having refused Ireton's offer of a pass, he sailed on December 11 in a very fast vessel of twenty-four tons and four guns which the Duke of York had provided for him in Jersey. He was accompanied by Inchiquin, Bellings, Daniel O'Neill, and many officers, and it was three weeks before they reached land at Perros Guirec in Brittany. Forty men in a boat of twenty-four tons in the open Atlantic and in midwinter must have endured very great hardships. Ormonde made his way to Caen, where his wife and children were, and from thence to Paris. A second ship with Sir George Lane and others reached France, and a third with servants and baggage was lost at sea. The distinguished exiles were from the first in the direst distress.[193] FOOTNOTES: [179] Clarendon's _Hist. Ireland_, 97-106; Cox's _Hibernia Anglicana_, appx. 45.