When the news of Worcester reached Ormonde he knew that all was over for a very long time. A Scottish army in England under Charles in person, a still unsubdued Scotland behind that, and at the same time enough resistance in Ireland to occupy a large Parliamentary force, all these made a combination very unlikely to recur. The only chance, and that a remote one, was that the parties into which England was divided might fall out among themselves, and so the King come by his own. 'This,' he wrote to Clanricarde, who may never have got the letter, 'I take to be a remote, lazy speculation, and very near lying in the dirt and crying God help. God often blesses very improbable endeavours, but I find not where he promises, or where he has given success to flat idleness, unless contempt or misery, which are the proper fruits of it, may be so called.' He thought the only thing to do was to seek foreign help, and that the best chance was to try to make the Pope a mediator. Attempts to get money from Rome for the Irish war had already failed, but it was proposed to send Taaffe there a little later. The Pope would do nothing unless Charles would satisfy him that he had joined the Roman communion, and to let this be known would have alienated England irretrievably. When, in due time, the treaty of Dover was signed, Ormonde was kept in the dark. Bishop French, who had reviled Taaffe for not signing the agreement with the Duke of Lorraine, did not return to Ireland, but he attacked Ormonde long after the Restoration for preferring Cromwell's protectorate to that of a distinguished Catholic prince. It was, perhaps, impossible for an Irish Ultramontane to understand the position of an English Royalist, but it is easy to see now that Ormonde and Clanricarde were essentially in the right. Neither they nor their master could help the usurpation, but they would have destroyed their chances altogether by placing the sovereignty of Ireland in the hands of a foreign adventurer, who could not call a single sea-port his own. Two years later the Spaniards seized his person, and the French annexed his army.[205] [Sidenote: Hopelessness of the struggle in Ireland.] [Sidenote: Operations in the midland counties, March.] [Sidenote: Finnea Castle, March 14.]