On June 25 Clotworthy left Antrim with 600 men in twelve boats built for the service on Lough Neagh. On the flat Tyrone shore little resistance was made, and Mountjoy was taken with no loss. Here he entrenched himself strongly, and 'notwithstanding the next was the Lord's day' spent it in building huts for his men. Before leaving it to be maintained by a garrison of 250 men he scoured the woods as well as he could, and lost very few men, though the pressure of hunger was severe, for he could not catch cows without cavalry, and there were 500 rescued British prisoners of both sexes and every age to feed along with the soldiers. The want of horse was partly supplied by making 200 men strip to their shirts for lightness, and they did not object, thinking it mean to wear armour against men that had none. Generally speaking the Irish would not stand against them, but they seemed to have ammunition enough, which was said to come from Limerick. One hundred cows were taken near Moneymore, after which the soldiers fared better, but there was much sickness from want of proper food, and from having to sleep on the ground.[21] [Sidenote: A general assembly meets, Oct. 1642.] [Sidenote: The name of Parliament avoided.] [Sidenote: The Catholic Church first.] [Sidenote: The King second.] [Sidenote: The Supreme Council.] [Sidenote: Four generals appointed.] The provisional supreme council, which had been formed at Kilkenny in the early summer, did what they could to give their organisation something of a legal shape. 'Letters,' says Bellings, 'in nature of writs were sent from this council to all the Lords spiritual and temporal, and all the counties, cities, and corporate towns that had right to send knights and burgesses to Parliament.' The general assembly so constituted met on October 24, a year and a day after the first outbreak in Ulster, at the house of Robert Shee, heir to Sir Richard Shee. The Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons sat in one room, Mr. Pat Darcy bareheaded upon a stool representing all or some that sat in Parliament upon the woolsack. Mr. Nicholas Plunket represented the Speaker of the Commons, and both Lords and Commons addressed their speech to him. The Lords had an upper room for a recess for private consultation, and upon resolutions taken the same were delivered to the Commons by Mr. Darcy. The name of Parliament was eschewed, and Plunket was called prolocutor or president, and not speaker. Burgesses were to be paid five shillings a day, and knights of the shire ten shillings during the session, and for ten days before and after. The first act of the assembly was to establish the Roman Catholic Church as it had been in the time of Henry VII., and the statute law was to be observed so far as it was 'not against the Catholic Roman religion.' Allegiance to King Charles came second. For the protection of the King's subjects against murders, rapes and robberies 'contrived and daily executed by the malignant party, and for