The officers knew that a strong town could not be taken with the means at their disposal, but the sailors were 'readier to fall on nakedly than forsake the work, and the soldiers no way backward.' The guns were taken on board, and Forbes departed to the Shannon. Askeaton, which had made so gallant a stand in the last Desmond war, surrendered without a blow. Sir Edward Denny continued to press for the relief of his castle at Tralee, but Forbes wasted two or three days in harrying the poor islands of Arran, and when at last he arrived off Ballingarry in Kerry it was only to hear that Tralee had fallen, the garrison having been reduced to eating hides. The expedition then returned to the Shannon, and captured a great piece of ordnance called 'roaring Meg' with which the Irish had taken most of the castles thereabouts. The gun was found in one boat and the carriage in another, so that this was an easy task. It was then proposed to destroy Sir Daniel O'Brien's house at Clare Castle on the ground that he was no friend to the Parliament. Yet he acted in strict unison with the loyal and Protestant Earl of Thomond. Even the latter was doubted, 'and in truth,' says Peters, 'his case is nice, the chief of the country being his kindred and himself without power saving fifty horses in his stable.' He was, however, unwilling to see his country laid waste, and declined to join in the work. The Limerick shore was devastated instead. The Knight of Glin sent a letter of recommendation from Clanricarde, and offered to give cattle for the use of the squadron. Glin Castle was nevertheless battered and stormed, the defenders being short of bullets. 'Most matters,' says Peters, 'fell as at the last siege forty years since,' but in shorter time and with the loss of only four men. 'The plate and silver were gone for Limerick, which receives most of which is in Ireland.' A garrison was put in, and guns mounted on the walls. This was done on September 26, and so the expedition ended, for the ships had only been hired till Michaelmas. Five vessels had been taken worth 20,000_l._, including one from Barbadoes with a cargo of tobacco, and corn to the same value had been destroyed. Many Irish towns had been burned, and many English relieved. Thousands of cattle had been taken or spoiled, and a diversion had been made on the west coast. This is Peters's own summary, and it does not amount to much. It is more certain that Forbes did everything in his power to aggravate the bitterness of a war which was already sufficiently horrible. The pragmatic chaplain's political remarks are interesting. He had been assured that a million of English had been murdered, and he hoped many more Irish slain. The cause of the war was Popery on the one side and profaneness on the other. The royalism of the Irish was a mere catchword. 'An Irish rebel and an English cavalier in words and actions we found as unlike as an egg is to an egg,' he adds rather ambiguously. Among the English there