well understood. Rinuccini was told, for instance, that the Parliament had 'bound themselves by a sacrilegious oath to maintain and defend what they called the true reformed Protestant religion against all Popish inventions and innovations, and determined to extinguish every spark of the Catholic religion, by extirpating all who adhered to that faith, not only in England and Scotland, but even in Ireland. This dreadful sentence came to the knowledge of the Irish at a time when four thousand men were in arms, who had been levied for the service of the King of Spain, but were then detained in Ireland by order of the Parliament.' The detention of the troops was indeed one great cause of the outbreak in 1641, but the men had been levied originally not for any foreign prince, but to enable Charles and Strafford to crush the English Parliament and their Scots allies. Parliament was undoubtedly ready to oppress the Roman Catholics, but there is no evidence of any intention to extirpate them. The friars persuaded the people that this had been determined on, and the argument was too convenient to be neglected. The main object of Rinuccini's mission was to 'restore and re-establish the public exercise of the Catholic religion in the island of Ireland, and further to lead her people, if not as tributaries to the Holy See, such as they were five centuries ago, to subject themselves to the mild yoke of the Pontiff, at least in all spiritual affairs--thus to gain over souls innumerable to the glories of Paradise.'[78] [Sidenote: Opinion held of Ormonde.] [Sidenote: The Queen distrusted,] [Sidenote: as well as the King.]