The Lord Lieutenant and the Commander-in-chief had a preliminary interview on the day of the latter's arrival. On the morrow they met for business, and Tyrconnel made a long rambling speech of which Clarendon took notes at the moment, and which may be taken as the key to what followed: 'My Lord, I am sent hither to view this army and to give the King an account of it. Here are great alterations to be made, and the poor people who are put out think it my doing, and, God damn me, I have little to do in the matter: for I told the King that I knew not two of the captains nor other officers in the whole army. I know there are some hard cases, which I am sorry for; but, by God, I know not how to help them. You must know, my Lord, the King, who is a Roman Catholic, is resolved to employ his subjects of that religion, as you will find out by the letters I have brought you, and therefore some must be put out to make room for such as the King likes.' Meritorious officers were displaced without pity, and Clarendon mentions a few specially ill-treated men among the multitude who were in the 'common calamity of being put out.' Thus Captain Brook was deprived of his troop, for which he had paid 1600_l._ two years before, and Lieutenant Pargiter of his commission for which he had given 800_l._ The privates were treated in the same way. When a troop or company was mustered Tyrconnel merely sent an order to the captain to dismiss such men as Colonel Richard Hamilton marked upon the list. 'Could not I have done that as well?' asked the Lord Lieutenant pathetically. Four hundred men were thus turned out of the regiment of Guards in one day. The General himself was so little of a soldier that he could not draw up a regiment, and his orders sometimes disgusted officers of his own Church as much as the Protestants. He told Lord Roscommon to admit only Roman Catholics into Ormonde's regiment. Major Macdonnell, who had served in Germany, received the same order, and gave it out on parade, but in his walks about Kilkenny freely declared that he had never known a distinction between soldiers on the score of religion. Tyrconnel denied his orders, but Roscommon was as outspoken and as sure of his fact as Macdonnell. The men dismissed were often physically superior to those who supplanted them, and many recruits spoke no English, which in Dublin excited the mockery of street boys. The disbanded men despised their successors, and 'rapped them soundly at fisticuffs.' To make sure of getting good Catholics, one of the places selected for recruiting was St. John's Well, resorted to by pilgrims at Midsummer.[151] [Sidenote: Tory Hamilton's case.]