punishment of one of Clarendon's servants who had attributed the change to the dog Talbot. Tyrconnel was sworn in as Deputy, not Lord Lieutenant, on February 12, and Clarendon was Cartwright's guest at Chester a few days later. He heard a sermon from Mr. Peake in the cathedral on the duties of governors, and it seems not to have been pleasant, for the bishop thought of suspending the preacher, though both Lord Derby and Mr. Cholmondeley interceded for him. Ten days afterwards Cartwright sent his carriage to meet Porter, and found the ex-Chancellor's children 'set in a stage-coach broke in the quicksands three miles from Chester.' They were rescued, and next day their father and mother were brought safely from Neston.[158] [Sidenote: The Coventry letter.] When Nagle left Ireland it was thought probable that he would return as Attorney-General, and that part of his business would be to attack the Act of Settlement. The King had assured Clarendon that it 'must always be kept untouched, though many ill and disaffected people are secured in their possessions by it.' Nagle was back in November, and neither then or later did Clarendon have any intimation from the English Government that a change of policy was intended. It was not until January, shortly before his recall, that he received through private hands the copy of a letter from Nagle to Tyrconnel purporting to have been written on the road at Coventry, but doubtless composed in London as the result of careful deliberation. In it the Acts of Settlement and Explanation and the administration of them were vigorously attacked. About the same time the Benedictine Philip Ellis, afterwards Bishop of Segni, was allowed, or, as some thought, bribed, by the Irish in London to preach at St. James's against the Acts. Tyrconnel admitted that he had inspired the sermon and promised Ellis the bishopric of Waterford as a reward. The contents of Nagle's letter were known in Ireland before Clarendon got his copy, and the writer complained of its surreptitious publication. Tyrconnel had the original, and his denial is worth little. Both letter and sermon were disliked by moderate men, but they evidently foreshadowed extreme measures. Less than a year after the date of Nagle's manifesto, Barillon knew that James had made secret preparations for repealing the Act of Settlement.[159] [Sidenote: The Land Settlement threatened.]