Ireland could not be governed without a standing army, and the cost of maintaining one, even on the most reduced scale, made it impossible to balance the public accounts. As there was no money to spare in England, the force upon which everything depended was irregularly paid and of course discontented. Ormonde refused to be coerced by hot-headed cavaliers into discharging all officers and men who had served the Protector, though he weeded them as closely as possible. Those who were discharged all remained in the country. A wholesale proscription would affect nearly all the English in Ireland, 'and many of your own party,' he told the King, 'were forced by the persecution that followed them in England to shelter themselves in Ireland, and as they were able to make friends, to get into the army some as inferior officers, some as private soldiers.' The revolutionary politicians thought it safer to get them out of England even on these terms. They were Royalists all along, and showed it when the time came. Many who never served against the King and some who had actually fought for him in England, 'their interest and detestation of the Irish assisting their mistake,' thought they might conscientiously oppose him when treaties with the rebels were being made in his name. They also believed, or wished to believe, that the late King had handed over the whole war to the Parliament once for all. National feeling and the folly of the clerical party made them receive Cromwell in certain towns, but they had since repented. He declined to cashier such men, though he took care to admit no recruits that had not a clear record. There were therefore heads to conspire and plenty of hands to execute, but Ormonde was aware that the plot in the North of England had sympathisers in Ireland. It was reported that Ludlow had returned to put himself at the head of the malcontents, and the Ulster Presbyterians might have been goaded by the bishops into rebellion. Spies were not wanting, and Colonel Vernon, Henry Cromwell's old antagonist, made himself very useful. Robert Shapcote, representing the borough of Wicklow, was arrested as a ringleader, and the House of Commons could not interfere during prorogation. It does not appear that more than two or three Presbyterian clergymen were in any way concerned, nor any of the more responsible sectaries. Ormonde's suspicions fell, perhaps not unnaturally, upon Henry Cromwell's old chaplain, Stephen Charnock, but there seems no reason to suppose that he was implicated, and in any case he eluded all attempts to arrest him either in England or Ireland.[33] [Sidenote: The Castle plot.] [Sidenote: A Puritan visionary.]