Early in August, Surrey, accompanied by Sir Piers Butler and his forces, entered Farney and punished MacMahon for the assistance given to O'Neill in his attacks on the Pale. O'Neill made some sort of verbal submission, and the Lord-Lieutenant returned to Dublin, where he detected a conspiracy among his soldiers, some of whom found life intolerable in Ireland. Their plan was to seize a small vessel in the river, and by her means a larger one on the high seas, and so to become rovers. The Irish lawyers held that the Viceroy could not hang them; for they had committed no overt act, and his patent did not authorise him to proceed by martial law. It is clear that the Crown was held capable of dispensing with the common law, at least in the case of soldiers.[86] [Sidenote: Desmonds and MacCarthies.] In September an important private war was waged in Munster. James, Earl of Desmond, according to the usual practice of his family, made a perfectly unprovoked attack upon Cormac Oge MacCarthy, the chief of Muskerry. Having secured the assistance of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, the Earl's uncle and his own sister's husband, and of his kinsman MacCarthy Reagh, Cormac Oge defeated Desmond in a pitched battle near Mourne Abbey, to the south of Mallow. The messenger who brought the news to Dublin reported that the Earl had lost 1,500 foot and 500 horse. The Lord-Lieutenant was not sorry, for he had straitly charged Desmond to leave the MacCarthies alone. The fate of the Desmonds has excited much not very well directed sympathy: it would better become Irishmen to remember that they were the worst oppressors of their Celtic neighbours. When Surrey visited Munster soon after, Desmond met him at Clonmel, and was as loyal in words as Sir Piers Butler had been in deeds. At Waterford he met MacCarthy Reagh and Cormac Oge, who were adherents of Sir Piers, and who had come on his invitation. They spoke fairly, bound themselves to keep the peace and professed themselves loyal, so that they might be protected. Surrey wished to make Cormac Oge a Privy Councillor and a Baron of Parliament, and he calls him a 'sad wise man.' Cormac produced a charter under the Great Seal, a copy of which was sent to England with an assurance that it comprised no lands to which the King was entitled.[87] [Sidenote: Henry speaks boldly to the Irish.]