The O'Connors having been quieted for the moment, Ormonde, who had private as well as public reasons for his advice, proposed a temporising policy towards O'Neill and O'Reilly on the north, and towards O'Byrne and O'Toole on the south, side of the Pale. The Government might then easily subdue the Kavanaghs, who were surrounded by settled districts. Their chief, Cahir MacEncross, who has been called the last King of Leinster, had till lately been Constable, and his acceptance of the office seems to have been thought a condescension. Ormonde's son Richard had now succeeded him, and with the aid of Saintloo and his Wexford men might hope to reduce the whole country. To strengthen Kilkenny against a possible counter attack from the O'Mores, Ormonde secured the services of Edmond MacSwiney, a powerful hereditary chief of gallowglasses, whom O'Connor had brought from Donegal. The Earl thought it cheaper to outbid O'Connor than to have MacSwiney's band thrown into the scale of rebellion. Desmond and the rest excused their slowness to reform by saying that they waited for him to begin; and he was anxious to wipe out this reproach, regretting only that he had not the same powers in Kilkenny as in Tipperary. Though not disinterested, Ormonde's was probably the best available plan, and his reforming zeal was certainly serious. 'I have proclaimed,' he said, 'over all the county of Tipperary, that no caines, allyiegs, errikes, Irish Brehons, neither that law, rahowns, and many like exactions and extortions shall cease, with reformation for the grey merchants, and the Liberty court to be duly continued, as the King's laws require.' In Kilkenny he could only exhort; 'howbeit,' he added, 'I have often persuaded many of them to be converted, which to do I can scarcely have their assents, for the lust they have to caines and other abuses, turning to their profit, as it doth to mine.'[201] [Sidenote: Grey goes to Ulster, 1538.]