At Limerick, Sidney was received by the Bishop, Hugh Lacy, in full pontificals, and with much ceremony of an entirely Roman character. The city he found much decayed, partly through the misdeeds of Desmond, but more through those of the Earl of Thomond, who was both incompetent and treacherous. Galway more 'resembled a town of war, frontiering upon an enemy, than a civil town in a country under the sovereign. They watch their walls nightly, and guard their gates daily with armed men.' Clanricarde's sons John and Ulick, by two wives both living, were the chief disturbers of the West, and they too were sent prisoners to Dublin. The town of Athenry was deserted, four families only remaining, who greeted the Viceroy with cries of 'Succour, succour.' Clanricarde's own country was in pretty good condition, and Sidney found nothing to complain of in his conduct, but he was quite unable to keep his sons in check.[123] [Sidenote: Sidney's opinion of the Munster and Connaught gentry. He advises a President.] After spending nearly three months in Munster and Connaught, Sidney came to the conclusion that they did not contain the seeds of reformation within themselves. Ormonde indeed did not lack ability; but he was absent, and likely to be absent, and his work could not be done by deputy. He summed up the qualifications of the other great lords in a few pithy sentences. 'The Earl of Desmond, a man both void of judgment to govern and will to be ruled. The Earl of Clancare I suppose willing enough to be ruled, but wanteth force and credit to rule. The Earl of Thomond, the most imperfect of all the rest; hath neither wit of himself to govern, nor grace or capacity to learn of others. The Earl of Clanricarde, equal in all good parts with the best of his coat of this country breed, both of good judgment to rule and also of himself of great humbleness to obey your Majesty and your laws, is yet so ruled by a putative wife, as oft times when he best intendeth she forceth him to do worst.' It was of small avail that the Lord Roche's country in Cork was pretty well managed, or that O'Shaughnessy, the son of him whom Henry VIII. knighted, should be an exception among the gentlemen of Galway. A President and Council for each province had been long advocated by Sidney, who reiterated his opinion that nothing else would be of any avail. He condemned, with becoming indignation, what an important public man had some years before called 'the old and necessary policy of keeping the Irish by all possible means at war between themselves.' If this cowardly system of fostering dissensions, lest quiet should bring unknown danger, were still persisted in, then he begged the Queen to choose some other minister. Ireland could only be reformed by justice, and by making it possible to practise the arts of peace.[124] [Sidenote: Death of Randolph. Fate of the Derry settlement.]