Fitzgibbon told Philip Stukeley's very unedifying history. At first he had recommended him as likely to be useful, but was now convinced that he was an impostor. 'I cannot,' he said, 'believe that the Irish princes would wish that a private English gentleman should have command in the slightest degree in their kingdom, while they with such obstinacy resist the Queen of England, who has so often offered them peace on good conditions. Therefore, I consider his coming as an act of deception, or an act devoid of common sense, for, as far as I can understand, he has received no commission from the princes of Ireland for your Majesty or any one else.' The adventurer retorted with charges against the prelate's private character, which, whether true or false, had certainly some weight with Philip. Stukeley may have cherished some mad idea of ruling Ireland as a Spanish viceroy. In any case, it is likely that he ill-treated the Irishmen who followed him, for they deserted to the Archbishop of Cashel, who refused to give them up. The Court were divided into two parties--Ruy Gomez, favouring the Archbishop, and the Duke of Feria, with his English wife, siding with Stukeley. There was a further difficulty with the Pope, who considered Ireland his own property, and thought Philip but a lukewarm son of the Church. It was not so very long since Tivoli and Ostia had been occupied by Spanish troops, and the city saved by a sort of accident. Did not the Catholic King, the great-nephew of Catherine of Arragon, the grandson of the great Isabella, keep the peace with his sister-in-law, and bear patiently the many insults of that excommunicated heretic, Anne Boleyn's bastard daughter? The cardinal secretary informed the zealous Irish priest that the Pope was much surprised at his presumption in moving in such matters without special license. He might easily have remembered that Ireland was a fief of the Church, and inalienable without the will of the lord. His Holiness would do nothing unless Philip would sue to him for a grant, and the cardinal secretary would merely venture to guess that such a suit would not be denied. He might, with at least equal probability, have guessed that it never would be made.[204] [Sidenote: Fitzgibbon's excuses to the Pope.] Fitzgibbon was horrified at meeting opposition from Rome. He was a fugitive, and his flock was at the mercy of wolves. His pall had been carried off by the English heretics, and he besought the Pope to send him another. If Ireland thought his Holiness alone could have delivered her 'from the jaws of the English,' she would have asked no other master. But other help was clearly necessary; France had none to give, and no State was more orthodox than Spain, which could alone relieve Irish Catholics. Only prompt help could avail, for the power of England increased daily, not only in Ireland, but in France, Flanders, Scotland, and Germany; Catholic interests, indeed, were threatened all over Europe.[205]