It is not surprising that Ormonde was 'almost at his wit's end' on receiving this extraordinary letter from his old brother-in-arms. 'The manner of the President's dealing herein is strange to me. I will stay his lordship (if I can by any means) from this attempt, and will with all my heart join with him myself and my company, to fight against the traitor and his whole company, rather than he should so barely hazard himself with so few.... God send us a good hour against these villains.'[212] He may have intended treachery and been foiled by Ormonde's action, or he may have suspected treachery; but the message he sent by his Irish poet gave a very good reason for not coming. 'If I should kill Sir John Perrott, the Queen of England can send another President into this province; but if he do kill me, there is none other to succeed me, or to command as I do, therefore I will not willingly fight with him, and so tell him from me.' In the most disturbed times in modern Ireland officials, even policemen, have often been protected by the same consideration. Perrott, however, was very angry, and resolved to 'hunt the fox out of his hole,' regretting, as well he might, that he had wasted so much time and played into the hands of his crafty foe.[213] [Sidenote: Colonisation of Ulster. Sir Thomas Smith, 1572.] The failure of colonisation projects in Munster did not prevent the Queen from listening to those who imagined that they could found private principalities in Ireland. The district of Ards, in what is now the County of Down, being almost surrounded by the sea, was by its position well suited for such an experiment. On the north-west a land frontier of barely ten miles might seem to require no great number of defenders. Various offers were made, those of Secretary Smith being accepted by Elizabeth. Tremayne, who foresaw the commotion that would be caused by any scheme of colonisation, was in favour of a more extended experiment; but strongly advised that the Queen should appear as the patroness of a country already her own, and not as a conqueror. The people should be told that their rights would not be infringed, and this should be published everywhere in the Irish language. Had Sir Thomas Smith taken this advice he would still have had many difficulties to encounter; but he did not take it, and the Ulster Irish had their first notice from a pamphlet written in English and published in London. Sir Thomas thought that 'the little book was evil done,' but was induced to agree to its being put forth by his son, who was to have the actual direction of the business, and whom he was even content to lose in the glorious work of reconquering the Queen's land without burden to her or to the English State. The writer of the pamphlet, whether young Smith or another, set forth at length the historical reasons why the English power had waned in Ireland, and proposed to restore it by colonisation. A permanent garrison