If Elizabeth really imagined that her Lieutenant of Pensioners, who had been little if at all in Ireland since his childhood, could travel as a private gentleman without attracting notice, the notion was quickly dispelled. The Irish Government treated him in all respects as a Royal Commissioner, and furnished him with careful instructions. The Munster rivers were flooded, and there was a difficulty about corresponding with Desmond. He professed himself ready to meet his kinsman near Clonmel on the last day of January, but declined to go to Dublin, and stiffly maintained that he was ready to prove all that he had ever asserted against the Lord Deputy or Sir John Perrott. There was no want of information as to Desmond's evil intentions. Patrick Sherlock, sheriff of Waterford, a stout old campaigner who had served the Emperor and the King of France, warned the English Government that all malcontents, north and south, were banded together, and that they would soon have 3,000 men in the field. The Earl of Ormonde and 1,000 English soldiers was Sherlock's prescription. Justice Walshe was much of the same opinion, and so was Maurice O'Brien, Bishop-Elect of Killaloe, a Cambridge man, who had become more English than the English, and who declared that it would be better to be a prisoner in England than a free man in Ireland. Mulroney O'Carroll informed the seneschal of Queen's County that a messenger of Desmond's had been at his house, and after drinking much whiskey had told him of letters sent by the Earl to O'Neill, Clanricarde, the O'Mores, O'Connors, and O'Byrnes. Shane Burke, with 600 Scots, was to harry the King's and Queen's Counties. O'Carroll, who addressed Cosby as his father, admitted that the truth was obscure, and that servants often exceeded it in speaking of their masters; but he confirmed the man's story to some extent, and stated that a flood in the Shannon had alone prevented Desmond from meeting Clanricarde. Anxiety for this meeting was believed to be the cause of Desmond's delay in meeting Fitzgerald. All accounts agreed that there was to be a general attack on the English settlers, that Desmond would have no president or other English official resident if he could help it, and that he aspired to be rather a tributary sovereign than a subject.[267] [Sidenote: The meeting takes place, but is not of much use.]