'We have given oath and vow that whosoever of the Irishry, especially of the gentlemen of Munster, or whosoever else, from the highest to the lowest, shall assist Christ's Catholic religion, and join in confederacy and make war with us... we will be to them a back or stay, warrant or surety, for their so aiding of God's just cause, and by our said oath and vow, never to conclude peace or war with the English, for ourselves or any of us, during our life, but that the like shall be concluded for you, &c.' Many of the scattered settlers in Munster were murdered about this time, and it was upon the property of Englishmen only that the MacSheehys and other robbers maintained themselves. In Tipperary, says the Chief Justice of Munster, there was 'a school of thieving of horses and cows where boys from every Munster county, some the bastard sons of the best of the country,' were trained in this patriotic exercise. The master and usher and seven of their pupils were tried and hanged. Care was taken that Protestant clergymen should not go scathless. One James, parson of Kilcornan near Pallaskenry, was visited by a party of swordsmen, but they were under protection and he unsuspectingly offered them refreshments. Nevertheless they murdered poor James, wounded three other Englishmen, and burned down the house; the leader swearing upon his target that he would never again seek protection, nor 'leave any Englishman's house unburned nor himself alive.' The same spirit was shown in the inland parts of Leinster, where Owen MacRory O'More was specially protected by Russell's order; but this did not prevent him from making a perfectly unprovoked attack upon Stradbally. Alexander Cosby, whose father had been slain at Glenmalure and who was himself married to a Sidney, sallied out with his two sons and the kerne under his orders. A fight took place on the bridge and the Irish were driven off, but Cosby and his eldest son fell. Dorcas Sidney ('for she would never allow herself to be called Cosby') and her daughter-in-law watched the fight out of a window and saw their husbands killed. In southern Leinster the death of Walter Reagh had not quite destroyed the old Geraldine leaven, and some of the Butlers were also engaged, greatly to Ormonde's indignation. Whatever Tyrone's own ideas were about religion, it is quite evident that out of his own district he was regarded as the leader of a crusade. The new English in Ireland were Protestants, and the instinctive horror of the natives for settlers whose notions about land were irreconcilable with their own was sedulously encouraged by priests and friars.[260] [Sidenote: The soldiers are disorderly and oppressive,]