Yet even Cromwell seems to have thought the deed deserving of excuse. "Truly," he wrote to Bradshaw, the President of the Council, "I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood through the goodness of God. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." "I am persuaded," he assured Lenthall, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse or regret." Leaving a garrison behind him in Drogheda, Cromwell marched to the south by way of Wexford. There too a slaughter took place, though this time it was brought on by the act of the townsmen, who continued their resistance after the walls had been scaled. The story often repeated of the two or three hundred women killed in the market place is pure fiction, of which nothing is heard till after the middle of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, both at Drogheda and Wexford priests were put to death without mercy. Whether these cruelties, in the long run, rendered Irishmen more ready to submit to the invaders may be doubted, but they certainly made Cromwell's path easier whilst the terror spread by them was recent. Wexford fell on October 11. On the 17th Cromwell summoned New Ross. "I have this witness for myself," he wrote to the Governor, "that I have endeavoured to avoid effusion of blood--this being my principle that the people and the places where I come may not suffer except through their own wilfulness." Two days later he was asked whether he would grant liberty of conscience. "I meddle not," he answered, "with any man's conscience, but if by liberty of conscience, you mean liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know that where the Parliament of England have power that will not be allowed of." Cromwell's principle in Ireland was very much what Elizabeth's had been in England. Men might hold what religious opinions they pleased, but toleration was not to be extended to the Roman Catholic worship. The distinction may appear unjustifiable in the eyes of the present generation. It was perfectly familiar to the statesmen of the seventeenth century.