Lord Carhampton went down and took command in Connaught. Informers offered their services, provided their presence was not required in the witness-box. A Priest named Phillips 'caused himself to be made a Defender with a view of giving information.'[421] Others came whose names the Viceroy dared not place on paper. With the help of these men, Carhampton was able to arrest many of the Connaught Leaders;[422] and legal trials being from the nature of the case impossible, he trusted to Parliament for an Act of Indemnity, and sent them by scores to serve in the Fleet. Thus, amidst the shrieks of Patriots and threats of prosecution, he succeeded in restoring some outward show of order.[423] Among Mr. Froude's startling passages, none created in Ireland a more painful sensation than this. That an Irish priest--the _Soggarth Aroon_[424] of the people--should be selling the lives of his friends, flock, and penitents, was indeed a novel incident. Interest in the episode has quite recently been revived by Mr. Lecky, who describes Father Phillips as having given the Government some really valuable assistance in detecting Rebel Leaders.[425] For all we know to the contrary, this Ecclesiastic might have gone on to the end undiscovered, posing and pontificating as a solemn Hierarch. But, in point of fact, Phillips, though in orders, had been degraded and suspended by his Ordinary. Dr. Madden, long before the publication of Froude or Lecky, casually notices Phillips[426] as an 'excommunicated priest from French Park, co. Roscommon.' His end was involved in some mystery which it may be well to penetrate. McSkimmins' 'History of Carrickfeargus' records, under date January 5, 1796: 'The body of a stranger, said to have been an informer, of the surname of Phillips, was found in a dam, near the paper mills, Belfast.' How he came there we learn from James Hope, a Protestant rebel of Ulster. After the excommunicated priest, Phillips, had betrayed a number of the Defenders in Connaught, he proceeded to Belfast, only to find, however, that his character had cast its shadow before him. A party of Defenders seized Phillips, tried him on the spot, and sentenced him to death. 'They gave him time to pray,' adds Hope, 'then put leaden weights into his pockets, and drowned him.' Punishment of informers by death was not of the frequency that McSkimmin supposed and Turner feared. Hope, who is always truthful, adds, that at a meeting of the Craigarogan Branch, 'they came to a resolution: "That any man who recommended or practised assassination of any person whomsoever, or however hostile to the Society, should be expelled."'