dear Bernard, I was amused at your back page comment for Simon Scarows “The Fields of Death”,he is no competition at all for you,at best he is a competent reteller of history.AS some one with ancestry in Co Meath,India and having lived in Cental Portugal I appreciate the Wesley-Wellesley-Wellington connectionI have read about two thirds of your Sharpe books with great pleasure.However you make an egregious mistake in the Fontana pbk edition of Sharpe’s Sword.On p 176 you use the phrase “English banned Irish priesthood” in the year 1812.Recently the 200th anniversary(1810-2010) of an Rc ST.Nathys College in Co Roscommon was celebrated by a cardinal and RC schools and priests had been flourishing in Ireland for a century before.Maynooth Seminary was set up in 1809 with British tax payers money.From 1660 to 1760 there were never less than one thousand secular RC clergy in Ireland in 2278 parishes rising to about five thousand by 1790.they were taking at least 200K pounds off their congregations every year in fees and fines.I get this info from a book published a century ago by a priest named Burke.I know hibernophiles like you have been taken in by Irish propaganda for centuries,even the Irish have realised by now where the RC church is at.I hope you will do more research and amend this error,regards Chris Walker