The northern executive had not responded to the call on 23 May. The senior Dublin Castle secretary, Edward Cooke, could write: "The quiet of the North is to me unaccountable; but I feel that the Popish tinge of the rebellion, and the treatment of France to Switzerland Protestant Cantons were resisting occupation and America Quasi naval war, has really done much, and, in addition to the army, the force of Orange yeomanry is really formidable." In response to the claim that "in Ulster there are 50,000 men with arms in their hands, ready to receive the French," the Westiminster Commons was assured that while "almost all Presbyterians... were attached to the popular, or, what has been called, the republican branch of the constitution, they are not to be confounded with Jacobins or banditti".