The MacLeans of Rùm and of Duart were mild supporters of the Scottish reformation, remaining Episcopalian, rather than becoming Presbyterian, and consequently the Roman Catholic church thought them susceptible to re-conversion. In 1622, the Irish church sent Cornelius Ward, a Franciscan friar, to bring Roman Catholicism back into the MacLean lands. Arriving on Rùm in 1625, Cornelius reported that it only had three villages; a few decades earlier the much smaller nearby island of Muck was recorded as having twice as many able men, suggesting that Rùm's population had been deliberately constrained.