25 April 1798: The mass arrest of United Irish leaders at Bond's in March has left the Leinster provincial committee in disarray but steels the Ulster equivalent to persevere and meet in Armagh. They assemble in William Campbell's Inn on the 17th under the chairmanship of a cloth merchant named Porter who attends with fellow Monaghan representative John Crawford. Alan Donaldson and John Wilson of Newtownhamilton join from Armagh while a former inmate of Dundalk gaol is delegated from Louth. Donegal is represented by John Marshall, Derry by Adjutant-General Smith and William McKeiver, Tyrone by William Clark and Antrim by John Montgomery of Killead whose brother, Rev. Henry Montgomery, is a suspected United Irishman.
They agree to reconvene in Kay's Tavern in Belfast on the 19th at the request of Nicholas Mageean, a Catholic living near Saintfield (Down) who is in the pay of the government. Mageean argues that the absence in Dublin of Belfast's Robert Simms renders the Armagh session pointless. Few of the west, south and mid-Ulster delegates can make the Belfast meeting, however, to which Mageean is accompanied by David Thompson. Simms and shopkeeper Robert Hunter speak for the town and discuss the conflicting reports of French intentions obtained from contacts in Paris and Liverpool. It is claimed, in reference to the Leinster committee, that "the only men that dared to act in the worst of times" were Ulstermen and that their southern comrades would have been "completely disorganized" if Simms, Samuel Neilson and Col Ludlow had not come to their assistance.
New troop deployments to enforce martial law in more and more sectors continue as the northerners confer. Elements of the Earl of Kingsborough's North Cork Militia are ordered to reinforce the Wexford garrisons of Gorey, Enniscorthy and the county town. Kingsborough is an Orange enthusiast and commands a regiment inured to severity by service in the anti-Defender campaign of 1795 in Roscommon and the dragooning of Ulster in 1797. In Tipperary, Faulkner's Dublin Journal reports on the 19th, "every United Irishman tried for High Treason [at Clonmel] has been convicted and condemned to die". Tim Ryan, Pat Garret, John Connor and James Browne are sentenced to death for being part of the "large body" which fired on the Louth militia and Cashel Cavalry at Tuberdora in March.
In Wicklow, the Journal notes, a troop of Ancient Britons patrolling from Newtownmountkennedy seized two men named Long near Delgany suspected of "treasonable acts". The captain "caused the punishment of picketing to be inflicted upon one of them who was deepest in the plot, to compel him to confess, which he endured for a time" before confessing. This "slight punishment" entails placing the victim's bare foot on a sharp spike while forcing him to support his own weight by means of a pulley mechanism. Not publicised is the fact that in the past week the Britons lynched six men "because they w[oul]d not make such discoveries as they were required to make" and sabred the clothes off women wearing green apparel.
Such actions inform Abercromby's decision to step down as commander in chief and he is temporarily replaced on the 21st by General Lake. The efficacy of martial law is also questionable given that the latest figures indicate slow but steady growth in Leinster. Captured returns credit Carlow with 11,300 members, Kildare, 11, 910; Kilkenny, 6,700; Dublin county, 7,412; Dublin city, 8,597; Meath, 8,596; Wicklow, 14,000; King's County, 6,500 and Westmeath, 5,250.