21 March, 1798: John Beresford, chief commissioner of the revenue, informs Lord Auckland on the 15th that Chief Secretary Pelham is "dangerously" ill. This is an inopportune decline owing to the urgent need to revise defence policy in the light of the recent arrests. Beresford is privy to the examinations of the "traitors" detained at Bond's and is delighted that documents recovered there "confirm to a certainty what we knew before; their treasonable designs and actions". In parliament, he reports, the members "say that their lives and properties depend on exertion, and that they will not be restrained".
Although Lord Edward Fitzgerald remains at large, seditious letters sent to him by Arthur O'Connor are discovered in his Leinster House rooms. O'Connor is almost as notorious as his correspondent and awaits trial at Margate, England, along with Armagh emissary Father James Coigley with whom he was intercepted en route to France. The letters are thought to be sufficiently incriminating to ensure Fitzgerald's conviction for high treason. Richard Annesley ascertains that Lord Edward's papers include "the plan of attack of the city of Dublin, all in his handwriting.
In Kildare Lady Sarah Napier discounts all such reports and protests that "nobody dreaded a Revolution more" that her beloved nephew, Lord Edward. She supposes that he has absconded "from the dread of prison" and met with disaffected persons only to discuss the suppression of the Press. The radical paper, however, said by the Earl of Clare to have "scattered the seeds of rebellion more thick and extensively than any other machine", was not closed down until the night following the search for Fitzgerald.
Beresford's "most private" letter to Auckland contains details of "an anti-United Irish association called Orangemen, who unite by oath to fight for the king and to defend him and the constitution in church and state". They are "to be ready to receive arms from government, and resist foreign and domestic enemies. These men make no secret of their association. There are already sworn 172,000 of them, and they are not a month old. They are not the mad people who first associated under that name, and began a religious war."
The semi-official sponsorship of loyalist extremists displeases Maj Gen John Moore who on the 16th condemns "some meetings of Orange boys" in Bandon (Cork). He argues that "if by such meetings they intended to form a union to defend their country, they were unnecessary. . . and they, as soldiers, had already sworn to do it; but if it was to create a distinction and separate interest from the Catholics it was wicked, and must be punished". The general's opposition to the sowing of loyalist cadres in regiments is unaffected by his visit to Macroom, where several disaffected Sligo militiamen consented "to go abroad", or by reports of unrest at Clonakilty, Skibbereen and Bantry.
Seven Hillhall men are committed to Down county goal for severing the ears of a man they mistook for the hangman of United Irish martyr William Orr of Farranshane. One of the accused is Orr's brother-in-law and the remainder are "respectable people". An approving James McKey predicts "another great hanging match at Carrickfergus next assizes that will make a great noise".
In England the increasingly tangible shape of United Irish intrigue pleases Lord Grenville who fears that "the most complete ignorance of Irish affairs universally prevails". Many apparently need convincing that what "is carrying on in Ireland requires to be treated in a different manner than an election mob, or a drunken riot in this country".