William Pitt the Younger intelligence network of spies and informers to crush the United Irishmen. In April 1797, the Pitt government was badly shaken by the mutiny of the entire fleet at Spithead with the sailors demanding a pay increase to match inflation. The Spithead mutiny occurred at exactly the same moment that the French and their Dutch allies were preparing for an invasion of Great Britain which threw the government into a state of panic. To regain control of the fleet, Pitt agreed to sailors' demands for pay increases and to have George III pardon the mutineers. By contrast, the more political "floating
William Pitt the Younger Pitt had tried fruitlessly to persuade the Dublin parliament to loosen the anti-Catholic laws to "keep things quiet in Ireland". Pitt's efforts to soften the anti-Catholic laws failed in the face of determined resistance from the families of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, who forced Pitt to recall Earl Fitzwilliam as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1795, when the latter had indicated he would support a bill for Catholic relief. In much of rural Ireland, law and order had broken down as an economic crisis impoverished the already poor Irish peasantry and a sectarian war with many atrocities on both