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 Byrne William Pitt Byrne William Pitt Byrne (c. 1806 – 6 or 8 April 1861) was a British newspaper editor and proprietor of "The Morning Post". He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with a BA and M.A.. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1835 and called to the bar in 1839 but never practised law. His father Nicholas Byrne was his predecessor as editor and proprietor of the "Morning Post", about whom there is little biographical information in the historical record. Nicholas Byrne took a strongly pro-Conservative editorial stance, and his son was named after William Pitt the Younger.