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
Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc who repudiated his father's arrangement for Old Sarum, and chose himself as MP when he inherited the borough. Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc ("c." 1705 – 17 July 1761) was a British landowner, Member of Parliament and Lord Warden of the Stannaries. He was the grandson and namesake of the better known Thomas Pitt and the son of Robert Pitt, MP, of Boconnoc, near Lostwithiel in Cornwall. He was the elder brother of William Pitt the Elder. He succeeded his father in 1727 to his estates, including Boconnoc. He was Assay master of the Stannaries from March