25th July, 1798: Finn's Leinster Journal reports on the 18th on the court martial of Lieut O'Dwyer of east Limerick's Coonagh Cavalry, at the behest of Tipperary High Sheriff Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald.
The vindication of O'Dwyer adds his name to the growing list of demonstrably loyal men exposed to embarrassment and potential ruin by Fitzgerald's zealousness. The district has become more disturbed with reports reaching the Castle that "parts of the King's County [Offaly] and Tipperary have looked angry".
Justice is dispensed in Limerick city to many United Irishmen as well as to six soldiers ordered "to be transported to serve his Majesty in the West Indies for life". Longford militiaman James Mahon, the only political offender, is fortunate not to be shot in the current climate of retribution.
He is instead to be conscripted into a "condemned" foreign service regiment, along with Kildare militia deserters Thomas Lawler, Michael Timmons and Michael Daly. Two black absconders from the Perthshire Highlanders make up the remainder of the batch.
Other Scots soldiers fulfil their duty in an action reported on the 21st by inflicting "considerable loss" on rebels at Castle Kelly, near Mount Pelier, Co Dublin. Edward Cooke writes to London that day on Henry Grattan's arrest for sending "an abusive letter" to Dr Patrick Duigenan. Grattan's provocative conduct comes within days of his return from England and is adjudged to be "courting a challenge", or duel, from his conservative enemy.
Also noted is the surrender of the leading Leinster rebel commanders at the centre of the mismanaged negotiations in Sallins. Cooke informs Wickham: "Fifteen of them have been dirtying my Parlour this evening. I have not yet talked to them. Aylmer, the Kildare leader, seems to be a silly, ignorant, obstinate lad". It is agreed that their lives will be preserved, but controversial rumours of more generous terms abound.
An anonymous Dublin writer claims on the 23rd "Aylmer, who acted in the Co. of Kildare as Gen of the rebels, with 13 others, all men of rank in their army, surrendered themselves to government upon condition that they be permitted to transport themselves to Philadelphia. They have chosen that place no doubt with an idea that they may there enjoy that Revolution ready made, which they attempted in vain here".
The same correspondent proclaims his confidence that "even amidst the gloom occasioned by daily executions, things begin to look better. The nocturnal attendance of many of the yeomanry guards have been dispensed with".
Another "state prisoner", William Michael Byrne of Parkhill, is executed for high treason on the 25th outside Green Street courthouse. The public fate of Byrne, a Wicklow delegate arrested at Oliver Bond's redoubt in March, follows the grim spectacle of the black-clad Sheares brothers advancing "hand in hand" to tread the "fatal board".
Byrne's stoicism and youth gains him sympathy and perhaps influences the decision to remit the most grisly part of his sentence. Justices Crookshank, Baron George, and Day of the Special Commission, told Byrne he was to be hanged but not until death after which "your bowels are to be taken out, and thrown in your face, your head is to be cut off, and your limbs are to be quartered".
A similar prospect looms over Bond, whose conviction is deemed by the Castle to be "of great consequence, for he was a leading merchant, wealthy, & at the head of the Democratic Party in the City".