The Duke of Bedford and Rigby, in their letters to England, carefully concealed the enormity of the outrage. They knew Lord Temple wished to be Lord Lieutenant; and perhaps suspected, that that ambition had been the foundation of Mr. Pitt’s expostulations. Those seeds of jealousy, combining with Rigby’s devotion to Fox, gave rise to the succeeding animosities between the Duke and Pitt. What was more remarkable was, that the letters from the Castle acquitted the Papists of being authors of the sedition; yet, a short time before, the Duke had quarrelled with the Primate for saying he had no apprehensions from that quarter. Whatever was pretended, there was much reason for believing that the insurrection had deeper foundation than in a mere jealousy of an union with England. Seditious papers had been printed: two drummers, in the livery of the College, had commenced the uproar in the Earl of Meath’s Liberties, telling the people, that if they did not rise by one o’clock, an Act would be passed to abolish Parliaments in Ireland. So small, too, was the dislike to the then Government, that one of the rioters skimming away Lord Tavistock’s[81] hat, his comrades gave him 200 lashes, saying, Lord Tavistock had not offended them. But the strongest presumption of the tumult being excited by the emissaries of France came out afterwards; it appearing that the commotion began the very day after intelligence was received that the French fleet was sailed from Brest. Indeed it is now past doubt, that the Court of France had laid a very extensive plan, meditating an attack on the three kingdoms at one and the same time. England was to be invaded from Dunkirk, Ireland by the Brest Fleet, while Thurot[82] was to fall on the north of Scotland. Nor was Dublin the sole theatre where confusion was to be spread. Riots were raised at Cork on the prohibition of exporting Irish cattle. Mr. Pitt wrote a warm letter to the Duke of Bedford to complain of his supineness after such repeated intelligence of the designs of France.