December 19th, 1798: "Well armed banditti" with blackened faces rob and kill the elderly Father William Ryan near Arklow, Co Wicklow, on the night of the 13th.
The semi-retired priest is shot in the head by local yeomen, probably members of the Arklow Southshire Cavalry, who have previously threatened his life.
His killers are part of an emergent segment of grassroots loyalism in Wicklow and Wexford which opposes the conciliatory attitude adopted by the viceroy and has begun an unauthorised programme of chapel-burning, murder and robbery.
A letter sent from Plymouth on the 15th contains details of the destruction of the Royal Navy's frigate La Coquille in port.
The former French vessel of 44 guns was built in Bordeaux in 1795 and captured off Donegal in the aftermath of Warren's action on October 12th.
Suspicion about the cause of the blaze is directed at midshipmen who were firing rockets when the fire began. It is presumed rocket sparks ignited combustible material on the deck.
Irish sailors are among those who perish in the accident, during which great efforts were made to prevent the spread of the flames to warships anchored nearby.
Major Sirr moves on the 16th against a suspected United Irish committee meeting in a public house on New Row off Thomas Street.
The men are taken to the Castle for questioning in what appears to mark yet another coup for Sirr's staff.
The Hibernian Journal on the 17th stresses that the Rev Denis Taaffe, the author of a "seditious" anti-Union pamphlet, is a Church of Ireland minister and not of the Catholic tradition, as hitherto reported.
Yet the original allegation is correct and it seems, moreover, that Taaffe, a talented Franciscan polemicist, sustained a wound when fighting Crown forces in Leinster during the summer.
The prospect of another French naval expedition leaving the Dutch waters of the Texel for Ireland does not unnerve the viceroy.
He promises the Duke of Portland: "No exertion shall be wanting . . . to provide against any attempt which the enemy may be disposed . . . it appears unnecessary in consequence of the above intelligence, to take any step beyond the general measures of precaution . . . nor do I intend at present to direct any change in the distribution of the troops."
Oblivious to matters of national defence, the bankers and merchants of Dublin meet in the Mansion House on the 18th to debate the Union under the lord mayor's chairmanship. All five resolutions proposed by William Digges Latouche and seconded by John C. Beresford are carried, and endorsed by the lord mayor. The motions uphold the political arrangements brought into being in 1782 and imply that Union with Britain would subject the Irish economy to the inequities under which it laboured before the Renunciation Act. Maj-Gen Henry Johnson receives an unwanted communication from the Castle on the 18th informing him: "The removal of the convicts from New Geneva is unfortunately again retarded." The perennial stumbling block of shipping procurement has resurfaced at a time when the augmented prison system is again strained.
More peaceful conditions ensure near-constant channelling of prisoners to the depot from regional jails and from the many courts-martial in session.
This poses questions of expense, security and health whenever the outflow of convicts to the military and New South Wales is curtailed.