Strange times for Britain. And for William Pitt the Younger. While at the beginning of his time as Prime Minister, he’d had to contend with being in a parliamentary minority, losing votes right and left, he’d enjoyed extraordinary economic success. Now, though, with a powerful majority, he faced economic hardship and the unrest to which it led.

Partly that was due to bad harvests as well as the impact of war. The turbulence was met with repression. Nowhere was that worse that in Ireland, where Britain put it down ferociously, though without addressing the fundamental problems, which would only lie in wait to preoccupy Pitt again later.

As for the war, Britain, with its allies dropping out one after the other, was doing badly on land. But it was doing superbly at sea, as each of its three main rivals, France, Spain and Holland went down to spectacular defeat.

And yet it was in the Royal Navy itself, that he came closest to facing his own defeat, as it too was caught up in the unrest sweeping the country.

Illustration: ‘The Delegates in Council, or Beggars on Horseback’. George Cruikshank. A contemporary cartoon of the delegation of sailors who devised the terms of settlement of the Mutiny of Spithead, 1797. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License