Clerkenwell. Despard, despite Catherine's lobbying efforts, was held for three years. During this time the authorities saw the hand not only of English radicals but also, with a large Irish contingent among the sailors, of United Irishmen in the Spithead and Nore mutinies of April and May 1797. They seized upon the leading role of Valentine Joyce at Spithead, described by Edmund Burke as "seditious Belfast clubist". Further repressive measures followed. The Corresponding Societies were comprehensively suppressed and the Combination Laws of 1799 and 1800 rendered union activity among workers criminal. Return to Ireland and renewed engagement With hostilities with France suspended by the Treaty of Amiens, Despard, who had not been charged, was released in May 1802. There was no indication that he was intending to renew his seditious activity—in prison he had petitioned for voluntary transportation. But he returned to Ireland where he met with William Dowdall, recently released from Fort George in Scotland. With Thomas Russell and other state prisoners, Dowdall had been in contact with the young militants Robert Emmet and William Putnam McCabe who were determined to reorganise United Irishmen on a strict military-conspiratorial basis. Members would be chosen personally by its officers meeting as the executive directory. The immediate aim of the reconstituted society was, in conjunction with simultaneous risings in Ireland and England, to again solicit a French invasion. The roving McCabe (Belfast, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Hamburg, Paris) was to take up the role that had been Coigly's . Despard may also have been swayed by what he observed in his home county of Queens. Government informers were reporting that while the Rebellion that had flared in 1798 had been "put down" it was "by no means suppressed. The blaze is only smothered". Meanwhile, in England, the influx of refugees from Ireland, the angry response of workers to the Combination Acts, and continued protest over food shortages encouraged renewed organisation among former conspirators. A military system and pike manufacture began to spread across the mill districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and regular meetings resumed between county and London delegates resumed. Treason trial On 16 November 1802, not long after meeting again Dowdall (who on his return to Ireland, had spoken openly of an insurrectionary conspiracy in London, at a dinner party) Despard was arrested. He was seized attending a meeting of 40 working men at the Oakley Arms public house in Lambeth.