Bottle Hill Rising
Alarm preceded the main outbreak. On 11 February an attempted Fenian raid on Chester Castle in England miscarried. The plan, in which Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy were involved, aimed to seize arms for use in Ireland. In Kerry, a small disturbance followed soon afterwards. These episodes mattered because they convinced the Dublin Castle administration and ministers in London that a renewed rising was imminent. Parliament therefore prolonged the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland. This did not suspend all law; rather, it gave the executive exceptional authority to arrest and detain people suspected of conspiring against the Crown without the ordinary safeguards of prompt legal challenge.