Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/153

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IMMIGRANTS AND EMIGRANTS.
133

of the campaign. This plucky Norfolker, who had served in Germany and Belgium, had offered his services to the Brabant insurgents in 1790, and had gone to France owing to no prospect of employment at home rather than to sympathy with the Revolution, for while a Whig, he was no Jacobin. In January 1793 he made an offer to the English Government to go over to Paris and arrange with Dumouriez to save the King's life. He believed that £100,000 would have turned the majority in the Convention the other way; but his proposal was not accepted, and on the King's death he sorrowfully returned to England. He was a witness for the defence of Hardy in 1794, and his name appears in a list of guests at the George III. Jubilee dinner at Norwich in 1809. He died at Trowse Hall, near that city, in 1817, aged seventy-seven.

In 1785 he had a perilous balloon adventure. He went up alone in Zambeccari's balloon from Norwich, in the presence of 40,000 people, was carried out of sight in an hour, and was driven out to sea, the valve being too small to allow of his descending. After being buffeted about for two hours the car dropped into the sea, and the balloon being torn, and hanging merely like an umbrella over his head, he had great difficulty in keeping afloat. A Dutch crew, inhuman or frightened, passed in sight, but took no notice of him. A