1795, of exporting coin, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, then to be detained as English. Charlotte Thomson, wife of François Laisin, who was interrogated and had her property sequestrated, April 6th, 1794, was apparently of British extraction, though born at Vienne.
As for the hostages in the provinces, they were most numerous in the north of France, for Boulogne even before the Revolution had a considerable English colony, retrenchment or fear of creditors attracting some of them.[1] Richard Warburton Lytton, Bulwer's grandfather, was one of those who fled in time, leaving his house to be confiscated. Englishwomen married to American Quakers at Dunkirk—the Quakers had been invited over to introduce whale-fishing—were, on the appeal of one of the husbands to the Convention, October 26th, 1793, declared exempt from arrest, unless "suspects" or married to suspects. Others were less fortunate. Mrs. Thicknesse, second wife of Governor Thicknesse—her stepson became Lord Audley—had started with her husband for Italy in 1792, when on the very day of leaving Boulogne he expired in the carriage. She returned to Boulogne for the funeral, and was erecting a costly monument over his remains when she was arrested, and, with other Englishwomen, confined in the Ursuline convent. The
- ↑ Byron's father, Captain Byron, died at Valenciennes, out of reach of his creditors, in August 1791.
