Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/39

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DELIVERANCE TO CAPTIVES.
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then fifteen years of age, to Belgium, as Count O'Gara wished to make her and her brother his heirs. She, however, desired to be a nun, whereupon O'Gara, disapproving this, placed her in the Lille convent, and she never went outside the gate till fetched by her brother to Paris. This version was obviously dictated by Rose herself. Macdonagh retorted by showing Desmoulins letters in her writing addressed to him, one of them referring to their secret marriage. Carondelet made no rejoinder. "When Rutledge in 1791 took down the story in full, Macdonagh, apparently not wishing, on second thoughts, that it should be published, asked to borrow the manuscript, but Rutledge refused. In a letter to the Moniteur Macdonagh then announced that he was on his way to Hainaut to secure the punishment of Rose and her co-conspirator. He was probably the Colonel Macdonagh who, in 1804, wrote a long letter in the Paris Argus on English misrule in Ireland.

Rutledge, as a prisoner under the old régime and one of the first political prisoners after its fall, may here be spoken of. He was the son of Walter Rutledge, a Jacobite privateer at Dunkirk, who joined "Walsh of Nantes in lending vessels, arms, and money to Charles Edward in 1745. The Old Pretender repaid them the money, and conferred a baronetcy on Rutledge, whose son consequently styled himself the Chevalier (or Sir James) Rut-