Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/172

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
152
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

for many innocent natives and foreigners had inevitably to suffer, and Frenchmen, lamenting that Englishmen had had to sustain so long a captivity, did everything in their power to make them forget their past sufferings. Released from Newgate on a change of ministry, he subsequently edited the Statesman, had cross suits for libel with Lewis Goldsmith, the jury giving him a farthing damages, and died in 1823, on the eve of discharge by the Insolvent Debtors' Court. A contemporary sketch of him,[1] apparently copied from a newspaper, is the sole authority I have been able to find for the fable of Paine (and Perry also) having escaped the guillotine by the cell door swinging open and being chalked on the inner side.

Henry Stevens, described like Perry as a man of letters, was imprisoned at the Abbaye, the Carmelites, and the Luxembourg from October 1793 to the end of January 1795. He also was a friend of Paine, and had written a book, which I have been unable to find, entitled "Les Crimes des Bois d'Angleterre." He called on Lord Malmesbury at Paris in 1796.

General Kilmaine should not be passed over, though he had in thirty years become to all intents and purposes a Frenchman. His real name was Charles Jennings, and he was born at Dublin in 1751, but was apparently related to the Jennings

  1. Annual Biography, 1824.