in 1759. He had just been captured at sea, and was coerced by threats of hanging into thus betraying his native Quebec, but coercion is a poor excuse for treason. He petitioned Pitt, moreover, for compensation or reward, and it is said with success. The son went to France about 1777, managed a manufactory for Philippe Egalité apparently at Montargis, joined the revolutionary clubs there, next went to Rouen, and then to Paris, where he stayed at the Hotel de Philadelphie, the resort of English and Americans, and sedulously attended the Jacobin Club. On the 16th December 1793 he was denounced at the Club as an agent of Pitt, and if his father's career was known this is not surprising. He was sharply interrogated, and sent to the Committee of Public Safety. As the Club usually sat till ten, Vitré doubtless passed that night in confinement, but the Committee probably discharged him. Anyhow, he is not on the guillotine list.
The British Catholic communities in France, twenty-eight in number, with about 1000 inmates and £15,000 revenue, were nearly all despoiled and broken up by the Revolution. The Embassy for a time, indeed, obtained their exemption from the law-suppressing monasteries, on the ground that their property was derived from British benefactions, and that to confiscate it, after the invitations and assurances given by French sovereigns to the
