were living upon what they could earn, and he dissuaded them from returning to England. A fresh confiscation, however, befell them in 1799, and they sought refuge with the Jerninghams at Cossey, Norfolk, where the community died out.
The Benedictine monastery and the three British seminaries were closed or turned into prisons, but the priests and monks mostly escaped. The Irish college, which then had lay as well as clerical students, had stormy times. In December 1790, one of a party of its students, walking in the Champ de Mars and mounting the Federation altar, leaned against and accidentally knocked down a wooden pedestal. The sentry tried to arrest the delinquent, his comrades defended him, a mob collected, and had not Lafayette with 100 horsemen hurried up, six of the Irish youths would have been hanged on the spot for the supposed insult to the altar. As it was, they spent a fortnight in prison, and were then acquitted. Later on a mob attempted to break into the college; but Mac Canna, a student, pistol in hand, planted himself at the gate, threatened to shoot the first man who advanced, and improvised a speech on the position of Irish exiles confiding in French hospitality, whereupon the mob applauded and dispersed. In September 1791 the congregation at the college chapel, including French worshippers, were mobbed on leaving, a lady being shamefully flogged, but
