from Paris next day," sarcastically wrote Talbot to Whitworth, "explains the motive of his refusal [to leave], and brings consolation, I trust, to the lovesick prisoner." Lady Craufurd, daughter of General Gage, seems to have been safe in England or Scotland. In October 1804 Craufurd had permission to go to Aix-la-chapelle for two months, but he made his way to England, pleading in excuse his wife's illness and the loss of promotion. Let us hope that his wife thought him sufficiently punished for his attentions to the lady from Paris, especially as gallantry ran in the family, for his cousin Quintin, as we have seen, had the same failing.[1] Craufurd's fellow-diplomatist, Alexander Cockburn, was more scrupulous as to his parole. Consul at Hamburg, he was detained at Paris in May 1803, but his French Creole wife, Yolande de Vignier, obtained an introduction to Josephine, and thus procured his release. His son, the future Chief Justice, whom we all remember well, was then lying in his cradle. Cockburn became minister to Colombia, and died in 1852, thirteen years after Craufurd.
Brooke, M.P. for Newton, Lancashire, followed the example of escaping. His clever French valet
- ↑ Shortly before Quintin Craufurd's death at Paris in 1819 his wife was prosecuted for defamation by Sir James, for relating in drawing-rooms that he had forced Quintin, pistol in hand, to settle £48,000 a year on him. The suit was dismissed. Quintin's servants afterwards prosecuted Sir James for defamation, apparently at their mistress's instigation.
