Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/23

 I.

DELIVERANCE TO CAPTIVES. Lord Massareene—Capt. Whyte—Playfair—Blackwell—H. Priestley—Lord Liverpool—Rigby—Macdonagh—Rutledge. Revolution, which ended by imprisoning several hundred Englishmen in Paris alone, began by liberating two, if not three, who had grown grey in captivity. The Earl of Massareene, with thoroughly British obstinacy, had remained a prisoner for at least nineteen years rather than yield to extortionate creditors. One version of his incarceration is that, arriving in Paris, a young man of twenty-three, he was deluded by a Syrian with a scheme for importing salt from Asia Minor, and signed bills to a large amount. Rutledge, however, a fellow-prisoner, who describes Massareene as the senior inmate, doing the honours of the place to newcomers, dispelling their melancholy, inviting them to supper, and encouraging them to narrate their adventures by giving his own, makes him speak thus:—