Disney Ffytche, elder brother of Dr. John Disney, (a Lincolnshire vicar who became the Unitarian minister at Essex Street chapel), apparently beat a hurried retreat, for in February 1794 his furniture was sold as that of an émigré Sir Robert Gerard, a young Lancashire baronet, with his schoolfellow, hereafter to be known as the informer Reynolds, "ran up" from Liège to see the men who were revolutionising France, but after seeing the King's return from Varennes they were advised by Lord Gower to hurry off. They were stopped eight or ten times on the way, and their papers scrutinised, lest they should be émigrés.
Cobbett may be numbered among the fugitives, for tidings of the King's dethronement and the massacre of the Swiss made him turn back at Abbeville on his way to Paris and embark at Havre for America. He had spent his honeymoon in France in the previous year. Back in London, he charged officers of his old regiment with peculation, but when a court-martial met, he failed to put in an appearance, either because he had taken hush-money or because he knew he could not substantiate his charges. He fell into further odium by allegations in support of an agitation for increasing soldiers' pay, and England being too hot for him he went in March 1792 to St. Omer, where he spent, he says, the six happiest months of his life. He found the French very hospitable, and intended
