because provincial manners were rougher, and because there was at Paris, even at the height of the Terror, a public opinion which prevented wanton ill-treatment of prisoners.
The English college at St. Omer had enjoyed a pension of 2000 crowns, originally given by the Spanish, and continued by the French kings. In May 1790 it made a patriotic gift of 600 francs to the Assembly. In 1793 its sixty-four inmates were sent as prisoners to Arras. Gregory Stapleton, who in 1773 had succeeded Allan Butler as superior, obtained a considerable remittance from friends, which he forwarded to his old fellow-collegians of Douai, who were suffering great privations in the citadel of Doullens. In May 1794 Stapleton and his comrades were also sent to Doullens, but in the following October they were permitted to return to St. Omer, though as prisoners in the French college. At the beginning of 1795 Stapleton was allowed to go to Paris to plead for the release of the British communities of St. Omer and Douai. By dint of persuasion and money he eventually succeeded, and they landed at Dover in March 1795—viz., thirty-two from Douai, and sixty-two from St. Omer. One of the St. Omer professors, Richard Brettergh, had succumbed under the hardships of imprisonment. Stapleton himself died at St. Omer in May 1802, having gone thither to try and recover the property.
An account of the sufferings of the Douai, and
