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The Wilmot Committee: Redefining Relief and National Interest in Britain during the French Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2021
Abstract
Although anti-Catholicism and anti-Jacobinism primed many Britons to fear what one observer called “the hordes of vagabond French” who reached their shores in the fall of 1792, others launched widespread relief efforts. Among the more remarkable was the Wilmot Committee. This subscription charity convened in September 1792, channeling donations from the public to destitute French priests at a time when the British government remained hesitant to directly aid refugees from revolutionary France. This article situates the committee's particular structures in both their eighteenth-century philanthropic contexts and Britain's history of aid to foreign refugees. It then traces interconnections between charitable giving and wartime exigencies, arguing that the Wilmot Committee, which managed relief efforts first to clergy and then also to laity throughout the subsequent war years in an evolving partnership with government, played a crucial role in shaping and shifting attitudes toward foreigners during an era of ideological revolution. Ultimately, the committee worked alongside legislation like the Aliens and Emigrant Corps Acts to underline that foreigners of different religious persuasions—provided their loyalties were confirmed, their principles appropriate, and their backgrounds appealing—might be mobilized to strengthen national interests. By the 1790s, shared opposition to revolutionary republican ideology came to supersede shared Protestantism in predicting foreigners’ utility to Britain.
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References
1 Letter of the Right Reverend John Francis de la Marche, Bishop of Leon, Addressed to the French Clergymen, Refugees in England, translated into English from the Original French (London, 1793), 4, 7; Lettre de M. L'Evèque de Leon aux Ecclesiastiques Français Réfugiés en Angleterre (Quebec, 1793).
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9 Letter of the Right Reverend John Francis de la Marche, Bishop of Leon, Addressed to the French Clergymen.
10 See Henry Dundas to various, 12 September 1792, The National Archive, HO 48/2. (Hereafter this repository is abbreviated as TNA.) As secretary of the Home Office, Dundas initially sought advice from the attorney solicitor generals, and the chief justices of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer; the Aliens Act ultimately resulted from these inquiries.
11 Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution; Weiner, French Exiles.
12 For discussion of the concept, see Bellenger, Dominic Aidan, The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789: An Historical Introduction and Working List (Bath, 1986), 28–46Google Scholar.
13 Times of London, 10, 11, 14, 15 September 1792. All newspapers cited in this article are published in London.
14 See, among others, Times, 18 September 1792.
15 Dinwiddy, “The Use of the Crown's Power of Deportation,” 193. For recommendations made by authors of the Times to the government, see issues for 13 and 14 September 1792.
16 Comments by the Marquis of Lansdown on 21 December 1792, in Cobbett's Parliamentary History from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, vol. 30 [13 December 1792–10 March 1794] (London, 1817), 147. The number of forty thousand was attributed to Lord Auckland, and his letter with that figure was reprinted in September 1792 newspapers. See Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, 217. The number of one hundred thousand appears in the Times, 28 August 1792.
17 Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, 39.
18 French decrees against the émigrés included attempts to order émigré returns or face prosecution for conspiracy (November 1791); to declare émigré property forfeit if émigrés remained absent (April 1792); and to banish émigrés (October 1792). The most punitive legislation of 28 March–5 April 1793 made emigration punishable by death and declared that all émigrés forfeited their French citizenship. Émigrés were banished from French territory, viewed as civilly dead, and their property was acquired by the republic.
19 For the low estimate of twenty thousand, see Weiner, French Exiles, 39. Kirsty Carpenter places the number at thirty thousand: Carpenter, Kristy, “Secularization by Stealth? Emigres in Britain during the French Revolution,” in The French Revolution and Religion in Global Perspective, ed. Banks, Bryan A. and Johnson, Erica (Cham, 2017), 73–94, at 73Google Scholar. Other authors who have also described these waves: Childs, Frances Sergeant, French Refugee Life in the United States, 1790–1800 (Baltimore, 1940)Google Scholar; Greer, Donald, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1951)Google Scholar.
20 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy; Erica Johnson, “Religion and the Atlantic World: The Case of Saint-Domingue and French Guiana,” in Banks and Johnson, French Revolution and Religion, 49–71.
21 For the many terms used for émigrés, see Reboul, French Emigration to Great Britain, 1–3. As Reboul argues, terms used tend to reflect the “describer's political position on emigration.” Émigré tends to reflect a certain political stance; refugee tends to “incriminate” the situation migrants had to flee; more neutral terms tend to include exile, emigrant, or displaced person (Reboul, 1).
22 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 3.
23 William Doyle, introduction to The French Émigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789–1814, ed. Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel (New York, 1999), xv–xii.
24 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 29:1556–76, and vol. 30 more generally.
25 For one such reference, see Times, 23 May 1793.
26 Such language appears in the 1681 brief on behalf of the Huguenots, which can be found in the Currant Intelligence (26–30 July 1681), and the 1709 brief on behalf of the Palatines, which can be found in The Piety and Bounty of the Queen of Great Britain with the Charitable Benevolence of Her Loving Subjects toward the support and settlement of the Distressed Protestant Palatines (London, 1709). See also Hintermaier, John M., “The First Modern Refugees? Charity, Entitlement, and Persuasion in the Huguenot Immigration of the 1680s,” Albion 32, no. 3 (2000): 429–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Statt, Daniel, Foreigners and Englishmen: The Controversy over Immigration and Population, 1660–1760 (Newark, 1995)Google Scholar.
27 As John Hintermaier notes in “First Modern Refugees?” (429n2), according to the Oxford English Dictionary the word refugee entered the English lexicon around 1681, although the concept of England as a land of refuge certainly existed before then. See also Shaw, Caroline, Britannia's Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (New York, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Norton, Mary Beth, The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774–1789 (Boston, 1972)Google Scholar; Jasanoff, Maya, “The Other Side of Revolution: Loyalists in the British Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 2 (2008): 205–32Google Scholar; Jasanoff, Maya, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.
29 Hintermaier, “First Modern Refugees?,” 448–49.
30 Thomas Trigge to Henry Dundas, 13 September 1792, TNA, HO 42/21.
31 Thomas Trigge to Henry Dundas, 13 September 1792, TNA, HO 42/21.
32 Henry Dundas to Thomas Trigge, 15 September 1792, TNA, HO 42/21.
33 Henry Dundas to Lord Hood, 21 September 1792, TNA, HO 42/21.
34 Letter from Henry Dundas to unspecified recipient, 25 September 1792, TNA HO, 42/21.
35 Letter from Henry Dundas to unspecified recipient, 25 September 1792, TNA HO, 42/21.
36 Edmund Burke to Lord Sheffield, 17 October 1792, in The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods, vol. 7, January 1792–August 1794 (Chicago, 1968), 274.
37 As quoted in Weiner, French Exiles, 10.
38 Times, 21 September 1792; Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, 33; Reboul, French Emigration to Great Britain, 97.
39 For more on this “conciliatory trifecta” and its impact on the remigration of the vast majority of émigrés, see Kelly Summers, “Healing the Republic's ‘Great Wound’: Emigration Reform and the Path to a General Amnesty, 1799–1802,” in French Emigrants in Revolutionised Europe: Connected Histories and Memories, ed. Laure Philip and Juliette Reboul (Cham, 2019), 235–55. The partial amnesty granted in 1800 may also explain the significant remigration that had already occurred by the end of 1800, noted in Greer, The Incidence, 104. For the Concordat, see in particular Dominic Aidan Bellenger, “The Last Ditch: The French Émigré Clergy in Britain and the Concordat of 1801,” in Philip and Reboul, French Emigrants in Revolutionised Europe, 257–75; Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 112–25. By late 1802, however, the threat of renewed hostilities had already led to a slowdown in these returns.
40 John Wilmot was appointed to inquire into the allowances of loyalists receiving government pensions in August 1782; he then became one of five commissioners with the authority to review the claims of loyalists under the July 1783 act of Parliament. Wilmot continued this work for more than six years before the commission published its final report in 1790. See Eardley-Wilmot, John, Historical View of the Commission for Enquiring into the Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists, at the Close of the War between Great Britain and her Colonies in 1783 (Boston, 1972)Google Scholar.
41 See, for example, London Recorder or Sunday Gazette, 16 September 1792; Morning Chronicle, no. 7265, 19 September 1792; World, no. 1786, 19 September 1792.
42 Joanna Innes, “The ‘Mixed Economy of Welfare’ in Early Modern England: Assessments of the Options from Hale to Malthus (c. 1683–1803),” in Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past, ed. Martin Daunton (New York, 1996), 139–80. See also Donna Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989), 4–5; the contributions in Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes, eds., Charity, Philanthropy and Reform from the 1690s to 1850 (New York, 1998); Ben-Amos, Ilana Krausman, The Culture of Giving: Informal Support and Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 David Owen linked the emergence of the subscription charity to the joint-stock business ventures of the era: Owen, David, English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (Cambridge, MA, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Others have largely echoed this assessment, although in The Culture of Giving, Ben-Amos has linked the practices of the subscription society in England to those of the early modern guild associations.
44 The Wilmot Committee's interaction with these other committees is well documented in its minutes and proceedings for 1792. See British Library, Add. MSS 18591. (Hereafter this repository is abbreviated as BL.) See also Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, 44–59; Weiner, 54–69.
45 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers for the Relief of the French Clergy, 20 September 1792, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fol. 3. As the descriptors for the committee and their materials vary among the archives holding its materials—among them “Committee of Subscribers for the Relief of the French Clergy,” “French Refugees Relief Committee,” “Committee of Subscribers”—I clarify in all citations that it is the Wilmot Committee. In the citations to items from the British Library, the body is hereafter referred to as the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee].
46 Innes, “‘Mixed Economy of Welfare,’” 146.
47 Joanna Innes, “State, Church and Voluntarism in European Welfare, 1690–1850,” in Cunningham and Innes, Charity, Philanthropy and Reform, 21.
48 A copy of the published list, “List of Subscribers to the Relief of the Suffering Clergy of France, Refugees in the British Dominions,” can be found in Osborn C42, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. (Hereafter this repository is referred to as Beinecke Library.) An archival copy held in TNA, T 93/8 lists subscribers in order of the date they subscribed, the first listing being 8 August 1792.
49 Ben-Amos, Culture of Giving, 136.
50 Weiner, French Exiles, 64.
51 Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, 28
52 Carpenter, 33.
53 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 17 October 1792, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fol. 28; Reboul, French Emigration to Great Britain, 99. Léon was throughout his life in routine and direct correspondence with ministers and the Treasury, much of which is preserved.
54 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 25.
55 For later examples of surveillance within the “communauté d'origine,” see Gérard Noiriel, Réfugiés et Sans Papiers: La République Face au Droit d'Asile, XIXe–XXe Siècle (Paris, 1991); Pierre Piazza, Histoire de la Carte Nationale d'Identité (Paris, 2004).
56 See Sundstrom, Roy, “French Huguenots and the Civil List, 1696–1727: A Study of Alien Assimilation in England,” Albion 8, no. 3 (1976): 219–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The 1709 brief for the Palatines appointed over one hundred “Trustees and Receivers” for the collection, among them at least five leaders from the German Lutheran community, entrusting them with the task of then distributing funds. The Palatine Commissioners’ first formal meeting was announced in the London Gazette of 5–7 July 1709. For information received from members of the Palatine community, see TNA, CO 388/76.
57 These activities are detailed in the following: Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], BL, Add. MSS 18591 and 18592; Minutes of the Committee [Wilmot Committee], TNA, T 93/1–93/7. For details on the management of the King's House at Winchester, see Letters (Winchester), TNA, T 93/53.
58 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 26 and 28 September, BL Add. MSS 18591, fols. 9, 11; Edmund Burke to Earl Fitzwilliam, 29 November 1792, in Marshall and Woods, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 7:274; Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 3 December 1792, BL Add. MSS 18591, fol. 50.
59 Minutes of the Committee [Wilmot Committee], copy of letter from Corbin to Wilmot, 24 January 1793, entered into the minutes, TNA, T 93/53.
60 See the following letters in Marshall and Woods, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. 7: Edmund Burke to Walker King, 20 September 1792 (219–21); Richard Burke to Walker King, 20 September 20 1792 (222); Edmund Burke to Richard Burke, Jr., 1 October 1792 (225).
61 Draft of Advertisement in Favor of the French Clergymen included with other papers from early November 1792, TNA, HO 42/21.
62 Star, 19 October 1792.
63 Edmund Burke to David Hughes, 16 October 1792, in Marshall and Woods, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 7:270.
64 Edmund Burke to Henry Dundas, 19 September 1792, in Marshall and Woods, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 7:215.
65 Burke to Dundas, 19 September 1792, in Marshall and Woods, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 7:216.
66 Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, 198, 133.
67 A draft of this document is in Letters and Papers, TNA, HO 42/21. The essay was published in the following: Times, 18 September 1792; Evening Mail, 17–19 September 1792. It was then published in pamphlet form and is most easily accessible as Burke, Edmund, Case of the Suffering Clergy of France, Refugees in the British Dominions (London, 1793)Google Scholar.
68 See Times, 18 January 1793; Public Advertiser, 13 February 1793.
69 Times, 16 October 1792.
70 See True Briton, 19 November 1793.
71 A copy of these guidelines, entitled “Conduite a tenir par M. M. les Ecclésiastiques François Réfugiés en Angleterre,” published by J. P. Coghlan, can be found in Beinecke Library, Osborn C42, File 2.
72 Times, 21 September 1793; these sentiments are also evident in Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 18 February 1793, BL, Add. MSS 18591.
73 Minutes of the Committee [Wilmot Committee], 30 October 1798, TNA, T 93/2.
74 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 29 October 1792, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fols. 34–36. On this day, the committee determined to publish the numbers of clergymen who had received aid; in October 1793, the World ran an advertisement noting that the number of clergymen in London was estimated at six thousand. See also Sheffield to Dundas, 25 September 1792, TNA, HO 42/21.
75 Sturges to Wilmot, 23 March 1796, Beinecke Library, Osborn C42, file 10. Wilmot's request to publish this letter appears in Wilmot to Bishop of Winchester, 26 March 1796, TNA, T 93/8.
76 Public Advertiser, 22 September 1792, as quoted in Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, 44.
77 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 17 October 1792, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fol. 28.
78 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 33.
79 Dundas to Burke, 21 September 1792, in Marshall and Woods, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 7:223.
80 Times, 21 September 1792.
81 See Stanley to Nepean, 18 December 1792, TNA, HO 42/23.
82 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 24, citing unfoliated list in TNA HO 1/1.
83 Times, 24 September 1792.
84 Report of the Committee of General Defence on the Dispositions of the British Government towards France, and on the Measures to be Taken addressed to the National Convention of France, also the Second Report on a Declaration of War with England (London, 1793), 30.
85 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 19.
86 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 18 February 1793, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fol. 77.
87 Bewes, Wyndham Anstis, Church Briefs, or Royal Warrants for Collections for Charitable Objects (London, 1896)Google Scholar; Harris, Mark, “‘Inky Blots and Rotten Parchment Bonds’: London, Charity Briefs and the Guildhall Library,” Historical Research 66, no. 159 (1993): 98–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Walford, “Kings’ Briefs: Their Purposes and History,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, no. 10 (1882): 1–74.
88 Thanks to Peter William Walker for sharing this letter, from A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow on Friday, February 18, 1780 (London, 1780).
89 See Hannah Weiss Muller, “Hearing Their Petitions: Royal Briefs and Benevolence,” paper presented at Petitions in Context Workshop, Birbeck, University of London, 11 April 2019.
90 The archbishop's letter and the king's letter are reproduced in Wake, W. R., Two Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of St. Michael one on the Fast-Day, April 19; the other on occasion of soliciting Relief for the Emigrant French Clergy (Bath, 1793), 15–17Google Scholar.
91 On 7 November 1793, the committee noted that collections amounted to £40,012.5.11¾. See Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], BL, Add. MSS 18591, fols. 126–27.
92 Wake, Two Sermons, 17, 24.
93 Hannah More, Considerations on Religion and Public Education with Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont [. . .] together with An Address to the Ladies of Great Britain and Ireland in behalf of the French Emigrant Clergy (Boston, 1794), 5, 6.
94 Wilmot to Chamberlyn, 16 May 1793, Beinecke Library, Osborn C42, file 4.
95 Wake, “Sermon II,” in Two Sermons, 19–21.
96 Burke, Case of the Suffering Clergy of France, 2.
97 Burney, Fanny, Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy: Earnestly Submitted to the Humane Consideration of the Ladies of Great Britain (London, 1793), 2Google Scholar.
98 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], various, BL, Add. MSS 18591–18592. These activities are discussed by Weiner in French Exiles, 54–69.
99 Copies of these reports can be found in TNA, T 1/725/2756. The letter from Charles Long, secretary to the Board of Treasury, apprising Wilmot of the payments, is reproduced in several locations, including Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 19 December 1793, BL, Add. MSS 18592, fols. 9–10; TNA, T 93/1; TNA, T 27/44.
100 Other countries in Europe, however, supported the émigrés in their military efforts.
101 See Weiner, French Exiles, 223–25. The government had already been providing grants to members of the French royal family in exile. Weiner compiled these figures from the Annual Register for the years 1794 to 1810; her total amounted to £2,952,746.8.2½, though that number included small amounts for American loyalists, sufferers from St. Domingo, and Corsican refugees. Treasury records also indicate small allowances made through the early 1820s, confirming that a group of impoverished émigrés remained in Britain after 1815, even if nine-tenths of them had returned to France by the time of Napoleon's fall. See Doyle, introduction to French Émigrés in Europe, xix. For the sizable group of French émigrés remaining in exile after 1815, see Bellenger, “The Last Ditch”; Hill, Alan G., “Wordsworth and the Émigré French Clergy, 1790–1827,” Review of English Studies 55, no. 218 (2004): 60–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
102 In December 1793, the committee had agreed that the presence of two committee members, as opposed to earlier provisions for five, would be sufficient to transact business. See Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 19 December 1793, BL, Add. MSS 18592, fol. 12.
103 A copy of the correspondence relating to this subtle alteration in the committee's structure and title can be found in TNA, T 93/2. At the committee's meeting on 5 February 1798, Wilmot and Glyn read a letter from Charles Long asking them to assume superintendence of the distribution. The only acknowledgments of this “salary” that I have found are in letters from Charles Long to John Wilmot and Thomas Glyn, dated 3 February 1798 in the Treasury Outletters, TNA, T 27/49; and Thomas Glyn to George Harrison, 17 December 1807, Beinecke Library, Osborn C42, folder 20.
104 George Nugent-Temple Grenville to Wilmot, 8 June 1806, Beinecke Library, OSB MSS 54, box 1, folder 19.
105 Minutes and Proceedings of the Committee [Wilmot Committee], TNA, T 93/15. The reasons for finally closing the “Emigrant Office” in the early 1820s are not entirely clear. A small group of French refugees remained in Britain after 1815, and the Treasury continued disbursements to them until at least the early 1820s (see notes 37 and 97 above). It is possible that discussions that ultimately resulted in the Indemnity Bill (1825), which indemnified certain émigré families for confiscation of their properties during the revolution, and the perception that France had moved past the extremes of revolution, which seemed confirmed when the ultraconservative Comte d'Artois became Charles X (1824), contributed to the perception that aid to French refugees was no longer necessary. For more, see Almut Franke, “Le milliard des émigrés: The Impact of the Indemnity Bill of 1825 on French Society,” in Carpenter and Mansel, French Émigrés in Europe, 124–37.
106 Weiner, French Exiles, 152. Minutes of the committee's meetings, beginning on 19 December 1793, can be found among the Treasury Papers, likely reflecting the date of Long's letter apprising Wilmot of the Treasury grants. Minutes prior to this date can be found in BL Add. MSS 18591-18592, or occasionally among some of Wilmot's private papers in the Beinecke Library.
107 After Wilmot's resignation, an audit was conducted in 1806, resulting in numerous documents to make transparent systems of distribution. See Copies of Papers Relating to the Examination of the Accounts of John Wilmot and Thomas Glyn and of the Correspondence thereon with the Audit Office, TNA, T 93/6.
108 Bellenger, French Exiled Clergy, 18.
109 Weiner, French Exiles, 67.
110 Thomas Glyn to George Harrison, 17 December 1807, preserved in Beinecke Library, Osborn C42, folder 20.
111 Weiner, French Exiles, 67.
112 Hughes to McLean, 18 November 1796, TNA, T 93/8.
113 Hughes to McLean, 18 November 1796, TNA, T 93/8.
114 Hughes to Woodford, 30 July 1796, TNA, T 93/8.
115 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 9 April 1795, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fol. 109.
116 Weiner, French Exiles, 67–68. Records of the Treasury Office help make clear the systems for distribution, in particular, the audit conducted in 1806; Copies of Papers, TNA, T 93/6.
117 Cottret, Bernard, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), 200Google Scholar.
118 Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen, 135.
119 Norton, British Americans, 116; see also, generally, Wilmot, A Historical View.
120 Dinwiddy, “Use of the Crown's Power of Deportation,” 206.
121 “Parliamentary Intelligence—House of Commons, Friday, January 4, 1793,” Times, 5 January 1793. For debates on the Aliens Act, see Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 30:147–238.
122 King to Canning, 7 September 1796, TNA, HO 5.
123 King to Lord Mayor, 2 March 1797, TNA, HO 43/8.
124 Wilmot to Long, 8 March 1797, Beinecke Library, Osborn C42, file 11.
125 See 34 Geo. III, Cap. 43 in The Statutes at Large of England and of Great Britain from Magna Carta to the Union of the Kingdoms, vol. 18 (London, 1811). For copies of the “Reglemens pour la Levée des Corps François a la Solde de l'Angleterre,” see Dundas to M. G. Williamson, 8 December 1794, enclosures, TNA, WO 6/5. A copy of these “Reglemens,” dated 20 August 1794, can also be found in TNA, FO 27/43.
126 See Hannah Weiss Muller, “Dangerous Aliens, Desired Recruits: French Émigrés, 1792–1795,” paper presented at the North American Conference on British Studies, Providence, 27 October 2018.
127 Muller, “Dangerous Aliens, Desired Recruits.”
128 A number of these can be found in TNA, WO, FO, and HO records relating to the Emigrant Corps. See Memoire aux Ministres de Sa Majesté Britannique par Basle a Soleurre, 28 Octobre 1793, TNA, FO 27/42.
129 Amherst to Windham, 22 October 1794, TNA, WO 40/6.
130 Hendry Dundas, comments on 17 April 1794, in Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. 31 [March 1794 to May 1795] (London, 1818), 414.
131 Times, 1 April 1793.
132 Hughes to Chief Magistrates, 30 March 1796, TNA, T 93/8.
133 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 29 April 1796, BL, Add. MSS 18591, fol. 245.
134 Numerous other interconnections exist between humanitarian, military, and government efforts. The Wilmot Committee, for example, assisted many of the families left destitute after disastrous émigré losses at Quiberon. Edmund Burke founded the Penn School for young refugee nobles, many of whom had lost parents at Quiberon, relying on government donations and the patronage of the French Princes and French Committee. See Kirsty Carpenter, “Émigré Children and the French School at Penn (Buckinghamshire): 1796–1814,” in Philip and Reboul, French Emigrants in Revolutionised Europe, 91–110.
135 As quoted in Weiner, French Exiles, 153.
136 John Wilmot to Benjamin West, 12 June 1809, Beinecke Library, OSB MSS 54, box 2, folder 57.
137 Minutes of the Committee of Subscribers [Wilmot Committee], 7 December 1792, BL, Add. MSS 18591, folder 52.