Enemies of the State by M. J. Trow Page B

trial in the spring of 1820 and given some additional purple phraseology by George Wilkinson. Thistlewood was born in Horncastle at the foot of the Wolds in Lincolnshire where the Bain and Waring streams meet. The place was best known for its great horse fair, described by George Borrow in The Romany Rye . Borrow was the son of a regular soldier who served in the Napoleonic Wars and he became fascinated with the ‘travelling people’ to be found at fairs like Horncastle.
    Thistlewood’s father was a bailiff or steward to ‘an ancient family’ in the area and the boy, probably from the age of 8 (1778), was privately taught with a view to becoming a land-surveyor. At a time of increasing enclosure and when ownership of land was still the cornerstone of wealth, such a career was respectable and potentially lucrative. In his teens however the lad ‘manifested idle and unsettled habits’ and became something of a trial to his family until he obtained a commission in a militia regiment at the age of 21. It was now 1791 and the shock waves of the French Revolution were being widely felt. The militia were on standby in the event of war and invasion, but Thistlewood had other conquests in mind. Even in the militia, an officer had to purchase his commission and was expected to live a certain lifestyle, with expensive uniforms and an indulgence in the social round of balls, soirees, point to point races, drinking and gambling. Where and how he met ‘a young lady of the name of Bruce’ is not recorded, but she was worth £300 a year on account of the property she owned in Bawtry in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a little south-west of the Great North Road.
    Thistlewood promptly resigned his militia commission and settled downto the life of a kept man, but he hadn’t read the small print. The financial deal, in an age when men dominated the world of money and inheritance, was that the new Mrs Thistlewood received the interest on her fortune for her lifetime only. When she died sixteen months later in child-bed, the cash reverted and Thistlewood was broke. It seems from later events that the baby died too, so an unencumbered Thistlewood obtained a second commission in a ‘marching’, i.e. regular regiment. How he was able to do this without a purchase price is unclear, but it was 1793 and Pitt’s government was desperate for officers and men to fight the ‘blue-water’ colonial war he believed would beat the French.
    Because there is no record of Thistlewood’s regiment, we cannot trace his whereabouts in these months. General Carey’s tiny army of 7,000 men took Martinique, St Lucia and Guadeloupe, as well as Tobago, but large numbers of men became ill and died from dysentery and yellow fever without even seeing a Frenchman and Thistlewood quickly grew bored with this, resigned his commission and sailed to America.
    The United States was a new nation with no love for the British and Thistlewood did not stay long. We have no idea exactly where he was although of course, at that stage, the westward extent of white settlement was still effectively the Allegheny mountains. Thistlewood then obtained a passport for France and reached Paris soon after the overthrow of Robespierre. By now, it was the end of July, Thermidor in the new Revolutionary calendar, and France was licking her internal wounds after two years of the Terror. If relations may have been strained for Thistlewood in America, they must have been doubly difficult in France for an Englishman whose country was at war. ‘In France,’ says Wilkinson, ‘his evil genius still followed him.’ There were irregularities in his passport and, despite the fact that ‘he became initiated in all the doctrines and sentiments of the French Revolutionists’, 4 found himself imprisoned by the French police. This was clearly not in Paris, but exactly where is unrecorded. Eventually an order for