112 Life of Count Rumford. 



his Majesty's feet [George III.] as a literary as well as 

 apolitical curiosity." 



While the war was in progress, Mr. Thompson 

 was brought into constant and intimate relations with 

 the refugees or loyalists who had sought in England 

 for protection against popular indignation and violence 

 in this country, which steadily increased with the ex- 

 asperation excited by every new measure of hostility 

 adopted by the mother country. Being himself so well 

 provided for, and in a situation of influence, where his 

 patronage was effective, he undoubtedly found his posi- 

 tion in this respect one of embarrassment and annoy- 

 ance. There were several centres in England where 

 these refugees gathered for companionship and mutual 

 comfort. Bristol sheltered very many of them, but 

 London was the place of their thickest concourse. The 

 condition of most of the exiles was deplorable in the 

 extreme, and many of the more magnanimous of them 

 learned abroad a true love for their native country by 

 suffering for it, if in another way, hardly any less in 

 feeling than they would have suffered had they re- 

 mained exposed to the dislike and gibes of their own 

 fellow-citizens. Such of these refugees as had no means 

 of their own and no wealthy friends the case with all 

 but a very few of them^ beset the home government 

 with their piteous appeals for aid, and the overburdened 

 treasury was drawn upon for pensions and gratuities to 

 keep them from starvation. Every one of them who 

 could establish a claim for any loss incurred by his 

 loyalty on this side of the water was eager to press 

 his demands. In one year the grants made to them 

 amounted to some < 80,000. At the close of the war, 



* Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society, 3d Series, Vol. VIII. pp. zy8, 279. 



