Forster escaped from Newgate by an ingenious ruse, only possible in days when prisons were conducted very much like hotels. He had inveigled Pitts, the Governor, into his room and the two sat drinking wine there while Forster’s servant locked the head-gaoler’s attendant in the cellar. Forster then left the room, ostensibly for a moment, but did not return, and the Governor, alarmed, arose to find himself locked in. Already, while he was vainly shouting and thumping upon the thick oak door, Forster and his trusty servant had enlarged themselves from gaol, and were making for Rochford on the Essex coast, whence they embarked for France. Forster took no further part in public affairs, but travelled to Italy, and died at Rome in 1738. Had he shown generalship at Preston equal to this of his flight, all might have gone well with the Pretender. The rebellion of 1745 came nearer success than this of thirty years earlier, but we do not find Preston harbouring and encouraging the rebels of that time, to anything like the same extent. The gaiety of Preston was not, this time, for them. But what, after all, did that gaiety amount to? A great deal, perhaps, judged by the standard of the wild Highlanders, come but lately from their solitary glens; but very little, it would seem, reckoned from an English standpoint, if the business then done by the sole wine-merchant of the town may serve for comparison. It would appear that the merchant who supplied Manchester lived at Preston, as the resort of the gentry, and was rarely asked to supply more than a gallon of wine at a time: and that a time which did not commonly stint itself in drink. It was a very small place in those days, and numbered little more than 6,000 inhabitants; but when the factory system was introduced into the cotton manufacture, it grew rapidly, and is now a great town of more than 113,000 people. Nothing else so vividly shows us how far removed we are from those days, in circumstances and spirit, than the simple juxtaposition of those eloquent figures, which speak far more eloquently than the most impassioned descriptive writing. [Illustration: PRESTON: TOWN HALL, HARRIS PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND SESSIONS HOUSE] [Sidenote: _PRESTON TOWN HALL_]