treated with more than usual severity. Two rooms in the King's Bench
State House were provided for him, in which, of course, all the
expenses of his maintenance devolved upon himself. He was led
to understand that, if he chose to ask for it, he might have the
privilege of "the rules," which would have allowed him, on certain
conditions, a range of about half-a-mile round the prison. But he
did not choose to ask. Rather, he said, than seek any favour from
the Government, he would lie in a dungeon all through the term of his
unjust imprisonment. Throughout that period he resolutely avowed his
perfect innocence, to friends and foes alike; and the consciousness
of his innocence helped him to bear up under a degradation that, to
a nature as sensitive and chivalrous as his, was doubly bitter. Good
friends, like Sir Francis Burdett, came to cheer him in his solitude,
and over-zealous, yet honest, friends, like William Cobbett, came to
take counsel with him as to ways of keeping alive and quickening the
popular indignation which, without any stimulants from headstrong
demagogues, was strong enough on his behalf.

The tedium of his captivity was further relieved by his devotion to
those scientific and mechanical pursuits which, all through life,
yielded employment very solacing to himself, and very profitable to
the world. While in the King's Bench Prison he was especially occupied
in completing a plan for lighting the public streets by means of a
lamp invented by him, in which the main principle was the introduction
of a steady current of fresh air into the globes, whereby all the oil
was fairly burnt, and a brilliant light was always maintained. In this
way lamps much cheaper than those previously in use were found to have
a far greater illuminating power. Early in October, 1814, the lamps
in St. Ann's parish, Westminster, numbering eight hundred in all, were
taken down and replaced by four hundred constructed on Lord Cochrane's