She was in several skirmishes, being wounded once by a ball which struck one of her ribs, and another time by a sabre stroke on the side. At Valenciennes, however, Captain Bowen was killed; and, finding among his effects several letters relating to herself, which proved that she had been cruelly defrauded of money left to her, she resolved to leave the regiment, and to return, if possible, to England. Accordingly she set out attired as a sailor boy, and eventually hired herself to the Commander of a French lugger, which turned out to be a privateer. But when the vessel fell in with some of Lord Howe's vessels in the Channel, she refused to fight against her countrymen, "notwithstanding all the blows and menaces the French captain could use." The privateer was taken, and our heroine was carried before Lord Howe, to whom she told candidly all that had happened to her—keeping her sex a secret.
Mary Anne Talbot, or John Taylor, was next placed on board the Brunswick, where she witnessed Lord Howe's great victory of the 1st June, and was actively engaged in it. But she was seriously wounded, "her left leg being struck a little above the knee by a musket-ball, and broken, and severely smashed lower down by a grape shot." On reaching England she was conveyed to Haslar Hospital, where she remained four months, no suspicion having ever been entertained of her being a woman. But she was no sooner out of the hospital than, retaining her disguise, she entered a small man-of-war—the Vesuvius, which was captured by two French ships, when she was sent to the prisons of Dunkirk. Here she was incarcerated for eighteen months, but, having been discovered planning an escape with a young midshipman, she was confined in a pitch-dark dungeon for eleven weeks, on a diet of bread and water. An exchange of prisoners set her at liberty, and, hearing accidentally an American merchant captain inquiring in the streets of Dunkirk for a lad to go to New York as ship's steward she offered her services, and was accepted. Accordingly, in August, 1796, she sailed with Captain Field, and, on arriving at Rhode Island, she resided with the Captain's family.
But here another kind of adventure was to befall her—for a niece of Captain Field's fell deeply in love with her, even going so far as to propose marriage. On leaving Rhode Island, the young lady had such alarming fits that, after sailing two miles, Mary Anne Talbot was called back by a boat, and compelled to promise a speedy return to the enamoured young lady. On reaching England, she was one day on shore with some of her comrades when she was seized by a press-gang, and finding there was no other way of getting off than by revealing her sex, she did so, her story creating a great sensation. From this time she never went to sea again, and soon afterwards lived in service with a bookseller, Mr. Kirby, who wrote her memoir.[44]
And the late Colonel Fred Burnaby has recorded the history of a singular case, the facts of which came under his notice when he was with Don Carlos during the Carlist rising of the year 1874: "A discovery was made a few days ago that a woman was serving in the Royalists' ranks, dressed in a soldier's uniform. She was found out in the following manner. The priest of the village to where she belonged happening to pass through a town where the regiment was quartered, and chancing to see her, was struck by the likeness she bore to one of his parishioners.
"You must be Andalicia Bravo," he remarked.
"No, I am her brother," was the reply.
The Cure's suspicions were aroused, and at his suggestion, an inquiry was made, when it was discovered that the youthful soldier had no right to the masculine vestments she wore. Don Carlos, who was told of the affair, desired that she should be sent as a nurse to the hospital of Durango, and, when he visited the establishment, presented the fair Amazon with a military cross of merit. The poor girl was delighted with the decoration, and besought the "King" to allow her to return to the regiment, as she said she was more accustomed to inflicting wounds than to healing them. In fact, she so implored to be permitted to serve once more as a soldier, that at last, Don Carlos, to extricate himself from the difficulty, said, "No, I cannot allow you to join a regiment of men; but when I form a battalion of women, I promise, upon my honour, that you shall be named the Colonel."
"It will never happen," said the girl, and she burst into tears as the King left the hospital.
At Haddon Hall may still be seen "Dorothy Vernon's Door," whence the heiress of Haddon stole out one moonlight night to join her lover. The story generally told is that, while her elder sister, the affianced bride of Sir Thomas Stanley, second son of the Earl of Derby, was made much of in her recognised attachment, Dorothy, on the other hand, was not only kept in the background, but every obstacle was thrown in her way against a connection she had formed with John Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland. But "something of the wild bird," it is said, "was noticed in Dorothy, and she was closely watched, kept almost a prisoner, and could only beat her wings against the bars that confined her." This kind of surveillance went on for some time, but did not check the young lady's infatuation for her lover, and it was not long before the young couple contrived to see one another. Disguised as a woodman, John Manners lurked of a day in the woods round Haddon for several weeks, obtaining now and then a stolen glance, a hurried word, or a pressure of the hand from the fair Dorothy.
At length, however, an opportunity arrived which enabled Dorothy to carry out the plan which had been suggested to her by John Manners. It so happened that a grand ball was given at Haddon Hall, to celebrate the approaching marriage of the elder daughter, and, whilst a throng of guests filled the ball-room, where the stringed minstrels played old dances in the Minstrels' Gallery, and the horns blew low, everyone being too busy with his own interests and pleasures to attend to those of another, the young Miss Dorothy stole away unobserved from the ball-room, "passed out of the door, which is now one of the most interesting parts of this historic pile of buildings, and crossed the terrace to where, at the "ladies' steps," she could dimly discern figures hiding in the shadow of the trees. Another moment, and she was in her lover's arms. Horses were waiting, and Dorothy was soon riding away with her lover through the moonlight, and was married on the following morning. This story, which has been gracefully told by Eliza Meteyard under the title of "The Love Steps of Dorothy Vernon," has always been regarded as one of the most romantic and pleasant episodes in the history of Haddon Hall. Through Dorothy's marriage, the estate of Haddon passed from the family of Vernon to that of Manners, and a branch of the house of Rutland was transferred to the county of Derby."