William Pitt the Younger there is much evidence of a "popular conservative movement" that rallied in defense of King and Country. Evans wrote there were about 200 prosecutions of "radicals" suspected of sympathy with the French revolution in British courts in the 1790s, which was much less than the prosecutions of suspected Jacobites after the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. However, the spy network maintained by the government was efficient. In Jane Austen's novel "Northanger Abbey"-which was written in the 1790s, but not published until 1817-one of the characters remarks it is not possible for a family to keep secrets in these modern times
Northanger Abbey novel as completely a satire of the Gothic genre is problematic. Irvine points out that, except in book II, the problems faced by Catherine are not caused by her reading Gothic novels, nor is Catherine's rejection of romantic love following Henry's outburst the climax, but instead is followed by Catherine being summarily expelled from Northanger Abbey after General Tilney discovers that she is not rich as he had been led to believe. Irvine observed that for Catherine her expulsion is a traumatic event that is equal in its emotional impact to the horrors that she had imagined General Tilney committing.