His mother, Ann Harrold, was the daughter of a farmer who fought for Prince Charles at Battle of Culloden, was taken prisoner, and died on board ship while being carried for trial to England.
The next eighteen months he spent in the more famous cities of Italy, where he had access to the literary circles, and saw everything with the eyes of a man well read in the poets and historians of the country, both ancient and modern, a connoisseur in architecture and a keen observer of thought and life.
The restraint there was not severe, but Forsyth was caught in an attempt to escape, and was thereupon marched in midwinter to Fort de Bitché, where his confinement was at first intolerably strict.
[1] Through the influence of a lady in the suite of the king of Holland he was in 1811 permitted to reside in Paris; but four months after the English in the capital were ordered back to their places of detention, and the utmost relaxation Forsyth's literary friends could obtain for him was the permission to go to Valenciennes instead of to Verdun.
His Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an Excursion in Italy in the years 1802 and 1803, were published in London in 1813, and copies were forwarded to Paris, but without result.