speak the language). State subsidy He went to Paris, and throughout 1747 negotiated with the French Government (in English) to sell them his technology. Denied the huge lump sum he wanted, Kay finally agreed to 3,000 livres plus a pension of 2,500 livre, (annually from 1749) in exchange for his patent, and instruction in its use (to the manufactures of Normandy). He retained the sole rights to shuttle production in France, and brought three of his sons to Paris to make them. Although wary of entering the manufacturing provinces (because of his experiences with rioting weavers in England) he was prevailed upon to do so. At one time, the French authorities may have discouraged his communication with England, but Kay wrote about the unanticipated use of his technology in England to the French government: "My new shuttles are also used in England to make all sorts of narrow woollen goods, although their use could have been more perfect had the weavers consulted me". The beginning of mechanisation in French textile production is traditionally dated to 1753, with the widespread adoption of the flying shuttle there. Most of these new shuttles were copies, not made by the Kays. John Kay unsuccessfully tried to enforce his manufacturing monopoly, and began to quarrel with the French authorities, briefly returning to England, in 1756 (it is said that he was in his Bury home in 1753 when it was vandalised by a mob, and that he narrowly escaped with his life, but this is probably a 19th-century tale based on earlier Colchester riots; Kay was probably in France throughout the early 1750s). He found his prospects in England unimproved; by 1758 he was back in France, which became his adopted country, though he was to visit England at least twice more. In the winter of 1765/66 he appealed to the Royal Society of Arts to reward him for his inventions, and exhibited his card-making machine for them. The Society could find no-one who understood the shuttle, and there was a breakdown in correspondence, so that no award was ever made. He was in England again in 1773, but returned to France in 1774 having lost his pension (at aged 70). Old age His offer to teach pupils if the pension were restored was not taken up, and he spent his remaining years developing and building machines for cotton manufacturers in Sens and Troyes. Though