THE CEMETERY—RELIGIOUS MINISTRATIONS—BISHOP OF MOULINS
No column high-lifted doth shadow their dust,
And o’er their poor ruin no willow trees wave;
Yet their honour is safe in the thought of the Just,
And their agony fireth the hearts of the Brave
Unto deeds that shall shine through Oblivion’s rust.Norman Hill, Père Lechaise.
For a short period after the occupation of the Depot, the prisoners who died were buried outside the prison wall, in the north-east corner of the site. The discovery of human skeletons by workmen engaged in excavating gravel in this locality gave rise to tales of violent deaths in duels and of surreptitious burials, tales which have to be dismissed as idle since our researches have brought to light the fact that the spot was for a brief period—the exact length of which cannot be determined—the burial-place of the prisoners. It is certain that very few burials took place in this corner. Early in the history of the prison, as mentioned in a previous chapter, the Government bought a portion of a field on the opposite—the western—side of the North Road for use as the prisoners’ cemetery, and in this field rest the remains of at least 1,770 of the captives taken by us in that long war.
There is nothing now to distinguish the prisoners’ cemetery from the surrounding fields; it is only by careful observation that the irregularities of the surface can be recognised as the mounds which mark the graves, these in the course of a hundred years having become very ill defined.
The occasional disturbance of the bones of the dead in agricultural operations, or by irreverent explorations of the graves by the village lads, alone keep alive in the minds of the rustic population the knowledge of this burial-place. The burial-places attached to other depots for prisoners of war have one after the other been distinguished by a monument erected to the memory of those who lie in them. Too long has the respect due to the memory of the brave men who fought and suffered for their country, and died at Norman Cross, been forgotten. Too long, alike by the nation whose foes these prisoners were and by the nation whose sons they were, has this God’s Acre, doubly sacred, because in it lie only patriots who died for their native land, been neglected and left without a mark to show that it is a sacred spot. Happily the animosity of a hundred years ago has been replaced by L’Entente Cordiale, and a movement originated by Mr. H. B. Sands, the late Secretary of the Association which has adopted that title, is even now in progress, the object of the movement being to acquire a portion of the ground, to fence it, and to erect upon it, close to the North Road, a monument with a suitable inscription to the memory of the foreign soldiers and sailors who, after years of captivity, died in the prison, and were buried in this neglected spot.
The information as to any provision for the spiritual welfare of the prisoners is very meagre. Marriages and births, calling for the sanctification of a church, there were none, but 1,770 deaths and burials there certainly were, as the certificates show.
Neither in the register nor on the certificate of those deaths, whether the prisoners were Roman Catholic or Protestant, does the name of priest or parson appear.
This applies only to the prisoners who died in confinement, not to the soldiers who guarded them. The Depot was in the parish of Yaxley, and in the churchyard of St. Peter’s, the parish church, the majority of the British soldiers who died while quartered at the barracks were buried, and their names are entered in the parish register and signed by the officiating minister.
The first entry connected with the Depot in the Yaxley Register is that of “John Smart, suffocated at the Barracks, February 12th, 1797.” He was probably a workman employed during the erection of the buildings, which were not occupied until two months later; after this date, and up to 1814, occur entries of soldiers’ burials at the rate of from twenty to thirty per annum.
The last funeral from the barracks was that of Captain Pressland on 21st March 1814. After fifteen years the soldiers’ graves were crowding the churchyard to such an extent, that in 1813 a plot of land adjoining the barrack-master’s house was purchased by the Government for a special burial-place for the barracks, and the ground was consecrated by the Bishop of Lincoln on 29th October in that year. The first soldier was buried in it on 4th November 1813, just seven months before the clearing of the barracks and the prisons was accomplished. This plot has been absorbed into the property on which stands the barrack-master’s house, now owned by J. A. Herbert, J.P. When and how the absorption took place is not known; it is now an orchard, and the few gravestones there were in it have disappeared. From the Register of Folksworth, about a mile from the barracks, it would appear that this village was a favourite place for the wives of the married soldiers quartered at Norman Cross to reside; several baptisms of the soldiers’ children, and one or two of the adult soldiers themselves, are there registered.
The prisoners’ cemetery and the barracks were in the mission of the Roman Catholic priest who lived at King’s Cliffe, but no register of deaths kept by him is known to exist, nor is there any record by a minister of religion of any burial service in this cemetery.
It must, I fear, be accepted that the men who were in captivity at Norman Cross during the seventeen years the prison was occupied received very little spiritual help, and in times of pressure many of those whose bones lie in the prisoners’ burial-place were, too probably, interred without religious rites of any kind, and scarcely ever with a single mourner at the grave side.
From the possibilities, nay probabilities of the burials during the epidemic of 1800–01, let us turn with a shudder and a sigh of regret for whatever blame attaches to our country for that tragic year in the history of Norman Cross.
Mrs. Sands says that, in examining the register in the Record Office, she and her late husband found that a large number of those buried came from Protestant provinces of France.
The Depot being in Yaxley parish, it is probable that during its occupation the vicar would be asked to bury the Protestants and possibly to minister to the sick and others in the prison. But that no entry of any such burial is found in the parish registers, nor any note by an incumbent of duty performed either in the prison or cemetery, points to the fact that the prison was considered extra-parochial. The present vicar, the Rev. E. H. Brown, who is keenly interested in the subject of this narrative, has ascertained from a relative of the Rev. T. Hinde that, to her certain knowledge, that clergyman, a former curate of Yaxley, was “Protestant chaplain to Norman Cross Barracks.” Mr. Brown adds that Mr. Hinde was apparently curate from September 1813 to January 1816; this would cover the last eight months only of the prison occupation.
This statement, from a member of Mr. Hinde’s family, leaves room to hope that the Vicar of Yaxley or his curate actually officiated as Protestant minister for those prisoners who were his co-religionists during their enforced sojourn within the boundaries of his cure.
But it must be borne in mind that those days were not as ours, and that there was little probability that Britain’s prisoners would be better treated than her soldiers and sailors. A writer in Notes and Queries quotes, respecting the treatment of the latter:
“Gleig—‘The Subaltern’ of 1813–14, who subsequently took holy orders and wrote a Life of Wellington—assures us that a hundred years ago Tommy Atkins was ‘spaded under’ without benefit of clergy, and it is highly improbable that any existing memorial marks, nay, that any memorial ever marked, the grave of even one of the thousands of British privates who lie among the Spanish hills and valleys. All that the tourist can hope to find in these distant and lonely spots is the occasional tomb of a British officer, or (quite exceptionally) of a favourite ‘non-com.’” [177]
That priests did frequent the prison in the earlier years of the war, 1797–1802, before the Peace of Amiens, we know from the correspondence of the Transport Commissioners with the agents. The prisoners themselves petitioned to have priests sent to them, and at length two priests were permitted to reside in the prison. That these gentlemen did not strictly confine themselves to the spiritual duties of their office we have reason to believe from an instruction given to Captain Pressland, the agent appointed when the prison was reopened in 1803. He was told that, “profiting by experience gained during the previous war,” the Board had decided that “no priests were to be admitted, except in extreme cases, and then under carefully arranged restrictions, as they had abused the privileges allowed them,” and that “a turnkey or clerk was to be present during the whole time they were in the hospital.” This memorandum evidently implies that at this time there was no regular provision for the spiritual needs of the general body of prisoners, no chaplain appointed by the authorities, and that no regular visitation except to the sick and dying was to be permitted.
The Government was not without evidence that many of these priests had supplemented the spiritual aid by acting as go-betweens and secretly conveying correspondence to and from the prisoners. Any collusion between the prisoners and possible foreign agents outside was provided against by the regulation that all letters should pass through the agent’s hands.
The continual recurrence throughout the war of plots for a general rising, originating with the French Government; the frequent attempts either of single prisoners or a combined body of them to escape, were probably, at the period with which we are dealing, felt to be sufficient reason for an order which in the present day would hardly be tolerated by the British public. A year later, in 1804, the commissioners, while affirming that they had no power to prevent French priests living in Stilton, were most decided in declining to allow them to live in the Depot, saying that at such a critical time they could not possibly grant such a privilege to foreigners “of that equivocal description”!
The Transport Board must have seen reason to relax the orders, for three years after this direction was given we find the Bishop of Moulins not resident in the Depot, but living at Stilton a mile from it, on an allowance received from the British Government, and earning a high character for his work among the prisoners. He was also officiating outside the prison, for in the register kept by the neighbouring priest, the Rev. W. Hayes of King’s Cliffe, in whose mission Stilton was, are, among others, the following three entries of baptisms to which allusion has already been made in Chap. IV, p. 59:
1st. “1807.—John Stephen Felix Delapoux, son of John Andrew Delapoux and of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife), of Norman Cross, Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, was born July 22 and baptised August 2nd, 1807, following, by Charles Lewis de Salmon du Chattelier, formerly Vicar General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church. Sponsor, the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour, residing at Stilton in the said county, which I, the undersigned, hereby certify from the original.
“W. Hayes.”
2nd. “1808.—William, son of Hugh and Margaret Drummond, was baptised by the Bishop of Moulins at Stilton, Hunts., May 30th, 1808. Sponsors, Edward Courier and Margaret Anderson, attested by Mr. Wm. Hayes.”
3rd. “1814.—Louis Stanilas Henry Paschal, son of John Andrew Delapoux and of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife) of Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, on May 3rd, was baptised May 14th, 1814, by the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour, residing at Stilton. Sponsor, Mr. Paschal Levisse of Oundle, Northamptonshire, which I, the undersigned, hereby certify from the original act.
“W. Hayes.”
In the first entry, 1807, the officiating priest is “the late Vicar General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church,” who was possibly attending to the prisoners until the Sponsor, the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tours (the Bishop-designate of Moulins), took up the work. John Andrew Delapoux, the father of the child, was a clerk at Norman Cross—many of the officials had French names, and were probably naturalised British subjects, or children of naturalised Frenchmen and familiar with the French language. He had been married to Miss Mason, in Stilton Parish Church, on 2nd September 1802, and until the research undertaken for the purposes of this work revealed his identity, these were supposed to be entries of the baptisms of children of a French prisoner who had married an English wife. In the second, 1808, the Bishop of Moulins is entered as the officiating priest. In the 3rd the priest performing the ceremony is the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour. The priest in whose mission the Baptism took place and who made the entry, gave the Christian and family names of the Bishop-designate of Moulins, but not the episcopal title, as in the second entry. The prefix Right Reverend marks the ecclesiastical rank claimed by the Bishop; but a letter from Lord Mulgrave [180a] states that he was only Bishop-designate. He had never been consecrated, and he would therefore not be always recognised by his brethren as Évêque de Moulins.
It is unfortunate that it is the duty of the humblest historian to push aside the glamour that tradition and the writers of romance weave around a man and to show him as he is, and the traditional story of the Bishop of Moulins is not the only illusion which has been dispelled in the course of our investigations.
The Bishop of Moulins has been, by traditions authoritatively reproduced in print, gradually elevated to the position of a saint who voluntarily relinquished his high office in France, and sacrificed its emoluments in order that he might minister to his fellow countrymen in captivity. In his little romance, [180b] the late Rev. Arthur Brown says, p. 44:
“And the Chaplain was none other than the Bishop of Moulins. He had voluntarily come to England out of pure compassion for his imprisoned countrymen, and with true missionary zeal was giving himself up to their spiritual welfare. He was a venerable-looking man, much respected by the prisoners generally. It was a noble act of self-sacrifice.”
In a romance it is quite legitimate to adopt a name for an imaginary character, and to endow the fictitious individual with virtues which the real owner of the name did not possess, but Mr. Brown emphatically declares this passage to be history, and not fiction, by a footnote, of which the first sentence is, “This is fact, not fiction.” The note continues:
“It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in 1814. One thing is certain, that he must ever have enjoyed a feast of memory to his dying day, in having been a shepherd and bishop of souls to these poor prisoners.”
The late Rev. G. N. Godwin, in the series of papers on “Norman Cross and its French Prisoners,” published in the Peterborough Advertiser in February and March 1906, says:
“The Depot had a noble Chaplain in the Bishop of Moulins, who voluntarily came over from France, and lived at his own charge and upon remittances from France, in the High Street, Stilton, near the Bell Inn. (The house which is now shored up. [181]) He walked up every day to Norman Cross, and acted very charitably to the prisoners, doing his utmost to stop their frequent duels. It is to be hoped that ere long more will be known of this worthy prelate.”
Mr. Godwin’s wish was soon fulfilled. Two years after this was written there came to light, among the family archives at Milton, near Peterborough, the correspondence which the author is able to print verbatim in the appendix, through the kind permission of Mr. George Wentworth Fitzwilliam, the greatgrandson of the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam, to whom the Bishop’s letters are addressed, and who is the present owner of the estates and head of the Northamptonshire branch of the family. This correspondence, with other information gathered from scanty but authentic sources, enables the writer to put before his readers a picture of the one priest of whose work at Norman Cross the memory remained in the neighbourhood for more than a generation after the Depot was destroyed. The correspondence is of interest as throwing light on other matters also.
The first part of this correspondence consists of letters from the Bishop of Moulins begging for pecuniary assistance and for another favour from Lord Fitzwilliam, with an accompanying document of great interest—viz. a condensed autobiography of the Bishop, and the unfinished draft of the Earl’s reply; these are all in French. The last mentioned is interesting, as it shows incidentally that the great Whig Earl sympathised with the Bishop in his loyalty to the Bourbons, to whom he was devoted, and in his firm resolve never to acknowledge the government of the Emperor Napoleon, whom he regarded as an usurper. It also gives first-hand information as to an outside matter, the enormous cost of the famous Yorkshire Election, in which the respective heads in the West Riding of the contesting Whigs and Tories, Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord Harewood, each represented by his own son, kept open house for the fifteen days during which the Poll lasted, Lord Milton, the Whig, beating, by a majority of 188, his Tory rival, the Hon. Henry Lascelles. [182] The condensed autobiography sent by the Bishop to Lord Fitzwilliam upsets much that has been written to accentuate the saintly character which has been, not altogether without reason, attributed to him. The remaining letters, one of which has been introduced in the text in connection with the straw-plait trade, refer to the application made by the Bishop for the release of another prisoner to take the place of his servant Jean Baptiste David.
The autobiography is practically that of an émigré, although the Bishop-designate was a “déporté.” Most of these aristocrats, ecclesiastics, and others who fled from France at a time when, had they possessed the courage to remain, they might have much altered the course of events, took refuge in Austria, Italy, and other continental Catholic countries. Comparatively few came to England. From the Bishop we learn that in 1791, having been designated Bishop of Moulins, he was expelled from France. He took refuge in Italy, where he had the good fortune to become Chief Chaplain to the Bourbon Princess, Victoire of France, “to whose bounty he owed his existence,” and at her death, in 1799, he was left absolutely without any resources. Under these circumstances he came to England, where he received the allowance granted to bishops at that time, £10 a month. In his narrative the Bishop enters into further details as to his misfortunes. He found his relatives in London in distress; he advanced them moneys which he obtained from money-lenders, who made the loans on the security of his expectations—expectations which came to nothing. When the Bishop’s father died, leaving a goodly inheritance, the whole was appropriated by his relatives, who took advantage of the Bishop’s absence from France. His brother suggested to him that if he would return to France and submit to the Government, they might help him. This the Bishop would never do, his devotion and loyalty to the Bourbons made it impossible, and in 1808 he is found at Stilton writing a begging letter from the Bell Inn—not there “out of pure compassion for his imprisoned countrymen,” but a “déporté” from France, who, when he arrived in England, was without any resources beyond his great expectations, on the strength of which the Bishop was able to obtain money from usurers, to one of whom this unfortunate prelate was paying 30 per cent. per annum for a loan of £200. He was not “living on his own charges and upon remittances from France,” but upon £240 a year paid to him by the British Government.
To this payment by the British Government was added the extraordinary privilege of the liberation of a lad from Norman Cross to act as his servant. This was a further favour from the Government which was feeding him and clothing him. The Bishop’s return for these acts of grace was to allow the lad to join in the illegal straw-plait traffic, and then to make the application which, reading between the lines of Sir Rupert George’s letter, it was easy to see was regarded by the Transport Board as a gross piece of effrontery. The sequel was more letters in the effusive begging-letter style of a century ago to the tender-hearted, influential nobleman whose acquaintance he had made, and the ultimate granting of another servant.
In one of his letters the Bishop denies that there is any truth in the accusation that his servant was an accomplice in the illicit trading in straw plait, and there is no extant evidence that he was so; but it is clear, from the correspondence between the Transport Board and the Secretary to the Admiralty, and between the latter and Earl Fitzwilliam, that the Transport Board had no doubt about the fact.
There is something pathetic in the fact that these letters, in his, the Bishop’s, beautiful handwriting, which is like the finest engrossing, but so small that it is scarcely legible without the aid of a magnifying-glass, should have come to light exactly 100 years after they were written, and only two years after the wish had been expressed by the writers quoted above, that more could be learned of “this worthy prelate” and “this good man,” for in them the Bishop himself rises up to cast off the adornments of self-sacrifice, etc., with which he has been decorated by his biographers.
Divers writers, one after another, have attributed to him the qualifications of a saint, finding everything he did so good and wonderful, that the last, the late Rev. M. C. Godwin, mentions as a merit that the Bishop walked a mile to his duties at the prison.
Mr. Brown, in the footnote just quoted, says: “It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in 1814.”
The Bishop’s association with Norman Cross entitles him to a prominent place in this narrative, and such further particulars of his life as have after much research been established add something to the little that is known of the émigrés and the déportés who took refuge in England.
Without the halo of a saint, the Bishop is still revealed as a good priest winning the hearts and the esteem of those among whom he ministered, seeking to lighten the lot of the prisoners who were his flock. What light is thrown on his character by the legend written against the boys’ prison on the prisoner Foulley’s model of the Norman Cross Depot, in the Invalides! [185] (vide Plate XX, p. 251). The Bishop was working when many another ecclesiastical emigrant was idle, and there is every reason to believe that he was worthy of his hire, as far as his work was concerned. Probably the advent of the Bishop to Norman Cross did for the prisoners what Buonaparte’s reinstatement of religion did for the population of France. The correspondence shows that it was his strong political opinions, his stedfast loyalty to the House of Bourbon, strengthened as it was by gratitude and affection, and his determined refusal to accept office on the terms of the Concordat, and to swear fealty to the Emperor, whom he regarded as a usurper, which kept him in England as a mere Bishop-designate instead of a consecrated endowed Bishop. So strong were his feelings on these points, that he was one of the ecclesiastics who signed the Remonstrance against the Concordat and thus incurred the Pope’s displeasure.
Outside his office there is good ground for believing that he was an accomplished and learned man, with a fine presence and attractive, courteous manners. [186] He was apparently persona grata at Milton, the residence of Earl Fitzwilliam, seven miles from Stilton. But the correspondence reveals the Bishop as a normally imperfect man. In the opinion of the authorities (with which the historian must agree) he abused the extraordinary privileges granted to him by the British Government, and on his own showing he was, to say the least of it, injudicious in the management of his affairs. He incurred heavy debts to money-lenders without any certain prospect of being able to repay them. In extenuation of these financial errors, it may be said that misfortune and over-generosity, not personal extravagance, led to his impecuniosity and his dealings with usurers, and as to the Bishop’s connivance in the matter of his servant taking up as his occupation illicit dealing in the straw plait made in the prison, Earl Fitzwilliam clearly did not regard it as a heinous offence, when it was brought before his notice by Lord Mulgrave, but continued his pleading for the Bishop, and eventually succeeded in obtaining for him the favour he craved.
The Bishop’s work at Norman Cross continued until he returned with the Bourbons to France after the banishment of Buonaparte to Elba in 1814. Several articles in the Peterborough Museum are described in the catalogue as presents from grateful prisoners to the Bishop. If they were, it would be interesting to know why he left them behind instead of taking them to France when he returned.
From other sources we gather that the Rt. Rev. Etienne Jean Baptist, Louis de Galois de la Tour, who was fifty-four years of age at the date of the correspondence, [187] was an ecclesiastic of great distinction. He was the son of Charles Jean Baptist de Galois de la Tour, who was French Administrator in 1788 at Moulins and first President of the Department of Aix, where the future Archbishop was born in 1754. He became Vicar-general of the See of Autun and doyen of the College of St. Pierre at Moulins. He had been designated to the See of Moulins, when in 1791 the order for his arrest was issued, and he was “déporté” according to the official list of émigrés published in Paris in 1793. In the Bishop’s own narrative he says, “L’Évêque de Moulins, parti de France en 1791.” Of his life and fortunes from that year until 1808 we have his own account. In 1814, after twenty-three years of exile, he returned with the Bourbons to France, but he was not at once consecrated or even appointed to the See of Moulins.
His attitude towards the Pope and the French Government during his banishment can be seen in three rare pamphlets published in London in 1802 and 1803. [188a] The Pope (Pius VII.) was remonstrated with for coming to terms with the French Government. To the first remonstrance, dated 23rd December 1801, one archbishop and twelve bishops affix their signatures, to which a cross is prefixed; Etienne de la Tour signs last, as nominated Bishop of Moulins, without the cross. In April 1803 he signs at the end of three archbishops and thirty-five bishops, this time with a cross. [188b] The history of the quarrel between the parties and final reconciliation can be seen in Thiers: History of the French Revolution (Shobul’s Trans.), 1895, vol. i., pp. 105–6, 145, 187.
After some correspondence and an acknowledgment of his error the Bishop-designate was consecrated, and two years later he was elevated to the archbishopric of Bourges.
The Archbishop did not live more than four years to occupy the lofty position which he had won by his personal attributes, by his fidelity to the House of Bourbon, by his services to the Church, by his twenty-three years’ banishment from France involuntary and voluntary, by his experiences at Norman Cross, [188c] among which the little incident of his association, through Jean Baptiste David, with the straw-plait smuggling business might, by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and even by the Bourbon Government, not be reckoned as otherwise than meritorious.
The Archbishop, who had for so many years lived at Stilton on a pittance allowed by the British Government, and had served his fellow countrymen within the walls of the Norman Cross Prison, died in his palace at Bourges on 20th March 1820.
No evidence has been procured, beyond the statement of the relative of the Rev. T. Hinde (p. 176), that, at any time, a Protestant clergyman was officially appointed as chaplain to the Depot. There is, however, sufficient evidence that, during the first period of the war, between the opening of the prison (1797) and its evacuation (1802), the services of Roman Catholic priests were accepted, a record existing that two priests were for a short time allowed to reside within the walls. After the resumption of hostilities in 1803, notwithstanding the very strong directions issued to Captain Pressland, on the reopening of the prison, that “no priests were to be admitted except in extreme cases, etc.,” we find the Bishop-designate of Moulins practically established as the priest ministering to his countrymen in captivity, and living on the income derived from the British Government.
The fact that the Vicar-general of Mans and the Bishop-designate of Moulins differed in their politics from the bulk of the prisoners probably led to their obtaining from the British Government the privilege of thus exercising their office—a privilege not apparently without its pecuniary advantages to themselves, for the Bishop in his autobiography tells us that on coming to London he received from the British Government the sum of £10 a month, the usual allowance to a man of his rank, while at Stilton the sum paid to him is doubled, and he has £240 a year.
On the whole, the records of this chapter in the history of Norman Cross, if painful to our national pride and self-respect in many details, would probably not be regarded in the same light by those who, a century since, were engaged in and suffering from this prolonged, sanguinary, bitter, and costly war.
PRISONERS ON PAROLE—SOCIAL HABITS—MARRIAGES—EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS
Law that is obeyed is nothing else but law; law disobeyed is law and jailor both.
Philistion, Menandri et Philistionis.
They enjoy a moderate degree of liberty, which, when kept within bounds, is most salutary both for individuals and for communities, though when it degenerates into licence, it becomes alike burdensome to others, and uncontrollable and hazardous to those who possess it.
Livy, Histories, xxxiv. 49.
The conditions of life for prisoners out on parole have hitherto not been considered. In more chivalrous days a prisoner on parole was allowed to live free in his own country, pledged only on his word of honour to take part in no action which should be directly or indirectly hostile to the country which had captured him. The spirit of animosity and mistrust which animated the combatants in the struggle which filled with captives Norman Cross and other prisons in both countries, would certainly admit no such arrangement as this, although M. Otto, the French Commissary in London, suggested it, either satirically or knowing that, if accepted, the arrangement would mean that while England would receive back only 5,000, France would receive 22,000.
M. Otto’s words were:
“If the scarcity of provisions is so notorious that the Government” (the British Government), “notwithstanding its solicitude cannot relieve the wants of its people, why should the Government unnecessarily increase the consumption, by feeding more than 22,000 individuals? I have already had the honour of laying before you, Two Proposals on this Subject, namely, that of ransoming the Prisoners, or that of sending them back to France on Parole. Either of these alternatives would afford an efficient remedy for the evil in question; the plan of Parole has already been adopted with respect to French Fishermen.” [191a]
This proposal was not likely to be accepted, and the great bulk of the prisoners in both countries remained in strict durance throughout the war. Those who were allowed on parole were naval and military officers, commanders and first lieutenants of privateers mounting fourteen guns, [191b] commanders and first mates of merchantmen, and non-combatants. These latter, in the second period of the war, constituted a considerable proportion of the parole prisoners. One of the first duties imposed by the regulations for the guidance of the agents at the various prisons was that when a fresh party of prisoners arrived, he should go thoroughly into the question of the rank, social condition, employment, and character of each man, in order to determine who were qualified to go on parole, and the captain of the ship in which the prisoners had been taken was expected to send such information as he could to enable the agents to carry out this duty.
The last sentence of the passage quoted from M. Otto’s letter to the Transport Board shows that for one class of non-combatants, the French fishermen, the British Government had adopted the plan of returning them to France.
A note in the register of the soldiers received at Norman Cross states that with certain chasseurs français who arrived at the prison on 9th September 1809, arrived two women and a child. How they were disposed of between that date and 24th December of the same year, when they were discharged to France, is not recorded. One of the women got only as far as Lynn on her way home, and in the following March returned to Norman Cross; her further adventures are not recorded.
The numbers of those on parole varied greatly in the course of the war. In the year 1796, in which the building of Norman Cross was commenced, the number was 1,200; on 30th April 1810, out of a total of 44,583 prisoners, 2,710; and on 11th June 1811, out of 49,132 prisoners, 3,193. The number on parole would greatly increase as more prisoners passed into the country. The Duke of Wellington, in one of his despatches dated 23rd December 1812, summarising the result of the campaign in Spain, mentions that “In the months which have elapsed since January, this army has sent to England little short of 20,000 prisoners.” Of these many came to Norman Cross. The number continued to increase until the total in Britain reached 67,000, that being the number returned to France after the Treaty of Paris was signed on 30th May 1814.
The prisoners on parole were widely distributed in various towns, many of them distant from any large depot. [192] Agents were appointed in each place to look after and pay the prisoners who lodged either in the town itself or in the neighbouring villages. Of the 1,200 on parole in 1797, 100 were in Peterborough and its neighbourhood, and the agent who accepted the responsibility of looking after them, paying them and mustering them at stated intervals when they had to report themselves to him, was Mr. Thomas Squire, a merchant and banker living in the Bridge House, in whose field, on the river bank, the second batch of prisoners consigned to Norman Cross in April 1797 landed from the barges which had brought them from Lynn. The only parole register relating to Peterborough which the author could find in the Record Office is a volume dating from 1795 to 1800, and refers mainly to the Dutch. In this volume there are entered, between 10th November 1797 and 3rd July 1800, the names of 100 Dutch prisoners on parole at Peterborough. The first French were the captain, four lieutenants, the purser, surgeon, and first pilot of La Jalouse, in June 1797.
No corresponding record has been found as to the disposal of those who arrived at Norman Cross in the second period of the war, 1803–15, and who by their rank or social status were entitled to parole. It is probable that on the officer who received them at the port where they landed, devolved the duty of selecting the parole prisoners and sending them direct to the towns where they were to be interned when the general body of prisoners went to Norman Cross.
From the general register of the prisoners at Norman Cross between 1803 and 1810 we can, however, gather a few notes which sufficiently indicate that the custom was not to allocate them in the immediate neighbourhood, but at more distant depots for parole prisoners. Thus we find that Jean Casquar, a boatswain’s mate, was sent to Tiverton; Antoine Sivié, a passenger, to Leek; Pierre Kervain, a servant on parole, to Ashbourne; Eustache, a black, to Ashbourne; Jean C. Le Prince, a clerk, to Montgomery; Captain Nicholas Lanceraux to Lichfield; Jean Maistey, second mate on a privateer, with three passengers taken in the same ship, to Leek. Then a more complicated transaction is shown: Louis Feyssier, a passenger on parole at Leek, was sent to Norman Cross, it being noted that he had not previously been there; he was probably sent for imprisonment, as a punishment for breach of his parole at Leek.
Another transaction helps us to learn what was going on at home in the long years of this terrible war, when only high polities and the military and naval events beyond our bounds were occupying the pens of historical writers. Captain A. Strazynski escaped with a midshipman from Ashbourne in September 1810. The pair of them were retaken at Chesterfield, whence they were sent to the Norman Cross Prison, where they arrived on 10th December of the same year. Again, Ensign Louis Pineau escaped from Greenlaw. He made his way south, until he was retaken and lodged in Northampton Gaol, whence he was sent to Norman Cross.
These are almost all the notes bearing on the question of the parole prisoners which occur in the register.
As has been already mentioned, these registers are very incomplete, and the notes and remarks are few and far between, but there is one long note dealing with the practice of one prisoner assuming the name of another. This was sometimes done with the object of establishing a man’s right to have the privileges of parole. One instance noted is that of a man entered as Mathuren Nazarean, his real name being Pierre Dussage; the assumed name was that of the first lieutenant of the Alerte, who was left ill at Lisbon. Dussage hoped to pass himself off as the lieutenant, and thus to be allowed out on parole.
No record has been found of the precise distribution in the town and the surrounding villages of the 100 prisoners registered as on parole in Peterborough. On 25th November 1797 the whole of the prisoners on parole in England were ordered, without any distinction of rank whatever, to be imprisoned at Norman Cross. For the sick and the baggage, covered conveyances were provided. The others of all ranks marched to the Depot, some of them hundreds of miles. This step was taken in part fulfilment of the threat already referred to in Chapter V., which had been held out against the French as a means of compelling them to clothe their own countrymen in the English prisons, and to withdraw their opposition to certain proposals of the English Government as to the terms of Exchange, and especially as to the restoration of Captain Sir Sydney Smith, whose liberation no expostulations of the Government could obtain.
In the later plans of the Depot is seen one block in the south-east quadrangle fenced off for the officers’ prison. It was probably in this block, or in No. 13 in the north-eastern quadrangle, that Jean de la Porte executed his wonderful straw marquetry pictures. At what date the order for the reincarceration of the officers was cancelled has not been ascertained, but it is certain that their close confinement was not of long duration, and that the privileges of parole were soon restored. This was, however, not the only occasion when such an order was issued, and when the prisoners on parole were placed in close confinement. Parole was very frequently broken by the French officers, and a considerable number were successful in making their escape. Those who failed to do so or were recaptured were severely treated. In extreme cases, such as repeated breaking of parole, officers were sent to the hulks. A cadet of the Utrecht, Dutch man-of-war, who broke his parole at Tenterden, when recaptured was sent to the hulks at Chatham. Unless there had been some gross misconduct, this punishment cannot fail to be regarded by some as unduly harsh. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the full term was parole d’honneur. The word of honour of an officer was assumed to be of a specially binding character; the poor, ignorant soldier or sailor was not trusted, the officer was, because his “word of honour” was deemed binding. In addition, the officer signed a document corresponding to the following parole paper, which was the form used for a prisoner restored on parole to France. This constituted a legal document.
Form of Parole Engagement.
“Whereas the Commissioners for conducting His Britannic Majesty’s Transport Service, and for the Care and Custody of Prisoners of War, have been pleased to grant me, the undersigned . . . . . . as described on the back thereof, late . . . . . . and now a Prisoner of War, leave to return to France, upon my entering into an Engagement not to serve against Great Britain, or any of the Powers in Alliance with that Kingdom, until I shall be regularly exchanged for a British Prisoner of War, of equal Rank; and upon my also engaging, that immediately after my Arrival in France, I shall make known the Place of my Residence there, to the British Agent for Prisoners in Paris, and shall not change the same on any account, without first intimating my intention to the said Agent; and moreover, that at the Expiration of every Two Months, until my exchange shall be effected, I shall regularly and punctually transmit to the said Agent, a Certificate of my Residence, signed by the Magistrates or Municipal Officers of the Place.
“Now, in Consideration of my Engagement, I do hereby declare that I have given my Parole of Honour accordingly, and that I will keep it inviolable.
“Given under my Hand at . . . . . . this . . . . . . Day of 17 . . . . . .
“On back, Name, Rank, Age, Stature, Person, Visage, Complexion, Hair, Eyes, Marks or Wounds, etc.”
Further it must be borne in mind that military punishments are more severe than civil; they follow more rapidly the crime. A breach of parole was a military crime as well as a civil offence, for which loss of liberty on a Chatham hulk was perhaps a fitting punishment. By Clause 4 of Rules to be observed by the prisoners of war in Great Britain, Ireland, etc.—rules with which all prisoners, whether in captivity or on parole, were familiar—very severe punishment for any escaped prisoner who was retaken was laid down for every class. In the case of officers escaping, it was enacted that if recaptured they “shall from that time be considered and treated in all respects like common men.” An officer on parole who escapes, not only escapes, but he breaks his word of honour, and he therefore merits a more severe punishment than he who only breaks his prison bars and does nothing dishonourable.
Both the French and British Governments, to their credit, were ever ready to deal generously and even magnanimously in the way of exchange or release as a reward for some uncalled-for act of bravery or kindness on the part of prisoners in connection with their captors. The following are a few out of many such instances: In December 1811, twenty-one English prisoners were released for assisting to extinguish a fire at Auxonne; among these was the mate of an English merchant vessel, and for him the mate of the French vessel Achille was released from Lichfield, he having assisted to put out a fire there. The colonel of the (French) 36th Regiment was allowed to go to France on parole to try to effect the exchange of Colonel Cox, and failing this to return in three months. In December 1810, Captain Bourde, of the French ship Neptune, was released in consequence of his humanity to the officers and crew of the Comet, a ship in the East India Company’s service. A French surgeon detained on the prison ship Assistance, at Portsmouth, was exchanged “in consequence of his attention to the British sick soldiers on board the Spence transport as represented by Lieut. J. W. Lloyd of the 8th King’s Regiment.” A French captain of the land forces being taken prisoner, was allowed to return to France “for his meritorious conduct in saving the life of a British officer in the last war.” Five French officers were released from Andover “for their exertions in extinguishing a fire at that town.” A naval lieutenant was released by Admiralty order “for saving a child’s life from a lion at Oswestry.” In April 1812, Pierre Marie Tong was released from Portsmouth “in consideration of services offered by his father to assist the Conquisador when on shore on the coast of France.” About the same date the second captain and clerk of a privateer obtained their liberty “for saving the lives of seventy-nine British seamen wrecked on the coast.”
Nor were these courtesies confined to officers. A seaman, prisoner at Plymouth, was to be exchanged “for having leaped overboard and saved the life of Alexander Muir on board the Brave, as per letter 3rd June (1810) from Captain Hawkins.” A number of Lascars, prisoners at Dunkirk, were exchanged for seamen at Norman Cross, the second captain for two, and the captain at Chatham was considered worth three Lascars. We have, in Appendix B, alluded to the release of Captain Woodriff. These bright examples serve to illuminate what is otherwise a gloomy episode.
The allowance paid by the British Government to the officers on parole was at first only 1s. a day. This was increased to 1s. 6d.; but even that amount, although more than was paid by the French to the English prisoners on parole in France, was altogether inadequate, owing to the greater expense of living in England. The inferior officers and others received only 1s. 3d. The French scale varied from 7s. a day for a General to 10d. a day for officers of merchantmen. Frequent complaints being made of the insufficiency of the English allowance, M. Riviere, of the French Admiralty, who nine years before denied the right of our Government to inquire into the treatment of British prisoners in France, adding, “that it (the treatment) was the will of the Emperor,” wrote a long letter to the Transport Board on the subject, stating that the cost at which an English officer could live in France was 9d. a day, while for a similar provision in England, a French officer must pay 2s. a day. The Board called upon Lieut. Wallis, who had recently escaped from France, to check each item by the market prices of provisions in France and in England, and he arrived at the following comparison:
An English Gentleman in France will require daily: |
A French Gentleman in England will require daily: |
||||
|
s. |
d. |
|
s. |
d. |
1 lb. Bread |
0 |
2 |
⅓ quartern loaf of Bread |
0 |
5 |
1 lb. Beef |
0 |
4 |
¾ lb. of beef, 10d. a lb. at least |
0 |
7½ |
¾ of beer (this measure is not known) |
0 |
1 |
2 quarts of beer |
0 |
6 |
Beer, very bad, is 3d. a bottle, wine 7½d.; say they are taken alternately, a bottle a day |
0 |
5¼ |
A pot of porter |
0 |
5 |
Vegetables and fruit (vegetables are very cheap) |
0 |
0½ |
Vegetables, including apples |
0 |
2 |
Milk |
0 |
0½ |
Milk |
0 |
2 |
Expense of cooking |
0 |
1 |
Cooking, at least 2d. |
0 |
2 |
Wood (at Verdun very dear, 36 livres a corde) 2d. per day probably |
0 |
2 |
|
||
1 day’s subsistence in France, according to M. Riviere |
0 |
9 |
1 day’s subsistence in England, according to M. Riviere’s information |
2 |
0 |
1 day’s subsistence in France, according to Lieut. Wallis’s price list |
1 |
5¼ |
More probably |
2 |
0½ |
Average of the two estimates |
1 |
1¼ [200] |
|
||
It therefore appeared clear that the least an officer could live on was 2s. a day in England and 1s. a day in France. To double the allowance to the French officers in England would, it was estimated, cost the Government £43,823, and ultimately it was decided to increase the allowance to 2s. for the higher ranks, coming down to 1s. 8d. in the lower, at an increased cost of £28,000 a year. When invalided, the prisoners received an extra allowance, and were attended by doctors practising in their neighbourhood selected by, and paid by, the Government. Their allowance was doubled when a nurse was required. These extra charges were borne by the Commissioners for the Care of the Sick and Hurt, not by the Transport Board.
The majority of the officers on parole were not entirely dependent on the allowance received from the British Government, their income being supplemented by remittances sent from France.
Several of the officers of high rank, and other prisoners whose means enabled them to do so, sent for their wives and lived comfortably in lodgings. Judging from the traditions of the Norman Cross district, and from the literature of the period, the presence of the prisoners on parole made but little change in the social life of the towns and villages in which they were quartered, not sufficient to leave an enduring impression. This is strange, for the presence of 100 foreigners of varying social position in and round about a quiet little cathedral city, such as Peterborough was a century ago, must certainly have modified the usual routine of the social life of its citizens, and of the dwellers in the neighbouring villages in which some of the prisoners lodged.
Although the bitter antagonism which existed between the French and the British during this long war would militate against it, there is no doubt that occasionally the prisoners on parole visited and formed friendships, and even attachments, among their neighbours according to their degree. This general statement made to the writer by his parents and other nonagenarians is borne out by the marriages to be mentioned directly, but although the writer has lived in Peterborough, excepting the few years when his education took him away, for three-quarters of a century, he does not recollect ever to have heard of any special instance of the survival of such a friendship in the city or in the immediate neighbourhood of Norman Cross, excepting those to be detailed when the marriages of the prisoners are dealt with.
It has been thought not irrelevant to the history of Norman Cross to devote the succeeding chapter to the subject of the English Prisoners in France, and it will be there seen that in the letter written by Lieut. Tucker from Verdun, he specially says, “there is no society between the English and the French.”
When in 1814 Napoleon abdicated, and the Treaty of Paris was signed on the 30th May, some 70,000 French prisoners, of whom nearly 4,000 were out on parole, together with hundreds of émigrés, left our shores. These friendships and close associations were abruptly cut short, and the foreign element in British Society appears to have been speedily forgotten. The intimacies which were kept up, of which we read in the biographies and family archives of those who lived in the first half of the last century, were almost all between the British and the French émigré, not between the British and the prisoners on parole; they were between persons who, although of different nationalities, agreed in their political sympathies, and who were equally opposed to the existing French Government.
Between 1793 and 1814 about 200,000 Frenchmen and other foreigners (at various periods, not all at one time), either in durance or on parole, spent a longer or shorter period of their lives in Great Britain. In the second period of the war (1803–15) there were 122,440, and of these probably 4,000 at least were out on parole, including in this estimate not only the commissioned officers, but also the large number of officers of privateers and of civilians of various occupations who were all reckoned as prisoners of war. [202]
A comparison of the Census Returns and the official returns as to prisoners of war for the year 1810 justifies the conclusion that about 2 per cent. of the adult males in Great Britain of the average age of the prisoners must have been Frenchmen. Of this 2 per cent., the great majority were, as has been already stated, in confinement; but as those on parole were not scattered broadcast throughout the country, but were concentrated in the various towns enumerated in the footnote to page 192, they would in these towns constitute a far larger proportion than 2 per cent. of the men of their own age. In Peterborough the 100 parole prisoners would be about 15 per cent. of their contemporaries in the town and neighbourhood. It is strange that this considerable element of French in the society of that period figures so little in the pages of contemporary authors who deal with social matters. In explanation it must be borne in mind that the allowance of the Government to the prisoners on parole was only sufficient for a bare living, and that, except in the case of those with good private means, these officers would have to be very economical in their choice of lodgings, and would be thrown chiefly into the society of persons who were by their circumstances compelled to let cheap lodgings. The prisoners would form a little circle among themselves.
Mr. John T. Thorp has with infinite pains gone into the question of how far Free Masonry brought the parole prisoners into association with their brethren of the craft. [204] The result of his investigations is that, although in eleven of the towns in which parole prisoners were detained—viz. Abergavenny, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leek, Melrose, Northampton, Plymouth, Sanquhar, Tiverton, Penicuik, Wantage, and Wincanton—French Lodges were established by the prisoners resident in the towns or their neighbourhood, only in four is there any evidence of association with British masons. In Abergavenny two English became members of the Lodge. In Melrose the members of the French Lodge joined with the Brethren of the Scotch Lodge in the ceremonial of the laying of the first stone of a public reservoir, and among the archives of the Scotch Lodge was a memorial presented by twenty of the members of the French Lodge expressing their gratitude for the fraternal manner in which they had uniformly been treated by the Brethren of the Melrose Lodge.
In Wantage, the Lodge “Cours unis” was formed by the prisoners, and when seven members were transferred to Kelso, it is recorded that they were received as visitors by the Scotch Lodge in that town.
At Wincanton (“La Paix désirée”) two certificates were granted to Englishmen, one as a joining member and the other as an initiate.
Very little more evidence is found in the minutes of the English Lodges. At Ashburton is the record of the Initiation of a Frenchman. At Selkirk twenty-three parole prisoners who were masons were enrolled as members of the Lodge, and they were allowed the use of the Lodge Room for their own business and ceremonies.
At Northampton, in the neighbouring county to that in which Norman Cross is situated, a French Lodge (“La Bonne Union”) was established, but there is no tradition of any association with the English Brethren.
At Ashby-de-la-Zouch a French Lodge was formed, but there is no record of any intercourse with the English Brethren. Ashby was a large depot for parole prisoners, some 200 being located in the town and neighbourhood, and there is a tradition that the French Lodge of Freemasons gave a ball to which they invited many of the inhabitants.
One reason why the Brethren of the French and English nations apparently associated to such a small extent, is that the British masons would, as a rule, regard the French Lodges as irregular and self-constituted, they having no mandate from the Grandmaster of England or Scotland.
In Peterborough there is no record or tradition of a French Lodge.
Mr. Thorp, in the little history from which these facts are drawn, mentions the marriage of a member of the French Lodge at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Brother Louis Jan to a Miss Edwards, in 1809. The couple went to France in 1814, returned to England for some years, but went back to Rouen, where M. Jan died. His widow came back to Ashby, where she supported herself and her children by teaching French. She died in 1867.
As regards the parole prisoners whose headquarters were at Peterborough, a careful search through the marriage register of St. John’s Church has failed to discover an entry of any marriage which can be identified as that of a French prisoner and English girl; but in the years 1800–01 five marriages between Dutch prisoners and English girls were celebrated in the church and duly registered.
The first three bridegrooms were young officers, who were married on the eve of their restoration to liberty under the terms of the Convention of Alkmaar. From the register of Dutch Prisoners of War in the Record Office, we have been able to identify these bridegrooms. In the Parish Church Register there is absolutely no hint that the bridegrooms were prisoners of war. The names only are given, without any description, although the statement that there are entries of French prisoners, designated as such, in this marriage register having been once made, has been adopted time after time by writers and lecturers on this subject.
1. On the 17th February 1800, Albertus Coeymans was married to Ann Whitwell. Witnesses who signed the register, B. Pletsz and James Gibbs. James Gibbs appears to have been the Parish Clerk, who usually witnessed the marriages. From the register in the Record Office we find that Albertus Coeymans was 2nd Lieutenant in the Furie, was captured when the ship was taken, received at Norman Cross 19th November 1798, and “discharged to Holland” 19th February 1800. The witness B. Pletsz was Captain of the Furie, and was received at Norman Cross on the same date as the Lieutenant.
2. On the 17th February 1800, Adrian Roeland Robberts Roelans was married to Mary Kingston. Witnesses, Joseph Little and James Gibbs. Mr. Roelans was a midshipman on the Jupiter, and was received at Norman Cross, with others of the captured crew, on the 4th November 1797, being released on parole twelve days after his reception. It is interesting to note that the witness at this wedding was not another Dutch officer, but Mr. Joseph Little of Thorpe, in which hamlet Miss Kingston resided. That the marriage of his friend was satisfactory to this witness, and that the intimacy between them was kept up after the liberation of the midshipman under the Alkmaar Cartel, may be accepted as established by an entry in the register nine years later of the marriage of Joseph Little of Thorpe to Mary Roelans, probably the sister of his friend the midshipman captured on the Jupiter.
Mr. Joseph Little remained at home with his Dutch bride, and as far as can be traced through the complicated connections of the large clan of Littles, the blood of Roelans still runs in the blood of several of them. A brother of Mr. Little’s had married a sister of the Miss Kingston who became the wife of Cadet Roelans, thus creating another link in the marriage connection of the Dutch Roelans and the Northamptonshire Littles.
3. On the 18th February 1800, Charles Peter Vanderaa married Lucy Rose. Witnesses to the marriage, J. Ysbrands and James Gibbs. Mr. Vanderaa was Lieutenant on a brig-of-war which was captured. He was received at Peterborough on parole on 11th June 1798, and was released on 19th February 1800. The witness J. Ysbrands was the Captain of the Courier, taken prisoner and received at Peterborough on parole 21st June 1798, released 19th February 1800 in accordance with the Alkmaar Convention.
4. After an interval of six months, on 20th August 1800, is the entry of the marriage of Antoni Staring to Nancy Rose. Witnesses, E. B. Knogz and James Gibbs. The bridegroom was Captain on the Duyffe man-of-war. He was received 27th May 1800, released 26th August, having been married on the day previous. The witness E. B. Knogz was surgeon on the Duyffe, and was received at Peterborough and released on the same day as the captain.
5. The fifth marriage of the Dutch prisoners was that of Berthold Johannas Justin Wyeth to Sarah Wotton. These marriages were all by licence and not by banns. In this case the entry is “Licence with consent of Parents,” but this by no means implies that the other marriages took place without such consent; the addition of these words depended upon the habit of the officiating minister. The witness was B. Pletsz. Mr. Wyeth was 2nd Lieutenant of the Furie, and was received on parole on 19th November 1798. He was not exchanged under the Alkmaar Cartel, but remained a prisoner until the 16th October 1801. [208]
As regards the absence of any evidence of the marriage of the French prisoners and British women, it must be remembered that the vast majority of the French were Roman Catholics, and that mixed marriages of members of that Church with Protestants were discouraged by the authorities of both Churches alike. There existed also throughout these years a fierce animosity between the French and the English, and when it is added that the French Government did not acknowledge the legality of such marriages, so that in many instances the unfortunate wives when they returned with their husbands at the close of the war were not allowed to land, we can understand that almost irresistible pressure would be exercised to prevent these unions, and that intimacies and flirtations which might ripen into love would very probably be strongly discouraged.
One instance of an attachment between a French prisoner confined at Norman Cross and an English girl, and their subsequent marriage, was that of Jean Marie Philippe Habart to Elizabeth Snow, of Stilton. In the prison register we find Jean Habart entered as a sailor, captured off Calais, 20th June 1803, in L’Abondance, a small vessel of ten tons. He was put on board L’Immortalité, and from her transferred to the prison ship Sandwich; was sent thence to Norman Cross, being received 27th August 1803. He acted as baker to Mr. Lindsay, the contractor, and was discharged on 20th June 1811. This official statement differs from the family tradition in two points only: the register says (probably incorrectly) that he was a sailor, the family that he was only temporarily on the boat fishing; the register says that he was freed on 20th June 1811, his granddaughter believed that he was freed on the emptying of the prison in 1814 (the register in this case is doubtless correct). His granddaughter’s account is, that M. Jean M. P. Habart was the son of a gunsmith in a good position in a town on the north coast of France, and that he was captured while fishing off the coast, and was imprisoned at Norman Cross. There, as we learn from the register, not being a combatant, but a civilian prisoner of war, he was employed as baker to the contractor.
His future wife, the daughter of a farmer in Stilton, was in the habit of bringing up the milk bought for the prisoners’ use, and she would probably have frequent interviews with the contractor’s assistant, and as her granddaughter says, “she fell in love with him.” The attachment was mutual, and when after his release he returned to France, he left his heart behind him. During his imprisonment his father had died, leaving property for his children, [210a] and Jean, when he had realised his share, returned to England, married Miss Snow, and settled in business, as a baker and corn merchant, in Stilton. The years of his imprisonment had been sweetened by love, but his end was a tragic one. On 24th January 1840, forty-three years after he passed through the prison gates and first saw the hated caserns and fenced courts of Norman Cross, he was killed within sight of the fields on which they stood.
He was returning from a round, which he had been making to collect money from his customers, and it is supposed that at an inn in Peterborough he had shown his well-filled purse, and was followed on the Norman Cross Road to the spot about three miles from Peterborough, where he was found with his head battered in and his pockets rifled, his empty purse being found some time after in an adjacent field. [210b]
Such histories as have been here given from the writer’s long and intimate knowledge of the locality might doubtless be collected in the neighbourhood of other prisons, but the danger of assuming that the mere occurrence of French names in the neighbourhood of a depot “still speak of the old war time” has already been dealt with in Chap. IV, p. 59, footnote.
The parole-breakers who managed to escape, varied from the humblest and poorest of the non-combatants, who had to pass through many hardships and trying adventures before securing their freedom, to men in the position and affluence of General Lefebre, who, in May 1812, accompanied by his wife, escaped from Cheltenham. He personated a German count; his wife, in boy’s clothes, passed for his son, and his aide-de-camp acted as valet. They put up at an hotel in Jermyn Street, got a passport, and reached Dover in style, whence they were conveyed to the French coast. From France he wrote an insolent letter to the English Government in justification of his breach of parole.
A slightly different version was that he reached London as a Russian General Officer, with two aides-de-camp, one of whom was his wife dressed in military costume; all conversed in German.
The conduct of the officers on parole both as regards the breaking of their parole and their general orderly behaviour, varied greatly in different districts, as also did the attitude of the surrounding population towards the prisoners when they attempted to escape. A population which for centuries had been accustomed to receive the benefits of, and to ignore or assist in, the trade of smuggling, would view the attempt to escape in a different light to that in which the quiet agricultural population of the Midlands and East Anglia would regard it.