Which of these two inns could it have been to which Mrs. Calderwood of Coltness refers in her diary when, travelling from Scotland to London in the middle of the eighteenth century, she mentions at Stilton a “fine large inn,” where the linen was “as perfit rags as ever I saw: plain linen with fifty holes in each towell.” It would be interesting to know, but it is hopeless now to attempt to identify it.
XXI
Up-hill from Stilton, three-quarters of a mile away, but well within sight, stands the Norman Cross inn, where the Peterborough, Louth, Lincoln, and Hull coaches turned off to the right.
Norman Cross! how many have been those old-time cyclists who have partaken of the hospitality of the inn here! Not always, though, has it been a place of welcome memories. For years, indeed, during the long struggles between England and France, this was the site of one of the largest of the prisons in which captured French soldiers were incarcerated. Over three thousand were placed here, officers and privates, some remaining captive for more than ten years. Happy those who, through influence or by mere luck, were selected to be exchanged for our soldiers, prisoners in France.
It was a weary time for those poor fellows. Many of them died in the great insanitary sheds in which they were confined, and others lost their reason. Desperate men sometimes succeeded in escaping to the coast, where friends were awaiting them. Others, wandering over the lonely flats, perished miserably in the dykes and drains into which they fell when the mists shrouded the countryside. There were, again, those who stabbed the sentries and made off. Such an one was Charles François Marie Bonchew, an officer, who had wounded, but had not killed, a sentry named Alexander Halliday. Being captured, he was sentenced to death at Huntingdon, and was brought back to Norman Cross to be executed, September 1808. All the prisoners were turned out to witness the execution, and the garrison was under arms.
But it was not all savagery and horror here among those military captives, for they were often allowed out on parole, within certain hours and well-defined bounds. It was understood that no prisoner out on parole should leave the highroad, nor was he to be at large after sunset. If he disregarded these rules he was liable to be shot at sight by any one who had a gun handy. He was an Ishmael against whom every hand was turned, and, indeed, the Post Office offered a reward of £5 to any mail guard who, seeing a prisoner breaking parole, should shoot him. After several inoffensive farm-labourers, going home after dusk, had been peppered with shot in mistake by guards anxious to secure this reward, the village streets and roads adjacent became singularly desolate when a coach was heard approaching.
There were exceptions to these strict rules, and officers of high rank—and consequently assumed to have a nicer sense of honour than that obtaining among subalterns and the rank and file—were permitted to take private lodgings at Stilton. Those were the fortunate ones. Most of the prisoners, unhappily, were penniless, and after a time even their own Government refused supplies for their maintenance. Accordingly, they obtained some few little luxuries, and employed the time that hung so heavily on their hands, by carving toys and artistic nick-nacks out of fragments of wood, or from the bones left from their rations, and selling them to the crowds of country folks who came to gaze at them on certain days. Straw-plaiting, too, was a prisoners’ industry, until it was stopped by some of the military in charge.
In March, 1812, Sergeant Ives, of the West Essex Militia, was stopped on the highway between Stilton and Norman Cross by a number of persons unknown, who, after having knocked him down and robbed him of his money and watch, wrenched open his jaws, and with savage cruelty, cut off a piece of his tongue. It was supposed that this outrage was in revenge for his having been concerned in suppressing the plait trade at Norman Cross barracks.
The prisoners were not entirely without spiritual consolation, for the good Bishop de Moulines appointed himself their chaplain, and, of his own free will leaving France, took up residence at Stilton. He attended them in sickness, and helped them out of his own resources.