At Cranbrook a French officer was assaulted by a local ruffian and hit him back, for which he was sent to Sissinghurst.
In 1808 and 1809 many complaints from officers were received that their applications to be allowed to go to places like Bath and Cheltenham for the benefit of their health were too often met with the stereotyped reply that ‘your complaint is evidently not of such a nature as to be cured by the waters of Bath or Cheltenham’. Of course, the Transport Office knew well enough that the complaints were not curable by the waters of those places, but by their life and gaiety: by the change from the monotonous country town with its narrow, gauche society, its wretched inns, and its mile limit, to the fashionable world of gaming, and dancing, and music, and flirting; but they also knew that to permit French officers to gather at these places in numbers would be to encourage plotting and planning, and to bring together gentlemen whom it was desirable to keep apart.
So in the latter year the Mayor of Bath received an order from the Earl of Liverpool that all prisoners of war were to be removed from the city except those who could produce certificates from two respectable doctors of the necessity of their remaining, ‘which must be done with such caution as, if required, the same may be verified on oath.’ The officers affected by this order were to go to Bishop’s Waltham, Odiham, Wincanton, and Tiverton.
Of complaints by prisoners on parole against the country people there must be many hundreds, the greater number of them dating from the period of the Seven Years’ War. During this time the prisoners were largely distributed in Kent, a county which, from its proximity to France, and its consequent continuous memory of wrongs, fancied and real, suffered at the hands of Frenchmen during the many centuries of warfare between the two countries, when Kent bore the brunt of invasion and fighting, may be understood to have entertained no particular affection for Frenchmen, despite the ceaseless commerce of a particular kind which the bitterest of wars could not interrupt.
A few instances will suffice to exemplify the unhappy relationship which existed, not in Kent alone, but everywhere, between the country people and the unfortunate foreigners thrust among them.
In 1757 a prisoner on parole at Basingstoke complained that he was in bed at 11 p.m., when there came ‘7 ou 8 drôles qui les défièrent de sortir en les accablant d’injures atroces, et frappant aux portes et aux fenêtres comme s’ils avoient voulu jeter la maison en bas.’ Another prisoner here had stones thrown at him ‘d’une telle force qu’elles faisoient feu sur le pavé,’ whilst another lot of youths broke windows and almost uprooted the garden.
From Wye in Kent is a whole batch of letters of complaint against the people. One of them is a round-robin signed by eighty prisoners complaining of bad and dear lodgings, and praying to be sent to Ashford, which was four times the size of Wye, and where there were only forty-five prisoners, and lodgings were better and cheaper.
At Tonbridge, in the same year, two parole officers dropped some milk for fun on the hat of a milk-woman at the door below their window. Some chaff ensued which a certain officious and mischief-making man named Miles heard, who threatened he would report the Frenchmen for improper conduct, and get them sent to Sissinghurst! The authors of the ‘fun’ wrote to the authorities informing them of the circumstances, and asking for forgiveness, knowing well that men had been sent to Sissinghurst for less. Whether the authorities saw the joke or not does not appear.
The rabble of the parole towns had recourse to all sorts of devices to make the prisoners break their paroles so that they could claim the usual reward of ten shillings. At Helston, on August 1, 1757, Hingston, the Parole Agent, sent to Dyer, the Agent at Penryn, a prisoner named Channazast, for being out of his lodgings all night. At the examination, Tonken, in whose house the man was, and who was liable to punishment for harbouring him, said, and wrote later:
‘I having been sent for by the mayor of our town this day to answer for I cannot tell what, however I’ll describe it to you in the best manner I am able. You must know that last Friday evening, I asked Monsieur Channazast to supper at my house who came according to my request. Now I have two Frenchmen boarded at my house, so they sat down together till most ten o’clock. At which time I had intelligence brought me that there was a soldier and another man waiting in the street for him to come out in order to get the ten shillings that was orders given by the Mayor for taking up all Frenchmen who was seen out of their Quarters after 9 o’clock. So, to prevent this rascally imposition I desired the man to go to bed with his two countrymen which he did accordingly altho’ he was not out of my house for the night——’