But even in 1756, when the persecution of prisoners by the rural riff-raff was very bad, we find a testimony from the officers on parole at Sodbury in Gloucestershire to the kindly behaviour of the inhabitants, saying that only on holidays are they sometimes jeered at, and asking to be kept there until exchanged.
Yet the next year, eighteen officers at the same place formulate to the Commissioners of the Sick and Wounded the following complaints:
1. Three Englishmen attacked two prisoners with sticks.
2. A naval doctor was struck in the face by a butcher.
3. A captain and a lieutenant were attacked with stones, bricks, and sticks, knocked down, and had to fly for safety to the house of Ludlow the Agent.
4. A second-captain, returning home, was attacked and knocked down in front of the Bell inn by a crowd, and would have been killed but for the intervention of some townspeople.
5. Two captains were at supper at the Bell. On leaving the house they were set on by four men who had been waiting for them, but with the help of some townspeople they made a fight and got away.
6. Between 10 and 11 p.m. a lieutenant had a terrible attack made on his lodging by a gang of men who broke in, and left him half dead. After which they went to an inn where some French prisoners lodged, and tried to break in ‘jusqu’au point, pour ainsy dire, de le demolir,’ swearing they would kill every Frenchman they found.
From Crediton a complaint signed by nearly fifty prisoners spoke of frequent attacks and insults, not only by low ruffians and loafers, but by people of social position, who, so far from doing their best to dissuade the lower classes, rather encouraged them. Even Mr. David, a man of apparently superior position, put a prisoner, a Captain Gazeau, into prison, took the keys himself, and kept them for a day in spite of the Portreeve’s remonstrance, but was made to pay damages by the effort of another man of local prominence.
The men selected as agents in the parole towns too often seem to have been socially unfitted for their positions as the ‘guides, philosophers, and friends’ of officers and gentlemen. At Crediton, for instance, the appointment of a Mr. Harvey called forth a remonstrance signed by sixty prisoners, one of whom thus described him: