‘Mr. Harvey à son arrivée de Londres, glorieux d’être exaucé, n’eut rien de plus pressé que de faire voir dans toutes les oberges et dans les rues les ordres dont il était revetu de la part des honorables Commissaires; ce qui ne pourra que nous faire un très mauvais effet, veu que le commun peuple qui habite ce pays-ci est beaucoup irrité contre les Français, à cause de la Nation et sans jusqu’au présent qu’aucun Français n’est donné aucun sujet de plainte.’
Again, in 1756 the aumonier of the Comte de Gramont, after complaining that the inhabitants of Ashburton are ‘un peuple sans règle et sans éducation’, by whom he was insulted, hissed, and stoned, and when he represented this to the authorities was ‘garrotté’ and taken to Exeter Prison, ridicules the status of the agents—here a shoemaker, here a tailor, here an apothecary, who dare not, for business reasons, take the part of the prisoners. He says he offered his services to well-to-do people in the neighbourhood, but they were declined—deceit on his part perhaps being feared.
From Ashford, Kent, a complainant writes, in 1758, that he was rather drunk one evening and went out for a walk to pick himself up. He met a mounted servant of Lord Winchilsea with a dog. He touched the dog, whereupon the servant dismounted and hit him in the face. A crowd then assembled, armed with sticks, and one man with a gun, and ill-treated him until he was unconscious, tied his hands behind him, emptied his pockets, and took him before Mr. Tritton. Knowing English fairly well, the prisoner justified himself, but he was committed to the cachot. He was then accused of having ill-treated a woman who, out of pity, had sent for her husband to help him. He handed in a certificate of injuries received, signed by Dr. Charles Fagg. His name was Marc Layne.
Complaints from Goudhurst in Kent relate that on one occasion three men left their hop-dressing to attack passing prisoners. Upon another, the French officers were, mirabile dictu, playing ‘criquet’, and told a boy of ten to get out of the way and not interfere with them, whereupon the boy called his companions, and there ensued a disturbance. A magistrate came up, and the result was that a Captain Lamoise had to pay £1 1s. or go to Maidstone Jail.
That the decent members of the community reprobated these attacks on defenceless foreigners, although they rarely seem to have taken any steps to stop them, is evident from the following story. At Goudhurst, some French prisoners, coming out of an inn, were attacked by a mob. Thirty-seven paroled officers there signed a petition and accompanied it with this testimony from inhabitants, dated November 9, 1757:
‘We, the inhabitants of the Parish of Goudhurst, certifie that we never was insulted in any respect by the French gentlemen, nor to their knowledge have they caused any Riot except when they have been drawn in by a Parcel of drunken, ignorant, and scandalous men who make it their Business to ensnare them for the sake of a little money.
(Signed.)
Stephen Osbourne. Thos. Ballard. John Savage.
Jasper Sprang. Richard Royse. J. Dickinson.
W. Hunt. John Bunnell. Zach. Sims.’
The complainants made declaration:
1. That the bad man Rastly exclaimed he would knock down the first Frenchman he met.
2. Two French prisoners were sounding horns and hautboys in the fields. The servant of the owner ordered them to go. They went quietly, but the man followed them and struck them. They complained to Tarith, the Agent, but he said that it did not concern him.
3. This servant assembled fifteen men with sticks, and stopped all exit from Bunnell’s inn, where five French prisoners were drinking. The prisoners were warned not to leave, and, although ‘remplis de boisson’, they kept in. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock came; they resolved to go out, one of them being drunk; they were attacked and brutally ill-used.