[Illustration: _Frontispiece_ PLAIT MERCHANTS TRADING WITH THE FRENCH PRISONERS OF WAR AT NORMAN CROSS _From a painting by A. C. Cooke in the Town Hall, Luton_ ] PRISONERS OF WAR IN BRITAIN 1756 TO 1815 A RECORD OF THEIR LIVES, THEIR ROMANCE AND THEIR SUFFERINGS BY FRANCIS ABELL HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY 1914 OXFORD: HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE Two influences have urged me to make a study of the subject of the prisoners of war in Britain. First: the hope that I might be able to vindicate our country against the charge so insistently brought against her that she treated the prisoners of war in her custody with exceptional inhumanity. Second: a desire to rescue from oblivion a not unimportant and a most interesting chapter of our national history. Whether my researches show the foregoing charge to be proven or not proven remains for my readers to judge. I can only say that I have striven to the utmost to prevent the entrance of any national bias into the presentation of the picture. As to the second influence. It is difficult to account for the fact that so interesting a page of our history should have remained unwritten. Even authors of fiction, who have pressed every department of history into their service, have, with about half a dozen exceptions, neglected it as a source of inspiration, whilst historical accounts are limited to Mr. Basil Thomson’s _Story of Dartmoor Prison_, Dr. T. J. Walker’s _Norman Cross_, and Mr. W. Sievwright’s _Perth Depôt_, all of which I have been permitted to make use of, and local handbooks.