A large bundle of documents contains the trial of Barnes, Lunn, Browne, and others, for, in conjunction with bribed soldiers of the garrison, taking straw into the prison and receiving the plaited article in exchange. The evidence of soldiers of the guard showed that James, ostler at the _Bell_, Stilton, had been seen many times at midnight throwing sacks of straw over the palisades, and receiving straw plait in return, and also bonnets, and that he was always assisted by soldiers. Barnes had said that he would get straw into the prison in spite of General Williams or anybody else, as he had bought five fields of wheat for the purpose. He was acting for his brother, a Baldock straw-dealer. The trial came off at Huntingdon on March 20, 1811, the result being that Lunn got twelve months, and the others six months each. It may be noted here that so profitable for dealers was this contraband trade in war-prison manufactured straw articles, that a Bedfordshire man, Matthew Wingrave, found it to be worth his while to buy up wheat and barley land in the neighbourhood of the great Scottish dépôt at Valleyfield, near Penicuik, and carry on business there. As an instance of the resentment aroused by this judgement among those interested in the illicit trade, a Sergeant Ives of the West Essex Militia, who had been especially active in the suppression of the straw-plait business, was, according to the _Taunton Courier_, stopped between Stilton and Norman Cross by a number of fellows, who, after knocking him down and robbing him of his watch and money, forced open his jaws with savage ferocity and cut off a piece of his tongue. In November 1807 a brick wall was built round Norman Cross prison; the outer palisade which it replaced being used to repair the inner. In 1809 Flaigneau, a prisoner, was tried at Huntingdon for murdering a turnkey. The trial lasted six hours, but in spite of the instructions of the judge, the jury brought him in _Not Guilty_. Forgery and murder brought the prisoners under the Civil Law. Thus in 1805 Nicholas Deschamps and Jean Roubillard were tried at Huntingdon Summer Assizes for forging £1 bank notes, which they had done most skilfully. They were sentenced to death, but were respited during His Majesty’s pleasure, and remained in Huntingdon gaol for nine years, until they were pardoned and sent back to France in 1814. From the _Stamford Mercury_ of September 16, 1808, I take the following: ‘Early on Friday morning last Charles François Maria Boucher, a French officer, a prisoner of war in this country, was conveyed from the County Gaol at Huntingdon to Yaxley Barracks where he was hanged, agreeable to his sentence at the last assizes, for stabbing with a knife, with intent to kill Alexander Halliday, in order to effect his escape from that prison. The whole garrison was under arms and all the prisoners in the different apartments were made witnesses of the impressive scene.’