In 1813 a Valleyfield prisoner was released in order that he might help a Mr. Ferguson in the cod and herring fishery: almost as easy a release as that of the Norman Cross prisoner who was freed because he had instructed the Earl of Winchester’s labourers at Burleigh, by Stamford, in the use of the Hainault scythe! At one time very few of the prisoners at Valleyfield were Frenchmen. About twenty of them were allowed to live on parole outside the prison, and some of them enjoyed the friendship of the Cowan family; one in particular, Ancamp, a Nantes merchant, had been a prisoner nine and a half years, and had had a son born to him since his capture, whom he had never seen. In 1814, Valleyfield was evacuated, and remained unoccupied until 1820, when, after having been advertised for sale and put up to auction several times without success, it was purchased by Cowan for £2,200. In Penicuik many relics of the prisoners’ manufactures may still be seen, and what is now the public park was formerly the vegetable garden of the prison. An elderly lady at Lasswade told Mr. Bresnil of Loanhead that she remembered in her childhood an old farmer who was pointed out as having made his fortune by providing oatmeal to the prisoners at Valleyfield of an inferior quality to that for which he had contracted. I shall now give two accounts of life at these prisons. The first is by Sergeant-Major Beaudouin, of the 31st Line Regiment, whom we have met before in this book on the hulks at Chatham. He was captured off Havana, 26th Germinal, An XII, that is, on April 16, 1804, on board one of the squadrons from St. Nicholas Mole, San Domingo, and brought via Belfast to Greenock, at which port he happened to arrive on June 4, in the midst of the celebrations of the King’s birthday. (It may be mentioned that he quitted England finally, eight years later, on the same day.) Bonaparte in effigy, on a donkey, was being paraded through the street preparatory to being burned, and the natives told him that they hoped some fine day to catch and burn Bonaparte himself, which upset Beaudouin and made him retort that despite all England’s strength France would never be conquered, and that 100,000 Frenchmen landed in England would be sufficient to conquer it, whereupon a disturbance ensued. Beaudouin landed at Port Glasgow, and thence to Renfrew and Glasgow, of which city he remarks: ‘Cette ville paraît très grande et belle; costume très brillant. Ce qu’il y a de remarquable c’est que les paysans sont aussi bien mis comme ceux de la ville; on ne peut en faire la différence que par le genre. Ce qui _jure_ beaucoup dans leur costume, c’est que les femmes marchent presque toujours nu-pieds. La quantité de belles femmes n’est pas grande, comme on dit; en outre, en général elles out les bouches commes des fours.’