‘I take this liberty in informing you that in case that the Prisoners of War residing here on Parole be not kept to stricter orders, that they will have the command of this Parish. They are out all hours of the night, they do almost as they have a mind to do: if a man is loaded ever so hard, he must turn out of the road for them, and if any person says anything he is reprimanded for it. ‘They have too much liberty a great deal. ‘I am, Gentlemen, ‘With a good wish to my King and Country, ‘A TRUE ENGLISHMAN.’ Another correspondent asserted that although Mr. Crapper complained of the generals’ breach of parole, he had the next week allowed thirty of the French prisoners to give a ball and supper to the little tradesmen of the town, which had been kept up till 3 a.m. Crapper denied this, and said he had refused the application of the prisoners for a dance until 10 p.m., given at an inn to the ‘ladies of the town—the checked apron Ladies of Wantage’. Yet another writer declared that Crapper was a drunkard, and drank with the prisoners. To this, Crapper replied that if they called on him as gentlemen, he was surely entitled to offer them hospitality. The same writer spoke of the French prisoners being often drunk in the streets, of Crapper fighting with them at the inns, and accused him of withholding money from them. Crapper, however, appears as Parole Agent for Wantage, with 340 prisoners in his charge, some time after all this. I have given Crapper’s case at some length merely as an instance of what parole agents had to put up with, not as being unusual. Ponsford at Moreton-Hampstead, Smith at Thame, and Eborall at Lichfield, seem to have been provoked in much the same way by turbulent and defiant prisoners. For very palpable reasons the authorities did not encourage close _rapprochements_ between parole agents and the prisoners under their charge. At Tavistock in 1779, something wrong in the intercourse between Ford, the Agent, and his flock, had led to an order that not only should Ford be removed, but that certain prisoners should be sent to Launceston. Whereupon the said prisoners petitioned to be allowed to remain at Tavistock under Ford: ‘A qui nous sommes très sincèrement attachés, tant par les doux façons qu’il a scu toujours avoir pour nous, même en exécutant ses ordres, que par son honnêteté particulière et la bonne intelligence qu’il a soin de faire raigner autant qu’il est possible entre les différentes claces de personnes qui habitent cette ville et les prisonniers qu’y sont;—point sy essentiel et sy particulièrement bien ménagé jusqu’à ce jour.’