But I find that in 1812, seven men were condemned at Maidstone, in addition to two years’ imprisonment, to stand in the pillory on every market-day for a month, for the same offence. In this year, Hughes, landlord of the _Red Lion_ and postmaster at Rye, Hatter, a fisherman, and Robinson, of Oswestry, were sentenced to two years in Horsham Jail, and in the first month to be pilloried on Rye Coast, _as near France as possible_, for aiding in the escape of General Phillipon and Lieutenant Garnier. Men, not regular escape agents, as well as the latter, often victimized the poor Frenchmen under pretence of friendship. One Whithair, of Tiverton, was accused, at the Exeter Summer Assizes of 1812, by French prisoners of having cheated them. He had obtained £200 from six officers on parole at Okehampton—he said to purchase a boat to get them off, and horses to carry them to the coast—through the medium of Madame Riccord, the English wife of one of the French officers. Whithair had also persuaded them to send their trunks to Tiverton in readiness. They waited four months, and then suspected that Whithair was tricking them, and informed the Agent. Whithair was arrested, and condemned to pay £200, and to be imprisoned until he did so. Later, Whithair humbly petitioned to be released from Newgate on the plea that during his imprisonment he would have no chance of paying the fine, and the Superintendent recommended it. It may be imagined that the profession of escape-aiding had much the same fascination for adventurous spirits as had what our forefathers called ‘the highway’. So we read of a young gentleman of Rye, who, having run through a fortune, determined to make a trial of this career as a means of restoring his exchequer, but he was evidently too much of an amateur in a craft which required the exercise of a great many qualities not often found in one man’s composition. His very first venture was to get off two officers of high rank from Reading, for which he was to receive three hundred guineas, half paid down. He got them in a post-chaise as far as the inn at Johns Cross, Mountfield, about fourteen miles from Hastings, but here the Excise officers dropped upon them, and there was an end of things. At Ashbourne in Derbyshire, a young woman was brought up on March 13, 1812, charged with aiding prisoners on parole to escape, and evidently there had been hints about improper relationship between her and the Frenchmen, for she published the following: ‘_To the Christian Impartial Reader._ ‘I the undernamed Susanna Cotton declares she has had nothing to do with the escape of the French prisoners, although she has been remanded at Stafford, and that there has been no improper relationship as rumoured.