The mere dread of the long imprisonment before them and probably the greater facility for the adventure led to several escapes while the prisoners were on the march from the coast to Norman Cross; these were sometimes successful. Thus in September 1797 a batch of 142 left Yarmouth for Yaxley; but only 141 entered Norman Cross, one having slipped away at Norwich. A cruel fate awaited some of the unfortunates who made such attempts. Two deaths occurred in Peterborough. On the 4th February 1808 a party of prisoners were lodged for the night in a stable in the yard of the Angel Inn, and one of them attempting to escape was shot by the sentinel, dying in twenty minutes; the verdict at the inquest was, “justifiable homicide.” On another occasion, one of a company of the poor fellows crossing the bridge, leapt over the low rail at the side, into the river, and was shot by the escort. On the 6th October 1799 a prisoner, Jean de Narde, son of a notary public of St. Malo, escaped and was recaptured on his way to the sea; he was confined for the night in the Bell Tower of East Dereham Church, from which he again attempted to escape, but was shot as he clambered down by a soldier on guard. He was buried in the churchyard, and fifty-eight years after a tombstone was erected by the vicar and two friends “as a memorial to Jean de Narde and as a tribute of respect to that brave and generous nation, once our foes, but now our allies and brethren.” The inscription on the stone is: IN MEMORY OF JEAN DE NARDE SON OF A NOTARY PUBLIC OF ST. MALO A FRENCH PRISONER OF WAR WHO HAVING ESCAPED FROM THE BELL TOWER OF THIS CHURCH WAS PURSUED AND SHOT BY A SOLDIER ON DUTY OCT. 6, 1799. AGED 28 YRS. Terribly handicapped as were the captives in their efforts to escape, the game was not entirely in the hands of the man with the firelock, if a tradition of the seven years’ war, 1756–63, is to be credited. An old family mansion at Sissinghurst was in that war used as a place of confinement for the French. In the Register of Burials is an entry in 1761, “William Bassuck, killed by a French Prisoner at Sissinghurst”; this is supposed to be the sentry killed by a prisoner who, like poor Jean de Narde forty years later at East Dereham, mounted the tower, and dropping a pail of water on the head of the sentry below, killed him on the spot. {160a}