That priests did frequent the prison in the earlier years of the war, 1797–1802, before the Peace of Amiens, we know from the correspondence of the Transport Commissioners with the agents. The prisoners themselves petitioned to have priests sent to them, and at length two priests were permitted to reside in the prison. That these gentlemen did not strictly confine themselves to the spiritual duties of their office we have reason to believe from an instruction given to Captain Pressland, the agent appointed when the prison was reopened in 1803. He was told that, “profiting by experience gained during the previous war,” the Board had decided that “no priests were to be admitted, except in extreme cases, and then under carefully arranged restrictions, as they had abused the privileges allowed them,” and that “a turnkey or clerk was to be present during the whole time they were in the hospital.” This memorandum evidently implies that at this time there was no regular provision for the spiritual needs of the general body of prisoners, no chaplain appointed by the authorities, and that no regular visitation except to the sick and dying was to be permitted. The Government was not without evidence that many of these priests had supplemented the spiritual aid by acting as go-betweens and secretly conveying correspondence to and from the prisoners. Any collusion between the prisoners and possible foreign agents outside was provided against by the regulation that all letters should pass through the agent’s hands. The continual recurrence throughout the war of plots for a general rising, originating with the French Government; the frequent attempts either of single prisoners or a combined body of them to escape, were probably, at the period with which we are dealing, felt to be sufficient reason for an order which in the present day would hardly be tolerated by the British public. A year later, in 1804, the commissioners, while affirming that they had no power to prevent French priests living in Stilton, were most decided in declining to allow them to live in the Depot, saying that at such a critical time they could not possibly grant such a privilege to foreigners “of that equivocal description”! The Transport Board must have seen reason to relax the orders, for three years after this direction was given we find the Bishop of Moulins not resident in the Depot, but living at Stilton a mile from it, on an allowance received from the British Government, and earning a high character for his work among the prisoners. He was also officiating outside the prison, for in the register kept by the neighbouring priest, the Rev. W. Hayes of King’s Cliffe, in whose mission Stilton was, are, among others, the following three entries of baptisms to which allusion has already been made in Chap. IV, p. 59: