IT has been necessary in the preceding chapters to allude occasionally to the English prisoners in France, and a short chapter on their experiences may be deemed not irrelevant to the scheme of this little history. The author having in his boyhood been personally acquainted with the Rev. John Hopkinson, Rector of Alwalton, near Peterborough, who had been, from February 1804 to April 1814, a prisoner of war in France, will avail himself of the kind permission of this gentleman’s son, the Rev. W. Hopkinson, J.P., of Sutton Grange, Northamptonshire, and commence the chapter with a narrative of his experiences which Mr. J. Hopkinson had himself written, and which was found among his papers after his death in 1853. The prison at Verdun, where Mr. Hopkinson was confined at times closely, at others on parole, was occupied by the subjects of Great Britain and her allies, the British being the great majority. The prisoners were of the same class as those who were allowed on parole in Britain and who were distributed either in special prisons such as Norman Cross or in parties, which might vary from a few units to 300 or more, in one of the towns enumerated in the footnote, Chapter X, p. 192. Mr. Hopkinson was the son of the vicar of Morton, near Bourne in Lincolnshire. He was born in 1782 within three miles of the home of Hereward the Wake, and early in life he showed that he was endowed with some of that hero’s spirit—a spirit too adventurous for the quiet parsonage. After various experiences, commencing with his following as a child a recruiting party, and joining it as a drummer boy, he entered His Majesty’s service on the 5th March 1803 as a cadet (first-class volunteer) on board the frigate _Hussar_. This vessel, after some brushes with the enemy while cruising in the Mediterranean, was wrecked off the Isle of Saints on the Coast of France. Mr. Hopkinson’s experiences in this misfortune and up to the date of his entering Verdun are given in his own words, while a brief biography added by his widow brings the narrative up to the date of his release after the first abdication of Buonaparte, and his arrival in England in April 1814, simultaneously with the evacuation of Norman Cross to be described in the next chapter.