{133b} The authenticity of the wine slides as Norman Cross work is absolute. Mr. Vinter, who gave them to the author for presentation to the museum, affirmed that his mother had known them all her life in the house of her parents, an inn opposite the prison. Her father had purchased them in the prison market. Mr. Vinter’s mother had herself seen from a window of the house a prisoner shot by a sentinel as he was attempting to escape. Of the caddies, one is in the possession of the Countess of Lindsey at Uffington Park, twelve miles from Norman Cross (Plate VII., Fig. 2, p. 40). Mr. Bodger has the second; it is of beautiful design, but dilapidated. The third is in the collection of Miss Paull, of Truro, and is known as the work of a French prisoner at the Falmouth Depot (Plate VIII, Fig. 1, p. 46). It is possible that the three caddies were all the work of the same artist, who may have been one of the thousands of prisoners who were sent from Falmouth to Norman Cross. {134a} _Parliamentary History_, xxxvi. 450. {134b} There were two rates for the tax on hats, those of a wider diameter being taxed at the higher rate. {134c} Norman Cross. Correspondence with the French Government relative to prisoners of war, issued from Downing Street 1st January 1801, as a supplement to Appendix 59. Report of the Transport Board to the House of Commons, 1798. {135} The Rev. E. Bradley (Cuthbert Bede), who half a century ago was the incumbent of Denton, a village a little over a mile from Norman Cross, left the following note among the MSS. which were prepared for a history of Huntingdon, or, as he called it, _Cromwell’s County_, which was never completed: “The French prisoners at the prison made beautiful straw plaits, which were purchased by people in Stilton and sold at a high rate. For a long time they were forbidden to sell these plaits, but they found means to do so through the soldiers. No doubt the soldiers made a great deal of money in this way, although the plaits were sold so cheaply that many people in Stilton made very respectable fortunes by their sale. The soldiers secretly brought the straw plaits to the houses, sometimes wrapped round their bodies under their clothes; in this case they would go upstairs and undress, and then come down with the straw plaits. “I do not know how the prisoners got the straw, but as they could no more make straw plaits without straw than the Israelites could make bricks, I suppose the soldiers helped them to it. Much of the plait (which was more neatly made than the English manufacture) was made up and sold in Stilton. Other was hawked about round the district; also sent to wholesale houses in London or elsewhere. One vendor of the straw plaits cleared a thousand pounds in a few years.” {136} Vol. 106.