For offences against the laws of the land, more grave than those which could be dealt with by the authorities of the various depots, the prisoners, like British subjects, were liable to be tried at the assizes—thus Nicholas Deschamps and Jean Roubillard were tried at Huntingdon Assizes for forging £1 bank-notes (which they had done most skilfully). This was at that time a capital offence, and they were sentenced to death, but were respited during His Majesty’s pleasure, and remained in Huntingdon Gaol under sentence of death for nine terrible years, until Buonaparte was sent to Elba in 1814; they were then pardoned, and sent back to France with the rest of the liberated prisoners. On the 9th September 1808, Charles François Marie Bourchier, who had been convicted at Huntingdon Assizes of having, in an attempt to escape, stabbed Alexander Halliday with a knife, was hanged at the prison in the sight of the whole garrison, who were under arms, and of all the prisoners. This is the only recorded civil execution at Norman Cross; there are several recorded instances of summary military justice, prisoners being shot dead in attempts to escape. It must be borne in mind that the prisoners were still our foes, who would, if they could escape, be at once in the ranks of the enemy’s army fighting against us; and to prevent their escape, there was, at Norman Cross, little beyond the muskets and bayonets of the Norman Cross sentries—sixty of them posted round and about the prison. The cleanliness, sanitary and domestic, of the prison, the inhabitants of which averaged probably about 5,500 men (6,270 being the highest number of prisoners recorded in any official document as confined in Norman Cross on a specified day), was provided for by systematic fatigue parties from the prisoners themselves, one out of each mess of twelve being told off in regular rotation for the duty of sweeping, washing, scraping, and disinfecting the prisons; probably under this system the prison and courts were kept as clean as a man-of-war. Each man on leaving his hammock, doubled it over so that both clews hung on one hook, leaving the floor space clear. The prisoners lived in the caserns day and night when the weather was too bad for them to live out of doors, but in fair weather they were compelled by the regulations to live outside “in the airing-court” from morning to dusk, except when they were summoned to the casern for their dinner. The quadrangle is in Foulley’s description of his model always called “_pré_,” and probably there was more or less grass on the surface.