On the 18th March 1806 the House of Commons resolved to go into committee to consider the question of charging a duty on imported straw plait. After formal stages, it was resolved, 26th June, to levy a duty of 7_s._ per lb. avoirdupois of plaiting for hats or bonnets, £1 16_s._ on every dozen hats or bonnets not exceeding 22 inches in diameter, £3 12_s._ on every dozen exceeding 22 inches in diameter. The Act received the royal assent on the 10th July. After this date the sale of straw plait was interdicted as had previously been the sale of hats, the hats and the plait made at Norman Cross being alike regarded as foreign productions and liable to tax. In official documents constant reference is made to this traffic in the plait as illegal and defrauding the Revenue. George Borrow’s eloquent description of “the straw plait hunts” (poor little ten-year-old George Borrow—his sympathetic soul went out to the captives!) has helped to throw the glamour of romance over the irregular proceedings of the Frenchmen, whom we were maintaining in our prisons, and whom we would gladly have restored to their own country if only we could be met on fair terms. Persons in the neighbourhood, soldiers from the barracks, and others were accessories in the illicit trade in straw plait. They would conceal it about their persons, wrap it round their bodies, etc. They assisted in two ways, they helped to get the straw into the prison and to carry the manufactured article out. {137} Although the interdict on the traffic was issued even before the articles were taxed, in the interests of the trade and of the workers in the district, so profitable was the illicit traffic to those who took part in it, that the fact that they were interfering with the living of their own countrymen and women had no deterrent effect, and such was the influence of the merchants and the various persons in the neighbourhood engaged in the trade that it was difficult to get convictions. To get the straw ready cut into proper lengths into the hands of the prisoners was doubtless more easy than to get a sack of straw thrown over the prison wall, carried across the open spaces up to the inner stockade fence, and again thrown over them into the court of the caserns. This proceeding must have needed several soldier accomplices, some giving active assistance and others closing their eyes to what was going on. These men, when detected, had severe punishment, receiving as many as 500 lashes. Three civilians tried at Huntingdon for being engaged in the traffic in 1811 were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, one for twelve and the two others for six months.