But it was not all savagery and horror here among those military captives, for they were often allowed out on parole, within certain hours and well-defined bounds. It was understood that no prisoner out on parole should leave the highroad, nor was he to be at large after sunset. If he disregarded these rules he was liable to be shot at sight by any one who had a gun handy. He was an Ishmael against whom every hand was turned, and, indeed, the Post Office offered a reward of £5 to any mail guard who, seeing a prisoner breaking parole, should shoot him. After several inoffensive farm-labourers, going home after dusk, had been peppered with shot in mistake by guards anxious to secure this reward, the village streets and roads adjacent became singularly desolate when a coach was heard approaching. There were exceptions to these strict rules, and officers of high rank—and consequently assumed to have a nicer sense of honour than that obtaining among subalterns and the rank and file—were permitted to take private lodgings at Stilton. Those were the fortunate ones. Most of the prisoners, unhappily, were penniless, and after a time even their own Government refused supplies for their maintenance. Accordingly, they obtained some few little luxuries, and employed the time that hung so heavily on their hands, by carving toys and artistic nick-nacks out of fragments of wood, or from the bones left from their rations, and selling them to the crowds of country folks who came to gaze at them on certain days. Straw-plaiting, too, was a prisoners’ industry, until it was stopped by some of the military in charge. In March, 1812, Sergeant Ives, of the West Essex Militia, was stopped on the highway between Stilton and Norman Cross by a number of persons unknown, who, after having knocked him down and robbed him of his money and watch, wrenched open his jaws, and with savage cruelty, cut off a piece of his tongue. It was supposed that this outrage was in revenge for his having been concerned in suppressing the plait trade at Norman Cross barracks. The prisoners were not entirely without spiritual consolation, for the good Bishop de Moulines appointed himself their chaplain, and, of his own free will leaving France, took up residence at Stilton. He attended them in sickness, and helped them out of his own resources. The officers in charge of these prisoners were often brutal, but that there were some who sympathised with their sorrows is evident from the tablet still to be seen in Yaxley Church, a mile distant, which tells of the gratitude of the prisoners for the kindness shown them by Captain John Draper, R.N., who died after being in charge of the prison for only eighteen months. Norman Cross Prison, or “Yaxley Barracks”—Norman Cross being in the parish of Yaxley—built in 1796; was demolished in 1816, and no vestige of it is left.