Rowland Hill was fond of talking in his old age of his childhood, of which he retained a very clear memory. He remembered how one day in the autumn of 1801, his brothers came back from school with the news that the mail coach had driven into Wolverhampton decked with blue ribbons. Tidings had just arrived of peace with France.[20] The whole country was in a blaze with bonfires and illuminations. Rowland and his brothers, when it grew dark, set fire to the stump of an old tree, and so bore their part in the general rejoicings. When war broke out again with France he was living in Birmingham. “Old Boney,” became the terror of all English children, as “Malbrook,” a hundred years before, had been the terror of all French children. Within half-a-mile of his father’s house, “the forging of gun-barrels was almost incessant, beginning each day long before dawn, and continuing long after nightfall; the noise of the hammers being drowned ever and anon by the rattle from the proof-house.” Their own house each time felt the shock, and his mother’s brewings of beer were injured by the constant jars. On the open ground in front of the house, one division of the Birmingham Volunteers was drilled each Sunday morning. Sunday drilling, in this season of alarms, went on throughout the length and breadth of the land. The press-gang now and then came so far as this inland town. He could remember the alarm they caused him and his brothers. They were fearful not so much for themselves as for their father. One day a captured French gun-boat was dragged into Birmingham, and shown at a small charge. Hitherto he had seen no vessel bigger than a coal barge. For the first time he saw a real anchor and ship guns. As he returned home with his brothers, they talked over the loss of the Royal George, and other “moving accidents by flood.” He could “well remember the mingled joy and grief at the great, but dearly-bought, victory of Trafalgar.” The following verses of a rude ballad that was sung in the streets remained fixed in his memory:— “On the nineteenth[21] of October, Eighteen hundred and five, We took from the French and Spaniards A most glorious prize. “We fought for full four hours, With thundering cannon balls; But the death of gallant Nelson Was by a musket ball. “Britannia and her heroes Will long bemoan their loss; For he was as brave an Admiral, As e’er the ocean crossed.”