ABSTRACT
[…] When the country was chin-deep in the fears of invasion & every month was filled with the terrors which Bonaparte had spread in other countries a national scheme was set on foot to raise a raw army of volunteers & to make the matter plausible a letter was circulated said to be written by the prince regent I forget how many was demanded from our parish but I remember the panic which it created was very great no great name rises in the world without creating a crowd of little mimics that glitter in borrowed rays & no great lie was ever put into circulation with[out] a herd of little lyes multiply[ing] by instinct as it were & crowding under its wings the papers that were circulated assured the people of England that the French were on the eve of invading it & that it was deemed nessesary by the regent that an army from 18 to 45 should be raised immediately this was the great lye & the little lies were soon at its heels which assured the people of Helpstone that the French had invaded & got to London & some of these little lyes had the impudence to swear that the french had even reached northampton the people got at their doors in the evening to talk over the rebellion of ’45 when the rebels reached Derby & even listened at intervals to fancy they heard the french ‘rebels’ at Northampton knocking it down with their cannon I never gave much credit to popular storys of any sort so I felt no concern at these storys though I coud not say much for my valour if the tale had provd true we had a cross-graind sort of choice left us which was to be forced to be drawn & go for nothing or take on as volunteers for a bounty of two guineas I accepted the latter & went with a neighbours son W. Clarke to Peterbrough to be sworn on & prepard to join the regiment at Oundle the morning we left home our mothers parted with us as if we were going to Botany Bay & people got at their doors to bid us farewell & greet us with a Job’s comfort that they doubted we should see Helpstone no more I confess I wished myself out of the matter by times when we got to Oundle the place of quartering we were drawn out76 into the fields & a more motley multitude of lawless fellows was never seen in Oundle before & hardly out of it there were 1300 of us we was drawn up into a line & sorted into companys I was one of the shortest & therefore my station is evident I was in that mixed multitude called the batallion which they nicknamed ‘bum-tools’ for what reason I cannot tell the light company was called ‘light-bobs’ & the grenadiers ‘bacon-bolters’ these were names given to each other who felt as great an enmity against each other as ever they all felt for the french […]
