complenished with men, well appointed with bows and arrows and other
weapons, that there was no passage nor entry for them into the town.'
Nor would they listen to 'the Gentlemen,' but refused all conference.

The 'Warlike Knights' then tried force, but were driven back with loss,
by a heavy volley. 'Whereupon some one strong man of that company,' says
Hooker (who must have admired decision), 'unawares of the gentlemen, did
set one of the barns on fire, and then the Commoners, seeing that, ran
and fled away out of the town.' This ended all the trouble in Crediton,
though the smoking barns served as fuel to the growing spirit of revolt,
and the 'Barns of Crediton' became a party-cry.

Clarendon mentions briefly that Charles I came here on his way into
Cornwall, and reviewed the troops under Prince Maurice.

About one hundred and fifty years later the distant echoes of war
sounded faintly in Crediton, for French prisoners of war on parole,
Napoleon's soldiers, were allowed to live in this town. Vague rumours of
them may still be heard. The sexton remembers that his mother often told
about them, and one of the first people he buried was a man named Henry,
'though,' he explained, 'they spell it rather differently.' The
melancholy fate of this stranger throws a light on one of the
disregarded tragedies in the train of war, for Henri was not a soldier,
but the son of a French prisoner. For some reason he never went home,
and died in the workhouse.

Amongst the conditions that the prisoners on parole had to sign was:
'Not to withdraw one mile from the boundaries prescribed there without
leave for that purpose from the said Commissioners;' and on some roads a
stone was put up marking the limits. One of these stones, of grey
limestone, and very like a milestone with no inscription, is still to be
seen jutting out from the bank of Shobrooke Park, on the Stockleigh
Pomeroy road. Another witness to the presence of the French prisoners
lies in the name that clings to a bit of road running behind the
Vicarage, for it is still sometimes called the Belle Parade, and
tradition says that here they used to assemble on Sundays.

Returning along the river, one passes through the property of the late
Sir Redvers Buller. Downes is a white house standing amongst green open
lawns sloping to the river, and it has a background of great trees and
ample shrubberies. The Bullers at one time lived chiefly in Cornwall,
and Downes was originally a