n conclave discussing such
strategical proposals as the local circumstances of each neighbourhood
seemed to suggest for arresting the onward march of the invader when he
had landed, as it was feared he would. Necessity was the mother of
invention, and what the farmer class wanted in military knowledge, they
made up for in practical sagacity directed to the intensely personal
ends of protecting their own homes and families, their herds and stacks
from the ruthless hands of the coming hosts! It was naturally expected
that Napoleon would land and enter England from the South or East, and
that in the latter case the inhabitants of Hertfordshire and
Cambridgeshire would, in the event of a flank movement through the
Eastern Counties for London, be among the first to bear the brunt of
the devastating march! The horror of the expected invasion was
intensified a thousandfold by the Englishman's attachment to his home
and family, and deliberations of the village councils often showed less
regard for the national scheme of defence than the protection of their
homes and property in the time of trial coming upon them. They set to
work devising means of local defence as real and as earnest as if every
village was already threatened with a state of siege!

This is clear from an intelligible means of local defence which was
taken in this neighbourhood. The expectation that "Boney" and his
"Mounseers" were coming from the South or East, naturally suggested the
expedient of arranging for the transport of non-combatants, and live
stock away farther Northward. The expedient was arranged for by the
villages around Royston along the Old North Road; and a plan had been
devised that as soon as tidings arrived that Buonaparte had landed,
each village was to assemble their live stock at a common centre in the
village, and then unite with those from other villages. Thus the route
for the removal of stock was settled, until it was expected that quotas
from each village would make one united common herd wending {65} its
way Northward to a safer distance from the ravaging hordes! One seems
to see that terrified exodus----

Now crowding in the narrow road,
In thick and struggling masses.
* * * *
Anon, with toss of horn and tail,
And paw of hoof and bellow,
They leap some farmer's broken pale,
O'er meadow-close or fallow!

From chronicles in the British Museum I am able to supplement the
foregoing arran