incidentally of the St. Omer prisoners, was given in the Catholic Magazine for 1831 by Joseph Hodgson, vice-president, and William Poynter, a professor, ultimately Vicar Apostolic of the London district. (He laid the first stone of St. Mary's, Moorfields, and was buried there.) The serious troubles of the Douai college began in February 1793, when commissioners installed themselves in the building, sealed up much of the furniture, and forced the inmates to retire to their country house at Equerchim. In October they were brought back to Douai, and lodged in the Scotch college, but a week later were transferred to Doullens. Their pupils had, of course, mostly taken flight—Charles Kemble in 1792, Daniel O'Connell in January 1793, and Lingard a little later. Some, indeed, both of the professors and students, had not returned after the Christmas holidays of 1792. The forty-seven captives were hooted as they passed through Arras. At Doullens they were at first shut up in a casemate under the rampart, with no bed but straw, and even for this they had to pay. They were afterwards lodged in an attic, above the room of a sergeant whom, on account of his dictatorial airs, they nicknamed Cromwell.[1] They managed three times clandestinely to say mass, a baker's basket serving as the altar, at an early hour in the morning, but had to be very quiet in their move-
- ↑ A recent French writer, Deramecourt, seriously gives this as the man's real name.
