The vocation of Captain Asbourne was a perilous one at that time, owing to the numerous British privateers cruising upon our coasts to prey upon our commerce. Into the hands of one of these he fell, in one of his voyages, and was carried a prisoner of war to England and thrown into Mill Prison at Plymouth, the story of whose famous dungeon and horrid barbarities belongs to the traditions of many an American family, where gentlemen of the best families, merchants, officers and privates suffered an indiscriminate death from contagions and fevers generated by the loathesomeness of its reeking atmosphere. Here Captain Ashbourne languished and died. And, strange to say, his captivity was shared by John Claypoole, who stranger still, had been a former lover of the youthful Betsy Griscom.
The dying husband was nursed and comforted (with such consolations as the walls of their prison would admit,) by his sympathizing and fast friend in affliction; to whom were confided the parting messages of love to the distant and disconsolate wife; together with such articles of value as his captors had left to him; the straw upon which he lay was shaken and turned by John Claypoole and the eyes of poor Ashburne were finally (on the third day of March 1782) closed in death by his friend, who envied him his earlier release and expected soon to follow; death seeming then their only hope.
At last, on the Twenty-second of June 1782, more than eight months after hearing of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis to General Washington in Yorktown, John Claypoole was released from his captivity and sent home with 316 other prisoners exchanged by cartel; and after a voyage of fifty days (which was quite adventurous) arrived in Philadelphia, the bearer to Mrs. Ashbourne (late Ross) of the tidings of her husband's sufferings and death.
