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A letter from Portsmouth, dated Aug. 4, says,
“Scarce a day for some time past has elapsed without furnishing instances of the most gross irregularity and barbarities committed by the military at Hilsea; insomuch, that it is become dangerous to travel in this neighbourhood in the night. On Wednesday evening two officers belonging to one of the independent companies indiscriminately knocked or cut down every person they met; even women and children felt the effects of their fury; and their mad career that night was finished by cutting off the right hand of one Calpen, a shoemaker, at Halfway-house, when endeavouring to ward the blow from his head, at which it was aimed. Next day a serjeant and nine men, to all appearance sent out for the purpose of making depredations on the public, inhumanly treated every person found by them on the road; by the activity of the constables, assisted by a number of the inhabitants, three of the most desperate villains were at length secured and lodged in the town gaol.
“Wednesday a party of recruits, mostly Irishmen, on their march to join the above independent companies, behaved in a most riotous and outrageous manner, at the White Lion, at Wickham, where they were quartered; without the smallest provocation, they turned the landlord and his family out of doors, took entire possession of the house, and were proceeding to other acts of violence, when a party of militia, whom it was deemed necessary to call to the aid of the civil power, arrived from Waltham, who, after a short conflict, dislodged these desperadoes, but not before one of them was so dangerously wounded, that it is imagined he cannot recover.”
— Kentish Gazette, Saturday 11 August, 1781 (source)