While spending some time at Yarmouth, Morland was looked upon as a
suspicious character, and was apprehended as a spy. After a sharp
examination, the drawings he had made on the shores of the Isle of Wight
were considered as confirmation of his guilt; he was therefore honored
with an escort of soldiers and constables to Newport, and there
confronted by a bench of justices. At his explanation, they shook their
heads, laid a strict injunction upon him to paint and draw no more in
that neighborhood, and dismissed him. This adventure he considered a
kind of pleasant interruption; and indeed it seems ridiculous enough in
the officials who apprehended him.