She denied that the voices ever contradicted themselves. On this occasion, as not having received leave from her voices, she refused to say anything as to her visions.
At the next meeting she admitted having heard the voices in court, but in court she could not distinguish the words, owing to the tumult. She had now, however, leave to speak more fully. The voices were those of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. Later she was asked if St. Margaret ‘spoke English.’ Apparently the querist thought that the English Margaret, wife of Malcolm of Scotland, was intended. They were crowned with fair crowns, as she had said at Poictiers two years before. She now appealed to the record of her examination there, but it was not in court, nor was it used in the trial of Rehabilitation. It has never been recovered. A witness who had examined her at Poictiers threw no light (twenty years later) on the saints and voices. Seven years ago (that is, when she was twelve) she first saw the saints. On the attire of the saints she had not leave to speak. They were preceded by St. Michael ‘with the angels of heaven.’ ‘I saw them as clearly as I see you, and I used to weep when they departed, and would fain that they should have taken me with them.’
As to the famous sword at Fierbois, she averred that she had been in the church there, on her way to Chinon, that the voices later bade her use a sword which was hidden under earth—she thinks behind, but possibly in front of the altar—at Fierbois. A man unknown to her was sent from Tours to fetch the sword, which after search was found, and she wore it.
Asked whether she had prophesied her wound by an arrow at Orleans, and her recovery, she said ‘Yes.’
This prediction is singular in that it was recorded before the event. The record was copied into the registre of Brabant, from a letter written on April 22nd, 1429, by a Flemish diplomatist, De Rotselaer, then at Lyons.* De Rotselaer had the prophecy from an officer of the court of the Dauphin. The prediction was thus noted on April 22nd; the event, the arrow-wound in the shoulder, occurred on May 7th. On the fifth day of the trial Jeanne announced that, before seven years were gone, the English ‘shall lose a dearer gage than Orleans; this I know by revelation, and am wroth that it is to be so long deferred.’ Mr. Myers observes that ‘the prediction of a great victory over the English within seven years was not fulfilled in any exact way.’ The words of the Maid are ‘Angli demittent majus vadium quam fecerunt coram Aurelianis,’ and, as prophecies go, their loss of Paris (1436) corresponds very well to the Maid’s announcement. She went on, indeed, to say that the English ‘will have greater loss than ever they had, through a great French victory,’ but this reads like a gloss on her original prediction. ‘She knew it as well as that we were there.‘** ‘You shall not have the exact year, but well I wish it might be before the St. John;’ however, she had already expressed her sorrow that this was NOT to be. Asked, on March 1st, whether her liberation was promised, she said, ‘Ask me in three months, and I will tell you.’ In three months exactly, her stainless soul was free.
On the appearance, garb, and so on of her saints, she declined to answer questions.
She had once disobeyed her voices, when they forbade her to leap from the tower of Beaurevoir. She leaped, but they forgave her, and told her that Compiegne (where she was captured on May 23rd, 1430) would be relieved ‘before Martinmas.’ It was relieved on October 26th, after a siege of five months. On March 10th an effort was made to prove that her voices had lied to her, and that she had lied about her voices. The enemy maintained that on May 23rd, 1430, she announced a promised victory to the people of Compiegne, vowing that St. Margaret and St. Catherine had revealed it to her. Two hostile priests of Compiegne were at Rouen, and may have carried this tale, which is reported by two Burgundian chroniclers, but NOT by Monstrelet, who was with the besieging army.* In court she said n’eust autre commandement de yssir: she had no command from her voices to make her fatal sally. She was not asked whether she had pretended to have received such an order. She told the touching story of how, at Melun, in April 1430, the voices had warned her that she would be taken prisoner before midsummer; how she had prayed for death, or for tidings as to the day and hour. But no tidings were given to her, and her old belief, often expressed, that she ‘should last but one year or little more,’ was confirmed. The Duc d’Alencon had heard her say this several times; for the prophecy at Melun we have only her own word.
She was now led into the allegory intended to veil the King’s secret, the allegory about the Angel (herself) and the Crown (the coronation at Rheims). This allegory was fatal, but does not bear on her real belief about her experiences. She averred, returning to genuine confessions, that her voices often came spontaneously; if they did not, she summoned them by a simple prayer to God. She had seen the angelic figures moving, invisible save to her, among men. The voices HAD promised her the release of Charles d’Orleans, but time had failed her. This was as near a confession of failure as she ever made, till the day of her burning, if she really made one then.* But here, as always, she had predicted that she would do this or that if she were sans empeschement. She had no revelation bidding her attack Paris when she did, and after the day at Melun she submitted to the advice of the other captains. As to her release, she was only bidden ‘to bear all cheerfully; be not vexed with thy martyrdom, thence shalt thou come at last into the kingdom of Paradise.’
To us, this is explicit enough, but the poor child explained to her judges that by martire she understood the pains of prison, and she referred it to her Lord, whether there were more to bear. In this passage the original French exists, as well as the Latin translation. The French is better.
‘Ne te chaille de ton martire, tu t’en vendras enfin en royaulme de Paradis.’
‘Non cures de martyrio tuo: tu venies finaliter in regnum paradisi.’
The word hinc is omitted in the bad Latin. Unluckily we have only a fragment of the original French, as taken down in court. The Latin version, by Courcelles, one of the prosecutors, is in places inaccurate, in others is actually garbled to the disadvantage of the Maid.
This passage, with some others, may perhaps be regarded as indicating that the contents of the communications received by Jeanne were not always intelligible to her.
That her saints could be, and were, touched physically by her, she admitted.* Here I am inclined to think that she had touched with her ring (as the custom was) a RELIC of St. Catherine at Fierbois. Such relics, brought from the monastery of Sinai, lay at Fierbois, and we know that women loved to rub their rings on the ring of Jeanne, in spite of her laughing remonstrances. But apart from this conjecture, she regarded her saints as tangible by her. She had embraced both St. Margaret and St. Catherine.**
For the rest, Jeanne recanted her so-called recantation, averring that she was unaware of the contents or full significance of the document, which certainly is not the very brief writing to which she set her mark. Her voices recalled her to her duty, for them she went to the stake, and if there was a moment of wavering on the day of her doom, her belief in the objective reality of the phenomena remained firm, and she recovered her faith in the agony of her death.
Of EXTERNAL evidence as to her accounts of these experiences, the best is probably that of d’Aulon, the maitre d’Hotel of the Maid, and her companion through her career. He and she were reposing in the same room at Orleans, her hostess being in the chamber (May 1429), and d’Aulon had just fallen asleep, when the Maid awoke him with a cry. Her voices bade her go against the English, but in what direction she knew not. In fact, the French leaders had begun, without her knowledge, an attack on St. Loup, whither she galloped and took the fort.* It is, of course, conceivable that the din of onset, which presently became audible, had vaguely reached the senses of the sleeping Maid. Her page confirms d’Aulon’s testimony.
D’Aulon states that when the Maid had any martial adventure in prospect, she told him that her ‘counsel’ had given her this or that advice. He questioned her as to the nature of this ‘counsel.’ She said ‘she had three councillors, of whom one was always with her, a second went and came to her, and the third was he with whom the others deliberated.’ D’Aulon ‘was not worthy to see this counsel.’ From the moment when he heard this, d’Aulon asked no more questions. Dunois also gave some evidence as to the ‘counsel.’ At Loches, when Jeanne was urging the journey to Rheims, Harcourt asked her, before the King, what the nature (modus) of the council was; HOW it communicated with her. She replied that when she was met with incredulity, she went apart and prayed to God. Then she heard a voice say, Fille De, va, va, va, je serai a ton aide, va! ‘And when she heard that voice she was right glad, and would fain be ever in that state.’ ‘As she spoke thus, ipsa miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.‘* (She seemed wondrous glad, raising her eyes to heaven.) Finally, that Jeanne maintained her belief to the moment of her death, we learn from the priest, Martin Ladvenu, who was with her to the last.** There is no sign anywhere that at the moment of an ‘experience’ the Maid’s aspect seemed that of one ‘dissociated,’ or uncanny, or abnormal, in the eyes of those who were in her company.
These depositions were given twenty years later (1452-56), and, of course, allowance must be made for weakness of memory and desire to glorify the Maid. But there is really nothing of a suspicious character about them. In fact, the ‘growth of legend’ was very slight, and is mainly confined to the events of the martyrdom, the White Dove, the name of Christ blazoned in flame, and so forth.* It should also have been mentioned that at the taking of St. Pierre de Moustier (November 1429) Jeanne, when deserted by her forces, declared to d’Aulon that she was ‘not alone, but surrounded by fifty thousand of her own.’ The men therefore rallied and stormed the place.
This is the sum of the external evidence as to the phenomena.
As to the contents of the communications to Jeanne, they were certainly sane, judicious, and heroic. M. Quicherat (Apercus Nouveaux, p. 61) distinguishes three classes of abnormally conveyed knowledge, all on unimpeachable evidence.
(1.) THOUGHT-READING, as in the case of the King’s secret; she repeated to him the words of a prayer which he had made mentally in his oratory.
(2.) CLAIRVOYANCE, as exhibited in the affair of the sword of Fierbois.
(3.) PRESCIENCE, as in the prophecy of her arrow-wound at Orleans. According to her confessor, Pasquerel, she repeated the prophecy and indicated the spot in which she would be wounded (under the right shoulder) on the night of May 6. But this is later evidence given in the trial of Rehabilitation. Neither Pasquerel nor any other of the Maid’s party was heard at the trial of 1431.
To these we might add the view, from Vaucouleurs, a hundred leagues away, of the defeat at Rouvray; the prophecy that she ‘would last but a year or little more;’ the prophecy, at Melun, of her capture; the prophecy of the relief of Compiegne; and the strange affair of the bon conduit at the battle of Pathay.* For several of these predictions we have only the Maid’s word, but to be plain, we can scarcely have more unimpeachable testimony.
Here the compiler leaves his task: the inferences may be drawn by experts. The old theory of imposture, the Voltairean theory of a ‘poor idiot,’ the vague charge of ‘hysteria,’ are untenable. The honesty and the genius of Jeanne are no longer denied. If hysteria be named, it is plain that we must argue that, because hysteria is accompanied by visionary symptoms, all visions are proofs of hysteria. Michelet holds by hallucinations which were unconsciously externalised by the mind of Jeanne. That mind must have been a very peculiar intellect, and the modus is precisely the difficulty. Henri Martin believes in some kind of manifestation revealed to the individual mind by the Absolute: perhaps this word is here equivalent to ‘the subliminal self’ of Mr. Myers. Many Catholics, as yet unauthorised, I conceive, by the Church, accept the theory of Jeanne herself; her saints were true saints from Paradise. On the other hand it is manifest that visions of a bright light and ‘auditions’ of voices are common enough phenomena in madness, and in the experiences of very uninspired sane men and women. From the sensations of these people Jeanne’s phenomena are only differentiated by their number, by their persistence through seven years of an almost abnormally healthy life, by their importance, orderliness, and veracity, as well as by their heroic character.
Mr. Myers has justly compared the case of Jeanne with that of Socrates. A much humbler parallel, curiously close in one respect, may be cited from M. Janet’s article, ‘Les Actes Inconscients dans le Somnambulisme’ (‘Revue Philosophique,’ March 1888).
The case is that of Madame B., a peasant woman near Cherbourg. She has her common work-a-day personality, called, for convenience, ‘Leonie.’ There is also her hypnotic personality, ‘Leontine.’ Now Leontine (that is, Madame B. in a somnambulistic state) was one day hysterical and troublesome. Suddenly she exclaimed in terror that she heard A VOICE ON THE LEFT, crying, ‘Enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance.’ She hunted in vain for the speaker, who, of course, was inaudible to M. Janet, though he was present. This sagacious speaker (a faculty of Madame B.‘s own nature) is ‘brought out’ by repeated passes, and when this moral and sensible phase of her character is thus evoked, Madame B. is ‘Leonore.’ Madame B. now sometimes assumes an expression of beatitude, smiling and looking upwards. As Dunois said of Jeanne when she was recalling her visions, ‘miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.’ This ecstasy Madame B. (as Leonie) dimly remembers, averring that ‘she has been dazzled BY A LIGHT ON THE LEFT SIDE.’ Here apparently we have the best aspect of poor Madame B. revealing itself in a mixture of hysterics and hypnotism, and associating itself with an audible sagacious voice and a dazzling light on the left, both hallucinatory.
The coincidence (not observed by M. Janet) with Jeanne’s earliest experience is most curious. Audivit vocem a dextero latere.... claritas est ab eodem latere in quo vox auditur, sed ibi communiter est magna claritas. (She heard a voice from the right. There is usually a bright light on the same side as the voice.) Like Madame B., Jeanne was at first alarmed by these sensations.
The parallel, so far, is perfectly complete (except that ‘Leonore’ merely talks common sense, while Jeanne’s voices gave information not normally acquired). But in Jeanne’s case I have found no hint of temporary unconsciousness or ‘dissociation.’ When strung up to the most intense mental eagerness in court, she still heard her voices, though, because of the tumult of the assembly, she heard them indistinctly. Thus her experiences are not associated with insanity, partial unconsciousness, or any physical disturbance (as in some tales of second sight), while the sagacity of the communications and their veracity distinguish them from the hallucinations of mad people. As far as the affair of Rouvray, the prophecy of the instant death of an insolent soldier at Chinon (evidence of Pasquerel, her confessor), and such things go, we have, of course, many alleged parallels in the predictions of Mr. Peden and other seers of the Covenant. But Mr. Peden’s political predictions are still unfulfilled, whereas concerning the ‘dear gage’ which the English should lose in France within seven years, Jeanne may be called successful.
On the whole, if we explain Jeanne’s experiences as the expressions of her higher self (as Leonore is Madame B.‘s higher self), we are compelled to ask what is the nature of that self?
Another parallel, on a low level, to what may be called the mechanism of Jeanne’s voices and visions is found in Professor Flournoy’s patient, ‘Helene Smith.‘* Miss ‘Smith,’ a hardworking shopwoman in Geneva, had, as a child, been dull but dreamy. At about twelve years of age she began to see, and hear, a visionary being named Leopold, who, in life, had been Cagliostro. His appearance was probably suggested by an illustration in the Joseph Balsamo of Alexandre Dumas. The saints of Jeanne, in the same way, may have been suggested by works of sacred art in statues and church windows. To Miss Smith, Leopold played the part of Jeanne’s saints. He appeared and warned her not to take such or such a street when walking, not to try to lift a parcel which seemed light, but was very heavy, and in other ways displayed knowledge not present to her ordinary workaday self.
There was no real Leopold, and Jeanne’s St. Catherine cannot be shown to have ever been a real historical personage.* These figures, in fact, are more or less akin to the ‘invisible playmates’ familiar to many children.** They are not objective personalities, but part of the mechanism of a certain class of mind. The mind may be that of a person devoid of genius, like Miss Smith, or of a genius like Goethe, Shelley, or Jeanne d’Arc, or Socrates with his ‘Daemon,’ and its warnings. In the case of Jeanne d’Arc, as of Socrates, the mind communicated knowledge not in the conscious everyday intelligence of the Athenian or of la Pucelle. This information, in Jeanne’s case, was presented in the shape of hallucinations of eye and ear. It was sane, wise, noble, veracious, and concerned not with trifles, but with great affairs. We are not encouraged to suppose that saints or angels made themselves audible and visible. But, by the mechanism of such appearances to the senses, that which was divine in the Maid—in all of us, if we follow St. Paul—that ‘in which we live and move and have our being,’ made itself intelligible to her ordinary consciousness, her workaday self, and led her to the fulfilment of a task which seemed impossible to men.
‘P’raps he was my father—though on this subjict I can’t speak suttinly, for my ma wrapped up my buth in a mistry. I may be illygitmit, I may have been changed at nuss.’
In these strange words does Mr. Thackeray’s Jeames de la Pluche anticipate the historical mystery of James de la Cloche. HIS ‘buth’ is ‘wrapped up in a mistry,’ HIS ‘ma’ is a theme of doubtful speculation; his father (to all appearance) was Charles II. We know not whether James de la Cloche—rejecting the gaudy lure of three crowns—lived and died a saintly Jesuit; or whether, on the other hand, he married beneath him, was thrown into gaol, was sentenced to a public whipping, was pardoned and released, and died at the age of twenty-three, full of swaggering and impenitent impudence. Was there but one James de la Cloche, a scion of the noblest of European royal lines? Did he, after professions of a holy vocation, suddenly assume the most secular of characters, jilting Poverty and Obedience for an earthly bride? Or was the person who appears to have acted in this unworthy manner a mere impostor, who had stolen James’s money and jewels and royal name? If so, what became of the genuine and saintly James de la Cloche? He is never heard of any more, whether because he assumed an ecclesiastical alias, or because he was effectually silenced by the person who took his character, name, money, and parentage.
There are two factions in the dispute about de la Cloche. The former (including the late Lord Acton and Father Boero) believe that James adhered to his sacred vocation, while the second James was a rank impostor. The other party holds that the frivolous and secular James was merely the original James, who suddenly abandoned his vocation, and burst on the world as a gay cavalier, and claimant of the rank of Prince of Wales, or, at least, of the revenues and perquisites of that position.
The first act in the drama was discovered by Father Boero, who printed the documents as to James de la Cloche in his ‘History of the Conversion to the Catholic Church of Charles II., King of England,’ in the sixth and seventh volumes, fifth series, of La Civilta Cattolica (Rome, 1863). (The essays can be procured in a separate brochure.) Father Boero says not a word about the second and secular James, calling himself ‘Giacopo Stuardo.’ But the learned father had communicated the papers about de la Cloche to Lord Acton, who wrote an article on the subject, ‘The Secret History of Charles II.,’ in ‘The Home and Foreign Review,’ July 1862. Lord Acton now added the story of the second James, or of the second avatar of the first James, from State Papers in our Record Office. The documents as to de la Cloche are among the MSS. of the Society of Jesus at Rome.
The purpose of Father Boero was not to elucidate a romance in royal life, but to prove that Charles II. had, for many years, been sincerely inclined to the Catholic creed, though thwarted by his often expressed disinclination to ‘go on his travels again.’ In point of fact, the religion of Charles II. might probably be stated in a celebrated figure of Pascal’s. Let it be granted that reason can discover nothing as to the existence of any ground for religion. Let it be granted that we cannot know whether there is a God or not. Yet either there is, or there is not. It is even betting, heads or tails, croix ou pile. This being so, it is wiser to bet that there is a God. It is safer. If you lose, you are just where you were, except for the pleasures which you desert. If you win, you win everything! What you stake is finite, a little pleasure; if you win, you win infinite bliss.
So far Charles was prepared theoretically to go but he would not abandon his diversions. A God there is, but ‘He’s a good fellow, and ‘twill all be well.’ God would never punish a man, he told Burnet, for taking ‘a little irregular pleasure.’ Further, Charles saw that, if bet he must, the safest religion to back was that of Catholicism. Thereby he could—it was even betting—actually ensure his salvation. But if he put on his money publicly, if he professed Catholicism, he certainly lost his kingdoms. Consequently he tried to be a crypto-Catholic, but he was not permitted to practise one creed and profess another. THAT the Pope would not stand. So it was on his death-bed that he made his desperate plunge, and went, it must be said, bravely, on the darkling voyage.
Not to dwell on Charles’s earlier dalliances with Rome, in November 1665, his kinsman, Ludovick Stewart, Sieur d’Aubigny, of the Scoto-French Lennox Stewarts, was made a cardinal, and then died. Charles had now no man whom he could implicitly trust in his efforts to become formally, but secretly, a Catholic. And now James de la Cloche comes on the scene. Father Boero publishes, from the Jesuit archives, a strange paper, purporting to be written and signed by the King’s hand, and sealed with his private seal, that diamond seal, whereof the impression brought such joy to the soul of the disgraced Archbishop Sharp. Father Boero attests the authenticity of seal and handwriting. In this paper, Charles acknowledges his paternity of James Stuart, ‘who, by our command, has hitherto lived in France and other countries under a feigned name.’ He has come to London, and is to bear the name of ‘de la Cloche du Bourg de Jarsey.’ De la Cloche is not to produce this document, ‘written in his own language’ (French), till after the King’s death. (It is important to note that James de la Cloche seems to have spoken no language except French.) The paper is dated ‘Whitehall, September 27, 1665,’ when, as Lord Acton observes, the Court, during the Plague, was NOT at Whitehall.*
Lord Acton conjectured that the name ‘de la Cloche’ was taken from that of a Protestant minister in Jersey (circ. 1646). This is the more probable, as Charles later invented a false history of his son, who was to be described as the son of ‘a rich preacher, deceased.’ The surname, de la Cloche, had really been that of a preacher in Jersey, and survives in Jersey.
After 1665, James de la Cloche was pursuing his studies in Holland, being at this time a Protestant. Conceivably he had been brought up in a French Huguenot family, like that of the de Rohan. On February 7, 1667, Charles wrote a new document. In this he grants to de la Cloche 500 pounds a year, while he lives in London and adheres to ‘the religion of his father and the Anglican service book.’ But, in that very year (July 29, 1667), de la Cloche went to Hamburg, and was there received into the Catholic Church, forfeiting his pension.
Christina of Sweden was then residing in Hamburg. De la Cloche apprised her of his real position—a son of the King of England—and must have shown her in proof Charles’s two letters of 1665 and 1667. If so—and how else could he prove his birth?—he broke faith with Charles, but, apparently, he did not mean to use Charles’s letters as proof of his origin when applying, as he did, for admission to the novitiate of the Jesuits at Rome. He obtained from Christina a statement, in Latin, that Charles had acknowledged him, privately, to her, as his son. This note of Christina’s, de la Cloche was to show to his director at Rome.
It does not appear that Charles had ever told Christina a word about the matter. These pious monarchs were far from being veracious. However, Christina’s document would save the young man much trouble, on the point of his illegitimacy, when, on April 11, 1668, he entered St. Andrea al Quirinale as a Jesuit novice. He came in poverty. His wardrobe was of the scantiest. He had two shirts, a chamois leather chest protector, three collars, and three pairs of sleeves. He described himself as ‘Jacques de la Cloche, of Jersey, British subject,’ and falsely, or ignorantly, stated his age as twenty-four. Really he was twenty-two.* Why he told Christina his secret, why he let her say that Charles had told her, we do not know. It may be that the General of the Jesuits, Oliva, did not yet know who de la Cloche really was. Meanwhile, his religious vocation led him to forfeit 500 pounds yearly, and expectations, and to disobey his father and king.
The good King took all very easily. On August 3, 1668, he wrote a longa et verbosa epistola, from Whitehall, to the General of the Jesuits. His face was now set towards the secret treaty of Dover and conversion. The conversion of his son, therefore, seemed truly providential. Charles had discussed it with his own mother and his wife. To Oliva he wrote in French, explaining that his Latin was ‘poor,’ and that, if he wrote English, an interpreter would be needed, but that no Englishman was to ‘put his nose’ into this affair. He had long prayed God to give him a safe and secret chance of conversion, but he could not use, without exciting suspicion, the priests then in England. On the other hand, his son would do: the young cavalier then at Rome, named de la Cloche de Jersey. This lad was the pledge of an early love for ‘a young lady of a family among the most distinguished in our kingdoms.’ He was a child of the King’s ‘earliest youth,’ that is, during his residence in Jersey, March-June 1646, when Charles was sixteen. In a few years, the King hoped to recognise him publicly. With him alone could Charles practise secretly the mysteries of the Church. To such edifying ends had God turned an offence against His laws, an amourette. De la Cloche, of course, was as yet not a priest, and could not administer sacraments, an idea which occurred to Charles himself.
The Queen of Sweden, Charles added, was prudent, but, being a woman, she probably could not keep a secret. Charles wants his son to come home, and asks the Jesuit to put off Christina with any lie he pleases, if she asks questions. In short, he regards the General of the Jesuits as a person ready to tell any convenient falsehood, and lets this opinion appear with perfect naivete! He will ask the Pope to hurry de la Cloche into priest’s orders, or, if that is not easy, he will have the thing done in Paris, by means of Louis XIV., or his own sister, Henrietta (Madame). Or the Queen and Queen Mother can have it done in London, as they ‘have bishops at their will.’ The King has no desire to interrupt his son’s vocation as a Jesuit. In London the young man must avoid Jesuit society, and other occasions of suspicion. He ends with a promise of subscriptions to Jesuit objects.*
By the same courier, the King wrote to ‘Our most honoured son, the Prince Stuart, dwelling with the R.P. Jesuits under the name of Signor de la Cloche.’ James may be easy about money. He must be careful of his health, which is delicate, and not voyage at an unhealthy season. The Queens are anxious to see him. He should avoid asceticism. He may yet be recognised, and take precedence of his younger and less nobly born brother, the Duke of Monmouth. The King expresses his affection for a son of excellent character, and distinguished by the solidity of his studies and acquirements. If toleration is gained, de la Cloche has some chance of the English throne, supposing Charles and the Duke of York to die without issue male. Parliament will be unable to oppose this arrangement, unless Catholics are excluded from the succession.
This has a crazy sound. The Crown would have been in no lack of legitimate heirs, failing offspring male of the King and the Duke of York.
If de la Cloche, however, persists in his vocation, so be it. The King may get for him a cardinal’s hat. The King assures his son of his affection, not only as the child of his extreme youth, but for the virtues of his character. De la Cloche must travel as a simple gentleman.*
On August 29, Charles again wrote to Oliva. He had heard that the Queen of Sweden was going to Rome. De la Cloche must not meet her, she might let out the secret: he must come home at once. If Charles is known to be a Catholic, there will be tumults, and he will lose his life. Another letter, undated, asks that the novice, contrary to rule, may travel alone, with no Jesuit chaperon, and by sea, direct from Genoa. Consulting physicians, the King has learned that sea sickness is never fatal, rather salutary. His travelling name should be Henri de Rohan, as if he were of that Calvinistic house, friends of the King. The story must be circulated that de la Cloche is the son of a rich preacher, deceased, and that he has gone to visit his mother, who is likely to be converted. He must leave his religious costume with the Jesuits at Genoa, and pick it up there on his return. He must not land at the port of London, but at some other harbour, and thence drive to town.*
Ut supra, 283-287.
On October 14, d’Oliva, from Leghorn, wrote to Charles that ‘the French gentleman’ was on the seas. On November 18, Charles wrote to d’Oliva that his son was returning to Rome as his secret ambassador, and, by the King’s orders, was to come back to London, bearing answers to questions which he will put verbally. In France he leaves a Jesuit whom he is to pick up as he again makes for England.*
The questions to which de la Cloche is to bring answers doubtless concerned the wish of Charles to be a Catholic secretly, and other arrangements which he is known to have suggested on another occasion.
After this letter of November 18, 1668, WE NEVER HEAR A WORD ABOUT JAMES DE LA CLOCHE.* No later letters from the King to d’Oliva are found, the name of James de la Cloche does not occur again in the Records of the Society of Jesus.
Father Boero argues that James would return to London, under a third name, unknown. But it would be risky for one who had appeared in England under one name in 1665, and under another (Rohan) in 1668, to turn up under a third in 1669. To take aliases, often three or four, was, however, the custom of the English Jesuits, and de la Cloche may have chosen his fourth. Thus we could not trace him, in records, unless Charles wrote again to d’Oliva about his son. No such letter exists. In his letter of November 18, Charles promises, in a year, a subscription to the Jesuit building fund—this at his son’s request. I know not if the money was ever paid. He also asks Oliva to give James 800 doppie for expenses, to be repaid in six months.
James did not leave the Society of Jesus, argues Father Boero, for, had he left, he would have carried away the papers in which Charles acknowledges him and promises a pension of 500 pounds yearly. But that document would be useless to James, whether he remained a Jesuit or not, for the condition of the pension (1667) was that he should be a Protestant of the Anglican sect, and live in London. However, Charles’s letter of 1668 was in another tune, and James certainly left THAT with the Jesuits in Rome; at least, they possess it now. But suppose that James fled secretly from the Jesuits, then he probably had no chance of recovering his papers. He was not likely to run away, however, for, Charles says, he ‘did not like London,’ or the secular life, and he appears to have returned to Rome at the end of 1668, with every intention of fulfilling his mission and pursuing his vocation. His return mission to England over, he probably would finish his Jesuit training at a college in France or Flanders, say St. Omer’s, where Titus Oates for a while abode. No James de la Cloche is known there or elsewhere, but he might easily adopt a new alias, and Charles would have no need to write to Oliva about him. It may be that James was the priest at St. Omer’s, whom, in 1670, Charles had arranged to send, but did not send, to Clement IX.* He may also be the priest secretly brought from abroad to Charles during the Popish Plot (1678-1681).**
These are suggestions of Lord Acton, who thinks that de la Cloche may also have been the author of two papers, in French, on religion, left by Charles, in his own hand, at his death.* These are conjectures. If we accept them, de la Cloche was a truly self-denying young semi-Prince, preferring an austere life to the delights and honours which attended his younger brother, the Duke of Monmouth. But, just when de la Cloche should have been returning from Rome to London, at the end of 1668 or beginning of 1669, a person calling himself James Stuart, son of Charles II., by an amour, at Jersey, in 1646, with a ‘Lady Mary Henrietta Stuart,’ appeared in some magnificence at Naples. This James Stuart either was, or affected to be, James de la Cloche. Whoever he was, the King’s carefully guarded secret was out, was public property.
Our information as to this James Stuart, or Giacopo Stuardo, son of the King of England—the cavalier who appears exactly when the Jesuit novice, James de la Cloche, son of the King of England, vanishes—is derived from two sources. First there are Roman newsletters, forwarded to England by Kent, the English agent at Rome, with his own despatches in English. It does not appear to me that Kent had, as a rule, any intimate purveyor of intelligence at Naples. He seems, in his own letters to Williamson,* merely to follow and comment on the Italian newsletters which he forwards and the gossip of ‘the Nation,’ that is, the English in Rome. The newsletters, of course, might be under the censorship of Rome and Naples. Such is one of our sources.**
Lord Acton, in 1862, and other writers, have relied solely on this first set of testimonies. But the late Mr. Maziere Brady has apparently ignored or been unacquainted with these materials, and he cites a printed book not quoted by Lord Acton.* This work is the third volume of the ‘Lettere’ of Vincenzo Armanni of Gubbio, who wrote much about the conversion of England, and had himself been in that country. The work quoted was printed (privately?) by Giuseppe Piccini, at Macerata, in 1674, and, so far, I have been unable to see an example. The British Museum Library has no copy, and the ‘Lettere’ are unknown to Brunet. We have thus to take a secondhand version of Armanni’s account. He says that his informant was one of two confessors, employed successively by Prince James Stuart, at Naples, in January-August 1669. Now, Kent sent to England an English translation of the Italian will of James Stuart. A will is also given, of course in Italian, by Vincenzo Armanni; a copy of this is in the Record Office.
It appears from this will that James Stuart, for reasons of his own, actually did enjoy the services of two successive confessors, at Naples, in 1669. The earlier of these two was Armanni’s informant. His account of James Stuart differs from that of Kent and the Italian newsletters, which we repeat, alone are cited by Lord Acton (1862); while Mr. Brady (1890), citing Armanni, knows nothing of the newsletters and Kent, and conceives himself to be the first writer in English on the subject.
Turning to our first source, the newsletters of Rome, and the letters of Kent, the dates in each case prove that Kent, with variations, follows the newsletters. The gazzetta of March 23, 1669, is the source of Kent’s despatch of March 30. On the gazzette of April 6, 13, and 20, he makes no comment, but his letter of June 16 varies more or less from the newsletter of June 11. His despatch of September 7 corresponds to the newsletter of the same date, but is much more copious.
Taking these authorities in order of date, we find the newsletter of Rome (March 23, 1669) averring that an unknown English gentleman has been ‘for some months’ at Naples, that is, since January at least, and has fallen in love with the daughter of a poor innkeeper, or host (locandiere). He is a Catholic and has married the girl. The newly made father-in-law has been spending freely the money given to him by the bridegroom. Armanni, as summarised by Mr. Brady, states the matter of the money thus: ‘The Prince was anxious to make it appear that his intended father-in-law was not altogether a pauper, and accordingly he gave a sum of money to Signor Francesco Corona to serve as a dowry for Teresa. Signor Corona could not deny himself the pleasure of exhibiting this money before his friends, and he indiscreetly boasted before his neighbours concerning his rich son-in-law.’
From Armanni’s version, derived from the confessor of James Stuart, it appears that nothing was said as to James’s royal birth till after his arrest, when he informed the Viceroy of Naples in self-defence.
To return to the newsletter of March 23, it represents that the Viceroy heard of the unwonted expenditure of money by Corona, and seized the English son-in-law on suspicion. In his possession the Viceroy found about 200 doppie, many jewels, and some papers in which he was addressed as Altezza (Highness). The word doppie is used by Charles (in Boero’s Italian translation) for the 800 coins which he asks Oliva to give to de la Cloche for travelling expenses. Were James Stuart’s 200 doppie the remains of the 800? Lord Acton exaggerates when he writes vaguely that Stuart possessed ‘heaps of pistoles.’ Two hundred doppie (about 150 or 160 pounds) are not ‘heaps.’ To return to the newsletter, the idea being current that the young man was a natural son of the King of England, he was provisionally confined in the castle of St. Elmo. On April 6, he is reported to be shut up in the castle of Gaeta. On the 20th, we hear that fifty scudi monthly have been assigned to the prisoner for his support. The Viceroy has written (to England) to ask what is to be done with him.
On June 11, it is reported that, after being removed to the Vicaria, a prison for vulgar malefactors, the captive has been released. He is NOT the son of the King of England.
Kent’s letter of March 30 follows the newsletter of March 23. He adds that the unknown Englishman ‘seems’ to have ‘vaunted to bee the King of England’s sonne BORNE AT GERSEY,’ a fact never expressly stated about de la Cloche. It is not clear that James Stuart vaunted his birth before his arrest made it necessary for him to give an account of himself. Kent also says that the unknown sent for the English consul, Mr. Browne, ‘to assist his delivery out of the castle. But it seems he could not speake a word of English nor give any account of the birth he pretended to.’ On Kent’s showing, he had no documentary proofs of his royal birth. French was de la Cloche’s language, if this unknown was he, and if Kent is right, he had not with him the two documents and the letter of Charles II. and the certificate of the Queen of Sweden. ‘This is all the light I can picke out of the Nation, or others, of his extravagant story, which whether will end in Prince or cheate I shall endeavour to inform you hereafter.’
Kent’s next letter (June 16) follows, with variations, the newsletter of June 11:—Kent to J. Williamson
June 16, 1669.
The Gentleman who WOULD HAVE BEENE HIS MAT’YS BASTARD at Naples, vpon the receipt of his Ma’ties Letters to that Vice King was immediately taken out of the Castle of Gaetta brought to Naples and Cast into the Grand Prison called the Vicaria, where being thrust amongst the most Vile and infamous Rascalls, the Vice King intended to have Caused him to bee whipt about the Citty, but meanes was made by his wife’s kindred (Who was Likewise taken with this pretended Prince) to the Vice-Queene, who, in compassion to her and her kindred, prevailed with Don Pedro to deliver him from that Shame [and from gaol, it seems], and soe ends the Story of this fourb WHO SPEAKS NOE LANGUADGE BUT FFRENCH.
The newsletter says nothing of the intended whipping, or of the intercession of the family of the wife of the unknown. These points may be the additions of gossips.
In any case the unknown, with his wife, after a stay of no long time in the Vicaria, is set at liberty. His release might be explained on the ground that Charles disavowed and cast him off, which he might safely do, if the man was really de la Cloche, but had none of the papers proving his birth, the papers which are still in the Jesuit archives. Or he may have had the papers, and they may have been taken from him and restored to the Jesuit General.
So far, the betting as to whether de la Cloche and the Naples pretender were the same man or not is at evens. Each hypothesis is beset by difficulties. It is highly improbable that the unworldly and enthusiastic Jesuit novice threw up, at its very crisis, a mission which might lead his king, his father, and the British Empire back into the one Fold. De la Cloche, forfeiting his chances of an earthly crown, was on the point of gaining a heavenly one. It seems to the last degree unlikely that he would lose this and leave the Jesuits to whom he had devoted himself, and the quiet life of study and religion, for the worldly life which he disliked, and for that life on a humble capital of a few hundred pounds, and some jewels, presents, perhaps from the two Queens, his grandmother and stepmother. De la Cloche knew that Charles, if the novice clung to religion, had promised to procure for him, if he desired it, a cardinal’s hat; while if, with Charles’s approval, he left religion, he might be a prince, perhaps a king. He had thus every imaginable motive for behaving with decorum—in religion or out of it. Yet, if he is the Naples pretender, he suddenly left the Jesuits without Charles’s knowledge and approval, but by a freakish escapade, like ‘The Start’ of Charles himself as a lad, when he ran away from Argyll and the Covenanters. And he did this before he ever saw Teresa Corona. He reminds one of the Huguenot pastor in London, whom an acquaintance met on the Turf. ‘I not preacher now, I gay dog,’ explained the holy man.
All this is, undeniably, of a high improbability. But on the other side, de la Cloche was freakish and unsettled. He had but lately (1667) asked for and accepted a pension to be paid while he remained an Anglican, then he was suddenly received into the Roman Church, and started off, probably on foot, with his tiny ‘swag’ of three shirts and three collars, to walk to Rome and become a Jesuit. He may have deserted the Jesuits as suddenly and recklessly as he had joined them. It is not impossible. He may have received the 800 pounds for travelling expenses from Oliva; not much of it was left by March 1669—only about 150 pounds. On the theory that the man at Naples was an impostor, it is odd that he should only have spoken French, that he was charged with no swindles, that he made a very poor marriage in place of aiming at a rich union; that he had, somehow, learned de la Cloche’s secret; and that, possessing a fatal secret, invaluable to a swindler and blackmailer, he was merely disgraced and set free. Louis XIV. would, at least, have held him a masked captive for the rest of his life. But he was liberated, and, after a brief excursion, returned to Naples, where he died, maintaining that he was a prince.
Thus, on either view, ‘prince or cheat,’ we are met by things almost impossible.
We now take up the Naples man’s adventure as narrated by Kent. He writes:
Kent to Jo: Williamson
Rome: August 31, 1669.
That certaine fellow or what hee was, who pretended to bee his Ma’ties naturall sonn at Naples is dead and haueing made his will they write mee from thence wee shall with the next Poast know the truth of his quality.
September 7, 1669.
That certaine Person at Naples who in his Lyfe tyme would needes bee his Ma’ties naturall Sonne is dead in the same confidence and Princely humour, for haueing Left his Lady Teresa Corona, an ordinary person, 7 months gone with Child, hee made his Testament, and hath Left his most Xtian Ma’tie (whom he called Cousin) executor of it.
Hee had been absent from Naples some tyme pretending to haue made a journey into France to visit his Mother, Dona Maria Stuarta of His Ma’tie Royall Family, which neernes and greatnes of Blood was the cause, Saies hee, that his Ma’tie would never acknowledge him for his Sonn, his mother Dona Maria Stuarta was, it seemes, dead before hee came into France. In his will hee desires the present King of England Carlo 2nd to allow His Prince Hans in Kelder eighty thousand Ducketts, which is his Mother’s Estate, he Leaues Likewise to his Child and Mother Teresa 291 thousand Ducketts which hee calls Legacies. Hee was buried in the Church of St. Fran’co Di Paolo out of the Porta Capuana (for hee dyed of this Religion). He left 400 pounds for a Lapide to have his name and quality engrauen vpon it for hee called himself Don Jacopo Stuarto, and this is the end of that Princely Cheate or whatever hee was.
The newsletter of September 7 merely mentions the death and the will. On this occasion Kent had private intelligence from a correspondent in Naples. Copies of the will, in English and in Italian, were forwarded to England, where both copies remain.
‘This will,’ Lord Acton remarked, ‘is fatal to the case for the Prince.’ If not fatal, it is a great obstacle to the cause of the Naples man. He claims as his mother, Donna Maria Stewart, ‘of the family of the Barons of San Marzo.’ If Marzo means ‘March,’ the Earl of March was a title in the Lennox family. The only Mary Stewart in that family known to Douglas’s ‘Peerage’ was younger than James de la Cloche, and died, the wife of the Earl of Arran, in 1667, at the age of eighteen. She may have had some outlying cousin Mary, but nothing is known of such a possible mother of de la Cloche. Again, the testator begs Charles II. to give his unborn child ‘the ordinary principality either of Wales or Monmouth, or other province customary to be given to the natural sons of the Crown;’ to the value of 100,000 scudi!
Could de la Cloche be so ignorant as to suppose that a royal bastard might be created Prince of Wales? He certainly knew, from Charles’s letter, that his younger brother was already Duke of Monmouth. His legacies are of princely munificence, but—he is to be buried at the expense of his father-in-law.
By way of security for his legacies, the testator ‘assigns and gives his lands, called the Marquisate of Juvignis, worth 300,000 scudi.’
Mr. Brady writes: ‘Juvignis is probably a mistake for Aubigny, the dukedom which belonged to the Dukes of Richmond and Lennox by the older creation.’ But a dukedom is not a marquisate, nor could de la Cloche hold Aubigny, of which the last holder was Ludovick Stewart, who died, a cardinal, in November 1665. The lands then reverted to the French Crown. Moreover, there are two places called Juvigny, or Juvignis, in north-eastern France (Orne and Manche). Conceivably one or other of these belonged to the house of Rohan, and James Stuart’s posthumous son, one of whose names is ‘Roano,’ claimed a title from Juvigny or Juvignis, among other absurd pretensions. ‘Henri de Rohan’ was only the travelling name of de la Cloche in 1668, though it is conceivable that he was brought up by the de Rohan family, friendly to Charles II.
The whole will is incompatible with all that de la Cloche must have known. Being in Italian it cannot have been intelligible to him, and may conceivably be the work of an ignorant Neapolitan attorney, while de la Cloche, as a dying man, may have signed without understanding much of what he signed. The folly of the Corona family may thus (it is a mere suggestion) be responsible for this absurd testament. Armanni, however, represents the man as sane, and very devout, till his death.
A posthumous child, a son, was born and lived a scrambling life, now ‘recognised’ abroad, now in prison and poverty, till we lose him about 1750.*