“W. Hayes.”
2nd. “1808.—William, son of Hugh and Margaret Drummond, was baptised by the Bishop of Moulins at Stilton, Hunts., May 30th, 1808. Sponsors, Edward Courier and Margaret Anderson, attested by Mr. Wm. Hayes.”
3rd. “1814.—Louis Stanilas Henry Paschal, son of John Andrew Delapoux and of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife) of Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, on May 3rd, was baptised May 14th, 1814, by the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour, residing at Stilton. Sponsor, Mr. Paschal Levisse of Oundle, Northamptonshire, which I, the undersigned, hereby certify from the original act.
“W. Hayes.”
In the first entry, 1807, the officiating priest is “the late Vicar General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church,” who was possibly attending to the prisoners until the Sponsor, the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tours (the Bishop-designate of Moulins), took up the work. John Andrew Delapoux, the father of the child, was a clerk at Norman Cross—many of the officials had French names, and were probably naturalised British subjects, or children of naturalised Frenchmen and familiar with the French language. He had been married to Miss Mason, in Stilton Parish Church, on 2nd September 1802, and until the research undertaken for the purposes of this work revealed his identity, these were supposed to be entries of the baptisms of children of a French prisoner who had married an English wife. In the second, 1808, the Bishop of Moulins is entered as the officiating priest. In the 3rd the priest performing the ceremony is the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour. The priest in whose mission the Baptism took place and who made the entry, gave the Christian and family names of the Bishop-designate of Moulins, but not the episcopal title, as in the second entry. The prefix Right Reverend marks the ecclesiastical rank claimed by the Bishop; but a letter from Lord Mulgrave [180a] states that he was only Bishop-designate. He had never been consecrated, and he would therefore not be always recognised by his brethren as Évêque de Moulins.
It is unfortunate that it is the duty of the humblest historian to push aside the glamour that tradition and the writers of romance weave around a man and to show him as he is, and the traditional story of the Bishop of Moulins is not the only illusion which has been dispelled in the course of our investigations.
The Bishop of Moulins has been, by traditions authoritatively reproduced in print, gradually elevated to the position of a saint who voluntarily relinquished his high office in France, and sacrificed its emoluments in order that he might minister to his fellow countrymen in captivity. In his little romance, [180b] the late Rev. Arthur Brown says, p. 44:
“And the Chaplain was none other than the Bishop of Moulins. He had voluntarily come to England out of pure compassion for his imprisoned countrymen, and with true missionary zeal was giving himself up to their spiritual welfare. He was a venerable-looking man, much respected by the prisoners generally. It was a noble act of self-sacrifice.”
In a romance it is quite legitimate to adopt a name for an imaginary character, and to endow the fictitious individual with virtues which the real owner of the name did not possess, but Mr. Brown emphatically declares this passage to be history, and not fiction, by a footnote, of which the first sentence is, “This is fact, not fiction.” The note continues:
“It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in 1814. One thing is certain, that he must ever have enjoyed a feast of memory to his dying day, in having been a shepherd and bishop of souls to these poor prisoners.”