The late Rev. G. N. Godwin, in the series of papers on “Norman Cross and its French Prisoners,” published in the Peterborough Advertiser in February and March 1906, says:
“The Depot had a noble Chaplain in the Bishop of Moulins, who voluntarily came over from France, and lived at his own charge and upon remittances from France, in the High Street, Stilton, near the Bell Inn. (The house which is now shored up. [181]) He walked up every day to Norman Cross, and acted very charitably to the prisoners, doing his utmost to stop their frequent duels. It is to be hoped that ere long more will be known of this worthy prelate.”
Mr. Godwin’s wish was soon fulfilled. Two years after this was written there came to light, among the family archives at Milton, near Peterborough, the correspondence which the author is able to print verbatim in the appendix, through the kind permission of Mr. George Wentworth Fitzwilliam, the greatgrandson of the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam, to whom the Bishop’s letters are addressed, and who is the present owner of the estates and head of the Northamptonshire branch of the family. This correspondence, with other information gathered from scanty but authentic sources, enables the writer to put before his readers a picture of the one priest of whose work at Norman Cross the memory remained in the neighbourhood for more than a generation after the Depot was destroyed. The correspondence is of interest as throwing light on other matters also.
The first part of this correspondence consists of letters from the Bishop of Moulins begging for pecuniary assistance and for another favour from Lord Fitzwilliam, with an accompanying document of great interest—viz. a condensed autobiography of the Bishop, and the unfinished draft of the Earl’s reply; these are all in French. The last mentioned is interesting, as it shows incidentally that the great Whig Earl sympathised with the Bishop in his loyalty to the Bourbons, to whom he was devoted, and in his firm resolve never to acknowledge the government of the Emperor Napoleon, whom he regarded as an usurper. It also gives first-hand information as to an outside matter, the enormous cost of the famous Yorkshire Election, in which the respective heads in the West Riding of the contesting Whigs and Tories, Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord Harewood, each represented by his own son, kept open house for the fifteen days during which the Poll lasted, Lord Milton, the Whig, beating, by a majority of 188, his Tory rival, the Hon. Henry Lascelles. [182] The condensed autobiography sent by the Bishop to Lord Fitzwilliam upsets much that has been written to accentuate the saintly character which has been, not altogether without reason, attributed to him. The remaining letters, one of which has been introduced in the text in connection with the straw-plait trade, refer to the application made by the Bishop for the release of another prisoner to take the place of his servant Jean Baptiste David.
The autobiography is practically that of an émigré, although the Bishop-designate was a “déporté.” Most of these aristocrats, ecclesiastics, and others who fled from France at a time when, had they possessed the courage to remain, they might have much altered the course of events, took refuge in Austria, Italy, and other continental Catholic countries. Comparatively few came to England. From the Bishop we learn that in 1791, having been designated Bishop of Moulins, he was expelled from France. He took refuge in Italy, where he had the good fortune to become Chief Chaplain to the Bourbon Princess, Victoire of France, “to whose bounty he owed his existence,” and at her death, in 1799, he was left absolutely without any resources. Under these circumstances he came to England, where he received the allowance granted to bishops at that time, £10 a month. In his narrative the Bishop enters into further details as to his misfortunes. He found his relatives in London in distress; he advanced them moneys which he obtained from money-lenders, who made the loans on the security of his expectations—expectations which came to nothing. When the Bishop’s father died, leaving a goodly inheritance, the whole was appropriated by his relatives, who took advantage of the Bishop’s absence from France. His brother suggested to him that if he would return to France and submit to the Government, they might help him. This the Bishop would never do, his devotion and loyalty to the Bourbons made it impossible, and in 1808 he is found at Stilton writing a begging letter from the Bell Inn—not there “out of pure compassion for his imprisoned countrymen,” but a “déporté” from France, who, when he arrived in England, was without any resources beyond his great expectations, on the strength of which the Bishop was able to obtain money from usurers, to one of whom this unfortunate prelate was paying 30 per cent. per annum for a loan of £200. He was not “living on his own charges and upon remittances from France,” but upon £240 a year paid to him by the British Government.
To this payment by the British Government was added the extraordinary privilege of the liberation of a lad from Norman Cross to act as his servant. This was a further favour from the Government which was feeding him and clothing him. The Bishop’s return for these acts of grace was to allow the lad to join in the illegal straw-plait traffic, and then to make the application which, reading between the lines of Sir Rupert George’s letter, it was easy to see was regarded by the Transport Board as a gross piece of effrontery. The sequel was more letters in the effusive begging-letter style of a century ago to the tender-hearted, influential nobleman whose acquaintance he had made, and the ultimate granting of another servant.
In one of his letters the Bishop denies that there is any truth in the accusation that his servant was an accomplice in the illicit trading in straw plait, and there is no extant evidence that he was so; but it is clear, from the correspondence between the Transport Board and the Secretary to the Admiralty, and between the latter and Earl Fitzwilliam, that the Transport Board had no doubt about the fact.
There is something pathetic in the fact that these letters, in his, the Bishop’s, beautiful handwriting, which is like the finest engrossing, but so small that it is scarcely legible without the aid of a magnifying-glass, should have come to light exactly 100 years after they were written, and only two years after the wish had been expressed by the writers quoted above, that more could be learned of “this worthy prelate” and “this good man,” for in them the Bishop himself rises up to cast off the adornments of self-sacrifice, etc., with which he has been decorated by his biographers.
Divers writers, one after another, have attributed to him the qualifications of a saint, finding everything he did so good and wonderful, that the last, the late Rev. M. C. Godwin, mentions as a merit that the Bishop walked a mile to his duties at the prison.
Mr. Brown, in the footnote just quoted, says: “It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in 1814.”