The Bishop’s association with Norman Cross entitles him to a prominent place in this narrative, and such further particulars of his life as have after much research been established add something to the little that is known of the émigrés and the déportés who took refuge in England.
Without the halo of a saint, the Bishop is still revealed as a good priest winning the hearts and the esteem of those among whom he ministered, seeking to lighten the lot of the prisoners who were his flock. What light is thrown on his character by the legend written against the boys’ prison on the prisoner Foulley’s model of the Norman Cross Depot, in the Invalides! [185] (vide Plate XX, p. 251). The Bishop was working when many another ecclesiastical emigrant was idle, and there is every reason to believe that he was worthy of his hire, as far as his work was concerned. Probably the advent of the Bishop to Norman Cross did for the prisoners what Buonaparte’s reinstatement of religion did for the population of France. The correspondence shows that it was his strong political opinions, his stedfast loyalty to the House of Bourbon, strengthened as it was by gratitude and affection, and his determined refusal to accept office on the terms of the Concordat, and to swear fealty to the Emperor, whom he regarded as a usurper, which kept him in England as a mere Bishop-designate instead of a consecrated endowed Bishop. So strong were his feelings on these points, that he was one of the ecclesiastics who signed the Remonstrance against the Concordat and thus incurred the Pope’s displeasure.
Outside his office there is good ground for believing that he was an accomplished and learned man, with a fine presence and attractive, courteous manners. [186] He was apparently persona grata at Milton, the residence of Earl Fitzwilliam, seven miles from Stilton. But the correspondence reveals the Bishop as a normally imperfect man. In the opinion of the authorities (with which the historian must agree) he abused the extraordinary privileges granted to him by the British Government, and on his own showing he was, to say the least of it, injudicious in the management of his affairs. He incurred heavy debts to money-lenders without any certain prospect of being able to repay them. In extenuation of these financial errors, it may be said that misfortune and over-generosity, not personal extravagance, led to his impecuniosity and his dealings with usurers, and as to the Bishop’s connivance in the matter of his servant taking up as his occupation illicit dealing in the straw plait made in the prison, Earl Fitzwilliam clearly did not regard it as a heinous offence, when it was brought before his notice by Lord Mulgrave, but continued his pleading for the Bishop, and eventually succeeded in obtaining for him the favour he craved.
The Bishop’s work at Norman Cross continued until he returned with the Bourbons to France after the banishment of Buonaparte to Elba in 1814. Several articles in the Peterborough Museum are described in the catalogue as presents from grateful prisoners to the Bishop. If they were, it would be interesting to know why he left them behind instead of taking them to France when he returned.
From other sources we gather that the Rt. Rev. Etienne Jean Baptist, Louis de Galois de la Tour, who was fifty-four years of age at the date of the correspondence, [187] was an ecclesiastic of great distinction. He was the son of Charles Jean Baptist de Galois de la Tour, who was French Administrator in 1788 at Moulins and first President of the Department of Aix, where the future Archbishop was born in 1754. He became Vicar-general of the See of Autun and doyen of the College of St. Pierre at Moulins. He had been designated to the See of Moulins, when in 1791 the order for his arrest was issued, and he was “déporté” according to the official list of émigrés published in Paris in 1793. In the Bishop’s own narrative he says, “L’Évêque de Moulins, parti de France en 1791.” Of his life and fortunes from that year until 1808 we have his own account. In 1814, after twenty-three years of exile, he returned with the Bourbons to France, but he was not at once consecrated or even appointed to the See of Moulins.
His attitude towards the Pope and the French Government during his banishment can be seen in three rare pamphlets published in London in 1802 and 1803. [188a] The Pope (Pius VII.) was remonstrated with for coming to terms with the French Government. To the first remonstrance, dated 23rd December 1801, one archbishop and twelve bishops affix their signatures, to which a cross is prefixed; Etienne de la Tour signs last, as nominated Bishop of Moulins, without the cross. In April 1803 he signs at the end of three archbishops and thirty-five bishops, this time with a cross. [188b] The history of the quarrel between the parties and final reconciliation can be seen in Thiers: History of the French Revolution (Shobul’s Trans.), 1895, vol. i., pp. 105–6, 145, 187.
After some correspondence and an acknowledgment of his error the Bishop-designate was consecrated, and two years later he was elevated to the archbishopric of Bourges.
The Archbishop did not live more than four years to occupy the lofty position which he had won by his personal attributes, by his fidelity to the House of Bourbon, by his services to the Church, by his twenty-three years’ banishment from France involuntary and voluntary, by his experiences at Norman Cross, [188c] among which the little incident of his association, through Jean Baptiste David, with the straw-plait smuggling business might, by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and even by the Bourbon Government, not be reckoned as otherwise than meritorious.
The Archbishop, who had for so many years lived at Stilton on a pittance allowed by the British Government, and had served his fellow countrymen within the walls of the Norman Cross Prison, died in his palace at Bourges on 20th March 1820.
No evidence has been procured, beyond the statement of the relative of the Rev. T. Hinde (p. 176), that, at any time, a Protestant clergyman was officially appointed as chaplain to the Depot. There is, however, sufficient evidence that, during the first period of the war, between the opening of the prison (1797) and its evacuation (1802), the services of Roman Catholic priests were accepted, a record existing that two priests were for a short time allowed to reside within the walls. After the resumption of hostilities in 1803, notwithstanding the very strong directions issued to Captain Pressland, on the reopening of the prison, that “no priests were to be admitted except in extreme cases, etc.,” we find the Bishop-designate of Moulins practically established as the priest ministering to his countrymen in captivity, and living on the income derived from the British Government.