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.