The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
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.
*Ut supra, 418-420.
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).**
*Mignet, Neg. rel. Succ. d’Espagne, iii. 232.
**Welwood, Memoirs, 146.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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