The following curious account was given to me by Mr. Fitz-Simons, an
Irish gentleman, upwards of eighty years of age, with whom I became
acquainted when resident with my family at Toulouse, in September, 1840;
he having resided in that city for many years as a teacher of the French
and English languages, and had attended the late Sir William Follett in
the former capacity there in 1817. He said,--
"I was a prisoner in Paris, in the convent of the English
Benedictines in the Rue St. Jaques, during part of the
revolution. In the year 1793 or 1794, the body of King James II.
of England was in one of the chapels there, where it had been
deposited some time, under the expectation that it would one day
be sent to England for interment in Westminster Abbey. It had
never been buried. The body was in a wooden coffin, inclosed in
a leaden one; and that again inclosed in a second wooden one,
covered with black velvet. That while I was so a prisoner, the
sans-culottes broke open the coffins to get at the lead to cast
into bullets. The body lay exposed nearly a whole day. It was
swaddled like a mummy, bound tight with garters. The
sans-culottes took out the body, which had been embalmed. There
was a strong smell of vinegar and camphor. The corpse was
beautiful and perfect. The hands and nails were very fine, I
moved and bent every finger. I never saw so fine a set of teeth
in my life. A young lady, a fellow prisoner, wished much to have
a tooth; I tried to get one out for her, but could not, they
were so firmly fixed. The feet also were very beautiful. The
face and cheeks were just as if he were alive. I rolled his
eyes: the eye-balls were perfectly firm under my finger. The
French and English prisoners {244} gave money to the
sans-culottes for showing the body. They said he was a good
sans-culotte, and they were going to put him into a hole in the
public churchyard like other sans-culottes; and he was carried
away, but where the body was thrown I never heard. King George
IV. tried all in his power to get tidings of the body, but could
not. Around the chapel were several wax moulds of the face hung
up, made probably at the time of the king's death, and the
corpse was very like them. The body had been originally kept at
the palace of St. Germain, from whence it was brought to the
convent of the Benedictines. Mr. Porter, the prior, was a
prisoner at the time in his own convent."
The above I took down from Mr. Fitz-Simons' own mouth, and read it to
him, and he said it was perfectly correct. Sir W. Follett told me he
thought Mr. Fitz-Simons was a runaway Vinegar Hill boy. He told me that
he was a monk.