James de la Cloche (1644–1669; unattested dates) is an alleged would-be-illegitimate son of Charles II of England who would have first joined a Jesuit seminary and then gave up his habit to marry a Neapolitan woman.
Arthur Barnes in 1908, and Marcel Pagnol in 1973, developed an identification of the famous Man in the Iron Mask with James de La Cloche.
The son would have received Protestant education in France and the Netherlands and used the name James de la Cloche du Bourg.
He could not contact any of the local Catholic priests without arousing suspicions but his son, one de la Cloche, would be a perfect choice.
The next royal letter, dated 18 November 1668, says that Charles II had sent his son back to Rome to act as his unofficial ambassador to the Holy See and he would later return to London when he had received answers to questions the king was willing to deliver only orally.
The English consul Browne, is summonsed and reports that this Jacopo can 'give no account of the birth he pretends to,' despite his claim to be a natural son of Charles II (although it is unclear when this was said).
The English offered no substantiation of the claims, and he had no documents to verify them, so he was removed from the relative comfort of the castle of Gaeta to the lowly prison of Vicaria.
Boero assumed that de la Cloche had returned to London using yet another name and James Stuart had adopted his claim.
The letters addressed to King Charles II evoke Queen Henrietta Maria as being in London in 1668, when she went to settle in France three years before, where she remained until her death in 1669.
Charles II would then have got rid of his bastard son, a few month only after requesting his return to London, in order to appeal to his new priest status to be catechized.
Marcel Pagnol disagrees with this theory, arguing that Charles II, who made other bastard sons dukes, would certainly not have had James life-imprisoned after having recognised him.
According to Lang, if James de la Cloche had been of royal blood and had acquired deep religious creeds, he would not have married a commoner or displayed his money.
Lang made up his mind to demonize James, considering him as a "bold crook" who screwed Father Oliva for the sole purpose of getting money out of him.
This is what Marcel Pagnol retrieves in the Jersey's dictionary: James was not the king's bastard son, but a megalomaniac crook, who died in Naples in on 10 September 1669.
In the historical essay Le Masque de fer (The Iron Mask) released in 1965, Marcel Pagnol develops a theory identifying the famous prisoner in the Iron Mask as the elder twin brother of Louis XIV, who was born after him (meaning the older brother, born before Louis, was the legitimate heir to the throne).
After giving birth, Henrietta of France sent Lady Perronette to the Carterets, the noblest family on the island of Jersey,[7] so their daughter Marguerite could raise the child.
It was to the same Carteret family that Henrietta of England sent her son (the future Charles II) at the age of 15 years in 1646 during the English Civil War of 1642–1651.
[9] In Jersey, a rumour spread that James was born of a liaison between Marguerite Carteret and the future King Charles II, who came to the island in his youth.
In his last letter, Charles II recommended that James call in to visit his sister Henrietta of England in Paris who could have him ordained as a priest.
When James gave the letter to Charles II in London in early 1669, the king recognised him and revealed to him the secret of his birth - information which he certainly inherited from his mother Henrietta of France.
Learning that he should reigning instead of his twin brother, James is sent by Charles II to Roux de Marcilly who organised a conspiracy against Louis XIV of which all the English Ministers were aware.