S.W.  SINGER.

REMAINS OF JAMES II. 
(Vol. ii., p. 243.).

The following passage is transcribed from a communication relative to the Scotch College at Paris, made by the Rev. H. Longueville Jones to the Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, 1841, vol. vii. p. 33.:—­

“The king left his brains to this college; and, it used to be said, other parts, but this is more doubtful, to the Irish and English colleges at Paris.  His heart was bequeathed to the Dames de St. Marie at Chaillot, and his entrails were buried at St. Germain-en-Laye, where a handsome monument has been erected to his memory by order of George IV.; but the body itself was interred in the monastery of English Benedictine Monks that once existed in the Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques, close to the Val de Grace.  In this latter house, previous to the Revolution, the following simple inscription marked where the monarch’s body lay:—­

    “‘CI GIST JACQUES II.  ROI DE LA GRANDE BRETAGNE.’”

A monument to the king still exists in the chapel of the Scotch College (which is now leased to a private school), and the inscription, in Latin, written by James, Duke of Perth, is printed in the same volume of Collectanea, p. 35., followed by all the other inscriptions to James’s adherents now remaining in that chapel.

In a subsequent communication respecting the Irish College at Paris, made by the same gentleman, and printed in the same volume, at p. 113. are these remarks:—­

“It is not uninteresting to add, that the body of James II. was brought to this college after the destruction of the English Benedictine Monastery adjoining the Val de Grace; and remained for some years in a temporary tomb in one of the lecture halls, then used as the chapel.  It was afterwards removed; by whose authority, and to what place, is not exactly known:  but it is considered not improbable that it was transported to the church of St. Germain-en-Laye, and there buried under the monument erected by George IV.  Some additional light will probably be thrown on this subject, in a work on the Stuarts now in course of compilation.”

Has this work since appeared?

J.G.N.

Interment of James II.—­I remember reading in the French papers, in the year 1823 or 1824, a long account of the then recent exhumation and re-interment in another spot of the remains of James II.  I was but a boy at the time, and neglected to make a “Note”, which might now be valuable to you.  I have not the least doubt, however, that the fact will be discovered on reference to a file of the Etoile, or any other of the Paris papers of one or other of the years above named.

There is a marble monument erected in memory of James, in the chapel of the old Scotch College, in the Rue des Fosses Saint Victor.  An urn of bronze, gilt, containing the king’s brains, formerly {282} stood on the crown of this monument.  The urn was smashed and the contents scattered over the ground, during the French Revolution.  A much more important loss to posterity was incurred by the destruction of the manuscripts entrusted by James to the keeping of the brotherhood he loved.  The trust is alluded to with mingled pride and affection in the noble and touching inscription on the royal monument.