Man in the Iron Mask

The Son of Charles II

In The Man of the Mask (1908), Arthur Barnes presents James de la Cloche, the illegitimate but acknowledged son of the reluctant Protestant Charles II of England, who would have been his father's secret intermediary with the Catholic court of France. Louis XIV could have imprisoned him because he knew too much about French affairs with England.

Another of Charles' sons who has been proposed as the man in the mask was the Duke of Monmouth. A Protestant, he led a rebellion against his uncle, the Catholic King James II. The rebellion failed and Monmouth was executed in 1685. But in 1768 a writer called Saint-Foix claimed that another man was executed in his place and that Monmouth became the masked prisoner, it being in Louis XIV's interests to assist a fellow Catholic like James who would not necessarily want to kill his own nephew. It must be pointed out though that Saint-Foix's case was based on unsubstantiated rumours and allegations that Monmouth's execution was faked and that he was still alive in the early 18th century