Henry Essex Edgeworth De Firmont

EDGEWORTH DE FIRMONT, HENRY ESSEX last confessor to Louis XVI., was the son of Rob ert Edgeworth, rector of. Edgeworthstown in Ireland, his mother being a granddaughter of Archbishop Ussher. His father resigned his living and emigrated to Toulouse, where the boy was brought up by the Jesuits. On taking orders he assumed the additional surname of de Firmont, from the family estate of Firmount near Edgeworthstown. In 1791 he became confessor to the princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., and then to Louis himself. After Louis' condemnation he obtained permission to celebrate mass for him and attend him on the scaffold, where he recommended the king to allow his hands to be tied, with the words : "Sire, in this new outrage I see only the last trait of resemblance between your Majesty and the God who will be your reward." The abbe himself denied that at the moment of the execution he uttered the celebrated words: "Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven." Edgeworth continued to correspond with Madame Elizabeth. In 1795, his mother having meanwhile died in prison, where his sister was also confined, he escaped to England, carrying with him Elizabeth's last message to her brother, the future King Charles X. He afterwards went with some papers to Monsieur (Louis XVIII.), then at Blankenburg in Brunswick, and was induced to accompany him to Mittau, where, on May 22, 1807, he died of a fever contracted while attending some French prisoners.

Edgeworth's

Memories, edited by C. S. Edgeworth, were first published in English (London, 1815) , and a French translation (really the letters and some miscellaneous notes, etc.) was published in Paris in 1816. A translation of the Lettres de l'abbe Edgeworth avec des memoires sur sa vie was published by Madame Elise de Bow in Paris in 1818, and Letters from the Abbe Edgeworth to his Friends, with Memoirs of his Life, edited by T. B. England, in London in 1818.