wrote to the general of the jesuits, F. Oliva, requesting that La Cloche should be sent to him in London. At the same time he sent a letter to La Cloche to the same effect (Giuseppe Boero, Istoria della Conversione alla Chiesa Cattolica di Carlo II, 1863). La Cloche set out in October, travelling under the name of Henri de Rohan. Arrived in London, he obtained, in pursuit of the king's instructions, audience of the queen and the queen-mother, and was by them secretly brought to his father. No details of La Cloche's mission are accessible. The last of the king's letters to Oliva is dated 18 Nov., and suggests that some important determination had been arrived at. La Cloche finally returned to Rome as his father's ‘secret ambassador to the father-general,’ charged with commissions only to be explained orally, and with a stipulation that so soon as he had fulfilled them he was to return to England.
Further notice of La Cloche is wanting. Probably owing to the repeated change of name, his later career cannot be traced in the registers of the society, but he doubtless continued a member until his death. Boero is of opinion that after his return to England he remained there under an assumed name, that he continued secretly to visit his father at intervals, and that he was, in fact, the ‘foreign ecclesiastic’ who was sent for by the Duke of York, but who ‘could not be found,’ in the last illness of the king.
[Gent. Mag. 1866, i. 26–8, 226–7, 531; Boero's Istoria della Conversione … di Carlo II, 1863.]
LACROIX, ALPHONSE FRANÇOIS (1799–1859), missionary, born in the canton of Neuchâtel on 10 May 1799, was educated there under the care of his uncle until he was seventeen years of age. In 1816 he went to Amsterdam as a tutor, and while there was stirred by the news of the overthrow of idolatry in Tahiti to offer himself for missionary labour. He was first appointed an agent of the Netherlands Missionary Society at Chinsurah, near Calcutta, but on the cession of the settlement to the East India Company he transferred his services to the London Missionary Society, and became a British subject. He married at Chinsurah, and continued there until 1827, when he removed to Calcutta, the principal sphere of his labours. While at Calcutta he inaugurated a remarkable religious movement in the small but numerous villages to the south and east of the metropolis as well as in the district of the Sunderbunds. He also preached with success in Saugor Island, made various itinerant visits to the rivers Isamutty and Mattabhanga, and devoted his leisure to revising the Bengali scriptures and to training native preachers. During the thirty-eight years that he was thus honourably employed he paid only one visit to Europe, in 1842–3, when he spent his holiday in Switzerland, France, and England, and aroused an especial interest in his mission work throughout Switzerland, and particularly at Geneva. He pursued his pastorate of the native churches at Calcutta until his death there on 8 July 1859. He was tall and handsome, and of dignified presence, and was an animated, natural, and expressive preacher. He spoke English well, but felt more free in expressing himself on the continent in French, or at Calcutta in Bengali, of which language he was a perfect master.
[Brief Memorials of the Rev. Alphonse François Lacroix, by the Rev. Dr. Mullens, London Missionary Society; Chronicle of London Missionary Society, art. iv., by the Rev. E. Storrow, L.M.S., February 1882.]
LACY, FRANCIS ANTONY (1731–1792), Spanish general and diplomatist, born in 1731, was the son of an Irish officer who went to Spain with the Duke of Berwick, probably the Lacy who was a general at the Spanish siege of Oran in 1730. Francis Antony commenced his military career as ensign in the Irish infantry regiment of Ultonia in the Spanish service, during the disastrous campaign in Italy in 1747. He commanded the same regiment in the war with Portugal in 1762. As lieutenant-general he commanded the Spanish artillery at the famous siege of Gibraltar (Drinkwater, p. 167). After the peace of 1783 Lacy was sent as Spanish minister-plenipotentiary to the courts of Stockholm and St. Petersburg, where he was very popular. On his return he was made commandant-general of the coast of Grenada, member of the supreme council of war, and commandant-general and sole inspector-general of the artillery and of all ordnance-manufacturing establishments in Spain and the Indies. The Spanish artillery school of Segovia was indebted to him for improved discipline and the establishment of classes for chemistry, mineralogy, and pyrotechnics. In March 1789 he was made governor and captain-general of Catalonia, where he was conspicuous by his active efforts to prevent the spread of French revolutionary doctrines. He married a daughter of the Marquis d'Abbeville, by whom he had a son and daughter. He died at Barcelona 31 Dec. 1792.
