According to some MS. notes left by M. de Bonac, French ambassador at
Constantinople in 1724, the Armenian Patriarch Arwedicks, a mortal enemy
of our Church and the instigator of the terrible persecutions to which
the Roman Catholics were subjected, was carried off into exile at the
request of the Jesuits by a French vessel, and confined in a prison
whence there was no escape. This prison was the fortress of
Sainte-Marguerite, and from there he was taken to the Bastille, where he
died. The Turkish Government continually clamoured for his release till
1723, but the French Government persistently denied having taken any part
in the abduction.

Even if it were not a matter of history that Arwedicks went over to the
Roman Catholic Church and died a free man in Paris, as may be seen by an
inspection of the certificate of his death preserved among the archives
in the Foreign Office, one sentence from the note-book of M. de Bonac
would be sufficient to annihilate this theory. M. de Bonac says that the
Patriarch was carried off, while M. de Feriol, who succeeded M. de
Chateauneuf in 1699, was ambassador at Constantinople. Now it was in
1698 that Saint-Mars arrived at the Bastille with his masked prisoner.

Several English scholars have sided with Gibbon in thinking that the Man
in the Iron Mask might possibly have been Henry, the second son of Oliver
Cromwell, who was held as a hostage by Louis XIV.

By an odd coincidence the second son of the Lord Protector does entirely
disappear from the page of history in 1659; we know nothing of where he
afterwards lived nor when he died. But why should he be a prisoner of
state in France, while his elder brother Richard was permitted to live
there quite openly? In the absence of all proof, we cannot attach the
least importance to this explanation of the mystery.