Sources on the Absolute Monarchies of Europe (1661-1787)

AS HISTORY

PRELIMINARY LESSONS

TOPIC 1

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON (1787-1815)

France under the Ancien Régime, 1661-1787

 

Sources

1. Adalbero, Bishop of Laon, Letter to King Robert of Francia (written between 1027-1031)

“God, through Moses, has established the clergy and its hierarchy… To the clergymen (clerici) God commanded to preserve the true faith… and pray for absolution of the sins of all people including their own… To them all mankind is subject; no one prince can be out of their spiritual authority… In the society of the faithful the principal place is occupied by the king (rex), whose power ensures stability in the state. There are other men whom no power limits except when they breach royal laws; these men are the warriors (milites), protectors of churches, and of everybody else, great or small… The other class is that of serfs (servi) who earn everything through their labour; they provide money, food, clothing to the whole world; no man can exist without them… The house of God is therefore divided into three: those who pray (oratores), those who fight (bellatores), and those who work (laboratores).”

2. Count de Brienne,[1] Memoirs (Mémoires), entry for March 10, 1661

“… We were just eight men. Then the king[2] spoke to the chancellor:[3]

“Sir, I have assembled you with my ministers and secretaries of state to tell you that until now I have considered it proper to leave the late monsignor Cardinal[4] in charge of my affairs; it is now time for me to manage them on my own. You will aid me with your councils when I demand these from you. I ask you and order you, mister chancellor, not to seal anything without my order.” After that the king turned towards us and told:

“And you, my secretaries of state, I order you not to sign anything, even a passport, without my command; I order you to give account only to me and not to favour anybody else in that respect…”

In the end, the king added: “You know my will, gentlemen; it is now your task to execute it.”

3. Duke de Saint-Simon,[5] Memoirs (Mémoires)

“… The intendants did not have great importance before that reign.[6] The king and (even more) his ministers have increased it little by little… They used the intendants… to balance, to obscure, and in the end to destroy the power of the governors of the provinces, i.e. their lieutenants, and – most important – the power held by the seigneurs in their lands… The intendants limited the power of bishops in lay matters… they obstructed all parlements, they subdued all city councils. The distribution of the taille and other taxes, given entirely to them, made them able to stir up and calm down even parishes and small villages…”

4. Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet,[7] Statecraft Drawn from the Very Words of the Holy Scriptures (Politique tirée des propres paroles de l’Écriture sainte, 1^st Paris, 1679/1709)

“… We have already seen that all power is of God. The ruler, adds St. Paul, “is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that, which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Rulers then act as the ministers of God and as his lieutenants on earth. It is through them that God exercises his empire. Think ye “to withstand the kingdom of the Lord in the hand of the sons of David”? Consequently, as we have seen, the royal throne is not the throne of a man, but the throne of God himself. The Lord “hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.” And again, “Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord.”

5. William Shakespeare, King Henry the Fifth, (written 1598-1599)

Act I, Scene 1

“ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY:

The king is full of grace and fair regard.

BISHOP OF ELY:

And a true lover of the holy church.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY:

The courses of his youth promised it not.

The breath no sooner left his father’s body,

But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment,

Consideration, like an angel, came,

And whip’t the offending Adam out of him,

Leaving his body as a paradise,

T’envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Never was such a sudden scholar made;

Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;

Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,

As in this king.

BISHOP OF ELY:

We are blessed in the change.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY:

Hear him but reason in divinity,

And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

You would desire the king were made a prelate:

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say it hath been all-in-all his study:

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearful battle render’d you in music:

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter…

Act I, Scene 2

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY:

…therefore doth heaven divide

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,

Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach,

The art of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king, and officers of sorts:

Where some, like magistrates, correct at home:

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds;

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

To the tent-royal of their emperor:

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;

The civil citizens kneading-up the honey;

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;

The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,

Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone…”

6. Jean de La Bruyère, Characters (Les Caractères, ou les mœurs de ce siècle, 1688)

“ON THE SOVEREIGN, Fragment 29: When you sometimes cast your look at a flock, assembled on a hill in the end of a beautiful day, grazing tranquilly thymus and other sweet herbs, or eating in the field the variegated and tender grass that has escaped the weapon of the reaper, the shepherd, watchful and vigilant, is always near his sheep; he never loses sight of them, he follows them, he leads them, he changes their pasture; if they disperse, he assembles them; if an wolf appears, he sets against him his dog which repels the predator; he feeds them, he defends them; dawn finds him already in the field, where from he does retire with the sun: what a care! what a vigilance! what a service! Which condition seems to you the more pleasant and more free – of the shepherd or of the sheep? Is the flock made for the shepherd, or the shepherd for the flock? A naïve image of the people and of the prince who governs them, if he is a good prince.

The splendour and luxury in a sovereign, this is the shepherd wearing gold and precious stones, with a golden club in his hands; his dog has a golden collar and a leash of silk and gold. What purpose does all this gold serve to the sheep or against the wolves?”

7. A little music? Why not! Georg Friedrich Händel was the favourite composer of King George II (1727-1760) and wrote the music of his Coronation Anthems, which is performed on every such occasion ever since. The text was taken from the Bible:

“I Kings, 1:39-40:

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king.

And all the people rejoiced, and said:

God save the king, long live the king!

May the king live for ever!

Amen, alleluia, amen!”

8. Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Statecraft Drawn from the Very Words of the Holy Scriptures (Politique tirée des propres paroles de l’Écriture sainte, 1^st Paris, 1679/1709)

“… It appears from all this that the person of the king is sacred, and that to attack him in any way is sacrilege. God has the kings anointed by his prophets with the holy unction in like manner as he has bishops and altars anointed. But even without the external application in thus being anointed, they are by their very office the representatives of the divine majesty deputed by Providence for the execution of his purposes…”

9. Duke de Saint-Simon, Memoirs (Mémoires)

“… I shall pass over the stormy period of Louis XIV’s minority. At twenty-three years of age he entered the great world as King, under the most favorable auspices. His ministers were the most skillful in all Europe; his generals the best; his Court was filled with illustrious and clever men, formed during the troubles which had followed the death of Louis XIII. Louis XIV was made for a brilliant Court. In the midst of other men, his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand mien, even the tone of his voice and the majestic and natural charm of all his person, distinguished him till his death as the King Bee, and showed that if he had only been born a simple private gentleman, he would equally have excelled in fetes, pleasures, and gallantry, and would have had the greatest success in love. The intrigues and adventures which early in life he had been engaged in… had exercised an unfortunate influence upon him… From this time, intellect, education, nobility of sentiment, and high principle, in others, became objects of suspicion to him, and soon of hatred. The more he advanced in years the more this sentiment was confirmed in him. He wished to reign by himself… He reigned, indeed, in little things; the great he could never reach: even in the former, too, he was often governed. The superior ability of his early ministers and his early generals soon wearied him. He liked nobody to be in any way superior to him. Thus he chose his ministers, not for their knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their want of it. He liked to form them, as he said; liked to teach them even the most trifling things. It was the same with his generals… Naturally fond of trifles, he unceasingly occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his household, his mansions; would even instruct his cooks, who received, like novices, lessons they had known by heart for years. This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration, was his ruin…”

10. A Remonstrance of the Parlement of Toulouse, 27 September 1756

“A Remonstrance of the Parlement of Toulouse to the King dated 27 September 1756, concerning the declarations of His Majesty establishing a second twentieth (vingtiéme) and prorogating the two additional sols on livre for the tithe

Sire,

Your Parlement has reviewed Your new declarations. Eager to serve You, it would have registered them without delay… A blind and too prompt a submission is already treason. Never have laws deserved to be so carefully thought over in the real Council of Your Majesty which is Your Parlement, than the tax laws, the promulgation of which you order us to-day. The general outcry and the lit de justice where everything took place in silence and dreariness have already brought alarm and desolation in the provinces under our jurisdiction. Our hearts, Sire, are full of bitterness when we look at these premature declarations which announce the exhaustion of Your finances and which would achieve the ruin of Your people if You preserve them. But this faithful people has so many times experienced the tenderness and extent of Your affection for it that it is still hoping to observe new signs of it in the entire suppression or diminution of the taxes which it was suggested to You to continue and to introduce.

Your subjects do not wish but Your glory. They profuse for You their lives and their goods, not by following the servile constraint typical of a slave, but by [making] a generous and free sacrifice, the only one which suits the French… But what urgent necessities, Sire, require the new subsidies when the old vingtiéme is much more considerable than the tithe; when the war has just begun, and does not yet threaten any of Your frontiers; and when the wise measures taken by You have already disconcerted those who violated the peace?…

Do we believe, Sire, that the debts of the state could not be settled with the enormous profit of the vingtiéme after the peace? No; that imposition, similar to the fires, devouring everything in its way and already raised to the level of the tithe, sustained by the noble economy using which the great Kings honour themselves, presently annuls for You and for Your subjects the necessity of new aids.

Condescend, Sire, and consider their despondency. You can do everything but they cannot do the impossible. What burdens have not been heaped upon them! The tailles which take a large portion of the production of the fields; the capitation, a servile tax that could have been introduced under extreme necessity, but the destruction of which will be sooner or later required by the glory of our Kings; the centième denier which often absorbs the best part of inheritances; the droits du contrôle, the obscure tariff and the uncertain jurisprudence of which every day authorize glaring extortions; the ecclesiastical tithes, so scrupulously demanded; the rentes foncières (ground rents); the octrois once given to the cities for their relief, and having become for them a fertile seed of vexations and abuses. Besides these burdens common to all peoples under our jurisdiction, the Languedoc has its peculiar ones – the équivalent making so expensive the consumption of wines and foods; the leudes making traffic so shameful; the gabelles which make such a strange and hateful difference between the subjects of the same King…

We declare it with dread to Your Majesty – the tithe will administer the final blow to agriculture. It is [already] perishing from day to day…

Sire

Your most humble, most obedient, most loyal and most affectionate servants and subjects, the people holding Your Court of Parlement.

Made at Toulouse, in Parlement, on 27 September 1756”

11. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, On the Government of the Provinces. A Memoir Presented to the King by the Late Mr. Turgot. Lausanne, 1788

“Sire

…

The cause of the evil, Sire, lies in that your nation does not have a constitution; this is a society consisting of different estates, imperfectly united; a people the members of which have too little social connections between each other, and where – as a consequence – almost nobody is preoccupied by something different than his exclusive particular interests, where almost nobody bothers to either fulfill his duties or recognise his relations with other people, so that in this perpetual war of pretensions and enterprises which reason and enlightenment had not regulated ever, Your Majesty is obliged to decide everything in person or through mandatories…

But individuals are rather unimpressively educated regarding their obligations within the family, and not at all in those tying them to the state; families themselves hardly are in the know that they are attached to this state of which they form a part… they consider the orders of authority for contributions that may serve the maintenance of public order [to be] the law of the stronger to which there is no other reason to be subject than the impossibility to resist it, and which one can evade whenever he finds means. Because of that everybody seeks to deceive the government… revenue diminishes and cannot be recovered but partially, by an inquisitorial force because of which it is said that Your Majesty is at war with his people… In that war, nobody has interest to favour the government… There is no public spirit, for there is no visible and known common interest. The villages and towns, the parts of which are so disunited, do not have a relation to the regions to which they are attached; they cannot agree on the public works that will be necessary to them. The different divisions of the provinces are related in the same way, as well as the provinces to the kingdom. Some of these provinces have nevertheless a sort of a constitution, the assemblies… these are the so-called pays d’états; but, being composed of orders whose pretensions are too diverse, and whose interests too divided from each other and from those of the nation, these Estates are far from providing the whole good which may be desired for the provinces…”

12. Letter of the Duke of Aiguillon to Marshal Belle-Isle, 8 August 1759

“… The commissioners of the coast-guard militia must be Breton, to reside in Brittany… and on these conditions the Estates agreed not only to appoint them but also to secure the funds necessary for the maintenance of the coast-guard… The taxes having been consented to and the arrangements agreed upon in the assembly of the Estates, the first are being collected with an exceptional facility and promptitude, and the others are executed with the greatest exactitude. Thirty commissioners from every order dispatched throughout the nine bishoprics operate the whole machine for free; the peoples accustomed to their government pay in advance and without delay all tax, and there are neither distraints nor arrears. The sum farmed, almost 7 million, is being collected without difficulty and without assistants while the tax farmers were obliged to have more than one thousand officials for the tobacco only, and these were not enough. The Bretons do not have any scruple in not paying the taxes of the king but consider themselves dishonoured if they do so to those which they themselves impose… In 1756 there were arrears amounting to almost 2 million from the vingtiéme of the previous years, when the king was levying the tax through the intendant; since he has the contract [for farming the taxes] and the Estates commissioners recover the sums, he receives the sum in advance. The capitation under the intendant has never been more than 1.1 million livres; now it is 1.8 million paid in advance to the treasury… If the administration of that province entails some inconveniences, if it presents continuous embarrassments and often difficulties to the man who is in charge, on the other hand it offers such great advantages that it has to be protected and maintained, and Brittany, procuring to the king resources which he does not find in the other provinces of his kingdom, deserves that the ministry has some condescension to its prejudices and a particular attention to its customs and privileges, renewed and confirmed every two years in a most authentic form. Following this principle I believed I had to insist before you on a separate ordinance for the coast-guard militias, and I also take the liberty to inform you that you have to respect the engagements I have undertaken for two commissioners, and nominate the persons whom Le Bret has suggested to you for the said place…”

The Stuart and Hanoverian Monarchy in Britain

13. King James I (1603-1625) (James VI of Scotland, 1567-1625), A speech to Parliament, 1610

“… The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth… There be three principal [comparisons] that illustrate the state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God, and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the Divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families; for a king is truly parens patriae [Latin, ‘parent of the country’], the politic father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man… I conclude then… that as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy… so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power…. I will not be content that my power be disputed upon, but I shall ever be willing to make the reason appear of all my doings, and rule my actions according to my laws… Now the second general ground whereof I am to speak concerns the matter of grievances… First then, I am not to find fault that you inform yourselves of the particular just grievances of the people; nay I must tell you, ye can neither be just nor faithful to me or to your countries that trust and employ you, if you do it not… But I would wish you to be careful to avoid [these] things in the matter of grievances. First, that you do not meddle with the main points of government; that is my craft… to meddle with that, were to lessen me. I am now an old king… I must not be taught my office. Secondly, I would not have you meddle with such ancient rights of mine as I have received from my predecessors… All novelties are dangerous as well in a politic as in a natural body, and therefore I would be loath to be quarreled in my ancient rights and possessions: for that were to judge me unworthy of that which my predecessors had and left me…”

14. The Bill of Rights (1689)

“An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown

Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster, lawfully, fully and freely representing all the estates of the people of this realm, did upon the thirteenth day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty-eight present unto their Majesties, then called and known by the names and style of William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, being present in their proper persons, a certain declaration in writing made by the said Lords and Commons in the words following… the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons… being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation… do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare

• That the pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;
• That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal…
• That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
• That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;
• That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;
• That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;
• That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament…
• And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently…

Having therefore an entire confidence that his said Highness the prince of Orange will… still preserve them from the violation of their rights which they have here asserted, and from all other attempts upon their religion, rights and liberties, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster do resolve that William and Mary… be and be declared king and queen of England, France and Ireland and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions…”

15. John Abbot,[8] Memorandum (1796)

“The electors at Abingdon[9] are 240 scot and lot; about 70 of them take money. About half of the 240 go with the corporation. The Dissenters,[10] headed by the Tomkisses and Fletchers, are the next best interest. Child, the brewer, and his friends have also considerable weight. If all three sets can agree, they carry the place in defiance of all opposition…”

16. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand,[11] Diary, entry for March 15, 1818, London

“… There is an entire absence of dignity and greatness… the election is a mean parody and wretched farce… the successful candidates had to ride in a sort of triumphal procession through the city… they were pelted with filth, greeted with a shower of thick and black mud… I saw Lord Nugent[12] with one side all black. Lord Molyneux’s face resembled a pug’s. Lord John Russell[13] attempted with difficulty to wipe off the stinking patches of dirt which continually bespattered his cheeks… One of the servants received so violent a blow on the head with a stick that he fell from his horse unconscious… Some had their windows broken and their furniture damaged. The houses of Lord Castlereagh[14] and several others met with the same fate…”

17. Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke,[15] Speech before the House of Commons on the repeal of the Bill giving naturalization to Jews settled in England (the Bill was repealed after riots broke out in London and in several other towns), 1753

“However much the people may be misled, yet in a free country I do not think an unpopular Measure ought to be obstinately persisted in. We should treat the people as a skilful and humane physician would treat his patient; if they nauseate the salutary draught we have prescribed, we should think of some other remedy, or we should delay administering the prescription till time or change of circumstances has removed the nausea.”

The Habsburg, or Austrian, Monarchy

18. Emperor Joseph II,[16] Letter (“Letters of Joseph II”, in The Pamphleteer, London, 19, 1822, p. 290)

“I determined from the very commencement of my reign to adorn my diadem with the love of my people, to act in the administration of affairs according to just, impartial, and liberal principles; consequently, I granted toleration [in 1781], and removed the yoke which had oppressed the Protestants for centuries. Fanaticism shall in future be known in my states only by the contempt I have for it; nobody shall any longer be exposed to hardships on account of his creed; no man shall be compelled in future to profess the religion of the state if it be contrary to his persuasion… Tolerance is an effect of that beneficent increase of knowledge which now enlightens Europe and which is owing to philosophy and the efforts of great men; it is a convincing proof of the improvement of the human mind, which has boldly reopened a road through the dominions of superstition… and which, fortunately for mankind, has now become the highway of monarchs.”

The Hohenzollern, or Prussian Monarchy

19. Friedrich II, Essay on the Forms of Government

“A sovereign must possess an exact and detailed knowledge of the strong and of the weak points of his country. He must be thoroughly acquainted with its resources, the character of the people, and the national commerce… Rulers should always remind themselves that they are men like the least of their subjects. The sovereign is the foremost judge, general, financier, and minister of his country, not merely for the sake of his prestige. Therefore, he should perform with care the duties connected with these offices. He is merely the principal servant of the State. Hence, he must act with honesty, wisdom, and complete disinterestedness in such a way that he can render an account of his stewardship to the citizens at any moment. Consequently, he is guilty if he wastes the money of the people, the taxes which they have paid, in luxury, pomp and debauchery. He who should improve the morals of the people, be the guardian of the law, and improve their education should not pervert them by his bad example…

The bad administration which may be found in monarchies springs from many different causes, but their principal cause lies in the character of the sovereign. A ruler addicted to women will become a tool of his mistresses and favourites, and these will abuse their power and commit wrongs of every kind, will protect vice, sell offices, and perpetrate every infamy…

The sovereign is the representative of his State. He and his people form a single body. Ruler and ruled can be happy only if they are firmly united. The sovereign stands to his people in the same relation in which the head stands to the body. He must use his eyes and his brain for the whole community, and act on its behalf to the common advantage. If we wish to elevate monarchical above republican government, the duty of sovereigns is clear. They must be active, hard-working, upright and honest, and concentrate all their strength upon filling their office worthily…”

20. Friedrich II, Political Testament (1752)

“… Politics is the science of always using the most convenient means in accord with one’s own interests. In order to act in conformity with one’s interests, one must know what these interests are, and in order to gain this knowledge, one must study their history and application… One must attempt, above all, to know the special genius of the people which one wants to govern in order to know if one must treat them leniently or severely, if they are inclined to revolt… to intrigue… [The Prussian nobility] has sacrificed its life and goods for the service of the state; its loyalty and merit have earned it the protection of all its rulers, and it is one of the duties [of the ruler] to aid those noble families which have become impoverished in order to keep them in possession of their lands; for they are to be regarded as the pedestals and the pillars of the state. In such a state no factions or rebellions need be feared… it is one goal of the policy of this state to preserve the nobility….”

The Romanov, or Russian Monarchy

21. Catherine II, Proposals for a New Law Code (1767)

“8. The Possessions of the Russian Empire extend upon the terrestrial Globe to 32 Degrees of Latitude, and to 165 of Longitude.

9. The Sovereign is absolute; for there is no other Authority but that which centers in his single Person, that can act with a Vigour proportionate to the Extent of such a vast Dominion.
10. The Extent of the Dominion requires an absolute Power to be vested in that Person who rules over it. It is expedient so to be, that the quick Dispatch of Affairs, sent from distant Parts, might make ample Amends for the Delay occasioned by the great Distance of the Places.
11. Every other Form of Government whatsoever would not only have been prejudicial to Russia, but would even have proved its entire Ruin.
12. Another Reason is: That it is better to be subject to the Laws under one Master, than to be subservient to many.”

 

9. Catherine II, Edict on Serfs (1767)

“…The Governing Senate… has deemed it necessary to make known that the landlords’ serfs and peasants… owe their landlords proper submission and absolute obedience in all matters, according to the laws that have been enacted from time immemorial by the autocratic forefathers of Her Imperial Majesty and which have not been repealed, and which provide that all persons who dare to incite serfs and peasants to disobey their landlords shall be arrested and taken to the nearest government office, there to be punished forthwith as disturbers of the public tranquillity, according to the laws and without leniency.”

[1] French nobleman (1635-1698), statesman during the reign of Louis XIV (1643/1661-1715).

[2] Louis XIV, here depicted in the moment when he began to rule on his own, after the death of his regent and first minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin (Giulio Mazzarino, 1602-1661).

[3] The chancellor Pierre Séguier (1588-1672); his office combined the duties of minister of justice and keeper of the royal seal during the reign of Louis XIII (1610-1643) and the early reign of Louis XIV.

[4] The abovementioned Cardinal Mazarin.

[5] Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon (b. Jan. 15, 1675, Paris, Fr. – d. March 2, 1755, Paris), soldier and writer, known as one of the great memoirists of France. His Mémoires are an important historic document of his time.

[6] I.e. the reign of Louis XIV.

[7] (b. Sept. 25, 1627, Dijon, Fr. – d. April 12, 1704, Paris), bishop of Meaux (France), who was the most eloquent and influential spokesman for the rights of the French church against papal authority. He is now chiefly remembered for his literary works, including funeral panegyrics for great personages.

[8] An English politician, Speaker of the House of Commons.

[9] Abingdon, a town (“parish”), Vale of White Horse district, county of Oxfordshire, England. It lies south of Oxford at the confluence of the Rivers Thames and Ock.

[10] Dissenters – members of the Non-conformist (i.e. outside of the Church of England) Christian denominations in Britain.

[11] French writer and diplomat, one of the first Romantic writers in Europe (1768-1848).

[12] (b. Oct. 25, 1759 – d. Jan. 12, 1834, Dropmore Lodge, Buckinghamshire, Eng.), British politician, son of prime minister George Grenville; he was himself head of the coalition “Ministry of all the Talents”, Feb. 11, 1806-March 25, 1807. His greatest achievement was the abolition of the British overseas slave trade by a bill that became law the day he left office.

[13] also called (until 1861) Lord John Russell (b. Aug. 18, 1792, London, Eng. – d. May 28, 1878, Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park, Surrey), prime minister of Great Britain (1846-52, 1865-66), an aristocratic liberal and leader of the fight for passage of the Reform Bill of 1832.

[14] also called (from 1821) 2^nd Marquess Of Londonderry (b. June 18, 1769, Dublin – d. Aug. 12, 1822, London), British foreign secretary (1812-22), who helped guide the Grand Alliance against Napoleon and was a major participant in the Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe in 1815.

[15] also called (1733-54) Baron Hardwicke Of Hardwicke (b. Dec. 1, 1690, Dover, Kent, Eng. – d. March 6, 1764, London), English lord chancellor, whose grasp of legal principle and study of the historical foundations of equity, combined with his knowledge of Roman civil law, enabled him to establish the principles and limits of the English system of equity.

[16] (b. March 13, 1741, Vienna – d. Feb. 20, 1790, Vienna), Holy Roman emperor (1765-90), at first co-ruler with his mother, Maria Theresia (1765-80), and then sole ruler (1780-90) of the Austrian Habsburg dominions.