Letter signed
AN UNRECORDED LETTRE MISSIVE FROM FRANCIS I
Saint-Prix (“Sainct Prys”): 20 October 1540.
Pot folium (12”[1] x 8 ¼”, 305mm x 209mm). With a header, sixteen lines of text, a signature and a countersignature. Directed verso in five lines. Watermarked with a handled pot with two lines of text across the belly, surmounted by five finials beneath a Greek cross.
Sometime folded into eight compartments, with slits along the right-hand side for locking. Some pinholes. An obliterated old inscription (describing the contents) in a later hand along the upper edge,[2] and a manuscript “6” to a green paper label adhered to the left of the text. Signed below the text by Francis I (“Francoys”) and countersigned by Bochetel with a paraph. Mounted in card, with the lower inch folded behind to fit the frame. With some peripheral losses (irregular sheet?) filled. Tanned, with some peripheral soiling.
François Ier (1494–1547) was king of France from 1515 till his death. Despite being born to the comte d’Angoulême, Francis (as he is generally known in Anglophone sources) assumed the throne after the death of Louis XII, to whose daughter Claude he was married in 1514; he was also the late king’s closest male relative (second cousins once removed). His reign was a golden age for France, including patronage of the arts (he owned Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa), expansion of territory in the New World and a great flourishing of French letters.
The present document, a “lettre missive” — in distinction to letters patent, which were public — was directed to a nobleman on whom Francis (the heading reads “De par le Roy,” usually rendered “in the name of the king") relied to promulgate and apply his laws and proclamations. Issued at “Sainct Prys” (modern Saint-Prix, the name given to several towns in France but almost certainly that in Val-d'Oise, where Francis had a hunting lodge) on the twentieth of October in 1540,[3] the letter enjoins its recipient to ease the regulation of the wheat trade in light of a particularly good harvest. The supply of sufficient wheat to the bread-devoted French was perhaps the king’s greatest responsibility from the fourteenth century till the Revolution (the riposte “let them eat cake” — “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” — comes from the pen of Rousseau, written long before Marie Antoinette was princess or queen; it is nevertheless a typically callous royal response to the people’s cry that they had no bread).
The wheat harvest will have been completed by late October, and the general surfeit allowed the king to deregulate: to remove obstacles to those merchants already possessed of “traittés” (vs. 5 etc.), trading licenses for the commodity. The letter is countersigned — typical registrarial practice, indicating that this is an official letter rather than a later or regional copy — by Guillaume Bochetel (d. 1558), the king’s finance secretary (secrétaire contresignataire des actes royaux de finance).
Neither the Catalogue des actes de François Ier nor Potter’s Inventaire des lettres missives de François Ier records the present letter, and so the interpretation of the direction (which begins: “A N[ot]re cher et bien ame/ Jehan…”) is uncertain. The preamble guarantees that the recipient is noble, and the name Jean (Middle French “Jehan”) clear enough. The final two lines list four old counties: the Dauphiné, the Lyonnais, the Forêz and the Beaujolais. All these point to Jean d’Albon de Saint-André (1472–1549), tutor to the future Henri II and gentleman of the king’s bedchamber. He was made governor of Lyon in 1539. Palaeographically, however, this is difficult to fit.
[1] The lower inch or so folded behind by a previous owner.
[2] Reading, by UV light, “Ordre de Roy Francois Ie contresigné Bochetel Secretaire/ d’estat touchant la traitté des bleds pour le Royaume” (Order of King Francis I, countersigned by Bochetel as state sercretary, regarding the licensure of wheat for the realm).
[3] The date is fairly clear: “Le/ ving[t]esme jour doctobre Lan Mil cinq cent quarante.” (vss. 15-16). There is a vertical stroke before the period but it would be an unusual way to indicate 1541.
Item #JLR0866
Price: $2,500