The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
The Charpentiers and their son-in-law,
Jacques I Dalibert
During the years when I was pursuing Marc-Antoine Charpentier in various European archives and libraries, I asked over and over: "Was there a family connection between Marc-Antoine's family and the Charpentier ancestors of Jacques II Dalibert? Is the relatively unusual baptismal name 'Etiennette' found in both families an important clue, or a mere coincidence?"
(Several notarial acts in the Minutier Central (notarial archives) at the Archives Nationales in Paris shed glimmers of light on the Dalibert-Charpentiers; but as yet they have not revealed a family relationship between these Charpentiers and Marc-Antoine Charpentier's relatives.)
The earliest act on which we will focus is the marriage contract of Jacques I Dalibert and Etiennette Charpentier, signed on November 3, 1629.(1) Noble homme Jean Charpentier, the father of the bride, was a commissaire ordinaire des guerres.(2) He and his wife, Etiennette Marests, lived on the rue des Vieux-Augustins in the parish of Saint-Eustache. Dalibert was described as both a "Messire" and a "chevalier" (that is, a knight — but of what?). He had purchased the offices of "conseiller du roi, trésorier de France, général des finances en la généralité de Béziers [and] intendant des gabelles en Languedoc." Dalibert was major when he married: that is, he was at least twenty-five years old. In other words, he was born circa 1600. Like his future father- and mother-in-law, Jacques Dalibert gave as his address the rue des Vieux-Augustins. He and his bride would dwell in that house for at least three decades.
Dalibert had southern connections: his mother's brother, honorable homme Pierre Poussoy, "banquier bourgeois de Paris" served as his sole witness. A will subsequently dictated in Toulouse by Poussoy who by then had acquired the position of secrétaire du roy maison et couronne de France et de ses finances — contains a few clues about Dalibert's close relatives. Pierre Poussoy mentions his wife, Françoise de Noël, and his "only" son, Louis "de" Poussoy. (In later years, Louis lived in Toulouse). Although the will was being drawn up in Toulouse, Pierre Poussoy stipulated that he wanted to be buried at his parish church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie in Paris, "which trade has obliged me to make my regular residence for several years." (Another notarial act confirms that around the time of the Charpentier-Dalibert wedding, Poussoy who described himself as a "merchant from Toulouse," did indeed reside in that parish, on the rue de la Vieille-Monnaie.(3)) In his will Poussoy refers to two brothers-in-law, one a councillor in the Parlement of Toulouse, the other a "trésorier général de France en la généralité de Dijon." He did not provide their family names. He also mentions two brothers, Jean Poussoy and Louis Poussoy,(4) and two nephews, Pierre and Antoine Najac ― all of whom he asks to help settle his estate. The will says nothing about his Parisian nephew, Jacques I Dalibert.
In sum, we know that Jacques I Dalibert had close ties to Toulouse
through his mother. We can also surmise that he had other Languedocian
roots through his father: the name Dalibert appears rather often in
documents involving the region around Carcassonne, Montauban, and
Toulouse.
By marrying into the Charpentier family in 1629, Jacques I
was creating influential Parisian links. One would not imagine that, as
a commissaire des guerres, Jean Charpentier would be connected
to the inner circle of the king's ministers. Looks can, however, be
deceiving: we shall see that Jean Charpentier was Cardinal Richelieu's
client.
Through the child of his late sister, Marie (or Marguerite) Charpentier, Jean Charpentier had become linked to the Robe, that is, to the judges and barristers at the Parlement of Paris. Marguerite had married Bertrand Picart/Picard (or Le Picart), a conseiller du roi and trésorier de la gendarmerie de France. Both Picarts were in their graves when their niece Etiennette Charpentier became the bride of Jacques I Dalibert, and neither their daughter, Louise Picart, nor her young husband Claude Foucault signed the Charpentier-Dalibert wedding contract. (In 1647, Foucault would however witness the wedding contract of Jacques I Dalibert's daughter Marie: "Monsieur Messire Claude Foucault, conseiller du roi dans sa cour de Parlement, cousin issu de germain à cause de Dame [Louise] Le Picard, son épouse.")(5)
Jean Charpentier also had a brother, Charles, described as "écuyer, sieur du Val et de Gaunevert" (I hope I am reading my old notes correctly for that place name), a gentilhomme ordinaire de la venerie du roi. He was close to Louis Hurault, the count of Limours, an estate situated south-west of Paris. (Hurault was the son of Chancellor Philippe Hurault de Cheverny. He died without issue from his marriage to Isabeau d'Escoubleau-Sourdis. He sold Limours to Cardinal Richelieu in 1623, and three years later Richelieu sold it to Gaston d'Orléans.) So close was Charles Charpentier to Hurault that, in 1631, Hurault would give a piece of land to him as a "donation inter vivos." Charles Charpentier's ties to Limours went beyond friendship or clientage, however: in 1613 he had married Geneviève Bobin (?) at Limours.(6) In short, one cannot rule out the possibility that it was through his brother Charles that Jean Charpentier found his way into Richelieu's circle.
Etiennette Charpentier, the bride, had three brothers, only one of whom, Gilbert ("Gilles"), witnessed her wedding contract. Gilbert had acquired lands that gave him a tincture of nobility: he was "sieur de Beauregard." By 1644 he had become a conseiller du roi en sa cour des aydes de Guyenne. By 1656 he had moved to Soissons with his wife, Elisabeth Descouturelles, the widow of a trésorier de France at Soissons named Charles Tibault. Another brother, Gratien Charpentier, was a Benedictine monk and prior of the priory of St. Nicolas de Monontoir (?); but in May 1639 he resigned the priory to "his cousin" Philippe Charpentier (apparently Charles's son), also a religious. Gratien soon left the Church and was henceforth known as "écuyer" and "sieur de Mareuil." Etiennette's youngest brother, Jacques, was not yet ten when his sister married. As a mature man he would sign his name "De Charpentier, écuyer, sieur de Hautemaison" or sometimes "De Carpentier." He married Catherine Porlier.(7)
Although I still have no firm answer to my wonderings about a common
godmother for Etiennette Charpentier-Dalibert and Marc-Antoine
Charpentier's sister Etiennette, we do know that young Mme Dalibert was
named after her mother, Etiennette Marests (or Marestz), who died circa
1642.
(In other words, Etiennette Marests was still hale and hearty
when Marc-Antoine Charpentier's sister Etiennette was born in the early
1630s. Thus it is remotely possible that she was Etiennette
Charpentier's godmother. )
Etiennette Marests' father was either Gaston Marests or Guillaume Marests; and a younger Gaston Marests mentioned by notaries may well have been her brother. All of them were bourgeois de Paris living in the Faubourg de Montmartre, where some, if not all of them earned their living as truck gardeners. Back in 1588 the older Gaston had, however, purchased the position of huissier sergent royal des aides et taille, magasin à sel dans l'élection de Paris.(8) It seems likely that a band of land consisting of truck gardens along the northern limits of Paris, plus vines and quarries at Montmartre and Clignancourt, had been part of Etiennette Marests' dowry.
Now, in 1629, these lands were being passed to young Etiennette Charpentier as her dowry. Or rather, her parents could chose between giving her a half dozen houses and some large plots of land in the northern environs of Paris, or paying Dalibert 60,000 livres in cash. The Charpentiers decided to give her the property.(9)
The wisdom of writing this option into the wedding contract would soon become clear. I refer readers to Maurice Dumolin's narrative of the real-estate ventures involving Jean Charpentier and his new son-in-law that began in 1631 and continued into the early 1640s.(10) To summarize very briefly: on August 22, 1631, Jean Charpentier took back the land that had formed his daughter's dowry, and gave the couple 60,000 livres in cash.(11) A mere six weeks later, on October 9, 1631, a construction project "directed" by Cardinal Richelieu became official: a new Montmartre gate and some adjacent city walls would be constructed just north and west of the Cardinal's palace. In the process, Richelieu planned to expand his gardens in the direction of the new walls. In other words, thanks to someone in Richelieu's circle, Jean Charpentier obtained inside information about a project that was not yet public knowledge and that was sure to make the value of those houses and fields north and west of the city soar.
A year later, Jean Charpentier himself was appointed to the group of architects and builders who would be constructing the walls and the gate. (He already held the contract for cleaning the city and the nearby suburbs, but that scarcely explains why he was singled out for the construction project.) A few months after that, Jean Charpentier began selling bits of property adjacent to Richelieu's palace to Pierre Pidou, the principal "strawman" through whom the lands involved in the wall and garden projects changed hands. Pidou in turn would sell the plot to Louis Le Barbier, the entrepreneur and speculator who was secretly helping finance the project.(12) Then Le Barbier would sell the plot to the Cardinal. Charpentier's in-law, Gaston Marests likewise began selling property to Le Barbier and his associates; and although Jacques I Dalibert had ceded the real estate back to his father-in-law, he quickly got involved in these land speculations. Indeed, as Dumolin noted, "all those who acquired parcels of land, and all those who re-sold plots of land, were [Cardinal Richelieu's] clients" (p. 171).
Through his father-in-law, Jacques I Dalibert can therefore be viewed as one of Richelieu's "clients." It is not clear how Dalibert moved to another sphere of influence after Richelieu's death in 1642, but by 1645 we find him occupying one of the most powerful positions in the household of the Gaston d'Orléans, the paternal uncle of little Louis XIV.(13)
Footnotes
1. AN, MC, II, 130.
2. Documents
signed by the different male Charpentiers whom I present in this chapter
are scattered through the Pièces Originales, "Charpentier," of the
Cabinet des Titres at the Manuscript Department of the BnF, but they add
nothing to the information I gleaned from the notarial acts cited here.
The family tree of this particular Charpentier clan is not sketched out
in the "Dossiers Bleus" of the Cabinet des Titres.
3. AN, MC, CVII,
104, quittance.
4. AD, Haute-Garonne, 3E11855, #8180, June 12, 1640,
Pierre Poussoy; and also June 26, 1659, Louis Poussoy. I am endebted to
Gayle Brunelle for this information.
5. AN, MC, XX, 265, marriage,
Oct. 1, 1647. For Bertrand Le Picart, see AN, MC, II, 134, marriage,
Nov. 30, 1630, signed by the Charpentiers and by Jacques I Dalibert.
6. AN, Y 171, fol. 415: April 14, 1631, which refers to the marriage
contract signed before Reverand, tabellion of Limours, July 28, 1613.
7. AN, MC, XX, 231, May 24, 1639, resignation; XX, 253, Nov. 26,
1644, ratification (Mareuil); and for the three brothers, AN, MC, XX,
259, May 6, 1646, partage, and XX, 264, August 4, 1647, ratification.
8. AN, MC, XXXV, 12, fols xxxvi-vii. Other acts related to the
Marests and signed by the Charpentiers and Daliberts are: AN, MC, XVIII,
267, Sept. 1, 1642, titre nouvel; XX, 265, Oct. 1, 1647, transport; XX,
266, Jan. 3, 1648, quittance.
9. AN, MC, II, 130, Nov. 3, 1629,
marriage, and Nov. 5, 1629, declaration.
10. Etudes de
Topographie parisienne (Paris, 1930), II, pp. 111-340.
11. AN,
MC, II, 137, cession.
12. For Pidou and Le Barbier, see Françoise
Bayard, Le Monde des financiers au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1988).
13. AN, MC, XX, 254, Jan. 20, 1645, bail: "conseiller du roi en ses
conseils, controlleur general des finances de Monseigneur le duc
d'Orleans et secrétaire du roi et de ses finances."