HUGUENOT MIRROR FOR CHARLES II
[CHARLES II.]
RIVET, Jean. ‘Le favory du Ciel ou Meditation sur le pseaume cent un par Jean Rivet laisné Sainctongeois’.
[Caussade en Quercy, 1664.]
Manuscript on paper, in French, 4to, pp. [36], in a neat italic hand; a couple of small marks but in very good condition, bound in contemporary dark mottled sheep, covers with gilt fillet, spine gilt in six compartments with raised bands.
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RIVET, Jean. ‘Le favory du Ciel ou Meditation sur le pseaume cent un par Jean Rivet laisné Sainctongeois’.
A fascinating manuscript meditation on Psalm 101, a text traditionally used as an exposition on princely authority in Protestant theology, with a long dedication ‘A Tres Puissant et Serenissime Roy Charle deuxiesme Roy de la grande Bretagne’.
Jean Rivet (b. 1610) was son of the Huguenot theologian Guillaume Rivet (1580–1651), sieur de Champvernon and pastor of Taillebourg (now in Charente-Maritime), and nephew of the celebrated André Rivet (1572–1651), who became one of the most influential members of the theological faculty at Leyden, and tutor to the future Stadtholder William II of Orange (1626–1650). André Rivet had strong ties to Britain: as a boy he had been tutored in Poitou by Sir Adam Newton (later tutor to Prince Henry); he was in Oxford for a period in the early 1620s; and in 1641 he accompanied his young charge William to London for his ceremonial wedding to Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I. A year later he addressed to William his Instruction du prince chrétien, which comprised a fictional dialogue between the prince and his directeur and a meditation on Psalm 101, ‘a common reference in Protestant discourses on princely authority … Ps 101 has the additional attraction for princely supervisors that it underlines the importance of wise counsellors’ (Green et al.).
It is unsurprising then that Rivet’s nephew chose the same text for his own ‘Meditation’ for presentation to Charles II, whose recent restoration, his triumph over ‘our enemies and the usurpers of our paternal inheritance’ (trans.), as the dedication says, must be a sign of his favour from heaven. The ‘Meditation’ itself is couched as a text to be spoken by the king himself, and Rivet follows his uncle’s model in stressing that the king’s moral life is not private but public, and that he is also a servant in the court of heaven.
Jean Rivet, ‘Sainctongeois’ (i.e, of Santonge, the county in which Taillebourg sits), is much less well documented than his father or uncle, but seems also to have spent time in the Netherlands in the 1620s, in the army, and then briefly in England, before returning to Taillebourg in 1632, when he married a local heiress, Marthe Chadeau. One of his sons (b. 635) was also Jean, hence the designation ‘l’ainé’ here, and the dedication is dated from Caussade, ‘23 Apuril [sic] 1664’, indicating that he had by then travelled some distance from the region of his birth to the similarly Protestant area around Montauban.
This unpublished meditation, presenting a fascinating intersection of Huguenot-Royalist and Anglo-French relations, will bear further study, particularly in the question of its presentation to Charles II himself. One might initially doubt the possibility, but the only other reference we can trace to the work is in the 1690 sale catalogue of the library of the Scottish Presbyterian and court favourite of Charles II, John Maitland, first Duke of Lauderdale, where lot 43 among the French and Italian books in 8vo is ‘Le Favory du Ciel, ou Meditation sur le pseaulme 101 par Jean Rivet. Montauban, 1664’ – evidently not the present manuscript but a twin, Montauban being a stone’s throw from Caussade.
Green, Nørgaard, and Bruun, ‘En privé & en public: the epistolary Preparation of the Dutch Stadtholders’, Journal of Early Modern History 24 (2020), pp. 253–79.
