Kings MS 133-136

Recueil de Lettres, de Memoires, d'Actes d'instructions et de Contracts, faits pour parvenir all Traité de Mariage d'entre Madame Honriette Marie soeur du Roy, et Charles Premier Roy de la Grande Bretagne'; 1624-1625. Four volumes, each with table of contents at the end. Other copies are Harley MSS. 4593-4596, Add. MSS 4150-4154, 30646-30649. These and many other transcripts probably originate in the large collection of state papers (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale and known as the fonds de Brienne), made by order of Antoine de Loménie for the use of his son Henri Auguste. The correspondence is chiefly that of Louis XIII and his Secretaries of State, especially of Henri Auguste de Loménie, Seigneur de la Ville-aux-Clercs, Comte de Brienne, with the successive French Ambassadors, ordinary and extraordinary, to England, viz. Tanneguy le Veneur, Comte de Tillières, replaced in July, 1624, by Antoine Coeffier Ruzé, Marquis d Effiat, René Potier, Comte de Tresmes, sent in April, 1625, to condole on the death of James I, and Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Chevreuse, instructed 31 Mar. 1625 (vol. iv, f. 269 b), 'pour la conduitte' of the Princess into England . Loménie himself was also twice in England on special missions, in Dec. 1624 (Vol iii, f. 101 b) to receive James's oath to the engagement he was to take about the Catholics, when joint letters from him and the Marquis d'Effiat were written to Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, and again as colleague of the Duc de Chevreuse as above, when their joint letters were addressed to Louis and the queen mother, Marie de Médicis. Added at the end of vol. ii (f. 478) is a treatise entitled ' Raisons pour soutenir la validité du mariage de Monseig^r [Gaston Jean-Baptiste,] le Duc d 'Orleans en 1624 (sic) ' by Sieur Passart, who was commissioned (f. 505b) to write it by the Duke [in 1634 ?] in answer to one against the validity of the marriage. The marriage in question is that with Marguerite de Lorraine in 1631. The present copy is dated 3 Dec. 1652, and is addressed to [Hippolyte,] Comte de Béthune. The most important contents of each volume, besides the general correspondence alluded to above, and the drafts of articles, &c., described below, are:-