Late 17th century French legal manuscript relating to the affairs of Nicolas de Montargon, businessman and frustrated diplomat.
Quarto sized (20x27 cm) disbound manuscript (c 12,000 words) in a clerk’s hand; ink on vellum comprising sixty numbered folios (120pp) in eight gatherings, sewn with string top and bottom only, sewing snapped between third and fourth gatherings. In ink stamped company logo ‘P. Expeditions Des Greffiers Traize Sols 4 D.P. Deux Rooles’ appears as the header to the recto of 26 leaves; some pages browned, with curling edges or folded corners; many pages bright.
The manuscript comprises several copied legal documents, bearing date 1693 at front, seemingly relating to properties, agreements entered into, and possibly the supply and transport of goods, many involving Nicolas [de] Montargon. Commences with a transaction from 1690, concerning the sum of 30,220 livres, possibly pertaining to the sale or use as collateral of a house (‘Ladite Maison’) in Paris, on rue du Quay et La Tournelle - a premier waterfront residential street looking across the Seine to Iles St Louis and Notre Dame. Folio 58 verso bears a selection of signatures; Folio 59 is in a separate hand, also signed.
Other people mentioned include: Charles Soisson; Daniel Roussil; Simon Couillard; Armand Poitevin; Mnsr Nicolas Miliand, Con.r du Roy; Pierre Capperon; Claude Collon, Chevalier; Nicolas Jacqueman; Guillaume Quilive; Damoiselle Catherine Boiron; Guillaume Heumant; Claude Trupaut; Louis de Bouillon, Chevalier; Marin Fagart; Joan Francoise Carpentier and Nicolaus Carpentier; Damoiselle de Champhuon; Antoine Monguillon.
Nicolas [de] Montargon was sometime procureur (prosecutor) of Chatelet in Paris; a businessman, after c.1702 he enjoyed a colourful, if ultimately frustrated career as a diplomat in the service of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; as Chamberlain, Montargon acted as Augustus’ permanent sales representative in Paris. A similar manuscript bearing identical ‘Expeditions Des Greffiers’ page headings is recorded in the holdings of the Newberry Library, Newberry VAULT folio Case MS 5299.
