French Renaissance Paleography

Description:

Paris, 1 August 1564
Grosse d’un arrêt du maître des requêtes du Parlement de Paris
Chicago, Newberry Library, VAULT Case MS 5027

Background:

This document, along with the La Fayette-Langec Contredict, the La Fayette-Langeac Contredict 2/manifest and the __Contrat d’échange de propriétés entre Gilbert de La Fayette et Delphine de Bonnabaud_, forms part of the dossier of a legal dispute between Jacques de Langeac, _seigneur of Bonnabaud, and his neighbor Louis de La Fayette, seigneur of Pontgibaud, regarding fishing rights on the river Sioule, which ran through the estates of both parties. The legal procedures lasted several months in 1564.

The document presented here is a copy of the ruling of the maître des requêtes __of the Parlement de Paris in favor of Langeac. It condemns the defending party La Fayette to pay damages and interests to the plaintiff. Copies of rulings in Ancien Régime France were called grosses (big letters), and were usually drawn by the notary clerk of the ruling jurisdiction. Another grosse is found here: Grosse d’un jugement du bailli d’Orléans/manifest.
The court dossier for the 1564 fishing rights dispute is part of a larger collection of documents related to the seigneurie of Bonnabaud, sold by Anne-Joseph-Gilbert-Allyre de Langeac to Amable-Jacques Soubrany de Bénistant in 1787. A large quantity of documents were assembled at the time, including copies of the sale deed, as well as descriptions of the property, lists of tenants, yearly earnings, previous legal disputes, and so forth.

For more documents related to the Langeac family, see the Vente au profit de Gabriel de Langeac and the Bail à cens de la seigneurie de Bonnabaud/manifest.
See the Lauzanne Family Papers for an overview of this significant family archive of thousands of documents held at the Newberry Library.

Bibliography:

https://french.newberry.t-pen.org/www/record.html?id=https://iiif.library.utoronto.ca/presentation/v2/paleography:498/manifest