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lettre de cachet, (French: “letter of the sign [or signet]”), a letter signed by the king and countersigned by a secretary of state and used primarily to authorize someone’s imprisonment. It was an important instrument of administration under the ancien régime in France. Lettres de cachet were abused to such an extent during the 17th and ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 14, 2018 · The term "lettre de cachet" refers to arrest warrants that were signed by the king and delivered at the request of royal officials or family members. These letters, whose wax seal or cachet had to be broken in order to be read, allowed individuals to be incarcerated indefinitely and without legal recourse. Although it is difficult to date their ...
A lettre de cachet of 1703 (reign of Louis XIV), opening De par le roy ("In the name of the King...") Lettres de cachet (French: [lɛtʁ də kaʃɛ]; lit. '"letters of the sign/signet"') were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal. They contained orders directly from the king ...
Such a letter could order imprisonment or exile for an individual without recourse to courts of law. Of very early origin, the lettre de cachet came into common use in the 17th cent. as an instrument of the new monarchy. Although its actual use was restrained, the issuance to local officials of lettres de cachet with the space for the name left ...
The lettre de cachet belonged to the class of lettres closes, as opposed to lettres patentes, which contained the expression of the legal and permanent will of the king, and had to be furnished with the seal of state affixed by the chancellor. The lettres de cachet, on the contrary, were signed simply by a secretary of state (formerly known as ...
Thomas du Fossé was a senior judge from a family long noted for its Jansenist sympathies, who after thirty-five years in the Parlement had acquired respect and authority. 17 According to a widely circulated account, when confronted with the lettre de cachet exiling him to the Île de Noirmoutier he responded by writing to the chancellor that ‘he knew of no law in the kingdom which compelled ...
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de cachet is simply that it was an exercise of arbitrary power that deprived victims of a fair trial and legal protections otherwise offered by the French legal system. In response, Strayer follows historians who have emphasized the overwhelming use of lettres de cachet in the service of family discipline. Royal
