De La Bastide.
Marc Antoine de la Bastide was an eminent man in the French Protestant Church, and also an efficient public servant in his native country. His family was noble, their territorial title being De La Bastide, and their patronymic being Crosat or De Crosat. Marc Antoine was born at Milhau about 1624; his father was the governor of the viscountry of Creissel. The youth came to Paris at a very early age, having as his patron the celebrated Fouquet, the Superintendent of the Finances during Cardinal Mazarin’s administration. His talents and training brought him into notice, and in 1652 he was appointed Secretary to the French Ambassador in England. In 1662 he returned to London as Ambassador Extraordinary; and in that city he is found at a later date as a colleague to the Marquis de Ruvigny or an attaché to his embassy.
De la Bastide was a zealous Protestant, and was ready with his pen to defend his church and his faith. He was an elder in the church of Charenton; the date of his ordination I cannot find, but in 1671 he is mentioned as an “ancien du consistoire de l’eglise de Charenton,” and his house was in the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache in Paris.[1] In the preceding year the pasteur of Saumur, Isaac d’Huisseau, published a latitudinarian pamphlet entitled La Reunion du Christianisme, to which De la Bastide wrote an able reply. But he had soon to take the field against Bossuet’s disingenuous book on the Doctrine of the Catholic Church. In 1673 Bossuet was Bishop of Condom, so that De la Bastide’s answer was entitled “Reponse au livre de M. de Condom qui a pour titre Exposition,” &c. (Quevilly, 1673). In 1680 he published a “Seconde Reponse a M. de Condom,” which he dedicated to the Marquis De Ruvigny;[2] like its predecessor it was anonymous, but an “Attestation” was prefixed, signed, Claude, De l’Angle, P. Allix, Menard. (A translation, published at Rouen in 1672, of Ratram, or Bertram, on the Body and Blood of the Lord, is usually attributed to Allix, but some claim it for De la Bastide.)
Like the Huguenot literati in general, De la Bastide enjoyed the confidence of the great Valentin Conrart, the father of the French Academy. Conrart had begun a revision of Clement Marot’s Psalms, but at his death (23d September 1675) the task was unfinished. De la Bastide continued it, and the Provincial Synod of the Isle of France (27th April 1679) recognised his undertaking of that revision. It was not completed when he became a refugee. The revision was published at Berlin in 1701, “avec privilege du Roi de Prusse.” (Whether this was the first edition I am not informed; a copy of it is in the British Museum, as well as of a reprint published by S. Powell at Dublin, 1731.)
Like his noble old chief, the Marquis de Ruvigny, De la Bastide foresaw the extinction of all liberty of worship for Protestants in France, while he made as good a fight as he could. The Romish clergy assembled in 1682, and fulminated their execrations and menaces. Our author replied to them in a pamphlet (published at Amsterdam in 1683), entitled “Reponse apologetique à MM. du clergé de France sur les actes de leur assemblée de 1682.”
At the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes he was still a Charenton elder, and accordingly Louis XIV. by a sealed letter (une lettre de cachet) banished him to Chartres. It appears that he had a country house at Villeneuve-le-Roi. His friends petitioned the Government to allow him to reside there; they hinted that he might be converted to Romanism, and their petition was granted. The converters, proud of their craft, were sanguine. A police report described him and his supposed tendencies thus:— “An able man and learned — a man of experience in worldly affairs and in negotiations — a man both honest and sensible — seems to be kept in his religion by a certain worldly sense of honour.” So said the French police;[3] and a paragraph in The Mercury of January 1686 confirmed the constabular expectation regarding himself and some others, describing him as an ancien of Charenton and a brother of the minister of Blois. There was no foundation for the fabricated news. He was stedfast, and in 1687 he was banished from France. Thus he became a refugee in England, whence his pen discharged pointed arrows upon the head of Pelisson, the arch-apostate and convertisseur. In 1690 the brochure entitled Avis important aux refugiez (which was really a venomous harangue against the refugees) was published. The general belief was that Bayle was its author. De la Bastide differed, and in an essay entitled “L’auteur de l’Avis aux Refugiez dechiffré,” he contended that the
- ↑ “Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais,” viii., p. 251.
- ↑ I reprint this dedicatory epistle in the Appendix to my Volume First.
- ↑ “La Bastide, homme d’esprit et de lettres, entendu au commerce de monde et aux negociations — honnête homme, esprit sage — il parait être retenu en sa religion par quelque interêt d’honneur du monde.” — The La Reynie Papers, quoted by Haag.
