Family tree of MALESHERBES

Author, Lawyer, judge, Politician in the French Ancien Régime

French Born Chrétien Guillaume de LAMOIGNON de MALESHERBES

French statesman, minister, and afterwards counsel for the defence of Louis XVI

Born on December 06, 1721 in Paris, France , France

Died on April 22, 1794 in Paris, France

Born on december 06 46

Deceased on april 22 32

Family tree

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de LAMOIGNON

Guillaume

1617 - 1677

POTIER

Madeleine

1623 - 1705

VOYSIN

Daniel

- 1693

TALON

Marie

- 1711

de LAMOIGNON

Chrétien-François

1644 - 1709

VOYSIN

Marie Jeanne

1654 - 1727

ROUJAULT

Nicolas Etienne

1662 - 1723

MAYNON

Barbe Madeleine

1668 - 1736

de LAMOIGNON

Guillaume II

1683 - 1772

ROUJAULT

Anne Elisabeth

1692 - 1734

de LAMOIGNON de MALESHERBES

Chrétien Guillaume

1721 - 1794

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Born at Paris from a famous legal family, Malesherbes was educated for the legal profession. The young lawyer soon proved his intellectual capacity, when he was appointed president of the cour des aides in the parlement of Paris in 1750 on the promotion of his father, Guillaume de Lamoignon de Blancmesnil, to be chancellor. One of the chancellor's duties was to control the press, and this duty was entrusted to Malesherbes by his father during his eighteen years of office, and brought him into connection with the public far more than his judicial functions. To carry it out efficiently he kept in communication with the literary leaders of Paris, and especially with Diderot, and Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm even goes so far as to say that "without the assistance of Malesherbes the Encyclopédie would probably never have been published".

In 1771 he was called upon to mix in politics; the parlements of France had been dissolved, and a new method of administering justice devised by Maupeou, which was in itself commendable as tending to the better and quicker administration of justice, but pernicious as exhibiting a tendency to over-centralization, and as abolishing the hereditary "nobility of the robe", which, with all its faults, had from its nature preserved some independence, and been a check on the royal power. Malesherbes presented a strong remonstrance against the new system, and was at once banished to his country seat at Malesherbes, to be recalled, however, with the old parlement on the accession of Louis XVI, and to be made minister of the maison du roi in 1775.

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