Ministerial patron-client networks during the reign of Louis XIV: The Phelypeaux de Pontchartrain, 1675-171

In early modern France, noble patron-client networks served as the primary conduit for royal and ministerial initiatives. Royal authority and the successful implementation of royal policy in Paris and the provinces depended not only on the formal machinery of the State but also on informal patron-client ties. This dissertation focuses on the evolution of the patron-client network of a family of Louis XIV's closest royal ministers, the Phelypeaux de Pontchartrain, in the last decades of Louis XIV's reign from 1675-1715. The study considers the continuity of traditional clientage in a period when the French State was becoming increasingly centralized and professionalized. The Pontchartrain family, as royal ministers, relied on their personal network of patrons and clients but at the same time, they increasingly depended on provincial royal officers with whom they shared only professional ties.;The Pontchartrain provide an ideal exemplar for studying the relationship between a family's informal patron-client network and early modern state-building. Louis began his career as a First President in the Parlement of Brittany. By 1715, he had served as the head of royal finances (as Controller General), as Secretary of State for the Navy, the king's household, Paris and the Clergy, and held the post of chancellor. Louis's son Jerome followed his father's career path and formally assumed his father's functions as Secretary of State for the Navy in 1699.;This study also details the significant role of women in the clan's clientage networks. Jerome married a woman from one of the old noble families at Louis XIV's court, Eleonore de La Rochefoucauld-Roye. She acted as an important bridge between her husband's robe noble family and the old sword noble families at the Court. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Pontchartrain family were integrated into the courtly world of Versailles, and they retained ties with provincial elites. These ties, both personal and professional, were indispensable to the functioning of Louis XIV's state institutions.