Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/La Mothe, Claude Grostête de
LA MOTHE, CLAUDE GROSTÊTE de (1647–1713), theologian, was born at Orleans in 1647, and was the son of Jacques Grostête de la Buffière, a member of the Paris bar, and an elder of the protestant church at Charenton. He assumed, according to custom, the name of one of his father's estates. He graduated in law at Orleans University 1664, and in the following year joined the Paris bar; but in 1676, having abandoned law for theology, he became protestant pastor at Lizy, near Melun. In 1682 he accepted a call to Rouen, but returned to Lizy on finding that no successor could be obtained, and was secretary of the provincial synod held there. On the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, he sought refuge in London with his wife. Marie Berthe, daughter of a Paris banker, was naturalised in 1668, and was minister first of the Swallow Street, and then, from 1694 till his death, of the Savoy Church. In 1712 he was elected a member of the Berlin Royal Society; in 1713 he collected subscriptions in England for the Huguenots released from the French galleys; and he died in London 30 Sept. 1713. La Mothe's father abjured protestantism, and his brother, Marin des Mahis, an ex-pastor become a canon of Orleans. La Mothe published 'Two Discourses relating to the Divinity of our Saviour,' London, 1693, 'The Inspiration of the New Testament asserted and explained,' London, 1694, and several treatises in French, one of them in defence of the Camisard prophets.
[Biography prefixed to his Sermons sur divers Textes, Amsterdam, 1715; Agnew's Prot. Exiles from France, 3rd edit. London, 1886; Haag's La France Protestante, Paris, 1855; Encyc. des Sciences Religieuses, v. 749, Paris. 1878.]