Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moulin, Peter du
MOULIN, PETER du (1601–1684), Anglican divine, son of Pierre du Moulin [q. v.], was born at Paris on 24 April 1601. After studying at Sedan and Leyden, he repaired to Cambridge, where he received the degree of D.D. About 1625, after an imprisonment at Dunkirk, he was appointed to the living (refused by his father) of St. John's, Chester, but there is no trace in the church books of his having resided there. In 1640, however, on becoming D.D. at Leyden, he described himself as holding that benefice. Wood could not ascertain whether he held any English preferment prior to the civil war, but he was rector of Witherley, Leicestershire, in 1633, and of Wheldrake, Yorkshire, in 1641. During the civil war he was first in Ireland as tutor in the Boyle family, and was next tutor at Oxford to Richard Boyle and Lord Dungarvan, frequently preaching at St. Peter-in-the-East. He was rector of Adisham, Kent, from 1646 (with a short intermission in 1660 on the reinstatement of Dr. Oliver) till his death. He sided, like his father, with the royalists, and wrote the scurrilous reply to Milton, 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor,' mistakenly attributed to Alexander More [q. v.] Du Moulin concealed his authorship, was consequently unmolested, and was even in 1656 made D.D. at Oxford, then under puritan sway. At the Restoration he was rewarded by a chaplaincy to Charles II and by succeeding to his father's prebend at Canterbury. He took up his residence there, died 10 Oct. 1684, and was buried in the cathedral. He published 'A Treatise of Peace and Contentment of the Soul,' London, 1657, and about twenty other works in English, French, and Latin. Wood styles him 'an honest, zealous Calvinist.' By his marriage in 1633 with Anne, daughter of Matthew Claver of Foscott, Buckinghamshire, he had a son Lewis, grandfather of Peter du Moulin, one of Frederick II's best generals. Peter's brother, Cyrus, was for a time French pastor at Canterbury.
[Life in Lansdowne MS. 987, fol. 44, Brit. Mus.; Wood's Athenæ Oxon.; Dart's Canterbury, 1726, p. 200; Album Studiosorum Lugdunæ, the Hague, 1875; Agnew's Protestant Exiles from France, 1886; Haag's La France Protestante; Foster's Alumni Oxon. and London Marriage Licences; Archæologia Cantiana, 1882–3.]