Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 12 - Section XIX
Vaillant.
The literary refugees were fortunate in including in their circle a learned book-seller who opened an attractive shop in London in 1686. Maittaire, in 1731, records as an agreeable reminiscence that he had made the acquaintance of Des Maizeaux in Paul Vaillant’s book-shop. In the present day inns and taverns have signs; but in his day shops also had them, and his shop bore the sign of “The Ship.” Its exact situation appears in the title-page of one of the reports of the French Committee:[1]— “Estats de la distribution de la somme de douze mille livres sterlings accordée par la Reine aux pauvres protestans françois refugiez en Angleterre, receue par le Committé françois le 18 de decembre 1706 et par lui administrée sons les ordres des Seigneurs nommés par Sa Majesté et par la direction de Messieurs les Commissaires anglois. A Londres, chez Paul Vaillant dans le Strand vis-a-vis de Bedford House, à l’enseigne du Navire, 1708.”
Paul Vaillant[2] was a member of a good Protestant family of Saumur. He escaped as a persecuted fugitive in 1685, or perhaps a year or two earlier, as he was naturalized in London in January 1685. Searching among the refugees naturalized at Westminster, we have found in the Patent-Rolls Paul Vaillant and Mary Magdalen, his wife (21st January 1685); and Francis Vaillant, Jacqueline, his wife, Paul, Francis, and Isaac, their sons, and Susan and Mary, their daughters (15th April 1687). The heads of these two families were brothers, and both were from Saumur. In the end of 1691 Paul Colomiés, being on his death-bed, sold his library to “a bookseller.” “Paul Vaillant” signed as one of the witnesses to his Will, dated 2d January 1692; he, therefore, probably was the fortunate bookseller whose shelves were enriched by that library. The business remained with the family till the year 1802, being carried on successively by the first Paul, by his nephews Paul and Isaac, and by a third Paul Vaillant (son of either Paul the second or of Isaac), who was born in 1715. We may note what is remembered concerning the generations of this family:
(1.) Paul Vaillant, the refugee, had the merit of founding and consolidating the business, and of making his shop a favourite literary resort. We identify him with the first of the Pauls in the Patent-Rolls. We cannot specify his birth and death; because the “Paul Vaillant” mentioned in an obituary notice quoted in “Illustrations of Literature” as “the first bookseller of that name in the Strand” is incorrectly described, and is not the aged Paul, but his nephew. The business was established in 1686.
(2.) Paul Vaillant, the second, the elder son of Francis, was born at Saumur in 1672, and was thirteen years of age at the date of the Revocation Edict. His education, therefore, must have been chiefly carried on in England. Perhaps not knowing anything about the naturalization in 1687, he and his brother were naturalized by Act of Parliament in 1708. He died October 14, 1739, aged sixty-seven, and was described as “an eminent bookseller in the foreign way,” which was true, although the chronicler mistook him for his uncle. His brother, Isaac Vaillant, was his partner, and probably survived him, devoting himself to the business department, and leaving the literary department to the third Paul.
(3.) Paul Vaillant, the third, was born in London in 1715. The “Literary Anecdotes” say of him: “In 1739 or 40 Mr. Vaillant went to Paris for the purpose of superintending the famous edition of Cicero by the Abbé Olivet, and again in 1759 to settle the plan for a new edition of Tacitus by the Abbé Brotier.” The latter year witnessed the commencement of his year of office as a Sheriff of London and Middlesex. And in May 1760 he had the mournful duty of attending on the scaffold the unfortunate Earl Ferrers, who was executed for having murdered his steward in a paroxysm of rage. His pious and Christian bearing towards the unhappy peer is detailed in the “British Chronologist,” vol. iii.; the Earl acknowledged his kind attentions by presenting him with his stop-watch. Paul Vaillant, Esq., was a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex; he is described as “an opulent and respectable book-seller in the Strand.” He died at his house in Pall-Mall on 1st February 1802 in his eighty-seventh year, “being at that time father of the Company of Stationers, of which he had been a liveryman sixty-four years.” He was twice married. By his first wife he was the father of Paul Vaillant of Hexham, in Northumberland, who married Miss Downes, only child and heiress of an attorney there. By his second wife he had “two sons, one of whom is in holy orders; the other is well known and respected as a gentleman of great literary talents, and eminent as one of the Counsellors-at-law in the Corporation of London.” (These last particulars apply to the early years of the present century; see “Nichols.”)