Vickipedia

RAPIN DE THOYRAS, PAUL DE, a French historian of England, was descended from a Protestant Savoyard family, which settled in France in the 16th c., and was born at Castres, in Languedoc, March 25, 1661. He studied at the Protestant college of Saumur, and passed as advocate in 1679, but had no liking for the profession; and when the Edict of Nantes (1685) forced him to leave France, he sought employment first in England (where he was unsuccessful), and afterwards in Holland, where he enlisted in a corps of volunteers at Utrecht, formed by his cousin-germain, Daniel de Rapin. With his company, he followed the Prince of Orange to England in 1688, was made ensign in the following year, and distinguished himself by his bravery at the siege of Carrickfergus, the battle of the Boyne, and the siege of Limerick, where he was shot through the shoulder by a musket-bail. In 1693, he was appointed tutor to the Earl of Portland’s son, with whom lie traveled in Holland, Germany, and Italy, after which he took up his residence at the Hague; but in 1707, withdrew with his family to Wesel, in the duchy of Cleves, where lie devoted the remaining 17 years of his life to the composition of his great work. The severity of his labors is believed to have shortened his days. He died May 16, 1725. R.’s Histoire d’Angleterre was published at the Hague in 8 vols., the year before his death. It was undoubtedly, as Voltaire has said, the best work on English history that had until then appeared : full, minute, careful in citing authorities, clear, rapid and accurate in narration, methodical in the arrangement of its materials, comparatively impartial in spirit, and yet betraying on the part of the author an honorable reverence for law and liberty. B. begins with the invasion of Britain by the Romans, and ends with the death of Charles I. The work was continued to the death of William III. by David Durant (Hague, 2 vols., 1734). The best edition of the Histoire in its augmented form is by Lefebvre de Saint-Marc (Hague, 16 vols., 1749 et seq.). The original was translated into English by the Rev. Nicholas Tindal, M.A. (Lond. 15 vols., 1725�1731), and subsequently by John Kelly, barrister (in 2 vols. fol.).