SAVOIE (Marguerite de France, duchess of). Autograph letter signed "Marguerite de France" as duchess of Berry, addressed to the queen Catherine de Médicis. S.l.n.d. 1 p. in-folio, address on the back, small cut on the address sheet due to the opening without affecting the text. "Madame, il a pleu a Vos Magestés avoir esgart aulx RABÈS FAIS EN VOSTRE CONSEIL PRIVÉ A AUCUNS FERMIERS DES GRENIERS A SEL DE BERI QUI ME SUNT REVENUS A BIEN GRANDE DIMINUTION DE MON REVENU, en concideration de quoi et de la perte que g'i é repsue, YOUR SAID MAGESTES HAVE ORDERED ME THE SUM OF DIS-[H]UICT THOUSAND POUNDS TO BE TAKEN FROM THE REMAINS OF THE COMTABLES, which I should receive with the a[s]signation that you have, which is to me, Madam, a very great hope of withdrawing what is due to me. However, Forget [Pierre Forget, secretary to Marguerite de France, and future Secretary of State under Henry III and Henry IV] wrote me that he has not seen anything since one year after this letter was given to me, and that YOUR PEOPLE WHOM YOU HAVE GIVEN CHALLENGES OF THE P[A]IMENT OF YOUR BUILDING OF THE TUILERIES PREGNATE ALL THE DENIERS THAT PROVIDE FROM THE REMAINING DI[T]S to let me know, what I am sure, Madam, is not intended, which is no obligation that I beg you very humbly to commend, as it has pleased you to prove to the said Forget, that you will do for me that hereafter the third part of the remains be given to me in competition with you, but if this commendation does not come very expressly from you, I will always have to think about it and I will have to make you always uncomfortable. It will please you to hear the surplus of the aforementioned Forget to whom I have given the responsibility and to remember the services which he does me and to hold me in your good grace to which I present my very humble recommendations with prayers to God to give you a very happy health and long life... " DUCSE OF BERRY AND SAVOIE, MARGUERITE DE FRANCE (1523-1574) was a daughter of François I and Claude de France. She received a very good education, learned Latin and Greek, protected the poets and was carried by her sensitivity towards the evangelical reformist current. She received the duchy of Berry, from which she drew personal income, and of which the famous Michel de L'Hospital was for a time chancellor. In 1559, at the age of thirty-six, she married Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, nephew of Charles V and cousin of Philip II of Spain. This marriage was part of the provisions of the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with Spain: the duke of Savoy, who had warred against France in the Spanish ranks, obtained the restitution of his states occupied by France in exchange for his union with Marguerite. This one knew how to overcome the reluctance of the Savoyard prince (who found her too old) by supporting his political views: she delivered to him as of before the marriage information allowing him to draw the best profit from the treaty, and played of her good relations with Catherine de Médicis and her sons to make him obtain the return of the majority of the Piedmontese places still held by the French (1562 and 1574). If she tried to detach Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy from the Spanish interests, she was nevertheless a political instrument in his hands. MARGUERITE OF FRANCE HAD BEEN AN INTIMATE FRIEND OF CATHERINE OF MEDICIS, hardly older than her: they shared in particular the taste of the letters, and had even thought of the common project of writing news. They remained in epistolary relations after the marriage of Marguerite.