lettre de cachet

plural lettres de cachet

1. historicalA warrant issued by the monarch in ancien régime France, especially one which imprisons someone without trial.

   This year the King sent it to Troyes, each member ordered there by an individual lettre de cachet.

   1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, page 113

   3 more examples

   I lost my temper, and spoke so irreverently of the Grand Monarque, that the next morning I was sent to the Bastile, by virtue of a Lettre de Cachet.

   1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC

   “Bon Dieu!” thought the old negotiator, “the boy has actually talked the woman round, and she’d get him a wife as she would a toy if Master cried for it. Why are there no such things as lettres-de-cachet—and a Bastille for young fellows of family?”

   1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 7, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC

   Louis stepped up persecution of prominent Jansenists, using lettres de cachet to imprison the most subversive [...].

   2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 22