His father, Jean, was a doctor of repute; his grandfather, a minister of the reformed religion, was descended from a family of Béarn, settled in La Rochelle.
[1] The original project included Belgian, German, English, and other sections; Italia et Hispania Orientalis was a posthumous publication.
He then came to England, visited Vossius, who had been a resident since 1670, and had become canon of Windsor, and he obtained the post of reader in the French Anglican church established by Peter Allix.
Vossius introduced him to William Sancroft, who collated him (after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685), to the rectory of Eynesford in Kent on 18 November 1687, having previously made him a librarian (perhaps assistant to Henry Wharton, recruited by Sancroft at the same period) at Lambeth Palace.
He was on the point of going to Germany to become librarian to Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp when illness overtook him.