Paul de Beauvilliers, 2nd duc de Saint-Aignan

[1] As First Gentleman of the King's Bedchamber (Premier gentilhomme de la Chambre du roi) in 1666 (a high privilege whose recipient was in charge of ordering the servants and the doorkeepers attending the king in his public bedroom), he had daily access to Louis XIV with whom he could discuss personal and private matters.

In 1691 he entered the Council of Ministers (Conseil d'en haut), chaired by the king himself where matters of state policy were decided including religion, diplomacy, and war.

He was the voice of the dévot party that advocated finding a peaceful end to France's and Louis XIV's interminable wars.

In 1697, he ordered the intendants (heads of the royal administration in the provinces) to conduct a general survey whose conclusions, known as the Mémoires, offer an interesting portrayal of France in the very end of the 17th century.

Close to the duke of Burgundy, his pupil and heir to the throne, he was one of the reformists who advocated a less centralized and absolute monarchy, and whose ideas of polysynody were briefly applied after 1715, although he did not live long enough to see it.