ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with one response to this existential plight as the seventeenth century dawned: the accelerated methodisation, practice and record of a new confirmatory form of noble travel to England. It explores the birth of this little-studied culture of travel and its documentation, as recorded in the travelogue of a noble d’epee. Scrutiny of the presumptions brought to bear on French noble travel by this label is required if the current scholarly narrative is to be revised. Hence, this chapter seeks not only to examine the intricacies of a hitherto neglected record of travel. Through its analysis of a rare early record of elite travel, it also considers a revised theoretical framework for the study of French noble travel, at least that to England, in the seventeenth century. For the moment however, Gallocentric travel to England and the narratives woven by its exponents would remain central to the formation of a French noble.
