RAPIN DE THOYRAS, PAUL DE, a French historian of England, was descended from a Protestant Savoyard family, which settled in France in the 16th c., and was born at Castres, in Languedoc, Mar. 25, 1661. Ile studied at the Protestant college of .Sau mur, and passed as advocate in 1679, but had no liking for the profession; and when the edict of Nantes (1685) forced him to leave France, he sought employment first in Eng land (where he was unsuccessful), and afterward in Holland, where he enlisted in a corps of volunteers at Utrecht, formed by his cousin-german, Daniel de lapin. With his company he followed the prince of Orange to England in 1688, was made ensign in the following year, and distinguished himself by his bravery at the siege of Carrickfergus,' the battle of the Boyne, anil the siege of Limerick, where he was shot through the shoulder by It musket-ball. In 1693 he was appointed tutor to the earl of Portland's son, with whom be traveled in Holland, Germany, and Italy, after which he took up his resi dence at'llie Hague; but in 1707 withdrew with his fathily to Wesel, in the duchy of Cleves, where he devoted the remaining 17 years of his life to the composition of his great work. The severity of Ids labors is believed to have shortened his clays. He died
May 16, 1725. Rapin's Histoire d'Anyleterre was published at the Hague in 8 vols. the year before his death. It was undoubtedly, as Voltaire, has said, the best work on Eng lish history that had until then appeared: full, minute, careful in citing authorities, clear, rapid, and accurate in narration, methodical in the arrangement of its materials, comparatively impartial in spirit, and yet betraying on the part of the author an honor able reverence for law and liberty. Rapin begins with the invasion of Britain by the Romans, and ends with the death of Charles I. The work was continued to the death of William III. by David Durant (Hague, 2 vols., 1734). The bast edition of the Ilistoire in its augmented form is by Lefebvre de Saint-Marc (Hague, 16 vols., 1749, et seg.). The original was translated into English by the rev. Nicholas Tindal, M.A. (Load. 15 vols., 172541), and subsequently by John Kelly, barrister (in 2 vols. fol.).