HOUDETOT  , a

French noble family, taking its name from the lordship of Houdetot, between Arques and St Valery . Louis de Houdetot went with Robert, duke of Normandy, to Palestine in 1034, and the various branches of the family trace descent from Richard I. de Houdetot (fl . 1229), who married Marie de Montfort . Charles Louis de Houdetot received a marquisate in 1722, and on his son Claude Constance Cesar, lieutenant-general in the French army, was conferred the hereditary title of count in 1753 . His wife (see below) was the Madame de Houdetot of Rousseau's Confessions . Their son Cesar Louis Marie Francois Ange, comte de Houdetot (1749—1825), was governor of Martinique (1803-1809) and lieutenant-general (1814) under the Empire . His son Frederic Christophe, comte de Houdetot (1778—18J9), was director-general of indirect imposts in Prussia after Jena, and prefect of Brussels in 1813 . He acquiesced in the Restoration, but had to resign from the service after the Hundred Days . He became a peer of France in 1819, and under the Second Empire he was returned by the department of Calvados to the Corps Legislatif . His half-brother, . Charles Ile-de-France, comte de Houdetot (1789—1866), was wounded at Trafalgar and transferred to the army, in which he served through the Napoleonic wars . He retired at the Restoration, but returned to the service in 1823, and in 1826 became aide-de-camp to the duke of Orleans, becoming lieutenant-general in 1842 .

He sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1837 to 1848, when he followed Louis Philippe into

exile . A third brother, Cesar Francois Adolphe, comte de Houdetot (1799—1869), was a well-known writer on military and other subjects .